Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
(1962)
review by Sal Skellington

One of the first things to really scare the living hell out of your humble reviewer, way back in the hazy days of childhood, was not even supposed to be scary. The intention was actually comedy. This terrifying phenomenon was comedy duo French and Saunders’ parody of creepy old, black-and-white "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". Their parody of The Exorcist just made me laugh. As did the film. But that’s another story. *Baby Jane*, along with Todd Browning’s *Freaks*, is a good film to show a person who thinks that censorship or prudishness caused every director of black-and-white horror to make tame (eek it’s a nasty scaly monster) horror movies. Nothing says ‘would’ve been banned if it didn’t have Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in it’ like a monstrous old woman, dressed as a nine-year-old girl, kicking a crippled woman around the floor. But I digress.

The ‘Baby Jane’ of the title is Jane Hudson (Davis), an aging, alcoholic and deluded former child star. Over the years her own fame has waned, while her elder sister Blanche (Crawford) has blossomed into a beloved Hollywood star. When Blanche is paralysed from the waist down in a mysterious car accident, embittered, jealous Jane is forced to act as her carer. She uses
her sister’s dependence on her to begin a reign of terror, all the while seeking to restart her old act. She begins by withholding her mail, spying on her calls and verbally abusing her, but before long has begun to starve her, keep her few friends from visiting, and persuade her that she’s simply paranoid, and that she, Jane, is in fact being merciful to an ungrateful, spoilt actress. Before long the buzzer – for which she rings for help – has been torn out and Blanche bound and gagged. Baby Jane Hudson ain’t as sweet
as she used to be.

Then again, Baby Jane Hudson was never that sweet. One of the many fingernails-down-a-blackboard moments in this movie, is an early scene which shows the young Jane’s vaudeville act. Made up like a doll, she sings the horribly morbid ‘I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy’, a song about a little girl writing to her dead father, c/o Heaven Above. We hear this song again later on in the movie, when it is sung by an alcohol-soaked and make-up smeared older Jane. And she still has the pretty little petticoats, and ringlets and a bow in her hair. Another image likely to freak out anyone who finds the
above disturbing, is that of the Genuine Baby Jane Doll. Yes, at the height of her fame, life-sized porcelain dolls were made of little Baby Jane. And guess who now owns one, keeps it in the parlour and talks to it every now and then? Yep, that’s right. I think you’ll agree, this is one creepy movie.

    The masterstroke of *Baby Jane* is without a doubt the casting. Movie legend tells us that director Robert Aldrich had terrible trouble funding the film, as hardly any backers believed that anyone wanted to see Bette Davis and Joan Crawford anymore. The bulk of Davis’ work had been in the 1930s, and this was to be her 69th picture. It was Crawford’s 83rd. Yet it is now impossible to imagine two actresses more perfect for the roles. Crawford turns out a heart-wrenching, poignant, unassuming performance as the incapacitated Blanche, kind and forgiving at heart but dehumanized and coloured by the hate of her sister. Davis, however, fills the screen magnificently with her portrayal of a grotesque, unbalanced woman consumed with denial, envy and the desire to be doted upon and set on a pedestal like a pretty little girl. Criminally unrecognised in coffee-shop/pub discussions (yes, yes, we know you’re right but do we really need to hear again that Dennis Hopper’s rather good in *Blue Velvet*?), I’d say Bette Davis has given us one of the best presentations of a villain in film history.

    Folks, I urge you, do film discussion a service: watch this movie and then cite it – cite it I say! It’s not hard to get hold of, it’s an excellent movie, you don’t have to trawl through a thousand academic film books (or snort bug powder) to understand it, and everyone forgets to mention it. In trying to work out a suitable conclusion to this review, I enlisted the help of my housemate. She told me to drop in words like ‘enthralling’, ‘chilling’ and ‘masterful’. So I have. And I think the film deserves it.