Reflections On ... Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

From the Facebook event page:

Attention, Scream Queens! In honour of Halloween, for the October Lobotomy Room film club presentation we’ve scheduled the apogee of the “hagsploitation” genre Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) starring Bette Davis at her most frenzied! Wednesday 16 October! Come and settle-in for an evening of spine-tingling Southern Gothic horror in the Tiki splendour of Fontaine's Bamboo Lounge!

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love, specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the camp! (Our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People!). Remember: admission is FREE so that you can buy more cocktails! (One drink minimum).

“Millionaire and southern belle Charlotte Hollis guards a deep, dark secret. When cousin Miriam comes to stay with Charlotte, mystifying events begin to occur, driving the latter closer to insanity.”

/ IMDb’s synopsis for Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) /

/ "Suspense that starts with a whisper … and mounts to a shattering unpredictable climax!” /

Here at Lobotomy Room we love hagsploitation. For anyone unfamiliar, it’s the disreputable and campy subgenre (sometimes also referred to as Pyscho-Biddy or Grande Dame Guignol) whereby aging,  hungry-for-work leading ladies of Hollywood’s Golden Age swallowed their pride, lowered their standards and slummed it in gruesome horror movies in the 1960s and 70s. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) – which revived the flagging careers of arch-rivals Bette Davis and Joan Crawford - is universally credited as inaugurating the whole cycle, but you could argue that Gloria Swanson as homicidal silent movie diva Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950) was the original hagsploitation anti-heroine. And surely Norman Bates' toxic mother in Psycho (1960) merits a mention?

/ Bette Davis as Charlotte Hollis /

In any case, these horror flicks offered a temporary fillip to the flatlining careers of actresses as disparate as Tallulah Bankhead (Die, Die My Darling, 1965), Veronica Lake (Flesh Feast, 1970), Miriam Hopkins (Savage Intruder, 1970) and Shelley Winters (in multiple Curtis Harrington-directed thrillers like Who Slew Auntie Roo? and What’s the Matter with Helen? both 1971).

With some justification, the genre has been denounced as both misogynist and ageist. It essentially positions the aged woman as inherently horrific, after all. These are horror films about the ravages of time! But on the plus side, these films also offered juicy, demanding lead roles to veteran actresses who’d been otherwise sidelined by their industry for the crime of growing older. It's complicated!

Hagsploitation movies mostly tapered-off by the late 1970s, but it never entirely vanished from popular culture. Note how sixty-something Oscar winner Jessica Lange (whose film career had long been in the doldrums) triumphantly re-invented herself playing homicidal harridans in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story on television. I’d argue the campy psychological thriller Greta (2018) starring Isabelle Huppert is a prime example of modern hagsploitation.

/ Crawford and Davis promoting Hush at the beginning of filming, before it all went tits up /

Hush, Hush … Sweet Charlotte is the follow-up to the unexpected box office victory of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It was meant to jubilantly reunify director Robert Aldrich with his Baby Jane leading ladies Davis and Crawford – but as you probably already know (especially if you watched Ryan Murphy’s wildly entertaining 2017 TV mini-series Feud: Bette and Joan) that went catastrophically wrong. Penny Stalling pithily recaps what happened in her 1978 book Flesh and Fantasy:

“Despite the fact that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had been bitter rivals for years, Jack Warner managed to get them to agree to co-star in his upcoming thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The press predicted that all hell would break loose when the girls got together, but director Robert Aldrich, keenly aware that his budget couldn’t afford costly delays, kept the girls apart as much as possible when they weren’t working. When the two screen queens were reunited for Hush, Hush … Sweet Charlotte, however, the predicted fireworks became a reality. Riding high as a result of the earlier film’s success, Bette and Joan apparently felt they could afford to engage in some impromptu histrionics for Charlotte’s cast and crew. The hostilities ceased when Crawford became ill. After doctors told her that she would have to bow out, Crawford cried for three days in her hospital bed. When she read that Olivia de Havilland was to replace her, Crawford announced that she was happy for Olivia since she “needed the work.” A victorious Davis posed for on-the-set candids sipping a Coca-Cola.”  

Interestingly, de Havilland was not the first choice for Crawford’s substitution. The character of Miriam was also reportedly offered to Katharine Hepburn, Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck and Vivien Leigh first. (Some accounts claim Stanwyck was proffered the role of Jewel Mayhew – the part played by Mary Astor – rather than Miriam). Leigh – de Havilland’s co-star in Gone with the Wind - rejected the opportunity, bitchily explaining, “I could just about look at Joan Crawford’s face on a Southern plantation at 6:00 in the morning; I couldn’t possibly look at Bette Davis’.”

(In fact, Hush was the second film in a row in which de Havilland stepped into a role originally intended for Crawford. Prior to this she played the lead in ultra-lurid shocker Lady in a Cage (1964) when Crawford bowed-out. (This also means Hush wasn’t de Havilland’s first foray into hagsploitation)).

Understandably, a lot of people are preoccupied with what Hush would have been like with Crawford as Miriam. As a great cinematic “What If?” it ranks up there with Judy Garland as Helen Lawson instead of Susan Hayward in Valley of the Dolls (1967). But hell, I love raspy-voiced bitch goddess Hayward hamming it up and growling her way through Valley, and I love de Havilland in Hush. To fixate on Crawford does de Havilland a grave disservice. Why not appreciate de Havilland’s performance on its own considerable merits? In the 1930s and 40s she specialized in exuding sweetness as exemplars of virtuous femininity, most famously as the demure Maid Marion opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and as Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). Cast against type, de Havilland is spellbinding in an evil role (sorry – spoiler!), portraying Miriam with purring subtlety. It’s genuinely unsettling when Miriam suddenly betrays her true nature and turns nasty or violent, her usual honeyed ladylike voice abruptly shuttling to a snarl.

(I’m trying to think of other examples of de Havilland exploring her inner bitch onscreen. She’s mesmerizing in the underrated The Dark Mirror (1946) playing identical twin sisters, one good and one bad. The sociopathic one is inevitably far more compelling). It’s also worth noting that de Havilland - now 103 years old – is the sole cast member of Hush still alive and in fact is now one of the very few surviving Golden Age Hollywood-era stars. At this point her only peer is Kirk Douglas (102).

/ Can you say fierce? Joan Crawford as Miriam / 

All the footage shot with Crawford as Miriam has seemingly vanished and to this day remains unseen.  Presumably it was destroyed at the time: if it still existed, it would surely have cropped-up as a DVD extra or in a documentary by now? But watch for the scene where Miriam’s cab first pulls up to the driveway of Charlotte’s sprawling Southern mansion (approximately 28 minutes and thirty seconds into the film). De Havilland is wearing a hat and no sunglasses. In one fleeting shot we get the briefest, almost subliminal but unmistakable blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse of Crawford (wearing no hat and dark sunglasses) peering out of the cab’s passenger window. Presumably this was left-in in error. In all likelihood, this is the sole surviving fragment of Crawford as Miriam.

/ Olivia de Havilland as Miriam /

The film’s original title was to be What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? (the title of the short story it’s based on). But it was decided this was too like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and it was re-titled (reportedly at Bette Davis’ own insistence).

The painting of young Charlotte displayed on the wall is recycled from Bette Davis’ role as petulant southern belle Julie in the 1938 film Jezebel.

/ See Bette Davis scream and scream again (and again. And again. And then some more. Seriously, she screams a lot in this film!) / 

Hush doesn’t just reassemble Davis and director Aldrich from Baby Jane: the cast of Hush also includes Victor Buono (1938 - 1982), seen in a flashback as Charlotte’s father. (In reality, Buono was young enough to be Davis’ son). Speaking of age: as someone who certainly ain't getting any younger, it’s very enjoyable watching a film in which all the lead characters are on the wrong side of fifty!

The basic premise of Hush (people are conspiring to make Charlotte have a nervous breakdown and pin a murder on her) is essentially the same plot-line as Strait-Jacket starring Joan Crawford (1964).

Think of Hush as the Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce of hagsploitation. It was made with a luxe high budget, featured a distinguished all-star cast (not just Davis and de Havilland, but Joseph Cotton, Mary Astor and Agnes Moorehead) and was filmed on location on an actual Southern mansion (the Houmas House Plantation and Gardens in Baton Rouge, Louisiana). The sultry Southern Gothic atmosphere simmering with resentments, family tragedies and secrets almost hints at Tennessee Williams terrain. The black and white cinematography is exceptionally beautiful and velvet-y (watch for a haunting shot of de Havilland peering out of a misty window).

In fact, Hush is almost too plush for its own good: hagsploitation is better when it’s starker, nastier and more hardboiled. Baby Jane, for example, was made on a significantly lower budget. I’d argue William Castle’s primal, trashy low-budget b-movie Strait-Jacket starring Joan Crawford is superior, more urgent hagsploitation than Hush, which feels overextended and bogged-down with flashbacks, art-y dream sequences and way too many cliched shots of characters prowling around darkened hallways.  And Hush shamelessly plagiarizes one climactic moment from the French film Les Diaboliques (1955)!

As Paul Roen argues in volume one of his essential High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films (1994), Hush is pioneering in one regard, though: “the historical significance of Hush … is that it brought graphic gore into the mainstream. There had of course been other gory films before this one, but they didn’t have stars and weren’t nominated for Oscars. (Contrary to popular perception, Psycho contains no gore). Before we even get to the opening titles, Hush … shows us Bruce Dern’s hand being severed with a meat cleaver, blood splashing on a cupid and Dern waving the gruesome stump of his arm at the camera.”

Hush is also one of the shrillest, loudest films you’ll ever watch, comparable to John Waters’ Desperate Living (1977) where everyone screams their lines at full volume. It certainly captures volatile monstre sacree Davis at full screech and at her most abrasive. Look, of course I love Bette Davis. Everybody loves Bette Davis. But in Hush Davis is borderline insufferable at points! Charlotte Hollis is not nearly as nuanced a characterization as her earlier Baby Jane Hudson. Davis seemingly assumed the success of Baby Jane meant she should crank up the histrionics even more. Was Aldrich too intimidated by the volcanic Davis to reign her in? And she’s matched by character actress par excellence Agnes Moorehead as loyal housekeeper Lydia: both ham it up shamelessly. (Odd to think the usually excellent Moorehead – overacting here as if her life depends on it – was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this performance). The acting honours in Hush truly belong to the actors who dial-down the hysteria: de Havilland, Cotton and notably Mary Astor. In her last-ever film, Astor makes a haunting impression in a fleeting guest star appearance as Charlotte’s old rival Jewel Mayhew, lamenting “the ruined finery” of her genteelly impoverished old age. Davis’ eye-bulging, jibbering nervous breakdown towards the end reminded me of Divine’s as Francine Fishpaw in John Waters’ Polyester.

Further reading:

Read my analysis of Feud: Bette and Joan here.

Read Ken Anderson's essay on Hush here.

Reflections on ... Autumn Leaves (1956)

Friday night (5 October) we watched the gloriously tortured melodrama Autumn Leaves (1956) – an ideal way to conclude the British Film Institute’s Joan Crawford retrospective (Fierce: The Untameable Joan Crawford, August - October 2018). 

I was very disciplined about this Crawford season and only saw two other films: the freaky silent horror movie The Unknown (1927) (all about extreme body modification / amputation and obsessive love, which teamed young starlet Crawford with Lon Chaney as an armless knife thrower!) and A Woman’s Face (1941) (in which Crawford portrays an embittered facially-disfigured criminal who changes her ways once she undergoes plastic surgery and finds love). 

In the fifties, cinema’s bitch goddess extraordinaire Crawford made a whole cycle of middle-aged women-in peril-films that found her in love with dangerous younger men (see also Sudden Fear (1952) and Female on the Beach (1955)) - all of them great. In Autumn Leaves Crawford is Millicent Wetherby, a prim, lonely and quietly desperate forty-something spinster who finds herself unexpectedly romantically entangled with dishy, significantly younger man Burt Hanson (Cliff Robertson). They impulsively marry, and Millicent soon discovers – too late! – that she knows almost nothing about her profoundly troubled, weirdly childlike and secretive new husband. 

Millicent is meant to be a frumpy and sexually repressed typist, thus Crawford’s onscreen wardrobe is mostly restricted to high-necked, ultra-modest blouses and full skirts, with cardigans draped around her shoulders – but that “mousy” wardrobe is by Hollywood costume designer deluxe Jean Louis! Think haute couture librarian. (Crawford also wears a seriously pointy and gravity-defying underwired bullet bra throughout).

(An aside: Crawford was the original choice to play the role of Karen Holmes in the film From Here to Eternity (1953). Deborah Kerr was ultimately cast instead when the producers balked at Crawford’s demand that she bring her own cameraman. The single most famous image from From Here to Eternity is of Kerr and leading man Burt Lancaster kissing passionately on the beach while the surf crashes and foams around them. Interestingly, Autumn Leaves painstakingly recreates this scene!).

If – like me – you love watching Crawford undergo heavy emotional anguish, this is the film for you! In a mesmerizing, almost operatic performance Crawford’s face gradually becomes a taut, tense mask of suffering. (No one does eyes-glistening-with-tears quite like Crawford). Cliff Robertson is impressively tormented as Burt (a study of 1950s masculinity in crisis to compare with Robert Stack in Written on the Wind or James Mason in Bigger Than Life) and is fit as fuck (especially when wearing a white t-shirt so tight the outlines of his nipples are visible!). Stir into the mix Nat King Cole crooning the lushly romantic title track, Lorne Green and Vera Miles as a pair of genuinely sleazy villains, a  shocking scene of domestic violence and brutal close-ups of electric shock therapy and you get a vividly memorable and exemplary atomic-era “woman’s picture”. 

Perhaps the zenith of Crawford’s performance is when she encounters Green and Miles on the street and tears into them with a vengeful rant. "Where's your decency?” Millicent demands. “ In what garbage dump, Mr Hanson? And where's yours, you tramp? You his loving, doting fraud of a father and you, you slut! You're both consumed with evil so rotten your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself!" 

Autumn Leaves was directed by the hard-boiled Robert Aldrich (who makes some virtuoso, jarring stylistic choices. I especially love Aldrich's strange, dream-like flashback to Millicent's life as a younger woman). As viewers of Feud: Bette and Joan already know, Crawford and Aldrich would triumphantly reunite in 1962 for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Reflections on ... episode 8 of Feud: Bette and Joan

/ Twilight of a queen: Joan Crawford's last-ever photo session, 1976.  Portrait by John Engstead / 

Episode 8 of Feud: You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?

Just some random thoughts, musings and reflections on re-visiting the insanely enjoyable Feud: Bette and Joan (2017) -  Ryan Murphy’s deluxe eight-part TV mini-series covering the rivalry between veteran screen queens Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - on BBC2. (I originally watched Feud when it was first broadcast by FX in Spring 2017). You can read my earlier ramblings here and here. 

Feud: Bette and Joan truly reaches its zenith with episode eight. By this finale, even the most churlish contrarian would have to admit both Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon are completely inhabiting Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. It’s never been just about the physical resemblance, but at times the similarities (how Crawford’s and Davis’ coiffures and wardrobes are painstakingly simulated) are striking. The conclusion is awash with sadness, depicting Crawford and Davis coping with the travails of old age and exploring themes of abandonment, decline and death. It’s also a supreme weepie on a par with, say, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life. Both times I’ve watched this episode, it’s been through a veil of tears (embarrassingly, I wasn’t alone either time!).

It begins with Pauline (Robert Aldrich’s personal assistant) reminiscing in 1978 about her unexpected chance reunion with Crawford at LaGuardia airport, the final time she ever saw her. “She was wearing a Pepto pink dress and a mask of chalk-white foundation being wheeled through the airport with broken ankles, drunk …” seems a clear reference to the infamous 1968 clip of a frankly tipsy Joan giving an impromptu interview at an airport in a wheelchair. 

From there we cut to New York, 1969, with a wrenchingly melancholic montage of a lonely, noticeably older and frailer Crawford stoically adjusting to straitened circumstances and moving into a smaller and more modest Manhattan high-rise apartment, sound-tracked to “Rain Drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” (One caveat when I say “modest”: it’s a beautiful luxe apartment by any standards – but also an undeniable step down from Crawford’s previous Hollywood movie star dream mansion with the grand staircase and swimming pool. By this point, Pepsi had jettisoned Crawford from her lucrative spokeswoman position and her film career never recovered from the Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte debacle).

/ Crawford with Princess Lotus Blossom /

As The New York Times’ Sheila O’Malley notes, “the sequence goes on for some time, one evocative fragment after another, a poignant portrait of a woman slowly turning into a ghost.” We observe Crawford unpacking. Learning to heat quiche in the microwave. Answering fan mail. Eating dinner alone on a tray in front of the TV. (The evening news coverage of the Vietnam war depresses her). Wistfully looking at old photo albums while self-medicating with a tumbler of vodka. Trying and failing to zip herself into a green brocade dress, causing her to cancel lunch plans. Scrubbing the kitchen floor on her hands and knees wearing yellow rubber Marigold gloves. Taking possession of a new dog (the female Shiz Tzu Crawford would christen Princess Lotus Blossom – her last pet). Brushing her teeth and spitting vivid red blood into the avocado green sink (Crawford was indeed suffering from periodontal disease at this point). The return of the brusque Mamacita (“I will make myself available to you on a part-time basis”) amidst this relentless solitude comes as a blessed relief. Crawford embraces her tearfully and gratefully.

/ The return of Mamacita /

/ A portrait of Joan: 1959 photo by Eve Arnold /

Lange here has finally adopted the bright auburn hair colour that was mature, late-period Crawford’s trademark. Crawford’s pristine final apartment is also lovingly recreated: the egg yolk yellow, white and green décor (as described in Crawford’s book My Way of Life), with the ultra-kitsch big-eyed and idealized Margaret Keane portrait displayed above the plastic-covered couch.

/ Above: Feud's facsimile of Crawford's living room. Below: the genuine article. I am haunted by the Keane portrait! / 

The blood-spitting leads to a dentist scene. To the young dentist’s horror, Crawford explains that her dental problems are a result of having her six back molars removed years earlier to achieve her signature sunken cheekbones – a supposedly routine Hollywood procedure called “the Buccal”. She refuses his offer of dentures. When he cautions, “At your age you need to worry more about staying healthy than staying photogenic”, Crawford turns steely, snapping, “I’ll stop worrying about how I look when they dip me in formaldehyde.” As Nylon’s Dan Callahan notes, Crawford’s “highfalutin diction is at its frostiest” here.

(I’d long been familiar with the Buccal theory. From Penny Stalling’s gossip-y 1978 book Flesh and Fantasy: “The dramatic transformations that the stars underwent after arriving in Hollywood weren’t always due to lighting or cosmetic tricks. Both Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich had their backmost molars, top and bottom, extracted to create their high-cheekboned beauty.” I remember reading that passage to my mother as a kid and her dismissing it: people routinely get their top and bottom wisdom teeth removed and don’t wind up with killer cheekbones! The painstakingly-researched Concluding Chapter of Crawford blog definitively concludes Crawford never underwent the process)

When Crawford’s agent approaches her with the offer of a low-budget British independent horror film entitled The Missing Link, she jumps at the chance to work again. She’ll be playing a scientist! (“I had dreamed of playing Madame Curie”, Crawford purrs).  Arriving on the set in London for the movie (now re-titled Trog), she’s swiftly disenchanted with how just how threadbare and micro-budgeted this schlocky production is. Her dressing room is a dingy Volkswagen van too low for her stand up in. Her co-star is a wrestler wearing a furry ape mask. Perhaps understandably, we see Crawford washing-down pills with a slug from her vodka flask. It’s a degrading conclusion to Crawford’s distinguished film career. Lange movingly demonstrates Crawford’s valiant attempts to maintain her battered dignity and ladylike deportment.

/ Above: Crawford seeing her leading man in Trog for the first time / 

/ “I love people. I’ve been asked if I ever go around in disguise. Never! I think disguise is corny. If you’ve earned a position, be proud of it. Don’t hide it. I want to be recognized. When I hear people say, “There’s Joan Crawford!” I turn around and say, “Hi! How are you?” From My Way of Life (1972), Crawford’s ultra-kitsch, wildly impractical lifestyle manual on how to be a gracious, serene and enchanting wife, hostess and career bitch / 

I’m not sure about the veracity of the time frame, but Feud conflates the filming of Trog with Crawford dictating My Way of Life (her berserk 1971 volume of lifestyle, hostessing and beauty tips) into a tape recorder. Feud’s musical selections were frequently inspired: here the sense of doom is underlined with Jim Morrison of The Doors crooning the dirge-like “The End” while Crawford intones platitudes like “I mistrust people who don’t like animals” and “All the beauty products in the world can’t disguise a disagreeable expression”, the upbeat message painfully contrasted with her actual circumstances. In one spellbinding sequence, we see Crawford alone on the deserted set of Trog at night, pacing back and forth and seemingly in a trance. When she silently tries on Trog’s gorilla mask, the effect is eerie and sad. This is Joan Crawford unraveling.

/ The loving recreations of scenes from Trog. I've only ever seen Trog once - but that was at a special screening introduced by John Waters himself at The British Film Institute in 2015! And he interviewed the wrestler Joe Cornelius (Trog himself! The man behind the gorilla mask!) onstage. Read about it here /

The mortification continues at a book signing session to promote My Way of Life, when it becomes evident that a bratty and irreverent new generation of younger fans (especially the queer ones) have derisively embraced Crawford as a camp figure of fun. In an earlier episode of Feud, Davis had told Victor Buono that she was flattered when drag queens impersonated her in their nightclub acts. Crawford here sees that for an ageing diva, being a gay icon is a decidedly mixed blessing (just ask Tallulah Bankhead).  Always hyper-alert to any sign of ridicule, Crawford hisses, “These people aren’t buying the book for my advice. They’re buying it to mock me.” She’s haughtily affronted when a kittenish blond twink asks her to autograph a Baby Jane photo. Why did it have to be that film, she demands. He tries to backpedal by saying he loves What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? because Blanche and Jane are “survivors.” Crawford abruptly stands up and storms out, trailed by Mamacita: “What do you know about survival?”

Later, Crawford is crestfallen when she sees an unflattering paparazzi pic of herself with Rosalind Russell in the newspaper: “Is that really how I look? Then they’ve seen the last of me”.  (This incident genuinely happened: Crawford had hosted a party in honour of her friend Russell at New York’s Rainbow Room in 1974. It was indeed her last public appearance). Over the phone she instructs her manager to take her name off the books: no more film appearances. “I’m done.” Crawford would withdraw from public life, remaining a recluse until her 1977 death.

Bette Davis, meanwhile is still acting, but struggling and in inexorable decline. Having lowered her standards to keep employed, Davis’ career is reduced to making mediocre, unsuccessful TV pilots that don’t get picked-up. Sarandon is frankly magnificent as the abrasive, raspy-voiced, chain-smoking and imperious monstre sacree Davis, complete with the 1970s tunics, turtle-neck sweaters and big owlish smoked-brown spectacles. This dragon lady incarnation of Davis is the one I remember from TV interviews growing up.

/ Roger Ebert recalling his interview with Davis just before her death: "In the grand style of a movie queen holding court, Miss Davis delivers pronouncements. She speaks in periods and exclamation points, punching out brief, emphatic statements. When she talks, she is always listening to herself talking, constantly monitoring and editing herself, like an actress directing her own performance." Sarandon absolutely captures this terse, theatrical quality. /

/ Bette Davis' 1973 celebrity roast (above) and Feud's recreation (below) /

Davis furiously rages to Victor Buono (Feud portrays him as Davis’ primary confidant) that Kate Hepburn is scoring all the choice roles for older actresses, while she’s left with the humiliating scraps. She then recounts a painful anecdote: Life magazine had recently invited Hepburn to pose with Davis for a special dual portrait – and Hepburn refused. Davis was stung by the rejection – and the realization that Hepburn felt superior to her (“Am I not every bit her equal?” she rails, blinking back tears). In an ideal world, the experience should have given Davis some insight into how she’d made Crawford feel in the past. There’s nothing to indicate Davis made that connection. (By the way: in real life the proposed Davis-Hepburn Life photo shoot was later than Feud implies. It happened in the eighties, not the seventies).

In a previous blog post, I erroneously claimed that Feud repeatedly shows Crawford visiting elite Hollywood cocktail bar and restaurant Perino’s but not Davis, even though in real life Davis was a regular there. I stand corrected! Episode 8 shows a strained and miserable reunion between Davis and her daughter BD in a booth at Perino’s. In a foreshadowing of BD Hyman’s 1985 tell-all book My Mother's Keeper, the frankly-disapproving BD instructs Davis she can longer see her grandchildren without “supervision” and that she needs to address her “drinking problem.” Davis is aghast: “Since when do you think I'm a drunk?” “You’re sitting right there with a margarita,” BD replies, “At 11 am!”

Further evidence of Davis’ dissipation is provided next with a doctor’s appointment that echoes Crawford’s dentist scene. Sarandon had earlier looked too glamorous as 1960s Davis: here she is properly haggard, unflatteringly bewigged, complete with a hacking cough and wheezing asthmatic laugh. The decades of heavy chain-smoking have caught up with her (Davis famously smoked up to a hundred cigarettes a day).  The sympathetic female doctor implores her to quit, to go into rehab. “I’m off booze. I can’t give up smoking. They’re my only friends.” (If cigarettes are your “only friends”, you urgently need to reassess your life). Davis is smoking openly in her doctor’s office during her check-up in this sequence, which is no exaggeration. Vanity Fair has described how in real life Davis would even light up at the dentist’s – she was far too scary to be stopped. (Thank god she didn’t live to see the smoking ban). Feud seemingly suggests Davis’ brand of choice was Lucky Strikes. In fact, she smoked Vanguards. (Crawford smoked Alpines. I assume both brands are now long-defunct?). 

Davis has an awful experience making a made-for-TV biopic about Depression-era evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson starring the notoriously temperamental Faye Dunaway. (The Disappearance of Aimee, 1976). By all accounts the two women clashed. Davis had long wished to portray “Sister Aimee” herself. By the 1970s, she was reduced to playing McPherson’s mother in a secondary role. By comparison, even Davis has to begrudgingly admit that Dunaway’s chronic lateness and tantrums make Crawford seem like an easy-going paragon of virtue.

When Buono tells Davis that Crawford is dying of cancer, she tries to make light of it with a flippant joke: “Cancer isn’t going to kill Joan. She’s a cockroach just like me.” The perceptive Buono points out, “She may be the only person in the entire world who really knows how you feel right now.” Later, we see Davis phone Crawford, but chicken-out and hang up without speaking when Crawford answers. This incident is probably Feud’s invention, but Sarandon’s darting, expressive eyes are genuinely heartbreaking.

/ "This is Joan Crawford speaking ..." /

One of Crawford’s adopted twin daughters (Cathy) visits with her children. Crawford is relaxed about her grandchildren rough-housing in her immaculate apartment: in this regard at least, the control freak has finally mellowed in old age. Cathy cautiously refers to the rumoured book in the pipeline by Crawford’s estranged older adopted daughter, Christina. It’s fascinating to think Crawford already knew about the existence of Mommie Dearest prior to her death. Crawford acknowledges she already knows the book is “alleging the most vile things” and admits she was hard on Christina growing up: “I only wanted her to appreciate her advantages.” (This is one more thing Crawford and Davis shared: their daughters both wrote explosive “misery memoirs” about their mothers). Then comes one of Jessica Lange’s finest moments: in a hopeful tone, she hesitantly asks Cathy, “Do they think of me as their real grandmother?” When Cathy replies, “Of course”, Lange’s eyes brim with tears of gratitude and relief

For many viewers, the dream-like sequence that follows – the dying Crawford’s hallucinatory “party scene” – represents Feud’s artistic pinnacle. Sound-tracked to the The Flamingos’ doo-wop classic “I Only Have Eyes for You”, Crawford stumbles from her bed late at night into the living room and is suddenly reunited with the specters of her chief tormentors: Hedda Hopper, Jack Warner and Bette Davis, looking exactly as they did in the early 1960s. They are formally dressed and playing cards by candle light, wielding cigarettes and martinis. Walking into the frame, Crawford herself is suddenly transformed from grey-haired ailing crone in a nightie into a glamorous decades-younger manifestation of herself sheathed in a satin gown. Davis – back in Margo Channing mode – is unexpectedly sympathetic towards her. “Tell them what they did to you, Joan.”  Crawford responds with a regretful, heartbreaking soliloquy about the emotional cost of her devotion to movie stardom. “I suppose I felt like I always had to be “on”. If someone caught a glimpse of the girl beneath the movie star – poof! – I’d go back to the sad little wretch I’d been. I spent my whole life being Joan Crawford. A woman I created for others. I don’t know who I am when I’m by myself.”

Warner and Hopper vanish, leaving Davis and Crawford alone. “Why am I so happy to see you?” Crawford marvels. “Nostalgia,” Davis replies. In a bit of wish fulfillment, the duo finally manages to bond and have the conversation they always should have had. They apologize to each other, Davis telling Crawford, “I wish I’d been a friend to you.” Crawford’s face (well, Lange’s face) glows with undisguised pleasure. “It’s not too late!” Crawford exclaims. But it is. She calls for Mamacita to bring a celebratory bottle of champagne for them to share. The arrival of the actual Mamacita snaps Crawford out of her reverie. (“There’s no one else here – it’s just you and I”). It had all been a dream; Crawford is a grey-haired wraith again. Crawford died one week later. Mamacita tells the documentary filmmaker of her sadness that Crawford’s funeral was full and star-studded, but when she’d been alive “when she needed them most, no one was there.”

A journalist phones Davis for her comment on Crawford’s death. Davis famously responds, “My mother always said don’t say anything bad about the dead. Only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” It’s a pithy – if heartless - quote which will look snappy in print, but once Davis hangs up, Sarandon’s eyes are filled with remorse. (Davis herself would die in 1989).

We next see Davis visiting her disabled daughter Margo in the institution. Combing the silent Margo’s hair, the hard-boiled Davis seems able to let down her defenses and admit to loneliness and hurt. She describes the handsome young artist Don Bachardy drawing her portrait. Davis attempts to flirt with him. Bachardy tells her he’s gay (in real life he was Christopher Isherwood’s long-term boyfriend). She’s further dejected to see how aged she looks in his unsparing drawing. It’s a reminder: that’s not just what she looks like, that’s how he sees her. “Yep. That’s the old bag,” Davis sighs.

/ Above: Don Bachardy's sketch of Davis. Interestingly, he also did Crawford's portrait too /

Even worse, Davis has discovered a cache of her late mother’s old letters to a friend. The contents are deeply wounding, making Davis question her mother’s love. She’d written that “that I was a queen bee – that I was selfish and a pain and a chore. “

Finally, the action catches up to the present day: the Oscars ceremony in 1978, where Olivia de Havilland and Joan Blondell have been being interviewed by the documentary filmmakers. Backstage, Davis, de Havilland and Blondell silently watch Crawford honoured as one of the Hollywood luminaries who’d died that year. Sarandon’s face is a mask of mixed emotions. When the documentarian asks Davis to speak for his film, she refuses.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, the action cuts from 1978 back to 1961 and the first day of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’s production. It feels like an alternate universe where Crawford and Davis are relaxed and at ease together, laughing on the set in their canvas director’s chairs. Picking up her knitting, Crawford tells Davis, “Here’s what I really hope from this picture when all is said and done. I hope I’ve made a new friend.” Smiling, Davis replies, “Me too.” It’s a glimpse of what could have been.

Feud wasn’t perfect: it frequently laid-on its arguments about Davis and Crawford as casualties of Hollywood’s sexism and ageism with a trowel. The unconvincing 1978-set "present day" scenes with Oliva de Havilland and Joan Blondell being interviewed by a documentary crew existed purely to provide exposition. (Just think: if Murphy had skipped those, he wouldn’t now be facing Olivia de Havilland’s lawsuit!). And the central thesis that Crawford and Davis’ enmity was somehow manipulated by outside forces rings false. Both were fiercely competitive, temperamental and prickly and both had lengthy histories of clashing with directors and co-stars long before they worked together in the sixties. Think of Davis' skirmishes with Errol Flynn and especially Miriam Hopkins in the thirties and forties (not to mention Faye Dunaway in the seventies). Or Crawford with Norma Shearer in the thirties or Mercedes McCambridge during the making of Johnny Guitar.  Of course, once they encountered each other, there would be an inevitable struggle for dominance. Feuding was in their DNA!

With all due regards to Bette Davis and Susan Sarandon, perhaps Feud’s greatest legacy is the restoration of Joan Crawford’s image. (Davis never required any rehabilitation in the first place). Without ever sugar-coating her wrath, her neuroses or her messy alcoholism, the collaboration of Ryan Murphy and Jessica Lange humanized Crawford, presenting her as a deeply flawed but compelling anti-heroine, and hopefully banishing the shoulder-padded, wire hanger-wielding Mommie Dearest caricature forever. In Feud, we see a Crawford who lived with an unswerving commitment to glamour, almost militaristic in its discipline. That devotion to artifice and appearance can make someone appear foolish, tragic, make you catnip to gays and ensure you kitsch cult status. But there’s also something noble – even heroic - about it.

At its best, with its powerful and complex female protagonists, conflicts, confrontations, torrents of emotional torment and lush jewel-toned look, Feud invoked the same deeply satisfying, cathartic vein of melodrama as Crawford’s and Davis’ own Golden Age Hollywood “women’s pictures.” As Dan Callahan in Nylon concluded, “surely on that honest tearjerker level, Feud: Bette and Joan is a series that Bette and Joan themselves would have appreciated.”