Joan Crawford & Bette Davis feud sparked by sexual tension
May 15th, 2008 by Scott Marks
While out promoting Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bette Davis told one interviewer that when Robert Aldrich suggested that she and Joan Crawford co-star in the film, Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner replied: “If you get rid of those two old broads and sign some real box office names, we’ll give you the money.” (Surely Warner was joking, for the teaming of these two hated rivals meant instant box office gold.) Davis took great delight in retelling the story, but she reportedly received a follow-up telegram from Crawford that cautioned: “In future, please do not refer to me as an old broad!”
It was the last salvo the stars unleashed during the making of Baby Jane, a film that united the bitter actresses who had waged a personal war that both continued fighting to the grave.
Much has been written about the making of the film including juicy stories about its spiteful stars. Crawford was then on the board of Pepsi-Cola so Davis had a Coke machine installed on the set. Bette soon discovered that Joan’s personal Pepsi-bottle was always spiked with vodka. “That bitch is loaded half the time!” raged Bette. “How dare she pull this crap on a picture with me? I’ll kill her!”
In one scene, Crawford falls out of her wheelchair and a maniacal Davis begins kicking her. Davis claimed that her shoe coming in contact with Crawford’s scalp was quite unintentional. It took three stitches for the “accident” to heal.
Even though both actresses publicly denied that there was any personal animosity between them, for over thirty years their rivalry continued to grab headlines. The feud has pretty much been written off as professional jealousy until now. The Daily Mail’s Michael Thornton writes that two years before Ms. Davis died (and ten years after Crawford’s death) she confided that the love of her life was Crawford’s second husband Franchot Tone.
Bette told Thornton, “She took him from me. She did it coldly, deliberately and with complete ruthlessness. I have never forgiven her for that and never will.”
“On both sides, it was highly personal and sensitive,” Thornton writes, “and was a case of unrequited love. Crawford, a promiscuous bisexual, was in love with Davis but was rebuffed. Her co-star was firmly heterosexual.”
In 1935, the 27-year-old Davis took home her first Academy Award starring opposite Tone in Dangerous. At the time Davis was married to her high school sweetheart, the musician Harmon Oscar (”Ham”) Nelson. Ham spent a lot of time on the road and years later Davis confessed: “I fell in love with Franchot, professionally and privately. Everything about him reflected his elegance, from his name to his manners.”
The bad news was Crawford got there first. “She slept with every star at MGM”, Davis later alleged, “of both sexes.” Crawford had a reputation of bedding not only her leading men, but her directors as well. Well…maybe not George Cukor.
“Franchot isn’t interested in Bette,” Crawford reportedly said, “but I wouldn’t mind giving her a poke if I was in the right mood. Wouldn’t that be funny?”
During the filming of Dangerous, Crawford and Tone announced that they were going to tie the knot. Imagine Davis’s fury when the couple married in New Jersey soon after the film wrapped.
Both actresses shared a fortune when Baby Jane opened, but it wasn’t enough to heel the wounds.
In 1968, the feud re-surfaced when Davis learned that Tone was dying from lung cancer. Crawford encased her ex in a nine-room New York flat and nursed him until his death, even going so far as supervising the scattering of his ashes.
“Even when the poor bastard was dying, that bitch wouldn’t let him go,” raged Davis.
Thornton closes his piece with a hilarious anecdote that must have slipped by me. While filming her final feature The Whales of August, Davis decided to entertain the crew with some Crawford horror stories.
Director Lindsay Anderson, a friend of Crawford, slammed his hand on the table and told Davis he wasn’t going to listen to any more.
Davis brought her fist down even harder, raised her voice and told Anderson, “Just because a person’s dead doesn’t mean they’ve changed.”
Links:
Joan Crawford’s unreleased scenes from “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte” to be included in new DVD
Unretouched Before & After Photos of Joan Crawford
Bette Davis for Lustre Creme
Joan Crawford & Larry Fine
Mommie Dearest photos
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LOL That’s two Aries for you…why so serious girls???! They were both great and still are!