SILVER SCREEN ENEMIES
THE CINEMA STARS’ LIFE-LONG RIVALRY IS RE-CREATED FOR THE SMALL SCREEN
Bette and Joan’s bitter rivalry
As far as feuds go, it was the stuff of legend. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’ decades-long enmity, fuelled by jealousy, love, pettiness and spite, presided over Hollywood for years. It never let up, despite the pair co-starring in the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
Now the topic of a new series Feud: Bette and Joan, starring Susan Sarandon as Bette and Jessica Lange as Joan, the rivalry has never been matched in Tinseltown. However, the eight-part TV series, which screens on SOHO, attempts to delve deeper into one of history’s most famed jealousies.
“Bette Davis has been chasing me for years,” says Susan (70), who had been offered the chance to play her five times before agreeing.
“[Show creator Ryan Murphy] said, ‘We need to ask the question, how do we change that women are still being put against each other?”
It all started, in large part, over a man. In the ‘30s, theatre star Bette left Broadway to try and make it in Hollywood and came across Joan, who was already an established star. Bette won a part in the aptly titled film Dangerous, opposite Fran chot Tone, whom she fell head-over-heels in love with. Bette won an Oscar for the film, but lost the man to Joan, who married Fran chot as soon as filming wrapped.
Joan made it her mission to win over Fran chot, inviting him over to her home for tea only to greet him, naked, in the solarium.
“He was madly in love with her,” Bette admitted with a sigh. “He would return to the set, his face covered in lipstick... He was honoured this great star was in love with him. I was jealous, of course.”
While Joan got the guy, Bette’s career soon eclipsed her rival’s, winning another Oscar in 1938 for Jezebel. Joan had her contract terminated by MGM, and taking a large pay cut, joined Bette at Warner Bros, where she had no choice but to play second fiddle.
Joan initially tried to win Bette over, sending flowers and gifts to her dressing room, but they were returned with Bette snidely commenting on the “lesbian overtures” of the efforts, though she also took every opportunity to accuse her rival of having “slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie”.
Bette also described the actress as a shallow “mannequin” with eyebrows like “African caterpillars”.
Joan wasn’t any better, remarking, “Poor Bette, she looks like she’s never had a happy day, or night, in her life.”
But finally in 1946, Joan
won her own gold man with a role Bette turned down in Mildred Pierce.
However, it was in 1962, where Feud picks up, where their acrimony reached new heights. Both women were older, the parts had dried up and they both needed a big hit. They were both cast in the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and while filming initially started well, things soon turned sour.
Name calling, nightly phone calls to the director to complain about each other and passiveaggressive attempts to woo the crew in their favour dominated the set, and both ladies were on a mission to make each other’s lives as miserable as possible.
For the scene where Bette had to drag Joan’s character Blanche across the floor,
Joan, knowing her co-star had a bad back, filled her pockets with rocks to make herself heavier – and some say she even wore a weighted belt. By the end of the day’s filming, Bette was howling with pain and a smug Joan just “strolled back to her dressing room”, an onlooker said.
Joan was also worried that when it came to the fight scenes, Bette would try and harm her, so requested a body double. However, there was one scene where she was required. Bette did clip Joan in the head, but while Bette claimed she “barely touched her”, others from the set said Joan needed stitches.
And, of course, perhaps the most famous or at least most public moment of the feud – while Bette was the only one nominated for an Oscar for Baby Jane, Joan had arranged it so she would collect the award on behalf of the other actresses in the category should they win. When Anne Bancroft’s name was read out, Bette was shocked and furious when Joan brushed past her, saying, “Excuse me, I have an Oscar to collect.”
The animosity continued until the day Joan passed away from a heart attack in 1977.
“You should never say bad things about the dead, only good... Joan Crawford is dead. Good,” Bette remarked after hearing the news.
Feud series creator Ryan Murphy says Bette and
Joan were casualties of the Hollywood machine and the studio purposely pitted the duo against each other.
“If Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had become friends and allies, they could have won so much bigger, and they didn’t,” he says.
Luckily for Ryan, history didn’t repeat itself.
“I said to Jess at the closing of the whole thing, ‘Thank God we got along!’” laughs Susan.