That terrifying noise you hear is the heads of queer movie fans exploding in exciting anticipation over the news that thespian goddesses Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon will play Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, respectively, in Feud, a forthcoming anthology series about the making of the classic thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Related: Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About “What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?”
Ryan Murphy, producer of other riveting anthologies including American Horror Story, which garnered shelves of awards for Lange, and will oversee production of this new one for FX. The first season of the series will focus on the tantalizing real-life story of Crawford and Davis, both past their their fabled career peaks and struggling to remain relevant for new audiences, who agree to costar for the first time in a low-budget film about two has-been actress-sisters who share a crumbling Hollywood mansion. The 1962 film became an unexpected box office hit, won Davis an Academy Award nod as best actress and introduced a spate of similar Grand Guignol thrillers starring female movie stars of a certain age. It also launched countless insider stories that the two great stars did not enjoy working with one another, to put it mildly. The turbulent story of the making of Baby Jane and the alleged career-long rivalry between Crawford and Davis has been already told in Sean Considine’s juicy tome Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, which will presumably serve as a source for this project’s script.
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The series will also feature Alfred Molina as Baby Jane‘s director Robert Aldrich, Stanley Tucci as studio exec Jack Warner, Judy Davis as famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and Dominic Burgess as Baby Jane co-star Victor Buono. Brad Pitt will executive-produce the eight-episode first season alongside Murphy, Lange and Sarandon. The series will provide rich characters for the two Oscar-winning actresses to play. Lange is currently receiving kudos on Broadway for her turn as morphine-addicted Mary in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, while Sarandon has been dealing with controversy and fallout from her stumping for Bernie Sanders. The series is scheduled to premiere in 2017.
Related: Hollywood Shocker! Faye Dunaway Reportedly Writing Book About Mommie Dearest
Watch what is probably the most famous and widely quoted scene from Baby Jane below.
kurt_t
Oh my Sweet Rainbow Glitter Jesus.
dvlaries
Those who are read up, know that Crawford’s far more long-standing feud was with MGM rival Norma Shearer, lasting virtually from Joan’s 1925 arrival at the studio, till Norma’s last day at her final 1942 film. Joan left for Warner Brothers a year later.
They actually co-starred in 1939’s classic, original The Women with Joan’s character stealing Norma’s husband. They barely managed a chilled civility on the set.
https://youtu.be/T4XTeh6tjIs
Longer-lived but less known a feud because of Shearer’s retirement at 40, and because Norma refused to add fuel to the enmity. Bette Davis, on the other hand, relished a provocation by any colleague, female or male.
DDstar1me
OMG…@ kurt_t …my sentiments exactly. I’m making myself sick with excitement. lol. My friends and I perform this seen every time we spend a weekend away together. God I love this scene.
lykeitiz
@kurt_t: @DDstar1me: I 3rd that excitement!!!
Tobi
It’s odd they focused on the making of Baby Jane, given that Aldrich has said: “It’s proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly: no upstaging, not an abrasive word in public. … They both behaved in a wonderfully professional manner.” It was Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte where they went for each other’s throats, culminating in Davis getting Crawford fired from the film.
He BGB
Just as long as it’s not A remake (the Redgrave sisters’ remake still makes me cringe). With Ryan Murphy it should be fun, wonder which actress will chew the scenery. Jane was the better part in the movie but in a documentary Joan could be the better part esp after what we saw Faye Dunaway do with her. Lange plays a better b****. “Get out of my way, I have an Oscar to accept!”
Sluggo2007
The gays will crawl all over this series. Should be a big hit.
Pete
@dvlaries: The Women has been called the gayest movie ever made, and with some justification. Personally I think the best performance in that movie comes from Rosalind Russell.
19 year-old Joan Fontaine was also quite good. That was before she and sister Olivia de Havilland (now here’s a feud!) were re-invented as ‘British’ by Selznick (born in Japan to British parents, raised in the South Bay (Los Gatos) attended Mills College in Oakland).
dvlaries
@Pete:
When MGM began the project, producer Hunt Stromberg was certain from the first that he wanted Norma Shearer as Mary Haines. Crawford’s most recent films had not been profit gushers, and when she renewed her contract in 1938 she took a per-picture pay cut in exchange for longer contract terms. Incredibly, Russell was untried yet at comedy. On the other hand, Shearer’s Marie Antoinette had been an enormous success, and Louis B. Mayer too wanted her for her box office clout.
Shearer was not thrilled, finding Mary bland and “too noble,” as well as privately nervous of appearing with so many actresses younger than she. If the account is true, in January 1939 Mayer found out about a sexual liaison that had started up between widowed 36 year old Norma and 18 year old Mickey Rooney, that Mayer quashed immediately. (Rooney confirmed the story in 1990, but later reversed himself about it too; Shearer had died in June 1983.) It also put Mayer in a position to apply some pressure, and Norma to make ‘amends’ by yielding.
Crawford took quite a risk with a wholly unsympathetic character, never redeemed even at the end of the film, and aced it beautifully. Russell, as you note, was outstanding and when classic followed classic with His Girl Friday, nobody questioned her comedic skill again.
The Women, much like What Ever Happened To Baby Jane, is a ceaselessly rewarding film jewel. Gay it is too indeed; I’ve always felt the movie was like a visit to a clique-ish, one-upmanship gay bar disguised as a heterosexual film. It is no work at all, for instance, to imagine the parts of Sylvia and Edith played by drag queens.
Jeremy Kinser
@dvlaries:
Thanks for the background info. Since this is the beginning of an ongoing anthology series about famous feuds, perhaps Bette and Joan and their tempestuous relationships with other female costars will provide inspiration for subsequent seasons.
sfcarlos65
You can tell Ryan Murphy loves pop culture and will likely use the book, “Bette and Joan, The Divine Feud” by Shaun Considine, as a reference.
Tobi
@Pete: Olivia de Havilland is still alive and kicking, living in Paris, and will be celebrating her 100th birthday in a few months time. 🙂