Bette, Joan, and Baby Jane

I have been watching and greatly enjoying the FX series "Feud: Bette and Joan" these last several weeks.

The series centers around the long standing rivalry (to use a polite word) between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the filming of the 1962 movie "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"  The TV series stars Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange as Davis and Crawford, respectively. We are now three weeks into this eight week series, and it has been a real hoot to watch Sarandon and Lange chew the scenery while portraying two legendary divas chewing scenery.

Anyway, by an amazing bit of serendipity, earlier this week Turner Classic Movies showed the movie that is the subject of the TV series.

I think  that I saw this movie back in the 1960's when it finally appeared on television, but I had little memory of it, so I was anxious to see it, and it was interesting to watch, and see  Crawford and Davis, especially Davis, have at it in this movie, which has become a Camp Classic.

One of the real values of the Internet is that you can delve into it and find any number of articles and commentaries on just about any subject, and this movie and its stars are no exceptions.  It's as no secret in Hollywood that Davis and Crawford loathed each other.  It was also no secret that by 1962, neither had had a hit movie in years and were considered washed up by both the movie studios and the movie audiences.

It was director Robert Aldrich's idea to offer the roles of sisters Blanch and "Baby" Jane Hudson to Crawford and Davis.  The studios balked, but both actresses expressed interest and Aldrich figured that it would work because both actresses would work harder than hell to assure that the other  actress wouldn't steal the show from her.

From a 2008 essay ion the movie from critic Roger Ebert:

...it's possible that each agreed to do the picture only because she was jealous of the other's starring role. In the event, it was Davis who emerged on top, winning an Oscar nomination as the former child star who was now a shrill gargoyle with makeup pancaked all over her face. Davis was nothing if not courageous, as she abandoned all shreds of vanity and overacted her heart out. Crawford plays the quieter, kinder, more reasonable sister -- and, it must be said, the less interesting.

Ebert went on to make another interesting observation:

The impact of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" was considerable in 1962. Today's audiences, perhaps not familiar with the stars, don't fully realize how thoroughly Crawford, and especially Davis, trashed their screen images with the coaching of Aldrich. Imagine two contemporary great beauties -- Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett, say -- as aged crones. The personal dislike between Crawford and Davis no doubt deepened the power of their onscreen relationship; the critic Richard Scheib observes: "The irony that only came out in later years is that the roles were uncommonly close to the truth upon the parts of both actresses -- Crawford and Davis were both utterly vain, particularly when it came to their own celebrity, both abused their own family members and both had daughters who wrote books about the cruelty of their parents."

In his review of the movie at the time, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wasn't enthusiastic, and while he did praise both Davis and Crawford, he also used the term "scenery chewing" not once, but twice, in his review.

I enjoyed watching this movie very much in light of watching the "Feud" TV series.  

Lange and Sarandon

as

Crawford and Davis

 Crawford and Davis

The "Originals"

The movie, by the way, was in

glorious black & white

"The Maltese Falcon"

This past Wednesday evening, we took in the special TCM/Fathom Events showing to John Huston's 1941 classic, "The Maltese Falcon", on a big screen at the Cinemark Theaters.

Having just re-read the book last month (for the first time in over forty years), I was truck by how closely the movie followed the Dashiell Hammett novel, both in plot continuity and dialog.  The screenplay was written by John Huston, and it was his purpose to follow the book as closely as possible.  Two movie versions (1931 and 1936) of the book had already been made and both were terrible.  Huston saw the cinematic possibilities of the story as no one else had before him.  He convinced Warner Brothers to have him direct the movie. The result was a classic.  This was the first directing effort by Huston, who would go on to become one of Hollywood's great directors.  

The plot revolves around the recovery of jewel encrusted statue of a black bird, the Maltese Falcon, but as is often the case in such movies, plot is secondary to the acting, the setting, the dialog, and the mood created by the filmmakers.  And it is an important movie in that it rescued actor Humphrey Bogart from what had been a career of mediocre roles. The part of Sam Spade set the stage for the many great roles that followed for him in movies such as Casablanca, The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen.  "The Maltese Falcon" is also considered the first example of film noir in America, and, as such, it established the standard for so many movies of this nature in the years ahead.

Also, consider the part of Casper Gutman played by Sydney Greenstreet.  Greenstreet, a stage actor, was 62 years old at the time and this was his first movie role, and he was terrific, getting an Oscar nomination for his efforts.

Just a fabulous movie, and a great experience seeing it in a theater on a big screen.  Incidentally, mark your calendars for April when TCM/Fathom Events will be showing the great "On The Waterfront" as part of this series.

For a final, and more scholarly, and no doubt better written, treatise on "The Maltese Falcon", I give you to this piece written by the late film critic Roger Ebert in 2001.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-maltese-falcon-1941

To Absent Friends: Roger Ebert

Chicago film critic Roger Ebert passed away yesterday at the age of 70.   He and his Chicago newspaper rival critic Gene Siskel became famous in the 1980's and '90's, of course, with their syndicated TV show of movie reviews and criticism, "At the Movies", and their famous Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down judgments on current movies.  Siskel passed away in 1999, and Ebert went on to become perhaps the best known and most influential movie critic in the country, winning a Pulitzer Prize in the process.

The Internet and social media have been awash with tributes to Ebert since his death was announced yesterday, and who am I to add to the mix?  However, readers of this blog know how much I enjoy movies, and one thing I always enjoy doing, especially if I see an older movie for the first time, or if it has been many years since I had seen it, is going online and digging up Roger Ebert's reviews of that same movie.  His reviews are insightful and entertaining, and I almost always learn something after reading one if his reviews, and those reviews almost always add to my appreciation and enjoyment of the movie.  I did this just recently after I watched, for the first time, the 1994 movie, "The Shawshank Redemption".  Ebert's website contained both his original 1994 review, and a subsequent one that he wrote in 1999.

One great thing about the Internet is that writings such as these will always be available to anyone with access to a computer, and such informative and insightful criticism will never die.

RIP Roger Ebert.