Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (37 page)

It was fun and a challenge to outfit Bette as Baby Jane, Norma Koch recalled. "There were two distinct changes for Bette's character. As Jane, the sloppy housekeeper, when she was slouching around the house, drinking and being miserable to her sister, I tried to come up with the sleaziest outfits possible. Then as Baby Jane, when she was planning her career comeback, I designed grown-up versions of dresses of what a little girl would wear. They were supposed to be extensions of the child star she once was."

The outfit that Bette wore in public, when she drove to downtown L. A. to place her show-business ad in the newspaper, "had to be big Jane's idea of sexy," said Koch. "The dress had a see-through top, which clearly showed her grayish-white brassiere straps. It also had chipped pearl buttons down the front. I deliberately made the dress a half-size too small, so she would look like one of those old chorus girls coming apart at the seams."

The accessories were equally tawdry—a black waist cincher, a black velvet beret with a zircon clip, an old fox fur piece she pulled out of the closet, and for her feet she wore the classic Joan Crawford "chase-me, fuck-me pumps."

"Yes," said Koch with humor, "the shoes were the final touch. We tried various styles with the outfit—some with stiletto heels, some were slingbacks; then someone, I'm not sure if it was Bette, said, 'Why not get a pair of those old ankle-strap shoes, the ones Crawford used to wear in the forties?' We found a few pairs in the wardrobe department at Warner's. I'm not sure if they were Joan's, but they fit Bette perfectly."

Crawford was also responsible, unknowingly, for Bette's outrageous platinum curls in the movie. After Davis had tested in the original blond wig for
Baby Jane,
Bob Aldrich asked for a private word with Joan's personal hairstylist, Peggy Shannon. "He had a problem with the wig," said Shannon. "Bette's hairdresser brought in this Shirley Temple-style wig from Max Factor. It didn't look right. Bob knew I had spent years at M-G-M, so he said to me, 'Peggy, you worked on all those old musicals at M-G-M, can you help us out? We're desperate.' That evening I went over to Metro and found this long platinum-blond wig. I took it home and styled it, with curls and ringlets at the nape of the neck. The next day I brought it to Bette. She put it on, looked in the mirror, and in a loud voice said, 'It's the
NUTS!
I love it!' She wore it through the entire picture, and she never knew that it was an old wig of Joan's—one that Miss Crawford wore in an early M-G-M movie."

Norma Koch, who would win an Oscar for her
Baby Jane
costumes, admitted there were some slight wardrobe problems with Crawford. "She wanted to wear her own negligees and dressing gowns. The negligees were low-cut and revealing, nothing an invalid or recluse would wear. I managed to talk her out of that by saying they were too lovely and new, that her character should only wear clothes that looked dated. After all, she was crippled, and her sister, Jane, hated her so much she wasn't about to go to expensive stores to buy clothes for her. Joan agreed on that, and then we discussed the day wear. The dresses she wanted to wear were short. They were supposed to show off her famous legs. But again I explained that her character had been in a bad automobile accident and, having been an ex-movie star, Blanche was vain and would never want to show off her disfigured legs. She went along with that, and I designed two high-necked nightgowns for her, a peignoir, and a flowing monk's-robe type of dress, which Joan insisted on wearing with a belt to show off her waist."

When it was her turn to test her wardrobe for
Baby Jane,
Joan gave a full performance. "The camera was on a track," said Bob Gary, the script supervisor. "Aldrich wanted to see how every costume photographed and what the makeup looked like. You started full-shot—then you dollied in from head to toe. By the time the camera got to Joan's face, she was crying. She was wearing the dress she was supposed to die in at the beach, so she must have concentrated on that, and the tears began to fall. She is the only person I had ever seen who cried at her own wardrobe tests."

"The bitch could cry on demand," Davis commented to Judith Crist.

Early in July, while rehearsals were under way, Jack Warner took advantage of the growing media interest in the teaming of Bette and Joan by hosting a welcome-home luncheon for the two stars at Warner Brothers.

"He wouldn't let us film in his studio, and now he wants to give us a luncheon?" said Bette.

"Yummy," said Joan. "What should I wear?"

On July 18, at noon, wearing a colorful print dress, with her auburn hair rolled back in a chignon, Joan, flanked by Bette—also looking swell, in a flowered hat, three gold bracelets, pearls, and two diamond sunburst pins attached to the scooped neck of her black silk-and-linen suit—entered the Trophy Room at Warner's accompanied by their former boss. All three Hollywood legends beamed broadly as the flashbulbs popped and the assembled press applauded this happy "family" reunion. This was Bette's first visit home in fourteen years, and she was "overwhelmed with emotion to see Papa Jack." "I can't exactly call you my father, Mr. Warner," said Crawford, "because I give that credit to the late Louis B. Mayer. But you are my second father."

Talking to reporters, the two stars were ultra-careful to avoid even a hint of calumny toward each other. "I have been waiting for twenty years to work with Miss Davis," said Crawford.

"It's a good script and we expect to do good things with it," said Davis. Of her character, she explained, "It takes guts to hurt someone. This woman minces no words. She's full of hate."

Joan agreed. "This is wonderful for me. I usually play the bitches. Now I can sit back in my wheelchair and watch Bette do it."

"
ALL RIGHT
Blanche Hudson!
Miss
BIG FAT MOVIE STAR
. Miss
ROTTEN STINKING ACTRESS!
Press a button
...
ring a bell
...
and you think the whole
WORLD
comes running. Don't
you?"

—BETTE AS BABY JANE

On Monday, July 23, filming on
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
began at the Producers Studio on Melrose Avenue. The call was for 9:00
A.M.
, and at fifteen minutes to, Crawford arrived with her entourage—her hairdresser, makeup man, secretary, maid, junior agent from William Morris, and chauffeur, who carried a portable cooler filled with ice and bottles of Pepsi.

Bette Davis arrived alone.

Their dressing rooms were exactly the same size, placed at catty corners, at exactly the same distance from the soundstage. Bette's was to the right of the stage door; Joan's was to the left. After inspecting her trailer, Joan asked the studio carpenters to put in extra shelves and lights for her secretary, who would be answering the fan mail while her mistress emoted. "Bette stood in the doorway of her dressing room, watching all this activity," said photographer Phil Stern. "When the carpenters left Joan's trailer, they passed Bette and asked if she wanted anything done. 'Thank you,
no,'
said Bette, in a voice loud enough for Joan to hear. 'Dressing rooms do
not
make good pictures.'"

Then the bestowal of gifts from Joan began. "She had a deep and gnawing need to be liked, loved, admired, appreciated," said Bette. "She could be touchingly generous. She brought gifts for me to the set and presented them in front of the crew."

Bette did not reciprocate. In a note thanking Joan for the gifts, she asked that she discontinue the practice: "because I do not have time to go out and shop."

In front of the cast and crew, the stars were "painfully polite" to each other, said script supervisor Bob Gary. "They were very careful how they behaved."

Each star was a professional, said the director's seventeen-year-old son Bill Aldrich, whose duties included knocking on the doors of their respective dressing rooms and saying, "We're ready, Miss Crawford. We're ready, Miss Davis." "They were never late, and they always knew their lines. Each one intended to outdo the other by being cooperative, because they needed this picture, and so did Bob Aldrich."

The first scenes were done on stage two, in Blanche's bedroom. In the opening takes, director Aldrich told Davis that she was coming on too strong as Baby Jane.

"Who'd
cha
expect," Bette shot back, "Ann Blyth?"

Joan complained that the parakeet perched on her shoulder was pecking at the makeup on her face. "It's a sign of affection," the bird's trainer told her. "Then we'd better find one that hates me," the star snapped back.

During the first week, Bette Davis took her lunch breaks at Lucy's, a restaurant across the street from the studio. "She would cross the street in her makeup and stop traffic," said Phil Stern, "so after that she stayed in the studio and ate with the rest of the guys."

"Mother liked to be thought of as 'one of the boys,'" said daughter B.D., "but that too was a performance."

"Crawford could also be very cordial at times," said Phil Stern. "She wanted to show she could be a nice person too."

Crawford would "yell and scream," said continuity girl Adelle Aldrich, "and so did Davis, but afterwards she would teach me my job. I was only eighteen years old at the time, and that was my first job, to make sure things matched in the shots. My dad had told the ladies to give me a hard time. They both would question me very hard. Davis did it with great fondness. She was a wonderful teacher, and I'll forever be indebted to her. But Crawford was quite evil about it."

At nightfall Joan departed as she had arrived, with an entourage. "She had all kinds of characters around her," said Stern. "There was her maid, her social secretary, her manager—this entire entourage would follow her. Then you'd see Davis—she's stepping over the cables on the floor—going home, alone."

"Hollywood expected an
eruption when Joan Crawford
and Bette Davis got together for
Whatever Happened to Baby
Jane?
But it turned out to be
love in bloom."

—HEDDA HOPPER

"Yes, I know. Everybody
believed we would kill each
other. But we fooled them. We
were tempted to hang a sign on
the set, saying 'Sorry folks,
we're getting along
beautifully.' "

—BETTE DAVIS

"There is
no
feud," Bette told Mike Connolly of the Hollywood
Reporter
after the first week of filming. "We wouldn't have one. A man and a woman yes, and I can give you a list, but never two women—they'd be too clever for that."

There was an implied test of strength between the two women, but "they had to play that game of denying there was any competition between them," said Bette's daughter B.D. "Mother's favorite line at the beginning of the picture was, 'We're just two professional dames doing our jobs.' It was beneath them to compete with each other. Both felt so superior that they couldn't acknowledge their hatred, let alone express it."

On their first free Saturday evening, Bette and Joan had dinner with columnist Hedda Hopper at her home. "The three of us were dressed in black," said Hedda. "As we sat down to dinner, I said we looked like three black-widow spiders." For cocktails Bette made do with Hedda's Scotch on the rocks, but Joan produced her own flask of hundred-proof vodka from her handbag. "I say if you're going to have a drink, have what you want," she declared.

The filming was going beautifully, they chorused.

"Joan is wonderful, she's going to win all the awards," said Bette.

"No, no," said Joan, "Bette has Oscar written all over her performance."

She had to concentrate very hard on getting into character every day, Bette admitted.

"I'm aware of that," said Joan. "You didn't say good morning to me for a full five minutes today."

"I get absent-minded," said Bette. 'And sometimes that can be mistaken for something else."

Then there was the problem of the name-calling, said Joan.

"Oh?"
said Hedda, alert and ready for some good old-fashioned nasty dish.

"Yes," said Joan to Davis, "you flip when they call you Bet, just as I do when they call me Jo-ann. I was amused today when you told someone, 'If you called me Bette, I'd like you much better.'"

"Yes," said Bette, "it can be tedious."

Caught in the middle of this Girl Scout debate, Hedda tried to liven up the proceedings by asking which star had top billing in the picture.

"We tossed a coin and I won," said Bette proudly.

"She comes first," said a smiling Joan. "She plays the title role."

A few cocktails later, after the trio had discussed Hollywood today ("A ghost town," said Joan; "It's been taken over by the agents," said Bette), the two stars freshened up for the journey home. "When Joan reached into her purse and began to apply lipstick, Bette immediately followed suit, applying lipstick to
her
mouth," wrote Hedda. "Then Joan exited first, in her chauffeur-driven car, while Bette called her secretary."