One of the most deliciously long-simmering rivalries in the history of Hollywood is dissected in Ryan Murphy's Feud: Bette and Joan, starring Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon (above), premiering March 5.
And while both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford would no doubt revel in a buzzy premium series about their lives, they might not be so thrilled to find their grudge match played out on television screens. That's because they never publicly admitted to the feud and were all smiles whenever the reporters asked or the TV cameras rolled.
Crawford firmly dismissed any longtime enmity in a 1947 magazine article entitled "Can Women Trust Each Other?" by saying, "Why should there be a feud? I believe there is a place for every actress in this wonderful business. Certainly Bette and I don't fear each other."
And while it's tempting to dismiss the mind-boggling sexism of a magazine piece by that title—and there is of course room in Hollywood for a host of outsized talents—Crawford and Davis were not friends.
In the case of these two women, each of them divas, the mutual hatred burned hotter than that of a hundred spotlights. Let's take a closer look.
THE MEN
Yes, a man sparked the feud between Crawford and Davis. Now it could quite possibly crash the servers of the Town & Country website, taxing their capacities to the limit, to list all the players in the respective marriages, love affairs, and flings of these two actresses. For the purposes of this story, we shall employ a short list. Crawford was married four times—three actors, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone, and Phillip Terry, all divorced, and one Pepsi executive, Alfred Steele, who died—and had affairs with many of her leading men and directors, most memorably Clark Gable. "She slept with every male star at MGM except for Lassie," Davis supposedly wise-cracked.
Davis, it must be said, was no slouch herself, with four marriages ending in divorce (Harmon Nelson, Arthur Farnsworth, William Grant Sherry, and Gary Merrill) and many tangled affairs. During the period when she was married to Nelson, she was also sleeping with her director, William Wyler, and cheating on both of them with Howard Hughes.
The man Davis and Crawford fought over was the elegant Franchot Tone, best known today for his co-starring role in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). Crawford was engaged to Tone when he played the leading man opposite Davis in Dangerous. While filming, Davis fell in love with him, and they disappeared into her trailer for long talks. Sensing danger, Crawford began meeting Tone for lunch and he would return to the set with his face smeared with her lipstick. Tone made his choice and married Joan Crawford. Davis, however, won her first Academy Award for Best Actress, thanks to Dangerous. Which brings us to…
THE CAREERS
Bette Davis, during her lifetime and ever since, is considered one of Hollywood's finest actresses. Ferociously talented and ambitious, she won two Oscars for Best Actress and was nominated a total of ten times. This was the heyday of the studio system, when actors and actresses signed multiple-film contracts and were steadily employed—and controlled. In 1938 and 1939 alone, Warner Brothers released these Bette Davis films: The Sisters, Jezebel, Dark Victory, The Old Maid, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Juarez and Dark Victory.
She was the unquestioned queen of Warner Brothers—until a waning Crawford was released from her longtime MGM contract and signed with the studio. Davis fumed at this encroachment and insisted on first crack at all the starring roles. Davis turned down the script for Mildred Pierce, and Crawford eagerly snapped it up, turning it into a phenomenal comeback and snaring an Academy Award for Best Actress of 1945. The feud was full on.
THE GLAMOUR
Davis always insisted her looks were secondary to the part and she relished the chance to look hideous in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? When this film was made in 1962, both Davis and Crawford were considered washed up—or, to put it more genteelly, retired. But neither woman was wired for retirement, and Crawford, widowed, approached a frosty Davis backstage at The Night of the Iguana with the project. Davis, nearly broke, agreed to work together for the first time.
The story was of sisters, one a child star gone mad, and the other a famous actress confined to a wheelchair after a car accident involving her sister. The elderly "Baby Jane" (played by Davis) terrorizes Blanche (played by Crawford) in scenes best described as Grand Guignol, until finally Blanche dies. The film, when released, was a sensation.
Davis decided that Baby Jane, living in a fantasy world, would look "outrageous, like Mary Pickford in decay." She wore a filthy tangled wig and chalk-white makeup with black eyeshadow and a cupid's bow mouth lipstick. But Joan Crawford was a famous beauty who even at near 60 years of age stayed slim and meticulously groomed. She personified glamour, and though Blanche was a recluse, Crawford fought any efforts to look less than attractive, much to Davis's disdain: "Blanche was a cripple. She never left the house or saw anybody, yet Crawford made her appear as if she lived in Elizabeth Arden's beauty salon."
THE DIRTY TRICKS
Crawford made a great effort to establish rapport with Davis on the set of Baby Jane. She bought her flowers and a series of small gifts until Davis sent a note asking her to desist—"I do not have time to go out and shop." It went downhill from there. While Davis and Crawford were "painfully polite" to each other on the set, according to Shaun Considine's book Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud, they each called the director, Robert Aldrich, at night, ranting about the other with hours of complaints.
"They were like two Sherman tanks, despising each other," Aldrich said later.
In payback for the years of being snubbed and sneered at, Crawford, who discreetly laced her perpetual glasses of Pepsi with vodka, may have decided the time had come for payback. A scene called for Baby Jane to carry her sister Blanche, bound and gagged, out of her bed. After Davis carried the slender Crawford out of bed, she screamed, "My back! My back!" The story goes that Crawford had strapped a special weightlifter's belt lined with lead beneath her costume. As Davis sobbed, in agony, Crawford returned to her dressing room, a tiny smile on her face.
Nancy Bilyeau, a former staff editor at InStyle, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, has written a thriller set in the 18th century art and porcelain world titled 'The Blue.' For more information, see www.nancybilyeau.com.
