- There's a weird attraction to watching movie stars age, and none of the stars themselves seemed more attuned to this phenomenon than Bette Davis. As a young starlet, she batted her famous eyes and captured hearts. In All About Eve, she spat poison at the other young upstarts who ascended to threaten her stardom. Now, in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, we witness a fallen idol finally getting her revenge. That she seeks it on fellow aging star and real-life rival Joan Crawford just makes that revenge all the more sweet.
- Whereas Davis' character, Jane Hudson, was once the star of the family with her "Baby Jane" childhood vaudeville act, it was sister Blanche (Crawford) who ended up dominating the silver screen for most of their adult lives. That is, until four years ago when Blanche broke her legs in a car accident that may not have been so accidental. Everybody whispered that Jane had been drinking and driving that night, but no formal inquiries were ever made. Since then, the two of them have more or less remained holed up at home, with Jane playing the role of kindly nurse to her poor, infirm sister.
- At least, that's what their adoring public is meant to think. In actuality, Jane's grasp on reality has been growing more and more tenuous over the years, and she's also developed an unfortunate penchant for cruelty. Even the family maid (Maidie Norman) begins to worry that the increasingly unhinged Jane could hurt Blanche, but Blanche isn't initially one to fret. After all, she may need a wheelchair, but she's also the one who writes the checks in this household, right? It only takes a few surprises showing up on her dinner tray before Blanche finally becomes concerned. By then, Jane is putting up her blonde curls and singing the old songs to the accompaniment of the boyishly awkward pianist Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono). Maybe we've already crossed the point of no return.
- For its first half, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? proceeds at a pleasantly slow boil that builds from the pathetic innocence of Jane asking "Maybe you remember me?" to an absurdly violent apex that involves an unexpected level of physical brutality. Unfortunately, the later subplot involving Flagg and the film's allegedly bombastic final revelation are never as good as the setup. Given that the film ends on the same Malibu beach as director Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me, Deadly, this ending seems that much less crazy by comparison. Still, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? admittedly makes excellent use of old footage, offscreen controversies, and the fact that one of its stars aged much more gracefully than the other. To put these two stars in the same film and to shoot it in black and white in 1962 is so ambitious of Aldrich that we can't help but stand back and admire the slightly imperfect result.
Wesley Addy also plays a small role in the film.
