Also, in 1962 the bulk of the audience had a fairly fresh memory of the prestigious stardom both actresses had once enjoyed. Fickle, jaded film audiences enjoy seeing the mighty fall. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? presented both actresses as sad caricatures of themselves. The 1962–1963 audiences came for two things—and sometimes stayed for a second viewing: the cheap horror effects and the comical and outlandish parody of two cinema grande dames making fools of themselves.
The critic of The New York Herald-Tribune was rather tactful but his message is very clear:
“If Miss Davis’s portrait of an outrageous slattern with the mind of an infant has something of the force of a hurricane, Miss Crawford’s performance as the crippled sister could be described as the eye of that hurricane. Both women are seen in the isolated decay of two spirits left to dry on the desert by the receding flood of fame. ‘I didn’t bring you your breakfast because you didn’t eat your din-din,’ Miss Davis tells Miss Crawford. She then howls a witch’s laugh that would frizzle the mane of a wild beast. It is the mingling of baby-talk and baby-mindedness with the behavior of an ingenious gauleiter that raises the hackles.”
Bosley Crowther in The New York Times, however, told it as he saw it, writing, “Joan Crawford and Bette Davis make a couple of formidable freaks . . . but we’re afraid this unique conjunction of two one-time top-ranking stars in a story about two aging sisters who were once theatrical celebrities themselves does not afford either the opportunity to do more than wear grotesque costumes, make up to look like witches, and chew the scenery to shreds.”
When I interviewed Victor Buono in 1964, his memory of Jane was still as fresh as if he had shot it the week before. “It was a real break for me, appearing with Bette and Joan,” the actor recalled. “I had always dreamed of being the Charles Laughton of the 1960s, especially when he died the year the film came out, and that got me off to a flying start! I was a mother-ridden, pixillated, neurotic mess in that, helping Bette with her terrible song and discovering Joan nearly dead upstairs, and it was a stimulating, indeed galvanizing experience.” But with a candor that was refreshing, Buono admitted: “Bette was a real bitch to work with. One time we were doing a little rehearsing before a scene, and I wanted to show her the courtesy of leading off, and she turned and prodded me and said, ‘You’re being paid to act and react, you fat slob, so react! Don’t stand there like a damned idiot!’ When Bob Aldrich, who was guiding us, attempted to make Bette understand that I was only deferring to her courteously, she just grumbled, and continuing to stand her ground, didn’t even offer a grunt of apology.”
Robert Aldrich later told me that he felt Davis and Crawford both imagined he was in love with them. “Hell, I just wanted to charm and seduce them through the picture! Personally—forget it!” he huffed.
In September 1962, with Baby Jane only weeks in the can, Davis did a strange, unpredictable, and self-destructive thing. And it indicates that with the release of the film only two months away, she had little faith in its restoring her to the top, though it would—for a while. All during 1960 and 1961 she had been railing away at the journalists who, usually sympathetically, pointed out that her career was in decline. She would rant and rave and threaten to sue, while giving interviews such as the one with Bob Thomas (Newark Evening News, March 15, 1960) in which she was quoted thus: “Let’s face it! I’m simply not on the green list. There’s a list, you know, of a few top stars who are supposed to be the only box office draws . . . stars of my era don’t have a chance. If there is a good role for one of us they change it and give it to some cutie.” She told Variety on April 4, 1960: “I sat around Hollywood last fall and didn’t get a call from the studios. Oh, yes, I had a chance to play Burt Lancaster’s mother in The Unforgiven, but I’ll be damned if I’ll play Burt Lancaster’s mother after thirty years in this business.” Some time before that, she told Vernon Scott in The Morning Telegraph, “The tragedy is we can’t sit around and wait for good things. We have to take whatever comes along. I’ve done many TV shows I didn’t want to do, just to keep busy . . . but we all have to make a living doing whatever we can.”
In 1961, her depression was exacerbated by her mother’s death in July and her unhappiness playing second fiddle to Glenn Ford and Hope Lange in Pocketful of Miracles. By 1962, despite the publication of her Lonely Life autobiography (many wondered when Bette Davis had ever had a chance to be lonely) and her part in The Night of the Iguana, she still considered herself over the hill and discriminated against. Which leads to what she did in September 1962.
Obviously uncertain as to the fate of Baby Jane, she put an ad in the Hollywood trade papers on September 21. It read:
Mother of Three—10, 11, and 15—divorcee, American. Thirty years’ experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway.)
Bette Davis. References on request.
The late Dorothy Kilgallen, a superbitch who nonetheless leveled truthfully, let Davis have it in her column of September 26, 1962, writing:
“Will the real advisor of Bette Davis please step forward? That Hollywood tradepaper ad saying she was available and needed work certainly caused talk, but not the right kind for an actress of Miss Davis’ stature. Needless to say it made the producers of her latest picture furious, because it made her seem like a broken-down ‘has-been,’ and they were doing all they could to promote her for an Academy Award. Martin Baum . . . who gets credit for being her agent (not much of a compliment, when she’s indicating she’s desperate for work) ought to go into a corner and blush quietly for not talking her out of the ad.”
When she realized that she had made a major blunder in not consulting with her agent, Davis tried to say that she had been “facetious” and “sardonic,” but it was generally agreed that she had made a stupid mistake.
But with Baby Jane, Bette Davis was on top again.
Shocked into the awareness that Davis was still a hot box-office property after he saw Baby Jane’s receipts, Jack Warner decided to find a vehicle for her that would combine the high-gloss, “prestige” look of the films of her Warners heyday with the grotesque elements that her fans—in his view—would certainly expect after Baby Jane. The story he selected was Dead Pigeon, filmed in 1946 in Mexico with Dolores Del Rio. William H. Wright would produce and Albert Beich and Oscar Millard would write the screenplay from the story by Rian James. Jack Warner decided to retitle the picture Dead Ringer.
Production was due to start in the spring of 1963, but there were delays due to Davis’s European tours with Baby Jane, her radio appearances, and the necessity of getting her out of a commitment she had made with Robert Aldrich to guest-star in a western, 4 for Texas, which starred Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Since she had taken the role because it was all that was available, she was glad to get the release from Aldrich. “The role in the Sinatra picture was not that long, and I’m afraid ‘guest star’ didn’t apply in truth to it, as it was a small supporting role, and going the cameo route or whatever they call it would have been a strategic blunder at that point,” she said later. “The only real consolation would have been to have worked yet again with that delightful character actor Victor Buono, who had been cast in it.”
Dead Ringer was a sort of retread of A Stolen Life in that Davis again played twin sisters, both murderous. Davis has an acting field day. Again the clever use of process shots and the added boon of a double, Connie Cezon (who was indeed a dead ringer for Davis herself, and who had imitated her successfully in revues on the stage), promised a felicitous result.
The plot is reasonably complicated, at least for a melodrama. Davis is a poor sister, down on her luck, who hates and resents her twin, whom she hasn’t seen for years, because she stole the rich man she loved by pretending she was pregnant. After the rich man dies, Davis lures the widow to her apartment, murders her, puts her own clothes on her, leaves a “suicide note”—and walks out in her sister’s
clothes to the limousine and into her sister’s life.
There she finds matters more complicated than she imagined, what with a lover (Peter Lawford) who helped her sister murder her husband for his money. When she has to sign important papers, she burns her hand deliberately with a hot poker (a wonderful Davis scene, expertly played) to avoid giving herself away. The lover tries to blackmail her, so she sets her fierce dog on him. The detective (Karl Malden), who loved the poor sister and planned to marry her, comes around asking questions and eventually has Davis arrested for her “husband’s” murder. At the end, she is off to jail—not for the murder she actually committed, but for the one she didn’t.
All this wild melodrama and theatrical posturing is reasonably entertaining, in no small measure due to the sympathetic and understanding direction of Davis’s old co-star, Paul Henreid. He and Davis got along famously, as he told me in 1964. “We always had simpatico,” he said. “I understood her temperament and her peculiar gifts—I had acted opposite her in two pictures and I knew what she thought was effective for her. There was never a romance between us, but there was always a warm mutual regard, and my wife and I counted her among our greatest friends. She also kindly and thoughtfully suggested that my daughter Monika play her maid in several sequences. It was a big thrill for Monika, believe me.”
Asked if he underwent the usual Sturm und Drang Davis was notorious for inflicting on her directors, Henreid replied, “Not at all. Perhaps because we had acted together, Bette felt instinctively I was, in spirit, on her side of the camera with her at all times, and I did feel like I was doing double duty—keeping things going smoothly from in front and empathizing with her back there. In any event, it turned out very well indeed.”
The process shots from Dead Ringer were created with the same technique used in A Stolen Life. Ernest Haller was again the photographer (it was his last assignment; he died later in an automobile accident at seventy-four), and he and others from the process and research departments availed themselves of the lessons they learned during the filming of the earlier picture. One innovation was nailing down all the furniture on the set where the one twin murders the other, so that re-shooting would be a breeze. Connie Cezon’s resemblance to Davis was so uncanny that she even appeared in the final print in some minor throwaway shots. Haller did his best to make Davis up as effectively as her fifty-five years on earth would permit. In this endeavor he was aided by the clever Gene Hibbs, a protégé of Perc Westmore who had developed a clever technique for making older actresses look younger via “painting.” As Davis later put it, “Gene paints a face as if he were painting a portrait.”
It must be admitted, however, that despite the valiant and highly skilled efforts of Haller and Hibbs, Davis still looks middle-aged in even her best shots.
Peter Lawford, who played her lover, was someone she was prepared to like, as he was the brother-in-law of President John Kennedy. But Peter, then forty and already declining, was not at his best, and she and Henreid both felt he was not giving the role his full attention and seemed distracted by outside problems. Davis was not surprised when Pat Kennedy later divorced him—his deterioration during shooting was all too evident. But even at a dissipated forty Peter could still call on a certain rakish charm, and some of his scenes with Davis come off effectively. Reportedly, concerned and sympathetic Henreid gave him some Dutch-uncle lectures when he failed to show up on the set, and managed to instill enough self-respect into him to ensure some solid scenes.
A few years later, Peter told me: “Bette had always had a reputation as a holy terror on the set, and I didn’t know what to expect, but she was understanding, kindly, patient—even maternal, if that is the word. I suspect she felt sorry for me.” Jerry Asher told me that she said of Peter, “I’m sad about him. He’s unfortunate, and it’s too bad.”
Time magazine had fun with Davis in its review of Dead Ringer. “Exuberantly uncorseted,” the review ran in part, “her torso looks like a gunnysack full of galoshes. Coarsely cosmeticked, her face looks like a U-2 photograph of Utah. And her acting, as always, isn’t really acting; it’s shameless showing-off. But just try to look away.”
Next, Davis allowed herself to be talked into an Italian-made movie. It turned out to be one of her most unfortunate ventures. Joseph E. Levine and Carlo Ponti persuaded her that The Empty Canvas, based on Alberto Moravia’s novel Boredom (a prophetic title, as it turned out), would be just the thing to raise her spirits after another project, Faster, Faster, produced by Jack Dietz and written by William Marchant, failed to get off the ground in England. Accordingly it was on to Rome and director Damiano Damiani, with whom she had little rapport and who, she said later, “spoke a different language, verbally and creatively”; the pretty Belgian actress Catherine Spaak, a sassy eighteen-year-old whom Davis dismissed with, “She thinks trading on her looks is acting—well, it isn’t!”; and the popular young German star Horst Buchholz, whom she disliked on sight.
She claimed later that Buchholz frustrated her at every turn, and was “the male equivalent of a self-centered prima donna.” Since Buchholz didn’t have a strong command of the English language, he fell back on what he did know and called her, in turn, “a meddling bitch.” Born in Berlin in 1932, he had survived the Allied bombings of Germany as a child and had had to scrounge during Germany’s postwar chaos and bitter poverty. After dubbing foreign pictures into German, he had attracted the attention of director Julien Duvivier, who was bowled over by his performances at Berlin’s Schiller Theatre. In 1955 he debuted on film in the French/German co-production Marianne of My Youth, in which Duvivier showcased his dark good looks and lithe body.
From there he achieved international fame in the film version of Thomas Mann’s The Confessions of Felix Krull, in which his character seduces an old man. Critics raved about the “realism” and “sophisticated sensibility” of this film, and wrote that he “played it to the life.”
By the time he crossed swords with Davis in 1963, he had won added acclaim in films like The Magnificent Seven and Fanny, and was a “ravishingly sexy” thirty, as one Italian reviewer called him, and ready to do battle with Davis or any other formidable dragon.
Damiani irritated Davis mightily by siding with Buchholz in all arguments concerning the film. When she was overruled by the two men, who were every bit her match in opinionated arrogance, she retaliated by bitching up the project to “enliven” it and “give it some direction and form.”
Soon Davis was largely directing herself. Since the script was terrible (she felt), and since Carlo Ponti had not kept his promise (she maintained) to improve on it, she compensated in typical Davis style by adopting a garish blond pageboy bob and sporting a broad Texas-Louisiana accent. The wig did not always fit, and the accent was not always consistent, especially when Damiani’s direction and Buchholz’s upstaging got her rattled—which was often.
The screenplay, an uneasy tripartite concoction by Damiani, Tonino Guerra, and Ugo Liberatore, featured Buchholz, the son of rich American Davis and a deceased Italian nobleman, as a typical specimen of New Wave anomie and directionlessness, dabbling away at painting. Thinking he has found the image for his “empty canvas,” Buchholz takes up with man-mad nymphet Spaak, who refuses to marry him—even after he covers her nude body with 10,000-lire banknotes. She does agree to become his mistress—until a more interesting man comes along. The dénouement of all this weary existentialism comes when Buchholz has a breakdown and is guided back to health by Davis. He tells her at the fadeout that now he has suffered, and he thinks he might be able to fill that empty canvas.
One of the film’s intentional comic highlights comes when Davis walks in on her son and the nude Spaak, who is covered with the banknotes, and deadpans, “Put the money you don’t want back in the safe—I don’t want the maid to find the room in this curious state.” “This,” one critic laughed, “was the apogee of permissive, mom-istic existentialism.”
Davis later said, “All this talk of the anomi
e and the weltschmerz and the existentialist what-of-it aspects is a lot of poppycock. What that damned picture needed was a clear, linear, progressive beginning-middle-and-end plot and a part I could make credible to audiences—it had neither—and I refuse to accept any of the blame.” One commentator offered the wistful hope that “Miss Davis at least got well paid for it.”
Brendan Gill in The New Yorker thought the result, seen on American screens in the spring of 1964, “shockingly miscast” and “one of the worst pictures of this or any year.” Time threw Davis a consolatory dandelion by commenting that the picture was “chiefly notable for the fun of watching Davis breast the New Wave plot with bitchy authority.” Davis’s final comment on the film was: “It alerted me to choose my pictures with greater care henceforth.”
About this time Davis had some drastic personal changes in store for her.
In 1964, at the age of sixteen, B.D. married. Her husband, Jeremy Hyman, almost twice her age, was the nephew of the Eliot Hyman of Seven Arts Productions. They met in London and fell in love with each other almost on sight. B.D. liked Jeremy’s low-key, quietly assertive manliness; it was obvious that he was the father/older-brother figure she had sought all her life. As of January 1990 they have been married twenty-six years and have two boys, Ashley and Justin.
At first Davis opposed the marriage, citing B.D.’s youth. But in matters of the heart, the sixteen-year-old showed she had a will as strong as her mother’s. Davis eventually gave in, feeling that worse might follow if she didn’t accept Jeremy Hyman as her son-in-law. She also realized that, unlike herself, B.D. was a one-man woman. Davis had set her up with many a glamour boy, such as George Hamilton, and B.D.’s virtue and virginity remained intact. It was obvious that B.D. had set out to be everything her mother was not.
Davis was humiliated to realize that B.D. held her in contempt for her four marital failures and for her restless peregrinations among men young enough to be her sons. And B.D. would be particularly angry when Davis tried to alienate her from patient, forbearing Jeremy. When Davis visited them, there was always tension, and several times B.D. had to cut the visits short.
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