Literally Speaking: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
There isn’t really a lot to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, two ageing sisters, a crippled former Hollywood icon, Blanche Hudson, and a child star gone to seed, ‘Baby’ Jane, live together in a rundown house. ‘Baby’ Jane is slowly going off her rocker and when she learns of Blanche’s plans to sell the house and put her into care her mental breakdown goes into overdrive with disastrous results.
What makes the film work isn’t the plot but the performances, with the inspired casting of fading stars Joan Crawford as Blanche and Bette Davis as the grotesquely comical ‘Baby’ Jane giving the film a far greater resonance than it would otherwise have. The two stars detested each other in real life and, while that must have made director Robert Aldrich’s task far from easy, it adds greatly to the performances, particularly Davis’s.
Davis’s ‘Baby’ Jane is a childlike version of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, resentful of time and an industry that thrives on youth and the presence of her invalid, and vastly more talented, sister gives her someone to take out that resentment on. Davis it seems decided on the method approach for the scene where she brutally kicks Blanche unconscious, actually landing a kick to Crawford’s head that required stitches (Crawford allegedly retaliated by putting weights in her pockets for the scene where Davis drags her across the floor).
This isn’t a film to watch for the story, its potboiler plot holds few surprises, but rather for perhaps the last great turns from two of Hollywood’s grand dames. There are few actresses who would take on such unglamorous and in the case of ‘Baby’ Jane downright ugly, parts but it paid of, both for the film and the stars concerned (both received award nominations and more work off the back of the film)
And Davis’s make-up is as scary as any William Shatner Halloween mask.
