Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (43 page)

"Miss Crawford always says
good morning when she walks
on the set. Miss Davis seldom
answers her. Three hours later
she may say 'Hi,' and Miss
Crawford looks around to see if
she's addressing her or someone
else."

—LILY MAY CALDWELL

According to Joan Crawford, she tried very hard to reconcile her differences with Bette Davis during those first days and nights in Baton Rouge. "It was a challenge to try and make her my friend," she told
Motion Picture
reporter Len Baxter. "Crawford obviously wants to clear the air," said Baxter. "But Davis is not able to kiss and make up. She doesn't know how to say I'm sorry and Crawford doesn't feel
she
has anything to be sorry for."

Forgiveness was never one of Bette's weaknesses, her friends agreed. She could not easily forget the humiliation she had suffered because of Crawford's behavior at the Oscars the previous year. "Perhaps if Joan had prostrated herself in front of Bette, and the entire company, and begged her forgiveness in front of the Louisiana State Assembly, then Bette would have considered a pardon with qualifications," said a cast member. "But Joan wouldn't offer a crumb of contrition, so the major games of revenge began."

"Bette told me that Joan was terrified of her on the second film," said Vik Greenfield, "and with good reason. After the business with the Oscar, this was
war."

Vengeance in the movies was always sweet, and, short of spiking Joan's Pepsi with cyanide, or tampering with the brakes of her car (which had been done in
Queen Bee),
in real life Bette loathed the obvious. Her retaliation on
Hush
...
Hush, Sweet Charlotte
had to be inconspicuous, and final.

"She wanted to make a basket case out of Joan, and she almost succeeded," said George Cukor.

Censuring Crawford for her heavy drinking and star posturings would not be enough. This second time around, Bette intended to attack Joan's more vulnerable areas—her advancing age and appearance.

Having turned sixty that April, Crawford was more sensitive than ever that her true age be kept from the press and public. She insisted on going with the lower figure of fifty-six, the same age as Bette. But in a joint story for the Birmingham
News,
Davis told the reporter, Lily May Caldwell, that if their ages were printed Lily May should note that Joan was four years older. "She's sixty, and I have witnesses who can prove it," said Bette.

In her story, Caldwell, an old friend of Joan's, omitted all mention of age. "Each is a Hollywood star of first magnitude," the reporter wrote, "but it's Joan, not Bette, who is the queen of this Bayou Country plantation, where the murder mystery is being filmed."

When the two stars were invited to the governor's mansion for a reception, they arrived in separate cars and held court on opposite sides of the room. "The wives were enchanted by Joan, by her softspoken voice and manners, while the men seemed more taken with the outspoken more bawdy Bette," said Caldwell. During the evening, when another reporter approached Bette and began to speak about "the lovely Joan Crawford," her costar spoke up promptly. "Yes! She
is
lovely, isn't she?" said Bette. Then, in a voice loud enough to be heard across the Mississippi River, Bette added, "She is
quite
a dame for her age. She's over
sixty,
you know."

Bette was also publicly derisive of Joan's extensive location-wardrobe. "For a goddamn week in Baton Rouge, she brought twenty pieces of luggage. It was a black-and-white movie but she had color-coordinated outfits for the daytime scenes, and for the night shots all of her evening dresses were chiffon, which meant that the wardrobe lady had to spend hours ironing them in the one-hundred-degree weather."

There was also the matter of Joan's thinning hair, become finer with advancing age, as was Bette's ("Both stars wore wigs in
Baby
Jane
and
Charlotte,"
said Monte Westmore). "She brought
mounds
of hairpieces to Louisiana," said Bette. "Maggie Donovan, who had been my hairdresser for years, said to me one day, 'We're up to our asses in Crawford's hairpieces.'"

"Most Aries are inclined to
forgive and forget all but the
most cruel encounters. If one
Ram
is
stronger, and
insists
on
butting away, the weaker Ram
gradually turns into a neurotic
sheep."

—ASTROLOGER LINDA
GOODMAN

Off the set, at the Belmont Motel, Bette continued to ostracize Joan. Socially she made sure that it was she, and not Crawford, who was the leading hostess of the
Sweet Charlotte
film company. Each evening she held court in her larger bungalow, across the way from her rival. She entertained Joseph Cotten, George Kennedy, Cecil Kellaway and his wife, and Bob Aldrich. One night she hosted a get-together for Mary Astor. "That was Astor's last picture," said Harry Mines. "She was there for three days. She didn't want to see me. She had closed herself away from everyone. It made my job a little difficult. I mentioned that to Bette and she said, 'Do you need to talk to Mary?' I said I'd like it, if I could. She said, 'My dear, let me take care of it. I'll have Mary over tomorrow night for drinks, and you can come in and meet her.' " Drinks for Miss Astor became a party, with all of the cast on hand except Joan Crawford.

"Bette didn't invite her," said Harry Mines.

"Why should I?" said Bette. "Miss Crawford and I never socialized."

"Joan was staying in the bungalow across the way," said Mines, "and during the party I looked out the window and saw her drive off for dinner with Mamacita."

Bette also organized several social evenings in Baton Rouge, including a trip to a local nightclub to see ex-housewife-turned-comedian Phyllis Diller. Agnes Moorehead was Bette's special guest that evening, and two nights later she hosted a dinner for Bob Aldrich at a nearby restaurant. Again Crawford was not invited, but left to herself in her bungalow, where the empty vodka bottles were beginning to pile up outside her door. Socially and psychologically, the star was beginning to crumble.

"Bette does not play a part, she
attacks it. She comes on hungry.
And Joan began to worry. She
too was coming on hungry; but
when she entered the dining
room instead of devouring her
dinner, she began to feel she was
the dinner."

—JOSEPH COTTEN

It was said that Bette, as a "partner" on the film, used her leverage to codirect the picture.

"She and Aldrich were very tight," said Harry Mines. "She was always by his elbow."

"Unlike Joan when she's through with her scene she retires to her dressing room, Bette remains on the set, like a spy. She sits in her canvas chair watching every scene," said Paul Gardner in
Action
magazine.

"What I remember is how helpful Bette was to the other actors," said photographer Flip Schulke. "One day this old guy [Cecil Kellaway] had trouble with his lines, and Bette kept walking him back and forth outside the house, going over his lines with him."

"Bette was a formidable presence on the set, and I think she intimidated Joan," said Bob Gary.

When asked in 1987 to respond to reports that Crawford was scared to compete with her on this second film, Bette replied, "Things were quite different from
Jane.
She had quite a lot of people to contend with. There was Kellaway, and Mr. Joseph Cotten, and Agnes Moorehead. I think it was a combination of all those people."

"Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead would hardly seem to be a problem for Joan Crawford," said Bill Aldrich. "Joan could have taken them with one hand. Bette was something else. She worked the company, the crew. She was a very strong lady who was still carrying on a one-way feud with Crawford. It began at rehearsals of
Jane,
went through that picture and through
Charlotte.
In Bette's mind, to this day, it has never stopped."

In the last three days in Baton Rouge, the shots involving Bette and Joan were completed. In the first sequence there was no dialogue involved. Joan was to arrive at the plantation mansion in a cab, then exit, carrying a small case, pay the driver, and, lowering her sunglasses, look up at a balcony of the house where Bette, in pigtails and a nightgown, was standing in the shadows, holding a shotgun.

The scene was designed to be photographed in a wide continuous shot, and, thanks to Crawford's proficient technical skill, it was completed in one take. Later that evening, when Harry Mines called on Bette in her motel bungalow, he found her standing in the middle of the room practicing Joan's scene. "My God!" said Bette. "I've been here all evening long with a pair of dark glasses and some luggage and I'm imagining getting out of a cab and trying to do that whole business in one gesture. How
did
she do it?"

That praise was apparently never conveyed to Crawford; nor was Bette regressive in her criticism of her costar. On the next day, during the filming of a Crawford scene on the veranda, according to
Motion Picture,
Bette positioned herself in front of the camera. "This is strictly unusual," said Len Baxter. ''A director doesn't permit an actor to sit in front of the camera, directly in another actor's line of vision, unless the actor is part of the scene." During one of Joan's close-ups, Bette turned to director Aldrich and said in a loud voice, "You're
not
going to let her do it like
that,
are you?" Trembling, but a pro, Crawford finished the scene and returned to her dressing room.

Late that night, concerned about her work, the actress said, she called Aldrich in his motel room. It was past midnight, and Crawford apologized for waking him up. "I was worried," said Joan. "I wanted to explain how I felt about those scenes. I urged that they be redone. He said I was overreacting, that my work was fine. But then I heard this second voice, talking loudly beside him. I knew immediately who it was. It was Miss Davis. She was
there,
in Mr. Aldrich's bed."

"I wouldn't put it past Mother to let Joan Crawford
believe
that she was having an affair with Bob Aldrich," said B.D. Hyman, "but I don't think there was ever a physical relationship between them. Certainly Mother was always adoring of her directors when they got along, and hated them when they didn't. She would always concoct these fantasies that this director or that was madly in love with her. But I think the last thing in this universe that Bob Aldrich would even consider was a relationship with either Mother or Crawford, and certainly not with Mother."

On June 12, the last day of shooting in Louisiana, further ignominy was served on Joan. After some late-afternoon shots, she was relaxing in her trailer, on hand if needed for additional scenes. She apparently dozed off, because when she woke up it was dark. When she sent Mamacita to check when shooting would be completed, she found the place empty. The crew had packed up and left, leaving Joan at the rear of the house, in her trailer, with no transportation back to the motel.

"There were a lot of mishaps on location," said Bob Gary. "We had a production manager who drank a lot. He would get drunk and forget to schedule things. When we were ready to leave Baton Rouge the next day, Aldrich found out we had no plane. The one we normally used wasn't scheduled; it was off someplace else."

"They brought us back to Los Angeles on this old beat-up World War Two plane. We were almost killed in transit," said Peggy Shannon.

"It had trouble taking off," said Gary. "When we got back to L. A. we found a lot of shrubbery and branches stuck to the wheels of the plane. These were the tops of trees we cut off when clearing the runway. Everyone laughed, but if we had gone down the headline would have read, 'Bette Davis killed in crash. No survivors reported.'"

Except for Joan Crawford, who flew back to Los Angeles first-class on a commercial airline that evening. The privacy and distance from the company gave her time to pacify her rage and come up with a solution to combat the winning Bette.

"The fight was much fiercer the second time around. And Joan did not enjoy losing," said Monte Westmore.

"She was facing the same situation as with
Baby Jane,"
said Bill Aldrich. "When she accepted the film, she knew her part was subordinate to Bette's. When shooting started, she realized she was playing second banana again, and she wanted no part of that."

There were few options for the losing star. In Baton Rouge, Crawford had called her agent, who spoke to Bob Aldrich about fattening up her part. The answer was no. The script was set, along with the shooting schedule, Aldrich replied. There could be no rewrites for either actress at this late date. Crawford then called Leonard Rosen, her lawyer in New York. She wanted him to find a legal out in her contract. There was none, he told her. If she quit the picture, she could be sued for breach of contract. Her only recourse was to bow to Bette and finish the picture. But this was
Joan Crawford—conqueror
of men and idol of millions. She could not, would not, allow herself to be vanquished by
anyone,
especially Bette Davis. As long as she had the spirit to fight and the ability to scheme, she knew the battle was not yet over.