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Some movie sets carry gossip that fades within a news cycle. Others leave a mark that outlasts the film itself, the studio that made it, and even the people who lived it. The story of two aging screen legends thrown together for one horror picture in 1962 is that rare case, a behind-the-scenes drama so persistent it eventually got its own television series decades later.
What actually happened between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the making of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" is messier and more human than the shorthand version everyone repeats. There was real tension, yes, but also professionalism, calculation, and a fair amount of myth-making that took on a life of its own long after the cameras stopped rolling.
A rivalry decades in the making
The animosity did not start on the set of a horror film in the early sixties. It traces back nearly thirty years earlier, to 1933, when the feud supposedly began when Crawford's divorce announcement overshadowed Davis' first feature film "Ex-Lady." That slight, whether intentional or not, planted a seed of resentment that never fully went away. Things got worse when romance entered the picture. Davis blamed Crawford for the lack of success behind her comedy debut and that resentment worsened when Crawford stole actor Franchot Tone away from Davis, who fell in love with Tone while working with him on "Dangerous" in 1935. By the time Crawford tried to smooth things over years later, the damage was already baked in.
An unlikely alliance that started it all
Strangely enough, it was Crawford herself who set the whole Baby Jane project in motion. A gothic horror novel about two strange sisters with a showbiz history was published in 1960, and backstage at a performance of "Night of the Iguana," Joan Crawford approached Bette Davis about turning the story into a film.
Two women who had spent decades avoiding each other were now actively courting a shared spotlight. It was a calculated move on both sides.
Both actresses were watching their leading lady years slip away, and a project built around their long simmering rivalry looked like a lifeline rather than a liability, a fact that made the eventual on-screen chemistry feel almost inevitable.
Tense negotiations before a single scene was shot
Before either woman stepped in front of a camera, the paperwork alone revealed how competitive things already were. Even before shooting began, negotiations proved tense, with Davis initially securing a higher salary of sixty thousand dollars against Crawford's forty thousand, though after hardball bargaining Crawford signed on for thirty thousand dollars and fifteen percent of the take, with Davis granted top billing and consultation rights.
Every clause seemed to matter to both of them. The contract even carried a small but telling detail about who would be considered the true star of the picture.
The contract's original "equal costar" clause was literally crossed out to reflect Davis' dominant placement. It was a quiet but pointed win for Davis before filming had even started.
Life on the actual set was surprisingly civil
Given the decades of buildup, most people assume the set itself was a battlefield. The truth, according to those who were there, is less dramatic.
On set, the supposed animosity between the stars was more a cold détente than open warfare, with director Robert Aldrich later saying they really detested each other but behaved absolutely perfectly, with no upstaging and not an abrasive word in public, while Davis herself grudgingly admitted her costar was always punctual and always knew her lines. Their approaches to the craft, though, could not have been more different.
Crawford admitted she never gave until the camera turned since it was not being recorded, while Davis, by contrast, acted full throttle even in rehearsal. That contrast in work ethic became its own quiet source of friction, even if neither woman said so out loud.
The physical incidents that fed the legend
Not every clash stayed verbal or contractual. According to reporting cited by The Hollywood Reporter, both Joan Crawford and Bette Davis resorted to physical roughness while filming scenes together, with rumor holding that Davis kicked Crawford in the head, and that Crawford filled her pockets with stones to make herself heavier and harder to move during a scene where Davis had to drag her.
These are the moments that later got dramatized and amplified for television, though they were rooted in real on-set friction. It says something about both women's professionalism that the production still finished on schedule.
The fact that Crawford and Davis made it out of the movie relatively unscathed remains somewhat remarkable given everything simmering beneath the surface. Whatever resentment existed, neither let it derail the work itself.
The Oscar night that changed everything
If the film set was mostly a cold peace, the aftermath was where things truly ignited. The legendary Oscars feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford began after the awards ceremony in 1963, when the two greats found their squabble spilling into public view for the first time.
Davis earned a nomination for the role; Crawford, despite widely praised work, did not. What happened next became the stuff of Hollywood legend.
Anne Bancroft won the honor for The Miracle Worker but was performing on Broadway and unable to attend, so Crawford, who had been snubbed for consideration herself, accepted the award on Bancroft's behalf. Davis watched from the audience as her rival stood on stage holding the trophy she had wanted.
A quietly calculated campaign against Davis
The Oscar snub was not simply bad luck, at least according to several accounts of that awards season. Crawford getting snubbed for the highest honor in Hollywood finally set her off, and she reportedly joined forces with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper to work against Davis' chances of winning.
It was a strategy built on relationships and influence rather than open confrontation. Crawford's plan extended well beyond simply talking to columnists.
She wanted to keep Bette from winning and also wanted to steal the moment from her completely, going around to all the other nominees and offering to accept the Oscar on their behalf if they could not attend the show. It was a subtle but deliberate way of positioning herself at the center of a night that was not supposed to be about her at all.
A doomed attempt at reconciliation
Remarkably, the two agreed to work together again just two years later, perhaps hoping to recapture the commercial success of Baby Jane. The rift between the two actresses deepened between 1962 and 1964, before they attempted to work together again in "Hush...
Hush, Sweet Charlotte," directed by Robert Aldrich, the same filmmaker behind Baby Jane, which was meant to serve as a loose sequel of sorts. On paper, it looked like a natural follow up.
In practice, the goodwill from the first collaboration had clearly evaporated. Crawford and Davis refused to cooperate with one another on set, and Crawford made the decision to back out of the movie a week into filming.
The production had to recast the role entirely, a costly reminder that whatever truce existed on Baby Jane was not built to last.
How the press turned tension into legend
Part of what makes this story complicated is figuring out how much of it was organic and how much was manufactured for publicity. Much of their feud was contrived by greedy studio heads who felt it was good for business, before the 1963 Best Actress Oscar race pitted the two against each other in a very public way.
A juicy rivalry between two aging stars made for great copy, and Hollywood publicists knew it. Even Crawford herself pushed back against the narrative later in life.
Joan Crawford never understood why the story of her so-called feud with Bette Davis refused to die, insisting years later that there was never a feud because it takes two to tango and she refused to fight. Whether that was genuine or simply a final bit of image management, it added another layer to an already tangled story.
A legacy that outlived both women
The rivalry did not end with reconciliation, and it did not fade quietly with time. The feud lasted up until Crawford's death in 1977, with neither woman relenting in their verbal jabs or petty attacks on each other.
Davis herself confirmed as much when Crawford passed away. Decades later, the story found new life on television.
Feud executive producer Ryan Murphy chose the famously difficult making of 1962's horror classic and the legendary feud between the two Golden Age stars to be the first installment of an anthology series built around famous feuds. The 2017 FX series introduced the story to a generation who had never seen the original film, proof that this particular rivalry still had commercial and cultural pull more than half a century after it began.
Final thoughts
What lingers about this story is not the cattiness, though there was plenty of that, but the fact that two genuinely gifted actresses spent decades locked in a rivalry neither one seemed able or willing to fully let go of. Studio publicists certainly leaned into it, and the press exaggerated plenty along the way, but the underlying tension was real enough to survive contracts, comebacks, and even a failed reunion film.
It is worth remembering, too, that the picture born out of all that friction became a genuine career revival for both women. Sixty plus years later, the feud and the film remain inseparable, each one keeping the other alive in the public imagination long after the two women who lived it were gone.
