Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (51 page)
22
"I'm the nicest goddamn dame
who ever lived!"
—BETTE DAVIS TO REX REED
T
here was "
nevah
" a feud between them, Bette stated repeatedly in the years that followed her rival's demise. In London, when reporter Nancy Mills asked about the enemies she had made in the motion-picture business, Davis replied, "Enemies? I have no enemies. Who?"
"Joan Crawford?" said the brave Ms. Mills.
In a tone of "sugared innocence," Bette replied, "Miss Crawford and I weren't enemies. We made one film together. We didn't know each other at all."
"Most of her rivals are now dead," said the reporter, "and Miss Davis would like to present herself as just another little old lady in tennis shoes."
The myth and legend of Joan Crawford were also magnified after her death. In 1978 her personal effects—hats, sheets, monogrammed pillowcases—were auctioned off at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York. Appraised at eight thousand dollars, the small cache of Crawford memorabilia brought in $42,850. Among the bidders was Andy Warhol, who purchased several pairs of Crawford's false eyelashes and pieces of her costume jewelry, which the Pop artist would wear under his suits and ties when he ventured forth on his own peripatetic rounds of self-promotion.
The "camp element" of the auction was a source of shame to Crawford's daughter Christina, who said she was "embarrassed by my association with her." Christina, of course, did not share in the proceeds of the sale, or in her mother's will. But in November 1978 she remembered Mama with the release of her book
Mommie Dearest.
"It's a love story, a very sad love story," said the authoress.
"Tina cared about that bitch. She still cares," said the other disinherited member of Crawford's family, her son, Christopher. He recalled a meeting in Florida in 1962 when he had brought his newborn daughter to see her famous grandmother. "Joan Crawford summoned me to her suite at the Fontainebleau Hotel. She took one look at my child and said, 'It doesn't look like you. It's probably a bastard.' I walked out. It was the last time I saw her."
"She was tough on us, sure," said daughter Cathy in her mother's defense. "You'd get a swat once in a while, but none of that physical beatings—the coathangers. I think Christina must have been in another household." Her sister Cindy recalled the time she was attending Dubuque University and had a romance with a student. She became pregnant and told Joan, who at first offered to arrange for an abortion. "But I wanted the kid and Mother gave her full approval."
"I think Christina was jealous," Cindy believed. "She wanted to be the one person she couldn't be—Mother. I think she'll use Joan until she can't get any more out of it. Then she'll dump her."
With
Mommie Dearest
selling ten thousand copies a day, some of Crawford's Hollywood friends and costars came forward to protect the memory of the star they knew "It's lies, all lies," said Van Johnson. "No one I know ever saw any child abuse," said
Mildred Pierce
daughter Ann Blyth.
When Paramount Pictures bought the film rights to the book, Marlene Dietrich wrote an angry letter to one of their executives. "I am shocked that Paramount bought that filthy book, and made the frightful bitch who wrote it rich—and that rhymes," said Marlene. "I did not know Joan Crawford but nobody deserves that kind of slaughter. Too bad she did not leave her where she found her, so she could now spit her poison in the slums of some big city. I hate her with a passion and I know the public will."
Bette Davis bought an early copy of
Mommie Dearest,
then called her daughter. "I am reading the most terrific book. You must read it," she told B.D.
"I read that book in a state of shock," Bette confessed to Elliot Surkin of the Detroit
News.
"It didn't make me feel the least bit sorry for Joan. She was clearly not disciplined personally, and her problem was obvious. Drink."
"The book makes her a monster, but one gets the feeling Christina couldn't have made it up, could she?" Bette told the New York
Times.
In
Playboy
she stated that Christina had every right to publish the book. "I don't blame the daughter, don't blame her at all. She was left without a cent, living in a motor home in Tarzana. One area of life Joan should never have gone into was
children."
Mother Bette
While endorsing the merits of
Mommie Dearest,
Bette Davis frequently told the press that her children would never write a book about her. "Boy! You could really do a number on me. But you won't, will you, dear?" she warned her daughter, B.D. But in 1985 Davis was awarded the same filial dishonor as her rival when the personal accounts of her drinking and domestic tirades were put on public display in
My Mother's Keeper.
This was the latest in a series of dire misfortunes for the aging star. She had just undergone a mastectomy ("My God! I always thought cancer would never
dare
come near me"), and suffered a stroke ("I was furious," she said; "I did not think I deserved it. Of all the human afflictions, a stroke is about the worst. I wouldn't wish it on Adolf Hitler!"), and then the book by B.D. Hyman was released.
"Scathing!" said the Philadelphia
Inquirer.
"So moving!" said the New York
Times.
"So what?" said Ed Baker of the Seattle
Times.
'Aren't there a few other imperfect mothers in the world?"
"Epic characters have epic torments," said Neal O'Hara in
Christopher Street,
"and Christina Crawford, as leaden as her little heart may be, at least made a decent stab at the epic. Christina knew she was dealing with a mythic figure whom she did not purport to understand. B. D., on the other hand, is heavy into amateur psychology. I know what she would have deserved. Joan for a mother. That would have given her something to write about."
Bette and Helen and Lillian
Davis survived the cancer, the stroke, and the book, and in the persistent pursuit of her art went on to demolish a few other living legends. Her 1983 costar in an Agatha Christie TV movie was Helen Hayes. She and Miss Hayes had met a few times before, once at a party in Bette's New York town house. When daughter B.D. referred to Miss Hayes as the leading actress of the stage, Bette replied, "First Lady of the Theater, my ass!
I'm
the first lady."
"When I heard Miss Hayes was going to work with Mother on the Agatha Christie movie, my heart went out to her," said B.D. "She was a dear, sweet lady. I felt she didn't deserve this."
On the first day of filming, Davis "started by snapping at me," Miss Hayes told Pat O'Haire of the New York
Daily
News.
"I said, 'Good morning,' and she looked right through me. Later when the cast gathered for introductions, our eyes met, and I waved. 'What's
that
mean?' Bette snapped. 'I was saying good morning,' I answered. 'You already did that,' she snapped back."
"I was never so scared in my life. And I was in the war," said another actor on the film, John Mills.
Miss Lillian Gish did not glow in the warmth of Bette's embrace either. When the two seasoned stars met at the National Board of Review awards in 1984, Miss Gish went onstage and made a lovely but lengthy speech about D. W. Griffith. "Bette was sitting in the front row and she became annoyed because Lillian was talking too much," said a New York writer. "As Miss Gish went on and on, Bette began to mutter out loud, 'The silly bitch, get her off, get her off.'"
In Maine, two years later, on the first day of shooting for
The
Whales of August,
Miss Gish went over to Bette and welcomed her. "If you want to talk about the work or the script," Bette growled at the frail Lillian, "fine. Otherwise, we have
nothing
to talk about."
On the set another day, it was reported that when director Lindsay Anderson complimented Lillian Gish on a lovely close-up, Bette barked from the sidelines, "Of course, it's a lovely close-up! The bitch
invented
close-ups!"
"She made mincemeat out of poor Lillian," said Helen Hayes. "Lillian swears she'll never act again. So first she drove me from the screen, now she's driven Lillian. She's making a clean sweep of everyone our age!"
The Main Contender
In 1987, ten years after her death, it was Joan Crawford who remained as the number-one nemesis of Bette Davis. That spring, Bette's second set of memoirs,
This' n That,
became a best-seller. The book was anticipated as a blistering retort to her disloyal daughter, but she was mentioned only in the afterword, in a letter euphemistically addressed to "Dear Hyman" ("She couldn't very well call her 'Dear C——t,' could she?" asked one irreverent scribe). The afterword took up two short pages, while another, older, more formidable foe—Joan Crawford—received an entire chapter.
"Did Bette Davis and Joan Crawford feud during the filming of
Baby Jane? No!"
said the author-star, answering her own question. With that settled, the magnificently virulent Bette marched on, blithely disclosing that Joan was a skilled sexual politician who drank too much vodka on the job, wore three sets of falsies (at different times), and was in general a silly, vain old fool who stole the Oscar that rightfully belonged to Davis.
That November, Miss Davis agreed to talk for this book, devoted entirely to her and Miss Crawford. Again she said there was no feud, and she had nothing further to say about her rival. She then proceeded to talk about Aries women; Joan's background; her unrequited crush on Joan's second husband, Franchot Tone; the making of
Baby Jane;
and other Crawford-related topics (the quotes of which are in those particular chapters).
At the end of our conservation Davis declared it was fascinating that the public still linked her name with Crawford. "I have never been
anywhere,
all over the world, they haven't asked about Joan and me. I don't mind it. I find it interesting. But I have always wondered: what do people
think
they see in us together? After all, we had
nothing
in common."
Footnotes
*1
In her 1988 book Child Star, Shirley Temple confirmed that she and her mother "lit up like beacons" when Warner Bros. suggested she play Veda Pierce. "Not only does this child seduce and kill her stepfather," said the enthusiastic Temple, "she attempts to hang the murder around the neck of her self-made tycoon mother."
*2
Peter Shaw would find more permanent happiness with actress Angela Lansbury, whom he married in 1949.
*3
In her book,
Child Star,
Shirley Temple Black claimed the incident with Crawford and her children happened in 1938, but Christina and Christopher were not born until 1940 and 1942. When contacted through her agent in November and December 1988, Miss Temple Black declined to be interviewed or to provide a corrected date for her story.
*4
In 1977 Joan Blondell confirmed that she was signed for the film, but she withdrew because of an accident. "I stepped through a glass partition in my home and had to have sixty stitches in my leg. Nothing was said in the newspapers, because of the insurance, but Joan Crawford did not steal the role. Someone had to do it."
*5
'Vivien Leigh reportedly did not want to work with Bette either. In London, when called by a Fox executive about the role, she declined by saying, "No, thank you. I can just about stand looking at Joan Crawford's face at six o'clock in the morning, but not Bette Davis."
*6
Authors Note:
In 1987, after Davis put the story in
This' n That,
her second book of memoirs, and repeated it on the Johnny Carson TV show, I asked actress Anne Bancroft if she could set the record straight. Miss Bancroft responded: "Crawford is right. She brought the award to me, sometime shortly after the awards, while
Mother Courage
was still playing on Broadway."
Superstars in every language
