Stars:  Five out of five stars

"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" has been as much a part of my pop culture history and childhood as "The Wizard of Oz" and "It's a Wonderful Life."  How many rubber rats and fake dead canaries have I served to friends on trays and how many times have we repeated the line, "Butcha are, Blanche!  Butcha are in that chair!"  Funny that as time goes on, "Baby Jane" actually disturbs and frightens me more than amuses in the way the horror genre (which I've always selectively enjoyed) became temporarily taboo when I was grappling with my own mortality.  Perhaps it pains and haunts me to see two powerhouse leading ladies made into a freak show as elderly “has-beens” with parallels (slight) to their real careers.  Or is it that Davis, dubbed “screen sadist” tortures Crawford, dubbed “screen masochist?”  Still what other opportunity is there to view these two legends and real-life rivals playing opposite one another in a battle of wills?  (No, "Hollywood Canteen," in which both appeared as themselves pitching in for the war effort and still in their dewy youth, doesn't count.)  Although neither would admit it and stories are legion about off-screen antics, I suspect they rather enjoyed themselves!   In any case, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" is a deeply disturbing and unsettling film, in spite of whatever camp elements audiences read into it, with absolutely brilliant acting and an equally brilliant script.  It is chilling, sometimes hilarious, and full of superbly realized characters, a hive of dysfunctional families from hell suspended in private hells behind closed doors.

Originally a novel by Henry Farrell, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, like What's the Matter with Helen, is the macabre side of Hollywood ambition, the undercurrent of resentment, jealousy and stunted emotional growth beneath an industry that uses and discards as it freezes and projects beauty and immortality.  Two sisters – one a former child star of vaudeville, Baby Jane Hudson, the other a major film star of the 1930’s, Blanche – share a home in which Blanche, crippled in a car accident years ago, is at the mercy of her increasingly unhinged sister.  Most of it concerns the helpless, beleaguered Blanche trying to escape from her Gothic prison (teeming with old memories and familial bitterness) and escalating sadism at the hands of Baby Jane who is macabrely trying to stage a comeback.

In an ensemble piece of extraordinary acting, Bette Davis is a stand-out as Baby Jane.  True, she has the “showier” role and Crawford, in a softer part, confined to a wheelchair, is painfully sympathetic and certainly superb as well, communicating whole passages of drama with her facial expressions alone, but Davis is riveting.  Beyond the dumpy, slovenly, mannered high camp element that delights the audience, Davis gives us a woman who is emotionally as much a cripple as her sister physically is.  Sometimes childlike, she veers into pathological cruelty and malice with no more conscience than a baby tiger.  The often-imitated moment when she sings “Taking a Letter to Daddy” to a polite but appalled accompanist, Edwin Flagg (a deliciously quirky Victor Buono), her pancake makeup and ringlets grotesque and debauched, is astonishing.  One sees her as “helpless” as her sister in a sense – helpless against herself and her illness, monstrously and pathetically trapped in the mindset of a spoiled six-year-old.

Clips from early Joan Crawford and Bette Davis films (Davis’ ironically used to demonstrate her inability to act) reveal the two stars at the peak of their youth and glamour.  (Crawford’s early clips are from “Sadie McKee,” by the by, in which she was exquisite.)  Though in her sixties at the time of this film, required to deteriorate and lit without softening effects, Crawford’s beauty is still notable, her doleful eyes reminding me of the coquettish vulnerability of her flapper years.  As Vivian Sobchack noted in “The Leech Woman’s Revenge,” sadly, in this ageist culture, the aging woman has been scapegoated and abhorred as the symbol of a general fear of aging with no male counterpart existing, older women tragically seen “not as a resource, but as a ‘problem.’”  The open scorning that continues to thrive could use an “extreme makeover.”  This particular film ironically started a wave of Grand Guignol horror films depicting aging and “macabre” actresses, punished and marginalized by Hollywood for growing older, yet given “new blood,” according to some interpretations, through these arguably demeaning but substantial roles.

Nothing Blanche did (as in the surprise twist revelation which I won’t give away) justifies or excuses Baby Jane’s horrifying mistreatment, nor does it make her somehow more culpable for that treatment.  Baby Jane was a selfish little monster, as demonstrated in the eerie opening vaudeville scenes, and deserved a good kick in the pants.  One sympathizes with Blanche and wants to see her escape and Crawford, beautifully underplaying, makes us feel every desperate moment.

The supporting cast is uniformly magnificent.  Buono is fabulous as the corpulent mama’s boy (even he has a backstory, adding to the portrait of Hollywood decadence and delusion).  That “pansyish,” sullen mama’s boy, trapped in an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with mama, was a popular fetish of the 60’s and reveals the underlying prejudice regarding women (again!) (mothers yet still a popular scapegoat in psychology as fathers earn little rancor for their parental shortcomings), homosexuality (not actually implied), and obesity.  Maidie Norman (who also played Joan’s assistant in “Torch Song”), such a welcome presence in films, is wonderful and heroic as Elvira, their maid, her sensitive face and warmth giving strength and presence to her characterizations.  Even the young actresses who play Jane and Blanche as children (Julie Allred and Gina Gillespie, respectively) are superb.  And speaking of children, Bette Davis’ real-life daughter, B.D. Hyman, has a bit role in this.  She can’t act worth a damn and comes off sullen, spoiled and snotty and it works brilliantly, a perfect counterpoint to Baby Jane.

SPOILERS** I like to think Blanche survives at the finale; it remains ambiguous.  (Couldn’t the cops have given her an ice cream?  Interesting that things come full circle with Baby Jane offering Blanche an ice cream as she had in the beginning.)  Ultimately, Crawford, once again, is a "female on the beach," but this time there’s no attractive boy-toy as the menacer.

An amazing film, a masterpiece of horror and characterization with two great legends co-starring at long last and an ensemble supporting cast that meets them full throttle.  – D. Nowak