What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (2 page)

He would write the screenplay for a television film based on his novel
How Awful About Allan
, starring Anthony Perkins and Julie Harris in 1970; and a theatrical film,
What’s the Matter with Helen?
starring Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters, in 1971. Molly played small roles in both, as well as the television film
The Eye of Charles Sand
. Henry’s novel
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me
would be adopted as a 1972 French film directed by Francois Truffaut under the title
Une Belle Fille Comme Moi
.

Henry Farrell wrote a musical stage version of
Baby Jane
with lyrics by Hal Hackady and music by Lee Pockriss, which was produced in 2002 in Houston, Texas, but it played to mixed reviews. Henry, devastated by the death of Molly, was hospitalized with a bout of cancer during rehearsals in Texas and his health started to fail. The composer, Lee Pockriss, suffered a stroke, and lyricist Hackady, in his late eighties, retired to an assisted-living facility outside of Manhattan.

The revisions needed for the musical were never completed, and the project was abandoned.

Without Molly by his side, Henry became more and more reclusive, although he did finish a nonmusical stage version of
Baby Jane
shortly before his death at the age of eighty-five in 2006.

A new novel, completed by Henry some years earlier, titled
A Piece of Clarisse
, has recently been discovered.

I would like to thank Mary Wickliffe Bishop, the executrix of the Henry Farrell estate and close friend and caregiver to both Henry Farrell and Molly Dodd, and Jane Winslow for their memories of Henry. Thanks to Alex Rankin of the Howard Gottlieb Research Center at Boston University for his continuous and generous help in locating materials for this publication; and film historian John DiLeo for his notes on the material. I would also like to thank Tom Kennedy of 20th Century-Fox for his cooperation in releasing Henry Farrell’s original story, “What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?”, for its first publication.

Thanks also to Jamie Raab and Scott Rosenfeld of Grand Central Publishing for their support of this project.

Mitch Douglas

Mitch Douglas is a veteran literary agent who has represented Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Graham Greene, Kander and Ebb, as well as biographers Anne Edwards and J. Randy Taraborrelli, and a host of other literary and theatrical luminaries over a long career at ICM and now with his own literary agency, Mitch Douglas Literary and Theatrical, in New York City.

1908

They waited there in the deep summer shade of the alleyway, a small decorous band of young matrons and their fidgeting female offspring. The women wore long skirts of soft linen or lawn, summer-weight blouses and wide-brimmed straw hats. The little girls, starched and ruffled, bore on their heads voluminous hair ribbons of pale, shiny satin. Many of them were of the town’s best families, not the sort, ordinarily, to attend the performance of a common vaudeville show, even at a ladies’ matinee.

Only the special character of the theatre’s present attraction had made their presence permissible. Baby Jane Hudson (The Diminutive Dancing Duse from Duluth—
ONE WEEK ONLY
!) was so eminently beyond reproach that they were able even now to linger in the alley behind the theatre for one last glimpse of this remarkable star before leaving.

“They say she’s a lot older than anyone lets on.” This softly, from the woman in the red lacquered straw hat, close to the left of the stage door. “They claim she’s just very tiny for her age.”

Her companion, dressed all in pink, glanced down at the sombre child at her side, nodded, cushioned her reply against her hand. “I heard they give her whisky to stunt her growth.”

“No!”

“Oh, I don’t really believe it. Do you?”

It was also said of Baby Jane that she was really just a midget dressed in child’s clothing. Some said she had been born with the gift of speech. A spiritualist group in Philadelphia claimed she was possessed of the spirit of a deceased actress, who used the child as an instrument through which to project her talents from The Great Beyond.

In any case Baby Jane was a phenomenon. She was known everywhere. Her sayings, printed on small, ornamented cards, were included in boxes of confection. A dime purchased her photo, personally autographed with love and kisses. Baby Jane was an authentic celebrity. And so a tremor passed through the group in the alley when the stage door finally opened and Baby Jane stepped forward onto the outer platform.

A small compact child with large luminous eyes and thick dark hair, she was dressed entirely in white. Her dress and gloves were of white lace. The white satin sash about her waist matched the ribbon depending from the brim of her white straw hat. Her sturdy legs were encased in long white stockings. Her high-topped shoes were of soft white kid. The corkscrew curls that cascaded from beneath her hat to her shoulders seemed as black as night by contrast.

At first glimpse she looked exactly like a little white angel. But the illusion vanished when one saw the mottle of temper in the small, round face; saw the tiny, lace-covered hands double themselves into tight, hard fists.

“I won’t, I won’t—I will
not
!” Baby Jane’s voice—the same voice lifted so sweetly in song minutes before—shrilled against the adjacent walls. “I won’t go back to any old hotel. And I won’t take a nap. And you can’t make me!”

A dark, pleasant-looking man, appearing quickly behind her, knelt down, reached out to her. At the same time there emerged through the doorway a mild-faced woman carrying an infant.

“Ray…” the woman said anxiously.

But the man was intent on Baby Jane. “Janie—don’t act up, sweetheart. You’ve got to take your nap. You know——”

“I won’t!” Baby Jane yelled. “I won’t even close my eyes. You can’t make me!”

The man glanced out at the crowd, attempted a smile. “Be Daddy’s good little girl now, please, and——”

Baby Jane stamped her foot. “No!” she screamed. “No—no—
no!
”

“Now, Janie…” The woman started forward, but the infant in her arms began to whimper and she stopped. “There, there,” she crooned distractedly.

The father cleared his throat. “You want your nice friends to think you’re a bad little girl?”

“I don’t care! I want a sweet ice!” Baby Jane pulled against his grasp. “I want it and I’m going to get it!”

“Janie, we talked about that, and——”

The child’s eyes flicked toward the crowd. “I want it, I
want
it!” Her face grew liverish. “I make the money, so I can have what I want. You can’t stop me!”

“Jane, that’s enough!”

Baby Jane kicked out at his shin. “I can have it if I want!” she screamed.

Except for the increased wailing of the infant, the scene grew hushed. And then the father nodded. “All right. It’s a hot day. I guess you’ve earned it. But this is the last time this week. Do you understand that?”

Baby Jane’s demeanor underwent an instantaneous transformation. The small hands unclenched, her expression became demure. “All right, Daddy,” she said.

Her father produced a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped uneasily at his brow. “You don’t want to forget to say hello to all your nice little friends now…”

With a sudden smile Baby Jane turned to her admirers, lowered her eyes in an unabashed show of bogus self-effacement and bobbed down in a brief curtsy. Then, blowing kisses, two to the left, two to the right, she turned back and held out her hand to be
led down the steps. Below, the woman in the red straw hat turned to her friend with a sharp lift of the brows.

“My stars!” she gasped. “Did you ever?
Did
you?”

The woman in pink looked up in round-eyed dismay. “What’s ever to become of a child like that? Mercy! Can you guess?”

The woman in the red hat shook her head. “It’s the others I pity,” she said, “the ones who’ll have to live with her. Just think what life’s going to be for them!”

1959

I
don’t give a hang what Father says. I’m in love with you, Meg. What are all the Standish millions next to an angel like you?”

He was a clean-cut young man with dark lustrous hair combed down close to his head. As he spoke, his companion, the blonde girl with the lovely sooty eyes looked up at him. Her brows, which were no more than thinly penciled crescents, lifted slightly at the inner corners, giving her a look of pained enquiry. An intense moonlight beamed down from somewhere behind, nesting in her platinum hair in a perfect halo. She wore a frock with enormous puffed sleeves of gossamer organdy and a skirt that flared widely from the knees. Music frothed up out of the magic night, as from the very air around them. The tune—their theme—was called “Moonlight on Fifth Avenue.”

“But he’ll cut you off without a penny. Oh, Jeff, you’ve never had to work for a living.”

The young man, though, now had the strength of his love, and he smiled to show it. “I’ll learn to work for you, Meg. I want to. You’ll see—you’ll be proud of me.”

The girl lifted her eyes to his and though they were moist, her face was placid. “But it isn’t that simple. You were born to”—her gesture included the alabaster terrace upon which they stood, the mansion in the background, the acres of clipped lawn, the fountains, the two
glasses of half-tasted champagne on the balustrade—“to all this. Can you even guess what it’s like, living in a cold-water flat?”

“It would be heaven—with you.”

“Oh, Jeff, you poor—romantic—fool!”

As “Moonlight on Fifth Avenue” murmured yeastily on, they embraced. The sooty eyes opened wide and then closed, presumably with ecstasy. A saxophone moaned. Violins, a hundred of them, swelled the night with heady vibration. And then, as if banished by the sheer din, the terrace, the mansion and, finally, the lovers themselves faded from view. In their place there appeared a man with a strained smile and circles under his eyes.…

“Sorry to break in on this fine feature film, folks, but you’ll be glad I did when you see what I have here for that favorite pooch of yours!”

Moving her comfortably expanded bulk forward in her easy chair, Mrs. Bates reached out and turned down the volume. Smiling softly with gentle reminiscence, she looked around at Harriett Palmer seated at the other side of the coffee table on the divan.

“Oh, I remember, when I first saw that picture I thought it was just grand. Claude took me—on a Sunday afternoon.” Seeing that Harriett’s coffee cup was empty, she rose and picked it up. “It was showing at the old Majestic.”

Harriett Palmer smiled pleasantly and nodded. “I think I saw it; I’m not sure. Do you remember when it was made?”

Mrs. Bates paused at the entrance to the hallway. “ ’Thirty-four. That’s what it said in the program in the paper.”

When she returned with the replenished cup, she crossed to Harriett and put it down on the table before her.

“You know, I don’t believe I ever missed a Blanche Hudson picture.” She glanced back at the set to make sure the commercial was still on. “I was such a fan of hers—right up until the time she had her accident. Oh, do you remember when that happened? I felt so awful it might just as well have been someone in my own family.”

Harriett, taking a sip of the coffee, looked up, nodded. “Oh, I know. She
was
beautiful. I still think so.”

Even there in the muted lamplight, the difference between the two women, though they were both in their early fifties, was striking. Mrs. Bates, being undeniably plump both in face and figure seemed somewhat older than Harriett Palmer, who had kept herself stylishly slim. Where Mrs. Bates had let her hair turn a natural steel gray, Harriett had rendered her own a sleek silver blonde. Mrs. Bates wore a loose-fitting house dress with a pattern of pale flowers; Harriett had on a pair of fitted black slacks and a white silk blouse. Mrs. Bates had just moved out west from Fort Madison, Iowa. Harriett Palmer had always been a native of Hollywood, California.

For all of their differences, though, the two women had gotten along famously from the very first day of Mrs. Bates’s arrival there on Hillside Terrace. Mrs. Bates, a widow of less than a year, had come to California to be away from all the familiar sights of home which had become only sad reminders of happier days before her husband’s death. Harriett Palmer was married to a corporation lawyer who spent a great deal of time out of town. Both of them being somewhat at loose ends, they were grateful for each other’s company. As they were doing tonight, they spent a great many of their evenings in Mrs. Bates’s comfortable, homey living room watching television.

“Have you ever seen her?” Mrs. Bates asked. “I mean, does she ever show herself outside the house?”

Harriett promptly shook her head. “Not that I know of. Oh, I’ve seen her from a distance—sure—in the car, when they have to drive somewhere—but not so you could tell what she really looks like. I figure she must be at least fifty by now.”

Mrs. Bates smiled with a faint show of hesitation. “You know—I shouldn’t tell this on myself—but when I bought this house, the thing that really decided me was when they told me Blanche
Hudson lived next door. Isn’t that silly—a woman my age? And I haven’t had even a glimpse of her.”

“Well,” Harriett grinned, “it does give the old hill a touch of glamour. There was quite a colony of movie people up here in the old days, but she’s the only one left.”

Mrs. Bates nodded. “Back in Fort Madison—well, you just didn’t ever see any movie stars—not in the flesh.” Her gaze went to the row of French doors that comprised, almost totally, the east wall of the room, and to the darkness beyond. The Hudson house, a white, two-story Mediterranean absurdity, loomed in ghostly dimness at the end of the garden. “Can she walk at all?”

“I don’t know. I think I heard once that she had partially recovered the use of one leg. But apparently she still has to be in a wheel chair all the time.”

Mrs. Bates made a soft clucking sound of sympathy. “I’d love to meet her,” she said wistfully. “A real movie star. Sometimes I wonder…” Her voice trailed off thinly.

“Wonder what?”

“Oh, it’s just some more of my silliness.” Mrs. Bates turned back to her guest. “I spend so much time out in the garden. Sometimes, I’ll be out there and—well, I just wonder if she’s watching me——” She broke off, darting her gaze quickly to the television set. “Oh, the picture’s on!” Hurrying forward, she turned up the volume again.

The blonde girl and a female companion stood on a busy street corner in front of a cafeteria. As the camera moved in for a medium shot, she consulted her wrist watch, then glanced off anxiously down the street. Her dress was simple but attractive and her hair caught the sunlight, as it had previously caught the light of the moon, in a perfect halo.

The other girl was smaller and stouter. Her face was that of a pouting and somewhat fatigued cherub, making her appearance, at once, comic and sad. Her dark hair was arranged in a profusion of absurd ringlets. Her dress was fussy and tasteless, and she had lavished upon her eyes and mouth far too much make-up. As the blonde girl turned
to her, she made her eyes wide and foolish in an obvious striving for humorous effect.

“If they don’t show up soon,” the blonde girl said, “I guess we just aren’t going to get fed.”

The brunette nodded vigorously. “You said a mouthful. We’ve got to be back at the office in twenty minutes.”

“Well—let’s give them five more minutes—and then we’ll just go ahead.”

“Sure. Besides—when it’s Dutch treat who needs a man anyway?”

Harriett sat sharply forward, pointing at the screen. “That’s her!” she said. “The other one, I mean—there!—the sister.”

Mrs. Bates stared in blank confusion. “That dark girl?” she asked.

“Yes. Don’t you remember? It was in Blanche’s contract that they had to use her sister in all of her pictures. I forgot until just now. They used it in all of her publicity.”

“Oh, yes! Yes, I do remember now. But I never knew which one was her. For heaven’s sake! Have you met her?”

“Her?” Harriett looked around with loftily raised brows. “You just don’t meet her. She’s very funny—strange—everyone says so.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder about the two of them over there in that big old house all alone. They don’t ever seem to do anything—or have anyone in for company. It must be awful.…”

Mrs. Bates looked again toward the French doors and the night beyond. “It’s nice, though, that she’s stayed and taken care of Blanche all these years. She must be a nice person to do a thing like that.”

“Well, maybe,” Harriett said darkly, “and maybe not. They say she had something to do with that accident, you know.”

Mrs. Bates looked around sharply. “
She
did? The accident where Blanche got hurt?”

Harriett nodded. “There was some story around at the time about how it happened. I forget now exactly what it was, but she was supposed to be responsible.”

“Oh—how could she have been? It was just a plain automobile accident, wasn’t it?”

Harriett waved a hand in light dismissal. “Oh, there’s always talk. Around this town, there is. You can’t really tell what to believe.”

Mrs. Bates nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve forgotten,” she said; “what’s her name? You told me once, didn’t you?”

“Jane?” Harriett asked. “Her name’s Jane. She was famous, too, I understand, way back when she was just a little girl. Maybe you remember hearing about her—they called her Baby Jane Hudson.”

“There they are.” The clean-cut young man, dressed now in workman’s clothes pointed ahead up the street. “Come on, Mac.”

The other young man, fat and jolly-looking, glanced ahead and frowned. “Which one’s Gertie? No, don’t tell me. I know already.”

A reverse shot showed the blonde girl and the brunette as they looked up, saw the men and smiled in greeting. The camera then returned to the men. The fat man shook his head.

“Boy, is that Meg some dish! No wonder you’re ga-ga over her.”

And then the four of them met. In a close shot the blonde girl and the young man grinned at each other in vigorous noonday ecstasy. The fat man held his arm out to the brunette in an exaggerated gesture of gallantry.

“Ready to tie on the feed bag, Gorgeous?”

The brunette giggled and looked up at him with broad archness. “Okey-dokey, Slim,” she said, linking her arm through his. “Don’t mind if I do.”

The blonde girl with the sooty eyes, looking up at the clean-cut young man with mute adoration, put her hand in his, and together they looked after their retreating friends and smiled.

The girl on the screen smiled, and there in the dimness the woman huddled in the wheel chair at the far side of the room
seemed, for a moment, close on the verge of tears. Blanche Hudson, her gaze held fast to the flickering screen in a kind of intense wonder, moved one taut, tapering hand to the collar of her light, rose-colored robe and held it there, palm outward, as if in a gesture of defense.

Moonlight on Fifth Avenue
was the third of the old movies Blanche had seen within just the last month, and with each of them she had been left feeling, somehow, a bit more decimated. An invalid for more than twenty years now, loathing increasingly the helpless, wasted old woman she had become, she had begun to believe in the legend of what she had once been on the screen. She had begun to believe in the glamour, the charm, the magic that was said to have once been hers. For a long, long time now she had managed to warm herself by this bright image, to hug it close to her where its radiance might reach the spreading chill inside.

Now she saw that it had been a mistake, watching the old movies. They had brought with them a sad disillusionment that, in its own way, had been a kind of dying. Twenty-five years ago,
Moonlight on Fifth Avenue
had made a fortune almost purely on the strength of her name. Gazing now at the preposterous, posturing creature on the screen, Blanche found it hard to believe. What she did see—and this with stinging clarity—was that through all these years her sole defense against empty reality had been simply hollow illusion.

And yet she had needed the illusion, for it had sustained her. And she needed it still. Anything was preferable to the stark reality of her present existence.

Reality was crowded so close to her here in this room. It was the large hulking bed there in the shadows, and the wheel chair, and the invalid’s lifting bar, suspended by chains from the ceiling above the bed. And the bedside table filled with medications. And the writing desk before which there had stood no chair for more than twenty years. That was reality, that and the stale-sweet smell of her own invalidism, which made her think of fallen leaves
rotting slowly and hideously in some dank, sunless place. Blanche sighed, and hearing herself sigh, looked around in sudden apprehension at the dark, squat figure seated dimly at her side.

Distracted by her own unhappy speculations, she had quite forgotten she was not alone. Turning now, she looked obliquely at the face of the woman beside her, a face both revealed and obscured by the shadowing dimness. The large, dark eyes, intent upon the images on the screen, were half closed, narrowed really, as upon some intense inner observation. The contours of the face, underscored by the shadows, seemed not so much softened with age as swollen by it, so that the sagging flesh threatened, greedily, to swallow up the once pert and childlike features embedded within its folds. But there was more there, too, more than mere age and some dark fledgling thought. There was a fever in the narrowed, watching eyes, and in the face there was a kind of angry justification.

A justification, though, for what? Taking her gaze, by force, from Jane’s face, Blanche made herself look back in the direction of the screen. Very likely it was all just in her imagination; she was attributing to Jane’s attitudes and expressions sinister depths which they did not possess. It was like that when you were too much alone; you became oversensitive and you had to be careful not to let your mind play you tricks.