I was born too late to watch Joan Crawford and Bette Davis rule Hollywood, with popcorn
No one has verified it, but when Joan Crawford, shining star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, died in 1977, her archenemy Bette Davis, just as legendary a leading lady on the American silver screen, was quoted to have said, “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”
It all began at the beginning. By the time Bette moved to Hollywood in 1933, Joan was already a big star. The Warner Brothers-produced comedy Ex-Lady was to be Bette’s launching pad to stardom, but on the day the film studio kicked off a massive campaign to introduce her, Joan made a headline-hogging announcement—She was divorcing her first husband, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Hands down, she upstaged poor Bette. The movie, as it turned out, was also a flop.
And then there was the debonair Franchot Tone. “I fell in love with Franchot, professionally and privately,” Bette said, starry-eyed, when they co-starred in the 1935 drama Dangerous. Alas, during the filming, Tone ended up with Joan. They were married before the film was screened. Joan said that while Tone admired Bette as an actress, “he never thought of her as a woman.” That, too, made it to Bette’s list of grievances against Joan.
In 1943, Joan moved out of her home studio MGM, joining Bette at Warner Brothers and demanding the dressing room right next to her rival’s. Word has it she sent many gifts, such as flowers, in an attempt to bury the hatchet, but Bette returned them all.
BETTE: She has slept with every male star at MGM, except Lassie.
But life did pit the two divas against each other. Joan won her first—and only—Oscar for her starring role in the 1945 film noir Mildred Pierce, a role Bette turned down. The lead in the 1947 psy-drama Possessed, originally intended for Bette, also ended up with Joan, who clinched an Oscar nomination for it. But Bette didn’t think it was worth her stature. She was believed to have said again and again, “Miss Crawford is a movie star, and I am an actress.”
Joan knew how to get Bette’s goat. American gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote on account of what happened at the Academy Awards in 1963 held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in California, “When it comes to giving or stealing a show, nobody can top Joan Crawford.”
(Mondadori)
Bette was nominated for best actress for her performance in the 1962 film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, in which she co-starred with Joan. Had she won, it would have earned her her third Oscar—her first was in 1935 for Dangerous, her second in 1938 for Jezebel—and she would have been the first to win Best Actress three times in Academy Awards history. The award, however, went to Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker. But that wasn’t the reason losing the Oscar made Bette so angry she reportedly filled a glass to the brim with whisky to throw at someone’s face—Joan’s face.
As soon as the nominations were announced, Joan Crawford told reporters, “I always knew Bette would be chosen, and I hope and pray that she wins.” But that was no way true, at least according to Shaun Considine, who wrote the 1989 biography Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, re-released in 2017. “When Miss Crawford wasn’t nominated, she immediately got herself booked on the Oscar show to present the best director award,” so said Bette, as quoted in Considine’s work. “Then she flew to New York and deliberately campaigned against me. She told people not to vote for me. She also called up the other nominees and told them she would accept their statue if they couldn’t show up at the ceremonies.”
Apparently, Joan did, as Geraldine Page, nominated for Best Actress for Sweet Bird of Youth, confirmed, saying she did receive a call from Joan, who offered to accept the award in her behalf.
At the awarding ceremonies, Bette waited in the stage wings. So did Joan. When Swiss actor Maximilian Schell called Bancroft’s name, “Joan stood instantly erect,” said TV director Richard Dunlap, Oscar director. “Shoulders back, neck straight, head up. She stomped out her cigarette butt, grabbed the hand of the stage manager, who blurted afterward, ‘she nearly broke all my fingers with her strength.’ Then with barely an ‘excuse me’ to Bette Davis, she marched past her and soared calmly onstage.”
JOAN: Bette is a survivor. She survived herself.
“I am sure I turned white,” said Bette. “I will never forget the look she gave me. It was triumphant. The look clearly said, ‘You didn’t win and I am elated!’”
Joan should have rooted for Bette. She had everything to gain—and nothing to lose, except for her pride—from Bette winning the Best Actress race for Baby Jane, from which she and her co-star were entitled to a percentage of the profits. “An award would have meant a million more dollars to the film,” said Bette. “She cut off her own nose, just so I wouldn’t win.”
Between Joan and Bette, from beginning to end, there had been nothing but a big catfight, each just waiting to pounce on the other at every opportunity.
“I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire,” said Bette to Baby Jane director Robert Aldrich when he brought up the idea of bringing her and Joan together again in 1964’s Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
It wasn’t like they were opposites. Both Aries, with such strong personalities, they were each raised by a single mother. They were both unlucky in love, each with four husbands to struggle with. They both had ungrateful daughters, who each published a tell-all claiming they were bad mothers. With so much in common, why did they collide?
“I don’t hate Bette Davis, even though the press wants me to,” said Joan. “I resent her. I don’t see how she built a career out of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. She’s a phony, but I guess the public likes that.”
If all these catty remarks were true, Bette did agree to the very end, “The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” she said, her legendary lakewater-blue eyes ablaze with the story of her lifelong feud with Joan that Hollywood so often told.