The Bechdel Cast - Whatever Happened to Baby Jane with Angelica Jade Bastién

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

On this episode, former child stars Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Angelica Jade Bastién write letters to daddy and examine What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). Follow Angelica on IG at @angelicajadebastien | letterboxd.com/angelicajade | angelicabastien.substack.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Becdo cast. Whatever happened to baby Jamie? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever happened to you, Jamie? Well, here's what I did.

I locked you in a room and started feeding your rats. That's what happened. Yeah. You know, we're sort of two sister-coded people who live in Los Angeles. Maybe this could be, maybe we are, you know, it's not aspirational. No. But it's nice to have options. It's just nice to have options.

You know, we might have to move in together someday. I could see, I think more likely I could see like us, you know, doing more of a gray gardens situation. Yeah, yeah. I would really enjoy. I know we have never really covered, well, I guess we've covered a few documentaries on the show over the years. But that would be, that would be an interesting one to talk about. Indeed. Isn't that a mother-daughter pairing?

It is. Am I your mommy in this scenario? No, I guess I don't know which EDI. more identify with. I'm sure it changes as you as you age. I've got to revisit it. Anyways, speaking of two women in a house having a difficult time, we are doing a long-awaited episode of the Bechtelcast today, another movie that I'm like, I can't believe it took us nine years to get to it, but I'm so glad that we're here. But first, what the hell is this show, Caitlin? What is this? What are we doing here? I'll tell you. Well, first of all, my name is Caitlin. My name's

Jamie. I'm baby Jamie. You're baby Jamie and I'm old Caitlin. Old Caitlin. Brutal. This is the Bechtel cast, our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test simply as a jumping off point, just a way to get the conversation going, a conversation among women perhaps. Yeah. And this movie really is a great example of how women can talk about so many things. The Bechtel test, of course, created by now friend of the show, Alison Bechtel, originally as a one-off joke in her comic strip dikes to watch out for that has since become a mainstreamified media metric.

The version of the test we use requires that two characters of a marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man, which, as becomes clear in this movie immediately, is not a problem. that this movie has. Not at all. But let's get our wonderful returning guest into the mix. Absolutely. She is a pop culture critic for New York Magazine's site Vulture. You can find her at her substack, Mad Women and Muses. And you remember her from our episode on Miss Juneteenth. It's Angelica Jade Bastion. Welcome back. Hey, hey, hey, I am so happy to be here talking about some of my favorite dames. I love the classic Hollywood broads.

What fascinating, fascinating women. I actually just watched Marty Supreme a screener of it the other day. And so I've been thinking a little bit about like the idea of a classic Hollywood star and the actual reality of a classic Hollywood star because obviously in the movie, which takes place in 1952 and stars everybody's favorite. young, very online man, Timothy Shalame, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a former Hollywood star who was really big in the 30s.

And it's like really interesting because it's like, I was like, who would she be, who would be like sort of a reflection of the character she's playing but was an actual star in the 30s? And I couldn't pinpoint anyone it would make sense to compare her to. But it sort of made me think that like Hollywood really loves to terraform its own past in history in a way that's very dishonest about it

and like sort of softens a lot of things and makes a lot of the narratives around these people like simple and also mythic in a way that like doesn't recognize the complexity of their humanity and you know a lot can be said about whatever happened to baby jane but i really do feel both performers, Joan Crawford and Betty Davis, are really, really keeping in mind the humanity of their characters and the humanity underneath is like very arch, brutal, violent circumstance. Absolutely. I'm, well, I'm curious what your history with this movie is as well, because it does feel like so directly in conversation with film history and obviously with the careers of its stars. And as we were talking about before we started recording,

there is a lot of misinformation around this movie, around this production specifically. And I also feel like the more I was sitting with it and doing some reading with this genre in general, which we've talked about on the show before, but I'm excited to hear your thoughts about it. Yeah, what's your history with this movie? So I would say in high school, I went to an art high school. They called it a strand, but basically it's like a major and my major was film. And so in that time period, as I'm really starting to get into feminism, like I remember reading Bell Hook's, you know, book on black feminism from like margin to center. And I was also getting into Betty Davis at the time.

Like she, you know, because we're watching like a lot of different films in film class. And so I got into classic Hollywood that way. but the first time I watched this movie was thanks to my college class star a tour on Betty Davis. So it was a whole class just on Betty Davis. That's really cool. Yeah, like those, I really credit my college professor, Jeffrey John Smith, with sparking criticism as something that actually really interests me because I never really thought about it. I was going to college for screenwriting. It was a few years after college.

I genuinely gave criticism a shot. And I think the classes I took with him, which were, you start as a tour on Betty Davis, star as a tour on Carrie Grant, and a whole class on Gone with the Wind, which is crazy to do. I still have never seen that movie. It's like one of my big.

You know, it's very complicated that movie, because on one hand, I'm like, this is one of the most racist movies to ever exist that has really fueled the lost cause, the mythology that exists in the South about itself. That's like very inaccurate and glorify. But also Scarlett O'Hara is like you can draw a clear line from Scarlett O'Hara and Vivian Lee's performance of her to like Rosamond Pike playing Amy Dunn and Gone Girl. Like I really think you kind of she's gone with the wind girl.

I mean, Scarlett O'Hara is a crazy woman. Like, very intense, fascinating, fucked up character. And if you look at the movie Gone with the Wind as a movie about white people telling on themselves, it becomes like very interesting of a thing of a work to study. But yeah, I got introduced to whatever happened to Baby Jane in college, and I was so struck by it and got really into the haxploitation or sometimes called psychobitty genre. that really started or coalesced with this movie and then became a thing where

classic Hollywood actresses who had gone in a little older which is like really just their 40s and 50s were now called to play these like very intense archetypal like sometimes violent deranged usually completely mad women and horror thrillers or like just intense psychological dramas and like the genre starts to form

and like really co-eligible. with whatever happened to baby jane um which was released in 1962 my own mother wasn't even born yet it's kind of crazy that's yeah there's i mean i was really struck by um how i mean obviously especially the buddy davis character is is played to look much older but yeah they're in their 50s yeah they're in their like 50s yeah it's kind of crazy because you like like you like On one hand, we also have to keep in mind, like, people were drinking and smoking in ways that people don't drink in smoke now. So I also think people get way too obsessed with the idea of what does it mean to, like, look your age, what does it mean to look younger? We should value looking younger and remaining forever youthful, which I think has led to some weird phases in Hollywood where, like, now everybody's face, they can't move in the movies that they're supposed to be emoting in.

and it's like, I'm like, I don't believe in like talking shit about individual people's plastic surgery. I do not think that's the move. But there is like a very, we're in a very interesting place with the face of women in Hollywood. And it's like nobody knows how to really talk about it because it is a very sensitive thing to talk about and like hard line to tread where you're like, hey, this is a thing that's just kind of like happening overall. And it's also affecting the art. Like for all of classic Hollywood's BS, which I mean an incredibly racist, sexist in ways that are like violent and astounding. Yeah. And even with like a Rita Hayworth having such a transformation because of, you know, the studio system wanting to make her into an more accessible star, you know, all those sort of.

And that's also very racialized. They weren't doing the kind of work we see today because that kind of work didn't. wasn't refined didn't exist in the same way. They would have if they could have, but they couldn't. Probably. But like what that means is that there is an individuality to the beauty you see in classic, or I think in Hollywood and just in general before like the, you know, 2000, 2010s, people look, even the beautiful stars, they still look like people.

They still had some touching imperfections that in a way kind of heightens, oh, like the beauty, elsewhere. Like I always think of like how Elizabeth Taylor's so gorgeous, but she has such a high pitch, like, strange voice when you like listen to her. And I always thought that like contradiction was so interesting. Now stars don't have contradictions. They're very smooth and algorithmically perfect. And it's like that really takes something away from the performances. You know, Betty Davis would say you need your characters to be larger than life. But also she was very, very keen on like the psychology of her characters and adjusting how they look to reflect that. Yeah.

Which is why she she's the one who decided upon the makeup for baby Jane. Yeah. Which is like really fascinating to me. She is, I love, um, with Betty Davis specifically, I, I know that this has been said about her a lot, but it's just like, I just love, especially in that time that she wasn't like, she insisted on looking like shit if that is what the character. required. Like I think of, I think it's that like that scene that I think it's dark victory where like starting, you know, very early in her career, she's like, you know, no, I'm not going to like make a

performance pretty if that is not what the performance requires. And, you know, it's like that's the job. But also even at the time like that, that was unusual to to be doing. And I just, yeah, it is not something that has improved with time. And I agree. I mean, I don't, I don't know how to properly have the conversation around it, but it, but we've got to figure it out because it does, I mean, whatever, I mean, even seeing period pieces, watching period pieces is different now because you, whatever, the expectations in Hollywood require you have a face that could not have existed past a certain year. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It just makes me like sad because I think like honestly,

expectations for women's looks have always been bad. Like it's just always been bad, right? But this is like a new level of like, like self-optimizing to the point that you're almost superhuman. Like you look like modeled after a cyborg rather than like, it's like they made cyborg versions of these stars and we're, I'm like, what's what's going on? I just find it, I think I'm also feeling very affected because it's like I'm noticing actresses who are like my age, you know, the Lindsay Lohan's and, well, Anne Hathaway's like a couple years. She's in her early 40s. But like in my age range, doing very specific work like facelifts and stuff like that. And I'm like, wait a minute. This is, wait, is this really what's expected of women at like in their mid 30s, early 40s? That's like, also how are people's faces going to look in 10 years? I like really wonder that too. because it's like there's trends in the plastic surgery too.

And that's what I find like most interesting is like people are getting like work done that makes them all sort of blend in more with each other. Which I think is more like, well, I don't really know how to take this and how am I, you know, like, and you'll notice with like, you know, when people get like Botox in their upper lip, it causes them to kind of purse their lip in a certain way. And Emerson was doing it so much in begun. I was like, this is so, this is so fascinating to me, but how do we actually talk about this without like putting a new expectation onto these actresses?

Like, and I don't, I don't think we're there yet. It's complicated. It is. It is very complicated. Particularly, yeah, with the, I think what, now that, like, I, now that there's, like, working actors 10, 15 years younger who are also, like, it just concerns me. I think the first time I knew of someone who was like a friend of mine who is not even an actor getting like preventative Botox beginning when she was I think like 26 or something like that like I mean that is like unbelievably common now is like preventative work being marketed and sold I don't know and it just feels like the the age where that is expected keeps getting younger and younger and younger and it I think yeah like echo your sentiment angelica it makes me sad like it makes me sad like it makes me sad. for everyone and that it even extends beyond entertainment now because of like the culture of self

surveillance. Exactly. We see our faces so damn much now. Like we're yeah like do I need to see my face that much? My grandmother wasn't seeing her face that much. I'm looking at my face right now on this Zoom call and I just like it yeah like the culture that we live in it just like there are pictures I've seen of myself that I didn't know I was being photographed and then I think those are the moments that I was like, oh, should I? Should I think about it? Because our moments where I wasn't even able to like participate in, you know, consenting or like whatever it is. It's just I feel for especially, you know, like younger people whose brains are still developing and like having that be locked in. All that to say. I mean, like, I guess getting back to this movie specifically,

this movie feels, I mean, in this genre, I feel like it interacts with these ideas. directly and with mixed results certainly. There's some shit in this genre. I think a problem with the genre is, one, a lot of male directors and not all of them were the kind of male directors that, you know, like a George Cucor who had like genuine, intimate friendships with women and saw them as people worthy of study and like care. keyword study and care because I think the haxploitation

genre can really fall into gawking at these women and even the performances by the actresses can sometimes seem like brittle and ostentatious in a way that you can feel they're removed from the character like they look down upon that character and her desires of being wanted and like yeah

and so it can be a really rough genre to watch sometimes but it's also, it can be really, really interesting, and I think says a lot about how we think of women aging. And like, I think a lot of representations of womanhood in Hollywood believe that as a woman ages, her life becomes less interesting and she has less to live for. And that, I think, is very galling.

Yeah, definitely. This, to me, is like the ultimate example of, or one of the more interesting examples of, whatever, the thing that we're still told now, which is that it is too risky to have a movie centered on older women be released. And that is almost never true. There's, I mean, I think of, like, spanning genres of like what a surprise hit, the first wives club was. Like, all of these movies that feature older women that you're told are, you know, not supposed to be successful. And then are, this is another example of that. Like, there, and I feel like the reason that we're told that

is because you're just being told how Hollywood as an industry feels about the target audience, which is other women and queer people generally. So I didn't actually know much about how successful this movie was in its time, but it makes total sense that it was. Yeah. It was pretty successful. It was made for a little less than a million

because Robert Aldrich who... It actually, let me give a little, paint a little picture. because getting this movie made was very hard for people because no studio wanted to fund this and they were like, these women are just some old broads, no one cares about these women. And it was actually surprisingly,

Joan Crawford came to Betty Davis with the book. Yes. And was like, I think you would be really fire in this and I think we need to do it together. And that's why this movie has so many meta layers and it's very, like if you know the actual history of these women, there's like a humor, about playing with the image you expect of them as stars.

So it was really hard for Robert Aldrich to get it made, but it eventually was picked up for distribution by Betty Davis's former studio, Warner Brothers, and it made back its entire budget the first weekend over that. So like it was in the black very quickly, and both Joan Crawford and Betty Davis had points on the back end. They got paid very little for the actual movie, like $50,000 or something. re-reading Betty Davis is this and that, her second memoir. But the points on the back end meant they actually ended up making a nice coin from the movie.

But it shows how much they had faith in the project, even though these women did not get along, but were very professional in a lot of ways on the set, even though it was in that sort of nice, nasty. Like, I'm being cordial, but I actually don't like you. But we both know this is a good project. so let's like not, let's not rock the boat. Let's try to like make this work as much as possible. It's like the end of Chicago when the women approach each other and they're like, we don't like each other, but what if we work together and people will love it?

Exactly. That's a good one. Yeah, it really is. Damn. That's true. Just a powerful link up between two women who probably hate each other. I like, I mean, I really enjoyed going back through history and there is also a great two-part series that, be kind rewinded on YouTube

that sort of like recaps this whole story that I think she released in response to how much misinformation was in the Ryan Murphy feud show. That's good. A show that yeah, like we were talking about before we started recording, has a ton of misinformation but does have Alfred Molina. So it's

challenging for me. It is. I think he's really good in that role. And like, I think the you know, Jessica Lang as Joan Crawford and Susan Sarandon as Betty Davis is like good casting but it's like I think the the show has such a limited imagination about these women and I have like kind of a really big rant that have gotten me a lot of

heat when I like published a piece on this like in 2016 or so like a while ago on Vulture where I like I get really angry when like actresses like Joan Crawford and Betty Davis are looked at as primarily camp figures because I think in some ways looking at women as these sort of like glorious divas with all these like specific like vocal and physical ticks who are just so arch they're meant to be parodied by or beloved by a drag queen figure is so limiting to their artistry and story and it like can sometimes be backhanded praise and I think it's very important to like keep in mind like they weren't always look at like this. This is something very late

in their career they started being looked at like this. Especially Betty in the 80s, like has like, you know, she has a huge gay following. Joan did too. But I sometimes worry about the way we talk about the legacy of women like this

through camp. It's true. I mean, I think Joan Crawford is a particularly interesting example and like we'll do a separate episode of Mommy Dearest. Another movie you think we would have covered by now, but we haven't. But, you know, how, you know, Mommy Dearest is a camp movie versus what the subject matter is. I don't know. I've only seen the movie once, but I feel like,

yeah, particularly kind of the further you go back in Hollywood history. It's in one, like, with one hand, I'm like, yeah, like, you know, the drag performances are great and they are intended to honor them. But in the other sense, it's like, well, there's more to these women that isn't really discussed or thought about. And both, I mean, Joan and Betty were both, and I know that the Mommy Dearest conversation is a very, very, very complex one. But they were sort of accused of similar behavior

by their respective daughters. And Betty Davis' daughter is in Baby Jane. Yeah. Yeah, she plays the neighbor woman's daughter, I believe. Yeah. And speaking of Mommy Dearest, to get into my history with this, movie with whatever happened to baby Jane.

I had never seen it before prepping for this episode, but I knew some imagery from it, particularly the image of Betty Davis in her like vaudeville makeup that just looks kind of weird in the context of 1962. So I had that image in my head and I associated that image with Mommy Deerey. because there's an image from that movie where the Joan Crawford character, because it's a movie about Joan Crawford, who is in whatever happened to baby Jane, but there's that image of her with like the cold cream on her face. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so I just associated these two movies together. But point is, I had never seen whatever happened to baby Jane. And there's so much to talk about. I liked it as much as my brain allows me to enjoy a very stressful movie. But, yeah, I can't wait to dive in further. Jamie, what is your history with this movie? It had been a few years since I've seen this, but I've seen it many times over the years. I was, as many of us were, I was a TMC child.

I was a child of the TCM, TCM. TCM, I was a child of the TCM channel. I was later to appreciate Betty and Joan. They weren't my favorite those kids. I was a Judy Garland girl that was where my bread was buttered at the time. But I do remember seeing this as a kid and enjoying it maybe closer to the way it was intended to be enjoyed at the time in a gawky, like scary kind of way. And so then returning to it years later and just like how frequently this movie comes up. in feminist circles and how it, you know, inspired a very troubled genre.

It feels like such a, I'm trying to think of like, I've been struggling all morning to connect like what I want to compare this to. But for a movie that has sort of set off this genre that is still with us, the substance came out last year. I thought your piece about it was very, very interesting. But like this is a genre that's been with us for, you know, over half a century now. But it feels like a case of like when you want. watch the movie that inspired it, you're like, oh, and then as happened so frequently, all of the

wrong lessons were learned from what makes this movie work. Because I really like this movie. I think that it doesn't work without the two leads. Like there is a very bad version of this movie that could have existed. But I, yeah, I have a lot of love for this movie. The performances are just like unreal. And it was, yeah, I hadn't watched it in a few years. and I feel like every time I rewatch it, I remember the importance of how many side characters there are. I think I think of this as like two women in a house, which it mostly is, but I don't know, like every performance and every new character that's introduced is important. So I'm excited to get into it. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.

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Stream now on the free Iheart radio. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. And immediately, the mask came off. You're supposed to be safe.

That's your home. That's your husband. To keep this secret for so many years, He's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark. You're a dangerous person who prays unvulnerable and trusting people. Your creditor might go up and good.

Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you do in the headlines? Don't explain what's happening inside of it. you. I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you purpose when success isn't enough.

Peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Inelik Lamoma.

It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing in protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Almemata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr., and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die.

In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back, and we'll play. so content warning here for all of it domestic and familial abuse and violence this is not a tonally light movie we'll say um okay the story opens in 1917 we meet baby jane hudson a child vaudeville performer

who is a big star she's doing sold-out shows she's singing a damn earworm that every, I also remember it every time. I'm like, great, letter to daddy is going to be stuck in my head for the next month. This song. It's creepy. It's so, I just, this is like not a great association, but I just, like, watched the demi film Donkey Skin, which of course made me think more about the fairy tale because the movie doesn't really deal with the center of that fairy tale, which is, like, basically a king who is

married to a wonderful queen. She gets sick before she dies. She's like, yeah, you can only marry someone who's more beautiful than me. Then he's like distraught and terrible. And then he looks at his daughter and is like, hmm, what if I marry? It's, yeah. So it's that. And so I kept thinking, like, does she want to screw her dad?

Like, like, Betty Davis, like, especially when you see her older singing it, you're like, this is some weird, psychosexual, obsessive weirdness underneath the surface. I think that that is what we're supposed to believe, because I feel like that's almost like mirrored with Edwin Flagg and his mom where it's like, and what's going on here? Who also, I always kind of forget about Edwin Flag and not to be slept on. Such a weird performance. But yeah, anyways, letter to daddy, two thumbs down, but very catchy, very catchy. I like that, you know, whatever. she sings it much later in the movie and we're supposed to be like oh my gosh she's such a bad singer

I'll say it the kid didn't have the sauce either no that kid couldn't sing at all and like yeah we'll obviously get into the sequence of her singing it as an adult because I think there's multiple ways we're supposed to like take her singing this and like her obsession with that damn doll she gets in the 1917 sequence her my size Barbie yeah yeah yeah Yeah, because the venue that she performs at sells these lifelike, large, too big. Dolls of baby Jane. And because of all this, because of her child stardom and the doting that she receives, she's quite spoiled and entitled because children do not know how to navigate this type of fame

and child stardom should be not allowed. But anyway, we get all this information established. We meet her father as well. He is her manager and like fellow performer sometimes. And then we meet Baby Jane's sister, Blanche, who is not in the spotlight and perhaps resents this, or at least resents that her sister, baby Jane, is a spoiled brat. We cut to, I think like 18 years later, it's 1935. The tables have turned.

Blanche is now the successful movie star, and Jane is also an actor, but the Hollywood bigwigs think that she stinks. And she only gets cast in movies because Blanche's contract states that for every film she stars in, her sister Jane also gets a film role. I forgot to look this up. This is like actual older footage of the actresses. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Because I recognized the Joan Crawford one.

I didn't recognize the Betty. Yeah, I was trying to figure it out. Let me bring up. They pull footage from, so for Betty Davis's younger roles, they're from a movie called Parachute Jumper and Ex-Lady. They're both from 1933. Ex-Lady I have seen. Yeah. And then the Joan Crawford footage, they pull from a movie called

Sadie McKee from 1934. I love that dress she wears in that. But that's how I always recognize it. Yeah, it's interesting thinking about where their careers were actually at at the time because like Betty Davis was in her blonde phase in the 30s where like nobody really knew exactly what to do with her yet. But as you get like deeper into the decade, especially with like of human bondage. She's like, the thing about Betty is she was known as being an actor's actor versus Joan Crawford was considered like the glamour girl who's very beautiful and has a lure, but she's not, you don't go to her movies for acting. Right. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Joan, I mean, I feel like speaking to, and Be Kind of Rewin like sort of makes this point repeatedly in her video essay about it. Like Joan played the game. Yeah. And played it well. and Betty Davis was more known for resisting the game and suing the studio and like pushing forward in a very different way. But like Joan Crawford, for her many faults, she was really good at being famous. And like, I mean, the fact that she was a good producer for getting this movie made in the first place and seeing that there was both an advantage for both of these actors and that people wanted it in a way that like, of course, every man around them would not believe. Right.

So yeah, so it's the 1930s. Blanche is now the famous star, and Jane is kind of like riding her coattails. One night we see someone driving Blanche's car. We see another woman in a driveway of a house, and the woman driving the car seems to deliberately speed toward the woman in the driveway and mow her down, but we never see anyone's face. So we don't know who has done what. But we can assume that it was Jane who drove into Blanche because we cut too many years later. Blanche, played by Joan Crawford, is disabled and uses a wheelchair. She and Jane, played by Betty Davis, live together in a house. And Jane takes care of Blanche.

However, their relationship is very contentious. and they seem to deeply resent each other. We meet a woman named Elvira, played by Maidie Norman, who comes to the house a couple times a week to help with housekeeping and caring for Blanche. And Elvira shows Blanche fan mail that she's received that Jane apparently intercepted, opened, and then threw away.

And this is only the beginning of Jane's bad, deeds. Well, it also felt like just like with the parallels between these two women and their characters, my understanding is this was also something that was happening for about these actors at the time because movies were televised now and like older movies were being televised. And so there was sort of this resourged interest in both of these actors and just, I don't know, I, I generally really like the kind of mirror images that are introduced between them because that would have been happening for, you know, a new generation of Joan Crawford. ends at the time. Right, because I think when we cut to years later, it's like contemporary for the time.

Like the movie's shot in 1962 and I think it's also taking place in the early 60s, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we start to get a sense that Jane is maybe not behaving well, especially because the next thing she does is let Blanche's pet bird escape from its cage. She like does. She like does this on purpose. Alvira senses this. Alvira does not trust Jane at all. Then Jane calls a liquor store to place an order and they refuse to fill the order at first. So Jane pretends to be Blanche and we find out that Jane is able to do a spot-on impression of her sister. And we'll put a pin in that because that's basically like Chekhov's vocal impression. I also forgot to, I kept, I like wrote down, looked this up and then didn't.

Was that Betty Davis doing that? Or was she lip-syncing Crawford? I think she's lip-syncing Crawford because it just sounds so, the first time she does it, it looks like straight up like she's just, I mean, maybe she's just the best lip-sinker, which could be the truth, because it does sound like, it just sound like Crawford's manner of speaking. Yeah. It's very light.

I couldn't do. But I'm also like, it's Betty Davis. maybe she just has practice making fun of John Crawford. She was like, yeah, she might have had a lot of know-thy-enemy sort of reps before. Okay, yeah, I was curious. Either way. I couldn't tell one way or the other. But we, the audience, are to understand that Jane can do a spot-on impression of Blanche.

Meanwhile, we learn that Blanche intends to call a doctor about Jane because Jane has been a bit mentally unstable recently. And we learned that Blanche intends to sell the house they live in, and Blanche will move out and live with Elvira, seemingly to distance herself from Jane. And Blanche tries to talk to Jane about this, about, you know, like selling the house, but she's not honest about why. and she like kind of puts the blame on their business manager. But Jane sees right through this and she realizes that Blanche is trying to get rid of her. So things like kind of escalate from here. Jane retaliates by taking away the phone that Blanche has access to.

So Blanche lives in the like second story of the house and her limited mobility means that she can't go downstairs. There's no sort of like elevator or anything. anything that gives her access to the first floor. So she's kind of trapped on the second floor. Which does appear to be by design by Jane. So that Jane remains in control. Exactly. Yeah.

And so Jane takes away Blanche's phone. And then Jane serves Blanche the dead bird that she let escape and then apparently killed for lunch. Yeah, she just killed that bird and was like, oh, this is going to be. perfect for her lunch. That's like, so she was like, here's a dead bird and we're like, uh-oh. I mean, she has it on a silver tray.

She like serves tea and she hides it. So like she doesn't know immediately that her lunch is her dead pet bird. Which also means like it cues you in early on like, oh, Jane isn't just a little kooky. She's actually violent. Diabolical. Dangerous. And she has the capability to.

kill a bird just to get under her sister's skin. Yeah. Yes. Then Jane leaves the house for a bit to place an advertisement in the newspaper looking for a musical accompanimentist. I can never say this word, accompanist. Nailed it. For performances that she wants to put on.

And while Jane is running this errand, Blanche takes this opportunity to try to ask her neighbor, Mrs. Bates, for help. So Blanche writes a note instructing the neighbor to call the doctor, and Blanche throws this note out the window. But before Mrs. Bates can pick it up and see it, Jane comes back home and sees the note, reads it, and then taunts Blanche about it, being like, oh, you want me to see a doctor, huh? Well, screw you. Well, you're never going to get it.

I think something that is done, I, again, like, because I sort of, I don't think about the side characters in this movie as much is, whatever, in a movie that is, can be very over the top. I thought that, like, in this abusive, clearly abusive relationship, the ways in which everyone around them is sort of aware of it, but no one knows, either doesn't know what to do or, or what. worries about seeming impolite or like socially inappropriate by drawing attention to it, I thought was like, because we see that in certainly in Elvira's character, but also in the neighbors repeatedly. Like everyone knows something is off and they're also like unsure or unwilling to do something about it. And that, that, I don't know, just like ring very true. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, I can't disrupt social etiquette. Even if someone is trapped in their house and being abused by a family member.

And to some extent, Blanche as well, I mean, like, one of the scenes that really broke my heart this time that's coming up in a bit is that when there is another person in the house with Jane, when Edwin is in the house, like, a part of you is like, scream, Blanche. But I think she's so afraid of her sister. And I also think, I don't know, I guess this was just. my read of it this time. The like social fear of like not being believed or yeah looking vulnerable and that would you know she values how she's perceived by others and I don't know it just like it broke my heart on this view of like definitely because she's holding herself back from getting the help that she needs as well. Yeah for sure. So now Blanche is horrified. She's afraid to eat the food Jane brings her especially because the next meal has a dead rat in it.

And it's huge. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, okay, so she gets a pet bird for lunch. And then Jane,

like, you know something's up because Jane was like, do you know we have rats? Rats in the basement? You know, we're dealing with rats and I was, you know, I remember when I first watched it,

I was like, oh, Lord, how's a rat going to pop up? And it popped up for dinner. Yeah. It popped up. I do love how Betty did. Davis says dindin.

Very funny. He didn't eat you dindin. Yeah. Okay, so Blanche, again, she's trapped upstairs with no way of calling for help, no way of leaving the house. Meanwhile, we meet Edwin Flagg, played by Victor Urbano, who is a musician who sees Jane's ad in the paper. so he and his mother contact Jane to set up an audition of sorts, kind of like a meeting, an interview, and he shows up at the house.

He's desperate for work and income. So he flatters Jane and pretends to know who she is and does all this stuff to kind of patronize and humor her, and she gladly accepts it. And she really likes Edwin as a result, and she's super excited about working with him. So we find out that she's hoping to revive her vaudeville act, and she's dressed in a similar outfit and hairdo as when she was a little girl performing in 1917. And while they're meeting, Blanche rings her buzzer to alert Jane that she needs something, and Jane is furious. that Blanche is interrupting this meeting.

She strikes Blanche and accuses her of preventing Jane from ever having any friends. Blanche is desperately pleading with Jane, but Jane storms out, and the two of them, Jane and Edwin, leave a short time later. So Blanche, once again, takes this opportunity to try to get help. She climbs out of her wheelchair and slowly makes her way down the stairs and to the telephone. that's down there, where she manages to call Dr. Shelby, saying that Jane is very unwell and he needs to come over right away to tend to the situation. But Jane walks in on this phone conversation. She starts beating Blanche and then calls Dr. Shelby back, imitating Blanche's voice, saying, never mind, we don't need you after all.

Jane actually went to another doctor. So Blanche's plans are thwarted. Then Elvira shows up and Jane is like, we don't need you today. Or ever again, actually, you're fired. Then Jane leaves again. But Elvira is very skeptical of this situation. So she sneaks into the house and discovers that Jane has locked Blanche in her room and Blanche is not responsive on the other side.

So when Jane returns home, Elvira is like, What have you done? You monster. Give me the key to the door. And she does. So Elvira unlocks the door and sees that Jane has tied Blanche up in her bed. So Elvira goes to help. But then Jane strikes and I believe kills Elvira with a hammer.

Hammer to the head. It's also pretty clear when you see Blanche. It's like, oh, she's probably not getting any food or water. This woman is literally starving to death. And there's actually something very, very interesting to me about the exchange between Elvira and Jane when Elvira, like, confronts her. Because you're like, okay, so how is this going to go? Because Jane is obviously unwell. There's going to be some sort of violence, but like how quick are they going to go to the violence?

And I thought it was interesting because Elvira is a black woman and like this, you know, made. who comes in and cleans and all this stuff. But what happens in their argument is that Jane reverts to being very girlishly and mature and childlike and kind of cowering while Elvira says something that I thought was super fascinating, which is you've got to be a grown woman like everyone else. And there was something about that that I don't think the movie is like aware, but on a racial level, there's something very interesting about a black woman telling this white woman so lost in her own past.

you have to grow the fuck up. Yeah. There's something just so rich and meaty in that moment. And I think the Elvira character, like, really stood out to me on this watch. Yeah. She also has so much more discernment than any other character where she's the one who's like, hey, Blanche, your sister's acting really weird. And don't you think it's weird that you've never seen this fan mail?

She's throwing it away. She's the one to realize that when Jane is like, oops, the bird flew out. of its cage, sorry about it. Elvira is like, she let that bird go on purpose. Like, that was no accident. Like, she's able to read Jane for exactly who she is and what she's doing. The Mady Norman performance is really cool. I mean, just like how this movie, I mean, it's good on its own terms, but like the performances really make it where, you know, there are sometimes where Elvira is sent away, basically for plot reasons. But you can see, I believe it because of Mady Norman's performance where you can see her thinking in a way that actually like does make sense where she's like, ooh, is this, do I want to get involved with this right now? Is this something that I, okay, I'll come back next week. Like she keeps coming back. She is concerned. But it takes a little bit of time as I feel like it very often does in these situations. And that there is, I mean, I hate that she dies via Betty Davis Hammer. But that the plot, again, just like the,

we you know the reason that jane is caught is because elvira's family is looking for her which in movies that i expect loose ends this movie doesn't really have very many and yeah elvara is such a great character and to your point jamie about elvara's family looking for her a short time after this jane gets a call from the police about elvira because her cousin had reported her missing so jane free freaks out. She runs into Blanche's room. She's crying. She's saying that everything is falling apart. And, oh, she didn't mean to hurt anyone. She can't believe that she ran her own sister over with the car all those years ago. And Blanche is like, hmm, actually, I have something to tell you about that accident. But Jane is like, shut up. I don't want to talk about it. And then they're interrupted when Edwin

shows up. He has found out from his mother that his new employer, baby Jane Hudson, had tried to murder her sister many years prior. Or so people say. Or so people say. Then he comes into the house and he discovers Blanche upstairs tied up and trapped by Jane. So he's like, oh my God, my mom was right. So he runs out looking for help, presumably. Yeah.

The second Edwin sequence, this movie does very much stick to the fact that men don't know anything and can intuit absolutely nothing. for the entire runtime. Because Edwin has to be told by his mother, like, hey, maybe this is not a safe environment. Even though she has bad info, you know, he's not, I don't know, I mean, I guess he is picking up red flags. But Edwin carrying himself through the world, like, I can fuck anyone I want. I walk in a room and she's mine.

Like, he fully intends to go and do the same exact thing to Blanche. And. Well, there's also a class thing happening where he's desperate for income. So he's just willing to kind of look the other way when it comes to red flags he might be picking up on. Yeah. But he's just like this, you know, these rich women, this rich woman or this woman I perceive to be rich is going to pay me and I desperately need income. But anyway. That whole scene between him and Jane where for very different reasons they are just lying to each other, the entire scene, is so good.

It's so good. They're lying to each other. They're also interrupting each other because they just are desperately want to talk about themselves. Yeah. They're not listening to each other. It's, I,

that was another scene that really stuck out to me on this, on this watch because I feel like the, whatever, cultural takeaway is her performing, you know, daddy again, which is an important part of the scene, but like not even in kind of like the top parts of what I think is interesting about it.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So now the jig is, up basically and Jane is like I need to flee from the law so she puts Blanche in the car and they drive to the beach because that's their hiding spot I guess and they just kind of hang out there for a while I think it's a safe place for Jane because there's like a little exchange where she's like oh we'll just go away and then we can get ice cream and then we can be in the sun oh and then the sun is going to come up and it's going to be so nice and I was like

oh, she's like degrading into being pure child. And so it's like she, it's very interesting. Her crackup is drifting further, further into childhood and like making these very rash, like nonsensical decisions that you can see is like her reaching for some sort of comfort, but she doesn't really know how to get it properly. Right, right, right, right. So they're hanging out on the beach. Blanche is baking in the sun and lightly dying.

It's dire. Yeah. That's how I feel at the beach, though. I was, I called, I called Grant over. I was like, this is what we look like when we go to the beach. We're just in the trenches. Yeah. So Blanche confesses to Jane that during that fateful night with the car and the collision,

it was actually Blanche who was driving. She was the one who tried to hit Jane with the car, but Jane dove out of the way, and instead Blanche hit a gate, and that's what caused the injury that disabled her. And then Blanche crawled out of the car and framed Jane for running Blanche over, and Jane was very drunk that night,

so she apparently had no recollection, of what actually happened. So she believed that it must have been her who was driving and caused the collision. And so after hearing this, this like confession of what actually happened, Jane fully dissociates. Well, right before then, though,

she says like the most banger line of the ending, which is, you mean all this time we could have been in France? Like, she's like, like, this dawning realization, like, oh, like there was a moment. moment where like we could have gone in an actually different direction as sisters and like had a much more stable relationship. And I thought it was interesting that Blanche said, I made you waste your whole life thinking, you know, you did this to me. And like that was like the first step into her becoming so childlike and like reverting to a past self that she felt had some control and happiness. Right. it's yeah

that that conversation is so loaded Betty Davis is so good it's like it's ridiculous yeah yeah it's a good it's a good it's a good I almost I almost like that moment as an ending more than the actual ending which felt very similar

to Sunset Boulevard to me in a way that I feel like undercut what we just saw I don't know I I agree like the twirling just completely I'm fully mad like I think what Betty is doing is interesting but the flip side is it like you have the ending between the sisters you know and blanche also says you weren't ugly then i made you that way and it's this so and then like you know she's obviously dead but then it's like oh if you end there like and you could end just like on betty's face and we could

like read like both the confusion the sorrow and the eventual just i'm going to retreat into myself so far that i'm just completely delusional i think that sort of ending would have been more more intelligent and more caring towards the characters by having the like twirling while the police and everyone is looking at her and she's holding these ice cream cones and thinking like people are really interested in her it turns her into a spectacle again so it undercuts the emotional resonance of that exchange between the sisters in a way totally yeah so basically what happens is she's like I'm gonna go get his ice cream as she's doing that a couple cops find her because I guess Edwin had reported what was happening to the police.

Yeah, because it's on, it's on like the radio. Yeah. And they're like looking for her specific car. And that's what like cues the cops in because someone mentions, oh, like there's like this car that's like kind of in the way. Yeah, exactly. I also like, I think it's really like another just little thing that I never noticed before that Jane would have maybe been happier to be arrested if at least someone

recognized her, but they recognized her car. It's not her. Oh, yeah, right. Right. So the cops approach Jane, and this causes a crowd to gather, and the crowd, thrills Jane. You know, she's finally back in the spotlight. So she starts twirling and dancing around, you know, very childlike. And then the movie ends with the cops seeing Blanche and running over to her

unclear if she's alive or not, but that is the end of the movie. So let's take another break and we'll come back to discuss. The newest tracks. Let's go. New music. And the next big thing. Always on the new music first. Your first place to hear it all. Because you're going to like it love or want to play it twice. Playing now. I heart new music. Your digital station for brand new drops, Fresh vines and tomorrow's bangers. I think we need something new. Discover I-Heart new music. Always fresh.

Always first. Stream now on the free I-H-H-R-R-R-R. In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband, Mike, was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell me exactly what you're doing. and immediately the mask came off.

You're supposed to be safe. That's your home. That's your husband. To keep this secret for so many years, he's like a seasoned pro. This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done living in the dark.

You're a dangerous person who prays on vulnerable of trusting people. Your creditor might go up and good. Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you do when the headlines don't explain

what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, And we go deeper than the polished story.

We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Minnick Lamouba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated.

And Black America was out a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Almemata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Where to begin? Angelica, do you have any place you want to? We've already, I mean, we've already started the discussion.

Yeah, I would kind of interject it. No, no, no, it's quite. It demands discussion. I guess, I mean, just to sort of close the loop on, and I would love to hear other thoughts, and I know you very likely know far more about it than we do, with the whole idea of the feud and how these characters were very intentionally meant to mirror the careers of the lead actors. Just speaking to, like, if you're a listener that's, like, not super familiar with the actual

history behind it, or, like, maybe watch the Ryan Murphy series. is like, you know, in 2017 and I don't know. I think it is very funny objectively that, you know, now in 2025, we know for a fact we are not to trust Ryan Murphy with history. But in 2017, people were still like, I don't know. Should we let him do it again? And now he, you know, is doing something completely different. But that there were, it's, from what I was able to gather, these two actors didn't

like each other, but it, like you were saying, Angelica, it wasn't, uh, She may not have even cracked Betty Davis's top five of actors that, actors or institutions. Like Betty Davis was famously in conflict with institutions. And I always think it's interesting when the feud with the institution is like, well, we don't talk about that because we want to celebrate and monetize Betty Davis's image. So we shouldn't say that she really had an axe to grind with Warner Brothers for years. But that like, yeah,

these women didn't like each other. There are false narratives that date back to production that have been mostly debunked but are persistent about them, you know, getting into physical altercations on set. Them have like stealing, like fucking the direct, like doing all, like seducing to get back at the other and, you know, all this stuff that like, you know, plays into a lot of, you know, negative tropes around women in general. and also was, I think, intended to some extent to sell the movie. Selling the feud also sold the movie. So I don't know. I mean, I would be curious. I know that certainly Betty Davis commented on this repeatedly throughout her career.

And she's like a famously very dynamic interview subject who kind of sometimes will repeat rumors as fact. But, you know, by all accounts, including the director and other people close to the production. There was, you know, that over the top thing wasn't happening. It seemed like it was a psychological war. I love the, I was just like, ooh, that is, that is diabolical. The, the Oscars, it is, it is so fucked up what Joan did. And it's like, really dark. Okay, just for some interesting context, if you've watched feud, you would think that like Betty and Joan, like, were really competing as actors in a way they weren't at the height of their career. At the height of their career, you know, first of all, Joan Crawford came to the industry before Betty.

She was established before Betty came to the scene. And Joan was like the queen of MGM. While Betty was considered like another Warner Brother, that's how important she was to Warner Brothers' bottom line. And she, you know, she was a performer who liked to play old. she like played you know characters that most people would find unsympathetic she like really pushed limits of female representation on screen while joan really craved a sense of glamour beauty and admiration betty almost liked people to not like her character in a way that's like she's a she was a very abrasive woman um but what's like interesting about also them coming into the making

of this movie, like I said earlier, like Joan Crawford brought her the project. And I think like they, you know, eventually Joan Crawford did go to Warner Brothers and like did like Mildra Pierce, which she won like her Oscar for it. So like there's like professional issues, but there's something Betty Davis says and her memoir, this and that, that I think kind of exemplifies the differences between these women. And like, I think issues they had on set were as much, these women come to acting in a very different way as it was, oh, this, oh, she's so much better than me or actually I'm better than,

I think it was like a professional mismatch in a way. They like create in a very different way. And like one issue Betty had with Joan was like, why is she making her character look so pretty? And her and Robert Aldrich were like telling Joan like, hey, don't wear this beautiful red nail polish, obviously it's in black and white, which by the way, they were originally going to shoot in color. Betty convinced the producers to shoot it in black and white. Queen at tour, I would say,

anyway. I was going to say that is the right choice for this. Wow. So the right choice. But Betty and Joan just had like just a very different approach to things and like Joan really wanted to still look glamorous because that's like very important to her to look good. So they had to like really encourage her to like, hey, like, let's pare down the glamour and play up the vulnerability. And I do think Joan eventually did that well. But there's this passage that I'm going to read from this and that, Betty Davis's second memoir, that I think is really useful for how she sees herself and how she sees Joan, which she's actually, like, she admits like, yeah, there are things about this woman I didn't

like, Joan tends to give gifts to, like, win people. And she was giving gifts to Betty, and Betty kept, like, sending them back. And like Betty was like, I don't want to be friends with you. Like, what are we, are we, is this a joke? But Davis writes in her memoir, quote, where the producers were uneasy about how outrageous I wanted Jane to look, they had a problem of another kind with Joan. It was a constant battle to get her not to look gorgeous.

She wanted her hair well dressed, her gowns beautiful, and her fingernails with red nail polish. For the part of an invalid who had been cooped up in a room for almost 20 years, she wanted to look attractive. She was wrong. Like Betty. And she continues, I understood why she did not want to look unattractive. She had been famous for her glamour all through the years.

And there is no question that the glamour actresses made Hollywood the famous place it is today. The glamorous actresses at that time were Gene Harlow, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamar, and of course, eventually Marilyn Monroe. The non-glamorous types in which I group myself were Hepburn, Tracy, Cagney, Fonda, Bogart. The non-glamorous group were all from theater and had been brought to Hollywood at the beginning of talking pictures. At present, Hollywood may lament the lack of stars as glamorous as those I have just listed. So it's like sort of backhanded, but also like, she's like, no, I admit it's the women like Joan who built the image of Hollywood that we continue to kind of chase. And she talks about throughout the chapter that she finds Joan like very professional.

She's always on time. She knows her lines. Like she cares about the picture like very, very much. But a big problem was the Oscar thing. So Betty gets nominated for Best Actress for her role and whatever happened to Baby Jane. Joan ain't having that. No, this was all her idea. I was like, I, you know.

Yes, which is cuckoo banana. So like Joan decided to basically, okay, I'm just going to read it. She reached out to all the other Oscar nominees and offered, if you can't come to the ceremony, I will gladly pick up your Oscar for you. Dianvolical. I will accept on your behalf. And then Betty kind of sets the scene. That year, each nominee sat in a separate dressing room backstage equipped with a T-Ollic. monitor. I was with my publicity man and Michael and B.D., her children, were out front. When

Anne Bancroft's name was announced, I am sure I turned white. Moments later, Crawford floated down the hole past my door. I will never forget the look she gave me. It was triumphant. The look clearly said, you didn't win, and I am elated. And, like, you know, Betty, like, really valued the Oscars. She's one of the most nominated actors in Oscar history. 10 nominations. Yeah. So she's like... She would have been the first to...

When the three can... Yeah. And so she really wanted that. And like I firmly believe she should have won for all about Eve or whatever happened to baby Jane. And that caused like genuine animosity between them. So I find it interesting that so much a feud and the reputation of their like animosity is born from like, Betty wasn't glamorous and no one wanted to fuck her.

but everyone wanted to fuck Joan, but Joan was jealous of this and did it, and they, like, rooted in, like, the male relationships they had sometimes, like, them trying to curry favor with men. But I really think a lot of their issues were, like, these are very different women and professional things, where it's like now they are in a more of a competitive thing. They previously were,

because now they're, like, this woman is actually affecting her Oscar chances. And, like, Joan was, like, actively helping other people's campaigns, So she really, really did not want Betty to win. And like Betty says in her memoir, like, hey, I actually think this was really dumb because it's like we have points on the back end. If I won the Oscar, that would have like raised the profile of the movie. Exactly. But she so petty and so like venomous towards Betty that like she'll trump what would actually be useful for her in the long run. Which is really sad.

I think what's very interesting about reading about women in classic Hollywood is like how they had to navigate other women because the world around you is putting you in competition with other women. And like Betty was always told you're not attractive. You don't have sex appeal. Da-da-da-da-da. And of course that would affect any woman hearing that like consistently. And like Betty was sometimes like she had, you know, friendships with people like Olivia DeHen. Havelin who ends up taking on Joan Crawford's role in a hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, another haxploitation movie that Robert Aldrich directed that was

supposed to re-team her and Joan, but Joan pretended to be sick to get out of her contract. Oh, wow. Like they started filming and Joan was like, I can't be. And Betty was like, you can't be around me. You cost me the Oscar. And I was getting over it to do this movie and you can't even do the movie. And so Betty reached out to Olivia DeHavland and convinced her to take on this very villainous role that isn't typical for Olivia DeHavlin. I actually like hush, hush, sweet Charlotte because it is very southern Gothic.

So it has a very different energy to Baby Jane, which feels like such a Hollywood movie steeped in Hollywood ideas and Hollywood as a sort of landscape. But yeah, that's a big reason why Joan and Betty don't get along. And like Betty just like, I think also was tired of people always associating them together. Because like if you read about both of their lives, there's like far more important figures that were like instrumental to them or they had feuds with. Like Betty Davis was like a lot of the directors in classic Hollywood feared her because she would take control over projects and was like this line is bad. Your shot set up sucks. I can direct this better than you. The thing is she was typically right.

So, like, her instincts as an artist are really, really sharp and fascinating. Betty was also far more politically engaged. Like, one of the most interesting things I like to tell people about her is that she was the first woman president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And that was all the way back in 1941. But they just wanted her to be a figurehead. She wanted to make actual changes for the industry. and she ended up leaving because the men like did not want to listen to her and the next person who took up that position implemented the same thing she was trying to implement so it was like oh you don't

have a problem with what she was trying to do to make this industry better you had a problem with her actually saying anything because she's a woman who's very abrasive right someone like there was an interesting article that's quoted in Sam Stagg's book All About All About Eve Which at the end says Betty's bluntness and impatience Her refusal to compromise

Surely helped alienate many whom she might later have persuaded She's kind of like a force to be reckoned with I think she's very interesting Both her and Joan Crawford are also Aries women's So I don't know why I find that interesting So So I think like you know, in a lot of ways

like Betty did it her way which some people saw as the hard way but actually like for all her faults I actually think she was a really really fascinating dynamic woman who holds a lot of very interesting contradictions

because on one hand you hear some of her relationships with women were like good and she had respect for them but then on the other hand you hear how she treated like Marilyn Monroe on the set of All About Eve and you're like, oh. But Marilyn Monroe was treated like shit

by so many women in the industry. Like Joan Crawford was like notably nasty towards Maryland and was publicly saying some really horrid things about her. And so that's something Betty and Joan share like a sort of discomfort with the industry moving past them. And so they turned towards animosity

that like builds towards younger women who actually are just as brutalize as they are. An interesting contrast would be Lana Turner, who while Joan Crawford had this whole, I'm going to give you advice, Marilyn, come over my place, but then

she just sort of read her to filth and like was completely disrespectful to her. Lana Turner, when she, like when Marilyn was coming up, she invited her to her house and gave her genuinely really good and caring professional advice, both

about how you should carry yourself, how you should dress, how you need to move, how you need to navigate a lot of these men in the industry. And it's like, Lana Turner was someone who dealt with a lot of shit that Maryland also dealt with. There's an interesting story. A friend of mine was talking about, about like, Lana Turner on the set of a movie, and she had just dealt with a miscarriage and was back on set like two weeks later and she was having trouble working up emotions for a scene when the director got so angry with her he decided keep the camera just on her face and I'm going to be twisting her arm till it almost breaks to force her to cry this is the kind of shit that women were dealing with in classic

Hollywood things have never been like great for actors but like now it's like you can't imagine like someone treating a star of like launa Turner's stature who was like a huge important star at MGM like you can't imagine like her like contemporary being treated in that same way because that's like a labor violate this is happening on you know what I mean so it's like these women were like so unprotected and what makes me sad with how we talk about the feud between Betty and Joan is we totally miss out on the more structural issues around them that would lead women to kind of feel uneaseless. easy with each other.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from what I understand about this feud, this alleged, you know. It exists. It exists, but it was blown so out of proportion by the media. It's less a feud and more like, oh, I just don't really care for you. And we're just professionally different.

Like, you can not like somebody and it not be a feud. There are people I don't like and I just don't think about them. Right. You know. Right. But like journalists would grasp at straws and then like print stuff about, oh, this big feud between these two actors just to pit women against each other, basically. And of course that that's something that the studio is never going to fight with because it sells tickets. It sells the movie.

It like all plays into it. I feel, yeah, I thank you for that background, Angelica, because I just, I, everything I've learned about Betty Davis as. a labor figure specifically, like that area of her life, it just feels very intentionally removed from how we talk about her and talk about her as a political figure, which, you know, on the Joan Crawford side, Joan Crawford is playing the game and the game involves not getting very political. And I, yeah, I just, I wish that there were elements, especially because, I don't know, yeah, feud a show that is well casted but ultimately just pisses me off where it's like it's also not fun to watch like it's not like a fun interesting watch it's more like you get frustrated like this is

the story you're telling about these like titans of the industry can you imagine like a similar work about like a lawrence olivier you know like he you know betty davis she used to say i was brando before brando like she's an actor's actor why are we forgetting about that or forgetting about like really interesting political things like her starting the Hollywood canteen with people like John Garfield during World War II that allowed white and black servicemen to hang out with each other like black people were welcome that's like very interesting how cool she was with like certain racial things that you would expect her not to be but she was she was very liberal Democrat but like she really had like a genuine care for the

that I find interesting and politically was like it doesn't make sense to like be entertaining only white servicemen they're not the only people who are dying for this country right now and I'm like I started doing that in the 1940s is pretty notable yeah for sure for sure I I wish that that was I mean going back to your your earlier point angelica like elements of her legacy that were you know talked about I I get her persona was huge I don't think she would be upset to know people are still discussing her persona, but like, but that there, she was such a complex person who I didn't know about the circumstances of her leaving as president of the academy. It's like, yeah, having that sort of recontextualized how much there was to push against and how impossible it generally was,

even for someone as influential and persistent as Betty Davis. And, um, and, um, and, um, and, I mean, to some extent, it's because of how those narratives are shaped, which gets us back into the content of the movie of, yeah, I'm curious how you both feel about how aging women and specifically aging women performers are framed. Because I feel like there's so many different ways to look at it that I was trying to, I don't know, my feelings on how Jane and Blanche, their dynamic,

has definitely changed over the years, and I'm sure we'll continue to change. But in terms of like the hagsploitation genre developing and taking, I think, a lot of bad lessons away from this movie, there are certain things that I've seen framed in the past, and I probably would have myself framed in the past as like just full-on, misogynist slop that I haven't a slightly easier time with now because we're looking at siblings, which I think sometimes women, I mean, women are very, very often pitted against each other in this absolute void where the assumption is like women hate each other because they're in competition for men. But that is very much not what's happening here. And I do feel like the table

is set for why this dynamic exists. And on this viewing, it really sat with me at the end that the twist at the end that Blanche was angry and resentful enough of Jane to want to kill her. And also that that being true and that lie being at the center of their relationship doesn't excuse how horrifically Blanche was treated by her sister, regardless of what she believed. It's just like it's, I don't know, it's, I think a far more complex dynamic than its cultural legacy would lead you to believe, I guess. I agree. I also like kind of, like, kind of. touching on that and building upon that.

One thing I thought was like interesting with the idea of the story and like Betty's approach to playing Jane was that in exploitation a lot like that follows a lot of times it's women trying desperately to like reclaim or latch on to being young, beautiful and sexually desired. Like that's the thing they fear. But Betty and her character Jane is instead like going into childhood. And like before any sort of sexual identity would arise. And I find that like really, really interesting,

as if to say this is the only time I felt like some sort of control over my life. And that's like, I don't know, something about that on a gender level really interests me. Like the lie or the belief that innocent childhood is the safest place a girl, a woman could be. It's sort of like, which isn't true because we know how heinously young girls are treated in and out of their families, right? So it's an interesting delusion to have a character play.

And it's also, I don't know, it sort of made me think weirdly of how people talk about like womanhood as being hard and difficult and unruly, but girlhood is what we want to be, the state we want to be in. And I think about how many people talk about girlhood and like refer to themselves as girls, this sort of infantile, you know, like infantilization of themselves, even though, you know, like I'm a 37-year-old baby, or I was 29 yesterday, but I just turned 32 or whatever, you know what I mean? And it's, it's sort of, it's sort of interests me how we render like womanhood and like what kinds of womanhood is rendered, especially in a visual medium like film. You know, I'm 36 now.

and if there's anything I've noticed recently, it's like we do not have a really dynamic range of movies being made about women's midlife. The movies we get made that are getting made about women's midlife at this point, which us millennials are pretty much in, like we are in, you know, late 30s into our 40s now. I'm on the cusp of 40, yeah.

Exactly. And it's like, I've noticed, oh, the movies we're kind of getting that are in that range are all of, about women as mothers or women and their like not great relationship with their husband and kind of realizing that midlife. And I think there is totally a place for those stories. But like I've been talking to other friends like, is it weird that we're actually seeing like that's the vision of a woman's mid like the millennial woman's midlife is only through

motherhood or her relationship to men? Because that's a little weird considering we're the generation that has now like really staved off marriage or where like many of us are just not having kids like i don't want kids and will not be having them but we don't see that represented so it ends up adding to this history of like what makes a woman most important is like her either her fertility or her youth or her beauty or how she cares for others but i like i don't know it's very frustrating so when i watch a movie like whatever happened to baby jane even though it's so sad and rough emotionally to watch,

I find it really interesting on a level that I think other exploitation doesn't touch, which is so layered and its understanding of who these women are and like how they fit in the world and certain structural things that are shaping them. Especially structural for Blanche is her disability. And I just want more prickly observations of like what it means to be a woman today and I don't think we're getting it and I feel like I'm losing my mind over it.

I totally agree. Even when it's movies that I like, often movies directed by women. Yeah. It feels like we're very often interfacing with women who are around our age who we have so little in common with. And I also don't know a lot of women going through the same things. Sometimes I'm like, I think I, the way that I like go like coping mode, I'm like, well, it's because I live in a city and it's less, but it's like, it is less common everywhere.

And I feel like it is just like a, what is it that we, that when we do see movies about women in their late 40s into like early 50s, a lot of it is surrounding like, I want to have a kid. I actually, I changed my mind. I want to have it. Or like, it's like rooted in this anxiety. Yeah. And not just people living and doing stuff. Yeah, like women do things. Yeah, we do.

Famously. What? Yeah. Like, I saw some, like, podcast clip. I hate when, like, someone was doing some little real on Instagram and they were responding to some stupid podcasts where this woman said, like, like, what do women do once they're in their mid to late 30s, but they don't have kids? Like, what are they doing?

What are they up to? I'm like, oh, yeah. People like really think women who don't have kids are just like, we just shrivel up and die. We shrivel, yeah, either we're literally just in a dark room staring at something because there's nothing to do and we don't have any friends or hobbies. Or like we're perpetually on vacation and life is just so easy because you don't have kids. And I'm like, do you see the economy?

Do you see how for our generation our parents are now fragile in dealing with health issues? Like the caretaking stuff is something very much. on my mind at, you know, at this point in my life. And I just feel like I love film so much as a medium, but I feel very disappointed in certain aspects of like American film history, like how much is not seen on screen, which leads people to think like a very limited idea of how human beings are based on pop culture.

You know what I mean? Like it feels very limited in this understanding of how contradictory and weird and wonderful being alive is. I don't feel life in a lot of movies I watch that are contemporary American movies these days. Totally. Yeah. Same. Yeah.

And then, I mean, going back to the women in this movie, I have very complicated feelings about it because on one hand, I think you could argue that tropes about older women are present in the sense that both of these women are clinging on to their quote unquote glory days. And for both of them, their glory days are different eras of their life. Again, for the Jane character, it's when she was seven years old or something. For Blanche, it's when she's... She's like in her early 20s, it seems like... 20s or 30s, yeah. And then... And this is affecting Jane in a different way than Blanche,

where Jane is, like, losing touch with reality versus Blanche, who seems to be just like, you know, watching... her old movies that are now like in television syndication, kind of reminiscing about these days and it doesn't seem that interested in her life in the present. There's also some ableism, I think, surrounding her character, which we can get into. Well, yeah, that she, she's all part of the era that she's romanticizing is the last time that she was able-bodied. Exactly. Right, right.

And we, you know, we have these older women who, by the way, the studio originally did not want Joan Crawford and Betty Davis to play these characters in this movie because the studio felt that those actors were too old, quote, unquote. They were both in their mid-50s, I believe, at the time. But director Robert Aldrich was like, this is what the story calls for. Like, I'm casting these actors and then the studio relented. but yeah, it's these older women clinging on to their youth, which is a very kind of tropey and stereotypical thing,

but this is also not happening in a vacuum. There's context for this where society values youth in women. And so if these women have been conditioned to think that youth is important, and that's what's important about them, then it stands to reason that they would try to cling. to that. I also feel like with their father coming up a lot

including in the world's most annoying song like it is telegraphed to us and again it's like I think that if I also understand how I totally believe that when this movie came out and still now if you're watching this movie

with your brain turned off it's just tropes all the way down if you're not looking for more but yeah that like we're told kind of right away and then get a little more information as the movie goes on of like, oh, I guess the dad passed away when they were very young. Like we don't really get a ton of information there. But but that especially with Jane that not only is it the world telling her this,

it's like her father manager telling her that this is where your value comes from. And then it sounds like he dies while she's young and never really. like that validation comes from him and the world. And so when he and the world are no longer, you know, either present or interested that like, that they're, I mean, these women are like left behind. For sure. I mean, I think the other surface level trope that maybe permeates deeper, maybe it doesn't, but the jealousy between the two sisters and the two women where Jane is jealous of Blanche, seemingly because Blanche was able to have success as an adult, and Jane didn't. Jane got this taste of fame as a child, but couldn't cross over into being a star as an adult,

and she resents Blanche for being able to do that. And we're to believe that Jane was so jealous of that, that's why she runs over Blanche with the car, allegedly. Then we find out that that's not what happened. We find out that Blanche was the one who tried to kill Jane with the car. because Blanche was upset that Jane was making fun of her at a party? I look at that as like a breaking point because there's an interesting, like after you see the footage of 30s, Betty Davis and like the studio head is like, oh, gosh, she's so sucks.

We need to get Blanche to take this clause out of her contract. I think it's like him with like an agent or some representative for Blanche. And there's just something very interesting about how. they're like describing Jane and Blanche's relationship which Blanche feels like she owes something to Jane to some degree but she

like it's clearly resentful that her sister is like so wedded to her and then also the studio head makes a mention that one day that like Jane is going to be committed or something so actually that actually kind of subverts Blanche's thoughts on things Jane has had problems for a very very long

time but Blanche's has like almost like adopted a parental role of feeling responsible for her sister so that like really weirdly complicates things in a way and then also like the studio head was talking about jane's drinking like this woman's an has been an alcoholic for a long time so there's like the tropes are all like very there but then like they're set askew in these certain ways that add like a certain texture and i think the performances are doing a enough to kind of sometimes almost contradict the gaze of the movie, which is really interesting to me.

Yeah, I think with, like we were talking about earlier, like the in less capable actors' hands, I think that the tropes would just read pretty one to one. Yeah, because I mean, this is also a movie, you know, and it seems like, you know, Robert Aldrich, I mean, like, wanted to do right by his actors in this, but, but it's a movie that's written and directed by men. And like whenever there's a story about women that is told in that way, you know, you have to enter

it with a like, let's let's see. And more often than not, we do. But yeah, it feels like certainly Betty and Joan is what, like they're really thinking about this because to some extent that's like what makes the movie interesting

is that they have either lived versions of these experiences or seen it happen to other people. I think that this movie also has something to say. It is not the most nuanced thing. I think it has its own tropes as well, but about child stardom and like child stardom out of vaudeville into, like a vaudeville child who sort of fails to make the transition to film and how that would affect you if that is where your, you know, like where your entire sense of self is derived from. I think we like, we still see a

examples of that now. It is still a huge issue, but certainly more so in the era where, you know, the kids that did make it into the studio system were abused horrifically. So I think what's, I guess what's tricky about it for me is like I think the performances, like you're saying, Angelica, do enough to not make it seem that they've brought this fate on themselves. But I understand that there is a very clear way to read it that way. Yeah, totally. I totally agree. I think it's the actresses that save this movie

from feeling cruel to its characters. I think it could read as very mean and nasty. And I also think the movie and like how Betty plays things is smart enough to let Jane be very nasty and unsympathetic. And like the end notes, you can be like, this is a very broken person, but they're also a, like, very monstrous in their actions.

Like, I don't think you're meant to, like, ever forgive her so much as, like, take a peek behind the curtain and understand the roots of things a little more clearly. Yeah. Well, because there's that scene toward the very beginning of the movie when, I think it's the only moment when we hear Blanche and Jane's mother speak, but their mother pulls aside little Blanche and says, she says something like, I hope you are able to forgive your father and your sister,

baby Jane, for, you know, being so cruel to you and that you won't treat them with the same crulness that they have shown you. And then little Blanche says something like, I won't forget, as if like she's going to harbor this resentment.

for the rest of her life. And perhaps that's what motivates her to, you know, try to mow down her sister with the car. Am I remembering that correctly? Is that how that goes? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe I'm misperbred, but I don't, their mother really doesn't come up again. No.

They don't care about that woman, apparently. Bizarre. Bizarre. I mean, I know that their father had this very specific role in their life because he was running. the child star farm, you know? And in that slept on conversation between Edwin Flagg and Jane later on, we get a little bit more into like what what motivates a lot of parents of child stars is that he wanted to be on stage. He was a musician and Jane kind of repeats the story he told her of like, I was misunderstood, my artistry.

People didn't get it. And like, you know, it is certainly reflective of things that happen of like, stage parents. I thought I was kind of curious that the mom doesn't come up again because that's a very male-ridden mistake. You know what I mean? Because I feel like the mother should be some, they have should have some sort of feelings for her. Whether it's like they feel betrayed or angry or like.

Is there a contrast between the way their father treated them versus the way their mother treated them? Like there would have been something. There would have been something and I think like, you know, I like love this movie for the performances. And so like for me, I feel like, yeah, if like a woman wrote this, that mother character would also cast a shadow over their lives for one reason or another. Right. But she doesn't. What's also interesting about these women is you don't hear anything about however the romantic lives were.

Yeah. I noticed that too, yes. And their romantic lives, like for jokes. Like for Joan Crawford, like hers in life were very important to people's understanding of her and like what men she was with. And with Betty, Betty was mostly marrying men not in the industry except for her last husband, Gary Merrill, who was a co-star of hers and All About Eve. That's how they meant. But it's so interesting because if you like read anything written about these women, they do think, they were thinking a lot about their. relationships to men and romance in general and like really craving romance and i wondered that with both

jane and blanche have they craved affection because if you watch blanche the only sort of awe and affection and care she wants is to just watch herself on screen and i wonder how much that plays into the ablest tropes that are present in this movie of like well she's disabled so we're not even going to have love and romance on the table for this character as like a prejudice of the writer. I wasn't really clear on that. And in general, why doesn't Blanche want more? Is it because of her own internalized ableism? Is it like what, you know, I think that there's a lot of different ways that could go.

I'd be curious what other people think. But I don't know. I guess, like going back to the mom for a second, I was trying to like see her in the performances because she's not there in the text. And it does feel like as close as she gets to going through, this is me really playing head canon. But like I think my theory is Joan Crawford was thinking about that mother character and that exchange at the beginning of the movie. Because for whatever, this first half, this beginning of Blanche's career, she continues to resent Jane in that same. way, but things change after this accident. And it almost feels like that, like, thing her mother

said of, like, be kinder to Jane than she was to you, only takes hold after she has failed to kill her, basically. And I think that that, like, a lot of Blanche's passivity comes from, you know, protracted abuse and fear. But I also, I also sort of feel like there's a part of it that is also coming from that line at the beginning from her mother. I agree. I think it's almost like she's been raised to accept poor treatment. And like in a way that I think a lot of young girls are called to just kind of take abuse and not call it that. I do think they need it. It's just really, the thing is with exploitation movies is they can be really fascinating and really over the top.

But a lot of times I don't think the script and story itself. understands women and how like women relate to each other. And so you have like a lot of actresses have to almost like offset and contradict or add in performance like layers that aren't there in the story, you know? Yeah. Because I think like they're both adding like layers to the character that's not on the page for them. And I definitely think the mother being such a void despite what she said to Blanche being so

integral in her psyche kind of speaks to the fact that like the men who made this weren't interested in women period they were just interested in like gawking at these like older women who no longer had you know people sexually desiring them or desiring them for any reason and so isn't that sad because what's a woman without an audience yeah i i find it interesting that at least least as far as my interpretation goes, a component of the hagsploitation element of this movie is the way that the Jane Hudson character looks, particularly her makeup. Because her makeup makes her look pretty ghoulish because it's this, you know, vaudevillian, very old-fashioned. She's like caking on the, yeah. So much like eyeliner and mascara and kind of stuff. But, but I think that

there's context for that, that at least Betty Davis as an actor brings out in her character in the sense that she, I mean, we hear this thing, and it might be an overgeneralization, but we've heard this thing, right, that a child star who becomes famous tends to kind of like, like their development gets a bit arrested at the moment that they become famous. They have difficulty sort of like maturing beyond that. And again, not true for all child stars. I'm not trying to make a blanket statement here. But like we've seen examples of this.

I feel like especially to the extent of like it, what matters is your support system and how careful is your support system being about allowing you to develop as a person. And even a good support system doesn't necessarily guarantee an outcome one way or another. For sure. And then also considering the context of this era where like mental health. support was like barely becoming a thing at this point. So we have all these, all this context for why Jane seems to constantly regress into this childlike immaturity with her aesthetic,

with her behavior, like all this stuff. So it's contextualized. So even though her like ghoulish appearance like contributes to this like hag aesthetic, we, we know the context. for it in a way that I think other exploitation movies would just ignore or like not pay that much attention to or not give that much care to. Yeah. I think um I'm going to actually read another passage. Betty Davis like um writes and this and that about like how she came up with this makeup. Um, quote, I decided to do my own makeup for baby Jane. What I had in mind, no professional makeup man would have dared to put on me. One told me he was, was afraid that if he did what I wanted, he might never work again.

Jane looked like many women once seized on Hollywood Boulevard. In fact, author Henry Farrell, who wrote the book is based on, patterned the character of Jane after these women. One would presume by the way they looked that they were once actresses and were now unemployed. I felt Jane never washed her face, just added another layer of makeup each day. And I think that's interesting because it also like just skirts, a sort of class thinking of like these are women who are also doing the same routines

because that was their way of like literally gaining money for their labor and that sort of look they're now associated so much but not just their like personal worth as a woman but their economic worth as an so there's like interesting like thinking behind it and I agree like you're not seeing that in other ha exploitation films by and large there they're there's some interesting ones, but in a lot of ways they don't do that. And I think that ha exploitation directly leads into the moment in horror we're in now, which instead of like the baby Jane being a central figure, the baby Jane is like a villainous monster in a lot of ways.

Like there's nothing more scary to modern male horror directors than an elderly naked woman. Aunt Gladys. Oh, we talk about this a lot on the show. I have dissenting opinions on Aunt Gladys. It's a cultural figure that people aren't ready to hear. Oh, from weapons? Yeah, or at least everyone I've tried to talk to about it. They're like, shut up, we like her.

I was like, all right. I had her in mind when I said that because I was like, once I like, you know, you actually watch the movie, you're like, oh, we're doing this. Oh. We're doing this. And we also did it in the first one. We did it in Barbarian as well. and then we're like, let's do it again,

and let's get her an Oscar, which is nothing against Amy Madigan, but it's an incredible performer, an incredible performance, but these are the parts that are available. Yeah, and there's something we need to, and I don't think anyone has, like, unpacked in a really good recent piece,

what the fuck is up with that? Like, yeah. Because it's like, this is all happening with these, like, look how terrible an elderly, it's not an elderly man's body, typically. It's an elderly woman. woman's body. Why is the figure of the crone so frightening to people? And this is happening at the

same time we're watching celebrities who are not even that old, like really working on their face. And then there's those. So it's like this very weird miasma of not a fuck shit that we're kind of in. And it's like every time I see a horror movie do this, I'm like, I don't think you guys realize what thematically you open the door to by having an elderly woman's body be the such a figure of fear and revulsion it's also like we're disgusted because that's not what a woman is supposed to do and look like yeah and it's not and it's it's not a question to me of the caliber of performance because again agree it's a great performance but to my mind the substance getting the push that it did

thematically immediately followed by the huge push for we've got to award the en gladys like back to back I have five questions it's also like I've you know bitched about the substance I like wrote a piece

comparing the substance to the film a different man and how they both deal with like doppelgangers and like how we see ourselves and like identity found in the aesthetic and stuff like that. Like when I watch them like pretty almost back to back, I was like, oh, like there's a lot

going on here. And like the thing that upsets me about the substance in part is like once we get Demi Moore and Margaret Quali are actually both awake and in the same room, they don't talk to each other. They like scream and then it becomes violent and then murder happens. But something about that was so cowardly to me. I was like, no two characters have more to say to each other than these women. Like, why don't they say? Than your own selves?

True. I wish I could talk to my own self all the time. Oh my God. Like some, I wish I could like talk to like like my inner child or like the part of me that like, you know, is very mean to myself sometimes. Like, like, imagine like actually physically be able to interact with yourself like that. I thought it was very telling that Coralie Fargiat could not. imagine what these women would say to each other. Only, like it dovetails directly into violence.

And something about that always caught me. And it's also not a coincidence that all these elder, like, women figures and horror are not really talking to anybody too, too much. They're almost like these weird little objects of spectacle that you're supposed to, like, always regard at some sort of remove. You're not supposed to, like, really know about who they are underneath things. they're meant to be gawked at. They're meant to be a spectacle.

They're meant to be feared. But I'm sorry, if you're a woman, you keep living. You're going to age. There's no way around that. That's the thing about being a human being and alive. I know these whack-ass tech bros believe in like uploading your freaking brain to whatever bullshit that they hope will happen. The singularity.

Yes. I'm like, go to Mars and die. Can you just leave us alone? But like, it's just something. about like that is so fascinating to me right now and like people just kind of accept like yeah that's just the thing we're doing in horror right now but i'm like no i think we need to unpack the misogyny of this because it's i think horror is in like a very interesting place in terms of gender right now yeah i i agree with you and i i mean yeah i'm so glad that i was like oh she's talking about

on gladys i know it um because yeah like i and the whatever. It's a good movie, all that stuff, yada, yada. But I think that it is interesting that a movie like whatever happened to Baby Jane has the legacy it did, had a lot of very persistent and also understandable. Like, this is a fundamentally misogynist movie. While in the future, Aunt Gladys, a character that physically resembles this, like, I would be absolutely shocked if Baby Jane wasn't on the vision board for this character. in just presentation, in the makeup,

and all of that stuff, in the, like, you know, fake aunt form, at least. But a huge critical difference is we know something about baby Jane. We, like, even though it is laden in tropes in certain areas, we know her personal history. We at least are given information to understand why she's presenting this way and not just like a kind of voidless plot witch that is playing on your assumed negative opinions and fear of older women, which is that that's just like a kick back to something that is, I think we pretend, we like, we like to say has gone away because we're giving in an award. But I don't think that that element of horror, it hasn't gone away. It's like changed and gotten weirder as technology develops. So that's that's my favorite. final word on Aunt Gladys, God damn it.

Can we talk a little bit about Alvira? Oh, yes, yes. Stealth, one of the most fascinating, like, thorns and Jane's side and just like, I said this a little earlier, but there's like a racial commentary thing. The movie doesn't realize it's at all doing, because of course they would cast a black woman in this role and like, da-da-da-da. but having her be the one who can see through Jane so clearly speaks to something that I think I'm very aware of as a black woman, which is you have to study white women in order to survive.

So you tend to know them and how they're going to react better than they do. And so that's also, I think, her trepidation with saying anything is like being very aware this is my white employer. Yeah. like what what would be the repercussions for me professionally if I like do this I think she's a really really fascinating character in that way and yeah that line she says to Jane about you've got to be a grown woman like everyone else just like it's kind of haunting yeah I yeah I agree I again like the performance from Mady Norman who I was not familiar with like her sort of

body of work, but she was also a long-time professor at UCLA. She taught black theater history at UCLA for decades and decades and had this very fascinating career in a longer sense as well. But it just, she's a really, I feel like she brings a lot of that subtext that you're describing out of like you see her having to think about like in the moment where it's, it's so clear from, she knows things are wrong at the beginning of the movie. and you can tell that she wants to push Jane Moore the first time. She's told, actually go home. Here's your money, buy, go.

You can tell that like she wants to stay but has to do the calculus of like, you know, this is my white irrational boss. And like, do I stay? Is this a battle I'm going to choose right now? Is it not? And like it, I don't know. I just, I feel like you can see her thinking so much in a way that sells, I think on the, the page something that's just like we just need this character to go away yeah yeah and then i mean

there's also just the she's only there to serve the white characters yeah she's the only on-screen death we see i believe yeah the first and only so you know there's those very racialized and racist tropes present that were which were super common for this time especially as far as a black woman being in a service role. Yeah. We do get characterization from her and, you know, what we were just talking about as far as her being discerning and then having to, you know, navigate.

Like this is also her, at least a source of income. It's, I couldn't tell like how frequently she comes by or like how much. It seems like a, like a few times a week and this is probably, and I just inferred, oh, she must be doing this for multiple households. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I assumed as well, but this is at least a source of income for her.

So she has to, you know, navigate that. And but yeah, I found her to be a fascinating character that tropes that were very present at the time also very much apply to her as far as her sort of significance in the story. Yeah. Yeah. And just the lack of the complete dearth of things we know about her outside of her relationship to these sisters. sisters who are her employers. We know that she has a cousin. I know. I was like, she has a cousin.

That's, that's it. That's all there is to her. She has a cousin who's heard a lot about these sisters. Oh, you know. I would be, if she's 15 minutes late coming home, I'm calling someone. Exactly. Like, there's a whole, I would never say remake this movie. Like, there's no way to remake it in today's, but there's something very interesting about like the thought experiment of what if I as a woman wrote a story like this how would I change the perspective of things how would I make like the Elvira character alive in a way yeah maybe I'll

just write a novel sort of inspired by baby Jane I don't know oh my gosh you should the world is ready or I mean we'll find out that the world should be ready but it's like sort of like you know I had an interesting conversation with a friend, like maybe like two months ago. And she's more a literary, she's like a literary critic primarily. And she said something. And we had like, it was a conversation about Jennifer Lawrence and, and like I was mentioning Die My Love and and Geotolentino's like profile on Lawrence and talking about her as like she's like the biggest millennial star who's an actress, right? Like she's such a fixture. But all I kept thinking was like, oh, that makes me sad because it like speaks to how limited

portrayals are of like women in film that this is like, this is like the main chick. And, you know, my friends did something that sort of upset me where she was like, well, you know, like I don't have that problem with literature because like anyone can pick up a pen and start writing a novel. Making a film requires so much capital that just by the nature of the industry, you're just going to have less representations of things. And it's so dictated by capital that that affects things. So I don't know.

I've been thinking a lot about what storytelling excites me and like what I want to do with my own career going forward. So that's also why I'm like, what if I write a book that's inspired by baby Jane? And like actually really give a shit about these women as women. And yeah, the mother is going to be major in it because one of my biggest rants is there's too many movies about daddy issues. and there's not enough movies about mommy issues because I'm like, I see y'all in the streets. Y'all have mommy issues.

Y'all need to come correct. We need more mommy issues movies. Mommy Dearest. Mommy Dearest is a major mommy issues movie. That is, yeah, that's, I guess I want to repeat for our listeners, that, like, those elements to Joan Crawford and to Betty Davis, and there are, I mean, I almost want to save that for the Mommy Dearest episode. Yeah.

Because I honestly am not like well researched enough in that area of their personal history to speak to it intelligently today. But no, we are we are well aware. Yeah. It's very interesting with both Joan and Betty where it's like the daughter had complaints, you know, especially Joan's daughter. Like, B.D. Betty's daughter, like her issues with her mother are not to the level of she was literally beating me kind of. things. But it's interesting, like, in both families, there's some children who were like, they were great to me. And then there's the one child who was like, actually, I was like the vessel for all their issues with things that were out of my control because I'm a child. And I feel like

that's very accurate to the rest of life where a lot of times you'll see within families that there's like a sibling who has like genuine issues with their parents. Well, then there's the other siblings who like didn't have the same experience as they were growing up and how it's such sensitive territory and a lot of it is like kind of murked up by a movie like mommy dearest and like making like turning what is a really harrowing sad experience of like parental abuse into this almost like over the top camp extravaganza which sort of like you know makes the moments of abuse into like pop culture memes like no more wire hangers and stuff like that right yeah i think that this might this might be the this year 10 we are finally maybe going to have to to tackle mommy dearest

because it is a mire that i've been avoiding for for some time um i wanted to go back really quickly to um the disability conversation in this movie where yeah most definitely i mean it's i think that there's a lot of ablest tropes that while frustrating we're not unsurprising to see in a movie from 1962. Obviously, Joan Crawford does not have this unnamed disability. She is not a wheelchair user. I think that there are certain moments that, I mean, there's the ablest tropes we've talked about, and there's the fact that the movie really delights and lingers on seeing Joan Crawford being violently abused by her sister at length to the point. where it's, it is both able-less and you can almost be like, they're doing this for the trailer.

They're doing this to emphasize that Betty Davis wishes she was kicking Joan Crawford, doesn't she, you know, playing into that aspect of it. But of course it reads as extremely ableist. I did find, I found from a blog called When the Woman Screams by an unnamed author, unfortunately, who reflects on how specifically their present-day dynamic did have, at least to her mind, something to say about how disabled people were treated in the 60s. So I just want to read something from there. In the 1960s, people with disabilities had limited protections to ensure their safety. There was no Americans with Disabilities Act.

Disabled children still did not have the right to a public education. and the Center for Independent Living was just getting ready to open its doors. While the decade did see a move away from institutionalizing people with disabilities, support services for caregivers were sporadic at best. Like Blanche, a person with a disability that limited independent movement

had to hope that their caregiver was competent because there was simply no oversight to ensure care standards, unquote. And it continues from there. But I think that that is, again, I highly doubt something the movie was setting out to do explicitly, but does speak to, I think, something that we've talked about in other representations of disabled characters, the further you go back in history, there are no protections in place,

protections that remain very flawed to this day. And just the protect, I mean, I, this is a separate conversation, but when I was one of my dad's primary caregivers leading up to when he passed, I was shocked at how little you're like, and that's in the present day, how much it was dependent on me to know what I was doing and to get with the program because the support just mostly doesn't exist. And so whatever, there's a lot going on there. But that because of Blanche's unnamed disability for because of this accident that has left her in as a wheelchair user, she is completely how. having to, because there is no law that says her house needs to be able to be accessible for her. It enables Jane's abuse because there were even fewer protections and consideration of disabled people at the time. So, yeah, I appreciate at that point, even though I don't think it is when the movie is trying to draw attention to.

Right. Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point. I think the movie just kind of like trip into accidentally. more interesting ideas than what they set out to do. You can definitely feel like, oh, they didn't realize they're actually, like, tapping into something worth really saying about disability. It's also, like, you know, important to keep in mind, like,

there's not, like, many actors in Hollywood history who have dealt with, like, notable physical disabilities that have had, like, careers. Like, at the time, the only woman I can think of who, like, she's, started as an actress and then had an accident that eventually paralyzed her. And then she went actually back to acting. I don't know if you've ever heard of her, but her name was Susan Peters. And she did this really interesting noir called The Sign of the Ram in 1948. That's legitimately about her characters, like, struggle with accepting her own accident

and disability. It does not end well for the character. But there's something really interesting about watching a movie dealing with that with an actual woman who was paralyzed and like in real life really struggling with who am I now that this has happened to me and it's happened like so early in my career and this was like her last movie because she just kind of was in a space where she was like I'm not going to get interesting roles after this this is like probably it this industry is not going to support me and she ended up committing suicide pretty young very sad story but the sign of the ram is like

like actually a very interesting noir and speaking of aries that title is obviously alluding to aries people this is a whole podcast episode about aries women apparently i too am in aries oh i'm a i'm a leo got a lot of a lot of fire in the chat you've got a lot of fire in the chat i love that i'm a leo rising earth signs over here i'm a torus and then double virgo oh i like that oh yeah let's all talk our signs i'm And Airy's Sun, Leo rising, Virgo moon. Okay. Oh, my gosh.

I think I'm Leo's sun, Aries, moon, Pisces rising. Oh, that's an interesting. That's a really interesting next. A very interesting next. I don't know what any of that means. I don't actually, but I'm like all the good things about Aries and Leo's and Virgo's are right about me. All the bad things, I don't believe astrology is bullshit. It doesn't make sense.

That doesn't resonate with me. The bad things, they don't apply to me. Yeah, exactly. The closing loop on, I just wanted to shout this book out, and we should have her back on the show. Past guest of the show, Kristen Lopez just released a really good book about the history of disability in Hollywood called Popcorn Disabilities. I just started reading it the other night, and it's terrific.

Nice, yes. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss? Let female actresses be confident in an interesting. way again because Betty Davis very I think we're weirdly very uncomfortable as a culture with confident women that's a whole other like line of discussion but I've started to get annoyed because I keep coming across like people saying insert the blank woman character is not relatable because she's too confident and too good at what she does I like this is so nerdy but I saw this like said about the character Jad Zia Dax from Star Trek deep space nine and it literally pissed

me off so much. I was like, why do I care this much about a character who existed in the 90s? But watching, you know, Betty and Joan and, like, knowing about their careers. And, you know, they were very dynamic women who had insecurities in some areas and not in others. But I, like, I miss seeing a, like, body broad who really has confidence in herself as an artist and truly believe she has something to bring to the world and something to see. say that may not be pretty, but it is worthwhile.

That is very true to a Betty Davis. For sure. Hell yeah. Well, the movie does pass the Bechtoe test. In the most cruel, nasty way possible. Yeah. It is, it passes the Bechtoe test. I would, outside of like, mentions of daddy, we're really not talking about men.

Yeah. Very much. We're talking about mostly negative stuff. We're talking about two women who have a very complicated and deeply twisted history together. And that's what we're talking about. Or I think most of, if not the entire conversations between Blanche and Elvira pass, I think the only other characters that we haven't talked about that we don't need to belabor because they're not huge characters is the mother and daughter who live next door, including B.D.

Betty Davis's daughter, which is very, I just like, ugh, I love. Is her name B.D. Because those are Betty Davis's initials? Well, her name is Barbara. I see. But I did like that dynamic of, I think that all of those conversations passed the Bexel test. There was like one exchange between them that I really liked where the daughter, I know

I did this to my mom at some point where, you know, they're watching the Joan Crawford movie and, you know, the daughter's like, oh. she's she's our neighbor she must be so old she must be like a hundred and her mom is like actually she's my age and then i know i did that to my mom like when i was a kid i just that but they're talking about i mean whatever their plot function is that they're failing to act on what is a clearly abusive dynamic next door but i like that their side conversations have to do with how does the average person perceive you know perceive these women and i thought that was a kind of cool too. But yeah, I think it mostly passes the bectal test, but you know, flawed metric.

We've discussed many times. Yeah, there's basically conversations that are like, here's Dindin, and it's like, is it a dead bird again? You know, stuff like that. People aren't doing this anymore. Are you feeding me dead animals again? Well, a lot of meals. Two dead animals. That was why, I feel like my one note about this movie is like, it should have just been one. One or three. what is this rule of two Yeah now it is interesting The two and then and then Jane is like You know what? You're just not going to eat anymore

So you don't want the dead rat You don't get any food And it's like I was you kind of want The horse head situate you're like Because the animal's got a little bit bigger each time Yeah you do need the rule of threes Where's the third Anyway

Our nipple scale Where we rate the movie Zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. Oh, oh, this, that's a tricky one. This is a tricky one. Yeah. I almost want to defer.

I almost want to not. Yeah. That might be cheating. We're doing that more and more. I mean, there's just like, there's so much going on in this movie. And I think it is like a particularly tricky one because I feel like if we were, if we were rating it based on intent, that's a different number than from what I think we are generally getting out of it. Right.

I agree. So rather than nipples, I'm going to rate it on a scale of life-size baby Jane dolls. It's so big. It's huge. It looks heavy, too. Yeah. And I'm going to give the movie four out of five creepy baby Jane dolls. Yeah, I'm giving it five...

Whatever that means. I'm giving it five big bad baby janes. What a scary doll. I know that like... You know, this was just as the Barbie was taking off, so we didn't have those smaller dolls. And I'm glad that we decided to make the doll smaller. That's simply too big.

Yeah, it's really... It's too much. It's scary. Imagine just like, you know, you wake up one day in your bedroom room and you don't like you know your eyes are adjusting and that looks like something that's going to kill you like that I would be like you know whatever I would see her I'm like that's the kind of doll that you know there are goosebumps chucky wants to possess books about like yeah we've seen these dolls are bad I love it I love a killer doll I like the last the last silly the thing that I

was interested I don't know the moments where jane shows lucidity I'm like what an interesting choice there where like in that scene where she's you know telling um oh my gosh i keep forgetting his his name uh edwin she's telling edwin like oh yeah like i want to do the same songs i know that my songs are a little dated we'll have to update them i was like what would we have updated that to how are we going to i would i would have loved to hear them bring uh the rock and roll remix to letter to daddy letters to daddy letters to daddy what's that the 1962 interpolation of letters to daddy. Someone, someone figure that up for me, please. Disturving. I just love that. She was like, I know we have to update it. I was like, of all the things

for you to know, this is very shrewd. It's true. Yeah, that is kind of surprising. We didn't talk about Edwin very much. And honestly, I don't even know what there is to say about him. He's weird. A dynamic with him and his mom. But, you know, with that. Yeah, I guess that that is the mommy issue representation in this movie is whatever's going on there yeah he slut shames his mom at one point he says something like why do you care about a woman shacking up with a man in a hotel room a strange man who she's never seen before isn't that how i was conceived like oh oh oh what why is she and she's and she was nothing but nice to him but i think it's it's implied that like he's i mean it is like explicitly implied that he's under her thumb or like she doesn't want to let go or that like I mean again it's like we don't it's not that I necessarily wanted to spend more time with that character but it does feel like there is at least an attempt to have the weird parent child dynamic sort of mirror Jane's weird parent dynamic so it like

I don't know seeing seeing those two in that scene especially with that like devise I don't know Victor Woto was nominated for an Oscar for this um which they were nominating a lot of they just they still be nominating some things that I'm like okay yeah sure it's not a bad performance but it's just like oh okay maybe that one sure it's a fine it's a fine prefer I honestly wasn't I I hadn't seen him outside of this movie but he was he died very young he died in his early 40s but like had a very successful career was closeted for most of his career but I guess there's a chapter about him in a book about queer Hollywood history

but I just don't know very much about him. I wondered if his character was meant to be queer coded in some way in like a very 1960s way partly because like he still lives with his mother. He still lives with his mom, musician, the way he interacts with like Jane is to like, he like clearly recognizes she's delusional but is still willing to use her

and like probably thinks that she wants some level of affection from him. So there's there's something there. I don't think it's like full blown queer coded but like knowing the actor I can see like that reading existing on some level. Yeah. Yeah.

And and that I think we mentioned this once earlier. God, this movie is so dense. So dense. We're like back into the discussion. That like with his character with Edwin, he is, you know, acting dishonestly every second we see him. on screen basically, but we also do get the understanding why is like that he is broke. And I think that

he views these wealthy women as like, well, who cares how I treat them? They're rich. Like, I think that that appears to be his MO where he's, he's like getting one over on the rich in his estimation. But the reality is far, you know, is far more complicated. But it's like in a movie that doesn't really deal with class very much, if like Edwin is, you know, he's, like, Edwin. is the little point of entry to that. Right. Anyway. Five out of five,

five, baby Jane dolls. I love it. Five out of five, most definitely. Well, thank you so much for returning to get into this incredible,

wonderful, weird movie with us. Oh, yeah. This was a lot of fun. I, like, you know, brought my pile of books out

that are related to Betty Davis and Joan, and that's not even all of them. I was like, wow, I have a lot of books on these women. Incredible. This was great. Oh, thank you so much. As usual, where can we find more your work? As always, you can find me at New York Magazine's site Vulture or in the pages of New York magazine. That is my job. And on my substack, Mad Women and Muses, I sometimes post on Blue sky. I am pretty active on letterbox. It's just my name. If you're a little nerd who wants to see what I'm watching, you can check that out there. But yeah, that's how you can find me. I've got a lot of work coming out that I'm really excited about. And I've kind of, you know, I think

this conversation was really wonderful because it's really got me thinking about, you know, how I create what I want to do as an artist and like how inspired I am by like women like. this who really had gusto when it came to their professionalism and their artistic desires. You got to write that book? I got to write. I got to move back into fiction. I miss fiction. I really do.

Well, thank you again for coming back on and please come back anytime. Oh, I'd love to. Just truly, yeah. I get parasycial sometimes because I was like, I just love your work so much. It's so wonderful. Oh, thank you. No, that means a lot. Sometimes it can be like easy to forget that people actually like my work.

because I get such weird blowback sometimes. So it just means a lot to connect, you know, with people through the writing. Yeah. No, we're big fans. We cite your work on the show often. Truly all the time. Thank you. Please subscribe to my newsletter, et cetera, et cetera.

Subscribe to New York Magazine, et cetera. Journalism is dying. Please help us. Please, God, please. You can find us mostly on Instagram and, of course, always on our Patreon, AKA Matrion, wear for five bucks a month, two bonus episodes a month on a theme of our communities choosing and access to over, I think, 200 back episodes, something like that. We've been doing it since 2017. And with that, oh, man, how do we dismount from this episode?

I wrote a letter to Daddy. His address is having a mouth. Spot on impression. That is perfect. pretty perfect. Bye. Bye. Bye.

The Bechtelcast is a production of IHeart Media, hosted and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. And me, Caitlin Durante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtenen. And edited by Caitlin Durante. Ever heard of them? That's me. And our logo and merch

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