Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell

One evening in 1935, Blanche's career is cut short when she is paralyzed from the waist down in a mysterious car accident that is unofficially blamed on Jane, who is found three days later in a drunken stupor.īy 1962, Blanche and Jane are living together in a mansion purchased with Blanche's movie earnings. Mindful of a promise made to their mother, Blanche attempts to maintain a semblance of a career for Jane, going as far as to prevail on producers to guarantee acting roles for her. As the sisters pass adolescence, their situations undergo a reversal Jane's style of performing falls out of fashion, and her career declines as she descends into alcoholism, while Blanche becomes an acclaimed Hollywood actress. Meanwhile, her shy older sister Blanche lives in her shadow and is treated with contempt by the haughty Jane. Her success is such that a line of porcelain dolls is made in her image. In 1917, 'Baby Jane' Hudson is a spoiled and capricious child actress who performs in vaudeville theatres across the country with her father, who acts as her manager and accompanies her on stage on the piano. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant'. 44 on the American Film Institute's list of the 50 Best Villains of American Cinema. In 2003, the character of Baby Jane Hudson was ranked No. It has also gone on to become an enduring favorite with queer audiences. Because of the appeal of the film's stars, Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times has identified it as being a 'cult classic'. The film's novel and controversial plot meant that it originally received an X rating in the U.K. In the years after release, critics continued to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy, camp, and creation of the psycho-biddy subgenre. This in part led to the revitalization of the careers of the two stars. The intensely bitter Hollywood rivalry between the film's two stars, Davis and Crawford, was pivotal to the film's initial success. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won one for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, with Davis receiving her tenth and final nomination for Best Actress. The film was met with critical acclaim and was a box office success.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was theatrically released in the United States on October 31, 1962, by Warner Bros. It follows an aging former child star tormenting her paraplegic sister, a former movie star, in an old Hollywood mansion.

The film stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and features the major film debut of Victor Buono. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a 1962 American psychological horror thriller film directed and produced by Robert Aldrich, from a screenplay by Lukas Heller, based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell