Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (46 page)

As it happened, Bette tried to bounce Rosalind Russell from the spotlight. "They were both on the dais together, and Bette said to Roz, 'I want a photograph taken with Mr. Warner.' And she pushed her out of the picture," said Greenfield.

Jim Watters was an entertainment reporter for Time-Life when he saw Joan Crawford perform one of
her
competitive star performances at a New York restaurant that same year. "There was a reception at the '21' Club for Ingrid Bergman and Goldie Hawn, who were in New York to make
Cactus Flower,"
said Watters. 'As I was going in, Crawford was getting out of a limo. She apparently had not been invited to the party, because in a loud voice she said to the doorman, 'What is this? Whose do is this?' He explained that there was a reception in progress upstairs for Ingrid Bergman and Goldie Hawn. Crawford headed straight for the elevator and went upstairs. She made a grand entrance into the party, and the first person she came face to face with was her old enemy Gloria Grahame, whose husband, Tony Ray, was the assistant director on
Cactus Flower.
Joan's face dropped when she saw Grahame, but she quickly recovered and proceeded to sweep through the room, taking over the party; which wasn't hard, because Goldie Hawn wasn't a star yet, and Ingrid Bergman looked rather dowdy, wearing a dress that looked as if she made it."

"Warner Brothers sent me a
letter saying they wanted to use
a clip from Now Voyager in
Summer of '42. They
implied that they wanted to use
it as a laugh. My lawyer wrote
back saying, if they wanted a
clip to laugh at, why didn't they
choose a scene from one of their
current films."

—BETTE DAVIS

As the sixties segued into the seventies, the drastic cultural changes confused and irritated many, including Crawford and Davis. The hippies, free love, and the political protesters especially annoyed Joan. "Peace and love and all of that is just fine," she said, "but there are limits to be observed. When I was young, I also broke some of the stuffy conventional rules. But, damnit, we obeyed the laws, respected our elders, and we always earned our own way. The kids today say they don't trust anyone over thirty. Does this apply to their parents, who seem to be paying for their freedom and rebellion?"

Bette Davis favored the legalization of marijuana. "It is the forbidden-fruit element that attracts," she said. "If pot is legalized, I think the young might fall away from it." She also decried the lack of personal grooming on some of the new generation. "I think the parents of the revolutionaries have given up," she told
Show
magazine. "For example, if my son ever grew his hair to his shoulders and did not bathe, and he's about six foot and I'm a shrimp, I'd cut his hair off in the middle of the night and I'd dump him in a tub."

The Great Unwashed were not the audience Joan Crawford had in mind either, for her 1971 book,
My Way
of Life.
"Entertain, decorate, be sexy for your husband," Joan advised, giving tips on posture ("Sit on hard chairs—soft ones spread the hips"), cooking ("A red vegetable next to a yellow one looks unappetizing"), how to pack for a trip ("Stuff the sleeves of your dresses with tissue, so they won't wrinkle"), and how to be a perfect houseguest in the country ("Have breakfast in your room and never see your hosts until lunch").

In the book, Joan the Pepsi board member published her work schedule opening new bottling plants, from San Diego to Copenhagen to Sao Paulo. The timing and precision were that of a West Point cadet officer. "Arrive at the plant at ten," the schedule stated. "At ten-ten we have the invocation. At ten-fifteen platform guests and speakers are introduced. At ten forty-five we start touring the plant, and from eleven to twelve I'm on the platform, signing autographs. On the dot of noon I head for the airport, for our next destination."

"The old bitch just wants everyone to know how busy she is," said Bette Davis. "She's like a
goddamn
robot!"

Keeping her cannon well oiled, Joan then fired off her rebuttal to Bette. "I'm the quiet one and Bette's explosive," she told
Life
in 1971. "I have discipline. She doesn't."

"My head is high as to my discipline as an actress. I can provide witnesses," Davis shot back, which led Crawford to disparage further her rival's following. "She has a
cult,"
said Joan. "And what the hell is a cult except a gang of rebels without a cause. I have
fans.
There's a big difference."

The Ladies Who Lunch

Although the two women claimed repeatedly that they preferred the company and friendship of men, both stars had a steady circle of female friends over the years. Crawford had more than Davis, retaining a steady acquaintanceship with dozens of other actresses by phone but mostly through her voluminous correspondence. Her contacts included Vivien Leigh, Myrna Loy, Marlene Dietrich, Rosalind Russell, Nancy Kelly, Virginia Grey, and such diverse talents as Barbara Stanwyck and Debbie Reynolds.

Reynolds became friends with Joan at the start of the 1950s, during her early days at M-G-M. "It wasn't a close friendship," said the musical-comedy star. "It was superficial in that respect, but it was consistent and endured." They had the same masseuse, Nancy Gianno, and Joan was one of the first to call Debbie when Eddie Fisher left her for Elizabeth Taylor. "She offered her home to me and the children, if we wanted to get away from the press." When Reynolds married shoe tycoon Harry Karl, she and Joan frequently lunched at the "21" Club in New York. "It was always on the second floor, the same corner table at the front of the room, so Joan could see and be seen by everyone who entered." On those occasions Crawford wore a big hat, drank Russian vodka ("so you couldn't smell it on her breath"), and was always warm and amiable. "I never knew the bad side of her," said Debbie. "She was always very sweet and kind to me."

Visitors to Crawford's New York apartment commented that the only photographs displayed in the star's living room were one of President John E Kennedy and one of Barbara Stanwyck. Approximately the same age, Crawford and Stanwyck began as "hoofers" on Broadway in the mid-1920s and went to Hollywood to star in silent movies not long after. In the early 1930s, when Stanwyck was married to actor Frank Fay, she lived in Brentwood, close enough to Crawford to find refuge in her house when Fay went into his alcoholic rages.

In 1935, when newcomer Robert Taylor was making M-G-M's
The Gorgeous Hussy,
the sight of the gorgeous young actor with the coal-black hair, blue eyes, and double eyelashes sent the star of that picture, Joan Crawford, into spasms of ecstasy. But it was a "look but don't touch" situation for Joan, because Taylor was the steady boyfriend of the slightly older Barbara Stanwyck ("He's got a lot to learn and I've got a lot to teach"), who, according to one reporter, "would kick Joan right in the butt if she even so much as touched a hair on Taylor's fine head in private."

"Joan really liked Stanwyck. She never had anything but wonderful things to say about her," writer Carl Johnes recalled. "It was always a kind of bond between them that the crews on their pictures used to call Stanwyck 'Missy,' and Joan Crawford 'Miss C.' "

On a visit to New York in the early 1970s, Stanwyck had lunch with Crawford at the "21" Club. Also at the table was Stanwyck's close friend, reporter Shirley Eder, who wrote up the meal in a book. Dispensing with menus, Joan ordered calves' liver for all three. "She also chose our vegetables, and the salad, leaving the choice of our dessert to us," said Eder. When Joan got up to greet someone in another part of the room, Stanwyck said, "I hate calves' liver." "Why didn't you tell her?" Eder asked. "I wouldn't dare," said the star.

On a subsequent occasion, prior to one of her work trips to California, Eder said that Crawford made plans to see Stanwyck for dinner when she arrived. At noon that day Joan's secretary, Betty Barker, called Stanwyck. Miss Crawford was on a plane, en route from New York to L.A., Barker told the star, and she planned to see her at Don the Beachcomber's for dinner at 5:00
P.M.

"Five
P.M.
?" Stanwyck asked. "Who eats dinner at that ungodly hour? Why do we have to meet so
early?"

Because of the time difference, the secretary replied: "Miss Crawford's stomach will be on Eastern Standard Time."

"Well you tell Miss Crawford that Miss Stanwyck's stomach is on California time and has been for the past thirty years," the classy silver-haired legend replied, declining to dine with Joan on that trip.

"It's a strange friendship, but nevertheless it's real," said Shirley Eder.

"And every year, on Joan's birthday, there was a big floral gift from Stanwyck," said Carl Johnes. "It was always signed 'From Missy to Miss C.' "

Bette and Olivia

"In my day the most beautiful
actresses in Hollywood were
Hedy Lamarr and Rita
Hayworth. And the most liked
were Carole Lombard and Jean
Harlow. But I never did pal
around with actresses. Their talk
usually bored me to tears."

—BETTE DAVIS

In December each year a select group of actresses received a Christmas card from Bette. They included Agnes Moorehead, Joan Blondell (both on Crawford's list), Claire Trevor, and Deborah Kerr. "She was also friendly with Marlene Dietrich, without sending cards or letters," said secretary Vik Greenfield. "Once they were in the same hospital in Philadelphia, on the same floor, and Marlene sent a note that said, 'Dear Bette, Get well soon. But please,
no
visitations, Love, Marlene.' "

There was also her "best friend," Olivia de Havilland.

"They were never really that close," said B.D. Hyman. "In later years Olivia always visited Mother when she was in the States, and if Mother was in the mood she called Olivia when she was in Europe."

"I think they're as close as actresses can be," said Vik Greenfield. "Olivia has a great admiration for Bette. It is not returned. Since they were girls at Warner's together, Bette always had the upper hand, so she—I hate to use the word—tolerates Olivia. And Olivia really, really likes Bette."

Bette and Kate

"I wanted to be the first to win
three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn
has done it. Actually it hasn't
been done: Miss Hepburn only
won half an Oscar. If they'd
given me half an Oscar, I would
have thrown it back in their
faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I
never lose."

—BETTE DAVIS

She was a fan of only two actresses, Davis said repeatedly. One was Garbo; the other was Katharine Hepburn.

She always wanted to have Hepburn's face, "with its hollows and high cheekbones," she told entertainment reporter Robert Osborne. "When I hit forty, I screamed every time I saw a mirror. But Miss Hepburn with her bone structure could look good at a hundred."

"She's awfully good," Hepburn said as a sparse tribute to Davis, while Bette occasionally acknowledged she was amenable to working with the Great Kate.

Early in 1936, at RKO, when Hepburn had been cast as Mary, Queen of Scots, Davis wanted the role opposite her, Elizabeth the Tudor Queen. One report claimed Jack Warner refused to loan her out, while another said it was director John Ford who booted her off the set, because Bette "talked too much." ("I always thought Mary was an absolute
jackass,"
said Hepburn, regretting that she hadn't played Elizabeth herself.)

In the decades to come, Hepburn and Davis were considered as costars for other projects, including
The Great Lie, The Night of the
Iguana,
and
Ship of Fools;
but the kinetic pairing never occurred. In March 1977 the New York
Times
reported that the two actresses were scheduled to work together in
Whitewater,
a film based on a novel about two spirited women in a small Texas town during the 1940s. The scheduled director was Jan Kadar, who said there would be a pivotal confrontational scene between the two, but which of the two formidable stars would win the showdown, and first billing, was not announced.

Whitewater
was never made. In 1985
Life
attempted to bring the two legends together for a photo layout. Entertainment editor Jim Watters was in charge of the magazine's special movie issue. For the cover he persuaded the current female powers—Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Jessica Lange, and Sally Field—to pose for a group portrait; for the closing shot he wanted Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis seated side by side. "I felt it would be a historic picture," said Watters. "The two didn't know each other, but they represented all that was great about Hollywood."

Watters sent a letter to each actress, outlining his concept. Bette answered first, with a telephone call. "This is a fantastic
idea,"
she said, "truly inspiring."

Hepburn did not respond. "I wrote her a second note," said Watters, "saying, 'Why are you ignoring me?' In the meantime, Davis kept calling me. 'I am coming to New York, to do these photographs with Miss Hepburn,' she said, 'but apparently Miss Hepburn doesn't
want
to do them. What is
wrong
with her? She
must
do this. Contact her
again.' "

The third note apparently moved Hepburn. Watters answered his phone one day and heard a familiar voice bellowing at him from the other end. "This is Kate Hepburn, and why are you making my life miserable?" she barked.

She wouldn't pose with Davis, she declared. "Oh, I can see your mind just clicking away, that this is one of those things where you get two old dames together and we'd be embarrassed to back out because one would blame the other. But I am saying no because it is a shitty idea and because I have done enough for
Life
magazine. The last time you didn't even put me on the cover." ("We had a wonderful private look at Kate's domain in Connecticut, and a strong Mick Jagger story, but the photo editor went with an embryo on the cover," said Watters.)

Hepburn could not be swayed by the historical significance of the photograph or the fact that Bette Davis was hot for the idea. "Well, I'm not going to do it," said Kate. "I did enough shit for
Life."

"She kept using that word twenty times in two minutes," Watters recalled.

"Forget the shitty idea, and don't write again, and don't call me," said the intractable one.

"Then she hung up in my ear by slamming down the receiver," said the editor, who had to tell Bette Davis that Hepburn wouldn't pose with her.

"Is she
crazy?"
Bette roared. "The woman is
nuts!"

"Davis was not happy, to say the least," said Watters. "But I managed to calm her down by assuring her that
Life
would be very happy to photograph her on her own, which we did."

"The camera doesn't know how
to lie. There
is
a thing, God help
us, called close-ups. There
is
no
place to return to when you
retire from the movies."

—ALEXANDRA DEL LAGO IN
SWEET BIRD
OF
YOUTH

By 1972 the movie careers of Bette and Joan were apparently over. Joan had made her last feature two years before, playing an anthropologist in
Trag.
Her leading man was an eight-foot troglodyte monster, but the star behaved as though she were appearing opposite Cary Grant or Clark Gable. She supplied her own wardrobe, arriving on location in the gray English moors with thirty-eight pieces of luggage. She had her face taped back by "gifted hairstylist, Ramon Guy," and divulged one of her special beauty secrets to a woman's magazine writer: "There's a trick, Claudette Colbert taught me years ago," said Joan. "Dump a tray of ice in your wash basin and splash ice water on your bazooms. It keeps them firm."

In 1971 Bette Davis made her last film for five years,
Bunny
O'Hare.
Wearing a hippie dress, a long blond wig, and a floppy granny hat, she played a bank robber bored with her family and retirement. "Silly, a gimmick ... dreadful," said Vincent Canby, panning the film and the star, whose career, "which began 40 years ago, has been recycled more often than the average rubber tire."

With no offers for features, Davis and Crawford grabbed whatever work they could in TV. "I want to do more guest spots," Crawford told
TV Guide.
"I was dying to do a
Daktari
or an
I Spy.
I was desperate to work with Judy [the chimp in
Daktari
] and with Gentle Ben. When I read that Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion died I sent a telegram to the producer, Ivan Tors."

Lucille Ball used Crawford in one of her revivified comedy series on TV. The script, not written for Joan, exploited one of her fetishes—her mania for cleaning. The plot had Lucy and her side kick, Vivian Vance, with a broken-down car, stopping at a Hollywood mansion and finding the occupant, a once-great star, down on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors. Assuming the star was destitute, Lucy and Ethel then arranged a charity auction to help her.

Gloria Swanson was being talked of for the role of the star when Stan Kamen, Crawford's agent at William Morris, said, "Why not give it to Joan?"

"She won't sue us?" said Lucy.

"She loves your show," said Kamen. "She'd be delighted to play herself."

During rehearsals, Crawford, terrified of appearing before a live studio audience, frequently forgot her lines and came close to being fired by Lucy the coproducer. But Lucy the actress tried to relax the great star. Between breaks, as Joan sat in her chair "with her nose in her purse," Lucy, no shy violet, went over and teased her with: "What' cha got in there?" Then she snapped open Crawford's purse. "The star was drinking 100-proof vodka from a brown paper bag—with two straws. And all these years she's been so refined," said the item in
McCall's
.

Bette Davis also clashed with Lucille Ball, but not over a mere TV-guest-star job. At stake was the multimillion-dollar musical
Mame
. When Warner's bought the movie rights, Bette asked her agent to submit her name. "I wanted the lead," she said. "I had agreed to test and pay for my own wardrobe. Then, when Lucy was signed, I said, 'What about the other role? As Vera Charles, the close friend to
Mame
?' Everyone thought it was a
divine
idea. After all, I
knew
Miss Ball. We were old
buddies
. We attended the same dramatic school in New York many years
before
. Then the word got back to me that Miss Ball didn't want two stars in the same picture. I said, 'Forget the star billing. Put me in a special box at the end of the credits. Or leave my name off entirely. I could be a
mystery
guest.' But no, Miss Ball would have
none
of that. It was her show and she was determined to sink it
alone.
"

In August 1972 Davis and Crawford were working at the same TV studio, Universal. Bette was starring in a pilot film for a potential series,
The Judge and Jake Wyler;
Joan was a guest star in a segment of
Sixth Sense
. Of the two, Bette had the larger salary and assignment, scheduled for ten days' work. Joan was there for three days and was paid a paltry twenty-five hundred dollars, but she was given her customary perks—a studio limousine, her own bungalow, and fresh flowers each day. "That shows the difference between the two," said Vik Greenfield. "Bette had this little dressing room and she took her meals alone, as she preferred."

One day Davis instructed her secretary to "go and see what Crawford was up to."

"After lunch I went off and watched Joan come out of her bungalow," he said. "She had five men as escorts, and she had her hands on each one of theirs. They escorted her like this fragile queen down to her limousine, and then they all drove off to the lot, which was a block and a half away. I didn't follow, because if someone pointed out who I was there would have been a scene."

Each afternoon of her three-day stay, Joan was visited by such studio notables as Lew Wasserman (Bette and Joan's former agent, now president of the studio), Alfred Hitchcock, Rock Hudson, and producer Aaron Spelling, who invited Joan to dinner to meet his new bride, Candy. "This was before Aaron made it big," said
Dynasty
designer Nolan Miller. "And Candy wore a pair of wispy diamond earrings at dinner. Crawford quickly took Mr. Spelling aside and told him, 'Until you can afford to buy your wife important pieces of jewelry, don't buy her anything.' "

Photographer George Hurrell was also called to the set, to photograph Joan. He recalled the occasion for
Interview
magazine. "How she ever got through or how she remembered her lines, except when they held up a card, I don't know." Crawford started the morning off with hundred-proof vodka over ice, and was partial to complaining to the veteran artist. "She was 'Oh-George'-ing me and all that, asking 'Why don't they give me a series, why don't they ...' All she wanted to do was work as a star. The producers were sore as hell about it, but they had to cater to her or else."

At the conclusion of filming, Joan attended the Friday-night wrap party. "Slightly drunk," she gave gifts to each member of the cast, shook hands with the crew, then departed in her limousine. 'As she was driven out of the studio, the irony of the situation was not evident," said writer Hector Arce. "This would be her very last job in Hollywood. She was ending her career playing a small part in a TV film at the same studio where Bette Davis began her career forty years before. And the title of her last film was
Dear Joan, We're Going to Scare You to Death
.

"Women's Lib? Poor little
things. They always look so
unhappy. Have you noticed how
bitter their faces are?"

—JOAN CRAWFORD

"Gay Liberation? I ain't agin it,
its just that there's nothing in it
for me."

—BETTE DAVIS

Strangely enough, at the same time the studios stopped making new Davis and Crawford features, the demand for their old movies increased. Classic pictures such as
All About Eve
and
Mildred Pierce
were becoming cult favorites at revival houses and on college campuses across America. Part of the renewed interest was due to a national nostalgia craze that began in 1971 with the opening of
No, No, Nanette
on Broadway. The fascination with the past was described by
Life
writer Loudon Wainwright as "a longing for the irrecoverable; to stave off preoccupation with a future in which there is only one predictable entirely unsentimental outcome."

Coupled with their renewed popularity from the nostalgia boom, Bette and Joan also learned they had become the leading icons of another growing force—the Gay Liberation movement.

In March 1953, Lawrence Quirk, author of
The Films of Joan Crawford
and writer, editor, and publisher of his own newsletter, offered his timely thesis—
"THE CULT OF BETTE AND JOAN
. The True Reasons Why They Drive Homosexuals Wild."

Analyzing the "frenzied, high-camp" element involved in the gay preoccupation with Davis and Crawford, Quirk said the stars "mirrored certain frenzied, posturing, arrogant, prima-donna-ish, ego-deifying, self-projective, super-compensating principles that psychologists and psychiatrists have spotted in the more aggressive and flamboyant homosexuals, especially those in show business."