Series explores how stars sparred on movie set
It was a clash of the titans when Robert Aldrich cast Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in the gothic film “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” in 1962.
The two actresses had been the reigning queens of Hollywood for years — Crawford the penultimate “star” and Davis the consummate “actress.”
Now, for the first time, they were working together in what was, at best, an armed truce.
Some years later, Aldrich reported that they had been perfectly well-behaved on the set.
“They spend the rest of the time saying what a cow the other one is,” he said.
Audiences can experience what the rivalry was like when FX premieres its limited series “Feud: Bette and Joan” on Sunday starring Jessica Lange as Crawford and Susan Sarandon as Davis.
Ryan Murphy (“American Horror Story”), executive producer of the series, says he didn’t want to emphasize the kitsch prompted by casting these two legends in such a film at the end of their careers.
“I was interested in something a little deeper and a little bit more emotional and painful,” he said. “I think ultimately what happened to both women is very painful. I got to know Bette Davis. I had a very minor relationship with her and got to spend time with her, and the thing about her is you go into something like that expecting a very largerthan-life camp figure, which she helped, I think, propagate.
“So in the public view, she rarely turned that off. She felt that was important for her survival. But when I got across from her oneon-one and I got to one day spend four hours talking with her, she was that person at all. She was not camp. She was not broad. She was very emotional and real, and all of those things were in the water when we began to write the show.”
Lange pored over information on Crawford.
“The thing with Joan is she was never on, and some actors, by nature, are just not that way. When she was in public, she was performing. So it was very hard to find a moment where you could really discern what the heart and soul of (her) character was.
“So then as an actor, you go back to, ‘OK, well, this is what happened to her in her childhood. This is what determined who she was — the physical abuse, sexual abuse, the poverty.’ All these things, she was constantly fighting against for the rest of her life. She had a fifth-grade education. As she says, ‘Everything I learned, I was taught by MGM: how to walk, how to speak, how to present your face. I mean,
So there is this great artifice.”
Lange was interested in depicting Crawford without this synthetic front. “Then you actually can invent what you would imagine was inside her.”
Sarandon, meanwhile, was terrified to play Davis, but Murphy assured her that she was up to the task.
“I said, ‘Well, I have to have a dialect coach because her speech pattern is the antithesis of mine,’” Sarandon said. “I’m so sloppy and slow, and she has got that thing that’s been imitated so many times.
“And Ryan also does a very good Bette Davis. Sometimes he would correct me and say, ‘But you have to hit that harder.’ ... And so I think it was an exercise in surrender and trust, and just jumping in and hoping for the best and channeling Bette in some way, but hoping that she’s pleased.”