Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1962

The Contenders:

Lee Remick: Days of Wine and Roses
Katharine Hepburn: Long Day’s Journey into Night
Anne Bancroft: The Miracle Worker (winner)
Geraldine Page: Sweet Bird of Youth
Bette Davis: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

All in the Family

Film: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

If you don’t pay attention to things, movies slip through the cracks. For one reason or another, I’d never seen the classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? until today. I’ve heard of it, of course, and heard about the legendary feud between stars Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. But I’d never gotten around to watching it. For my fellow bloggers pursuing Ryan McNeil’s Blind Spot series, this was one of my picks, and for obvious reasons. There’s no genuinely good reason I’ve waited until now to see it.

We start with Baby Jane Hudson (Julie Allred), a child star who is more demanding than she has a right to be. Her father (Dave Willock) gives in to all of her whims, which upsets the other daughter, Blanche (Gina Gillespie) and her mother (Anne Barton). She tells Blanche that someday, their roles will be reversed, and that when that happens, she should be kinder to them than they have been to her. It’s prophetic, because a few years later, Blanche (Joan Crawford) is a successful star (we see clips from her early films) while Jane (Bette Davis, again in clips) is a train wreck of an actress. Then there’s an accident as one sister evidently tries to kill the other, and we flash forward to the present.