377: Feud: Bette and Joan with Scott Eyman

00:00:01:29 – 00:00:35:26
Dan LeFebvre
Hello and welcome to Based on a True Story, the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies with history. Today we’re going to the Golden Age of Hollywood as we learn about the TV show simply called feud. Now, as of this recording, there are two seasons of feud, with each season focusing on a completely different, well, feud. So more specifically today we’re talking about the first season, eight episodes that aired in 2017, all about the rivalry between legendary actresses Joan Crawford and Betty Davis.

00:00:35:29 – 00:01:03:03
Dan LeFebvre
So let’s start with a quick refresher of what happens in the TV series. The first season of feud centers around the two successful actresses joining forces to make the movie called Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? In the early 1960s, Joan Crawford is played by Jessica Lange, while Betty Davis is played by Susan Sarandon. Episode by episode. The show traces how two aging legends in a male dominated Hollywood fight for respect, relevance, and recognition.

00:01:03:05 – 00:01:31:11
Dan LeFebvre
In the first episode, Joan, whose stardom is fading, pushes for Baby Jane and teams up with Betty Davis and director Robert Aldrich, only to find their strong personalities clash from the start. Aldrich is played by Alfred Molina in episode two. Tensions rise as homelife pressures, creative pride and external meddling. Studio politics, the press, showy supporting actors and so on drive Joan and Betty further apart, even as the production demands cooperation.

00:01:31:14 – 00:01:54:26
Dan LeFebvre
In episode three, we learn more about Joan’s family life with her daughters. By episode four, Baby Jane becomes a hit. There’s critical acclaim for Betty as Joan grows jealous. Then, in episode five, the rivalry is sent into the public’s eye at the 1963 Oscars, thanks to a secret plan from Joan and her friend had a Hopper. They talk nominee’s into letting Joan accept the award for them.

00:01:54:28 – 00:02:15:25
Dan LeFebvre
Hopper is played by Judy Davis in the TV series. Episode six suggests another teaming up of Betty Davis and Joan Crawford on yet another movie by Robert Aldrich called hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. But things turn to the worse in episode seven, when Joan finds out that Betty and Robert are having an affair, and this seems to give Betty some extra power on set.

00:02:15:26 – 00:02:45:21
Dan LeFebvre
So Joan tries her own stunt to get attention. She fakes an illness that forces the film’s production to a halt. That is, until she’s replaced on the film by Olivia de Havilland, who’s played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. And then the season concludes in episode eight, showing Joan’s final retirement from the movie business. Her illness and eventual death. Joining us today is Scott Simon, the author of a number of biographies from figures in the Golden Age of Hollywood, from Cary Grant and John Ford to Cecil B to Mel and John Wayne.

00:02:45:23 – 00:03:00:17
Dan LeFebvre
Scott’s newest book is called Joan Crawford A Woman’s Face, and you’ll find a link to it in the show notes to pick up your own copy. And while you find that, let’s set up our game for this episode. Now, if you’re new to the show, so it’s based on a true story is all about separating fact from fiction in the movies.

00:03:00:19 – 00:03:19:12
Dan LeFebvre
You’ll get to practice your skills at separating fact from fiction in this podcast episode with a game of two truths in a lie. So I’m about to give you three things that we’ll talk about in this episode. Two of them are true, and that means one of them is just an all out lie. Are you ready? Okay, here they are.

00:03:19:15 – 00:03:46:17
Dan LeFebvre
Number one, Joan Crawford’s best friend was Hedda Hopper. Number two, Joan Crawford was never officially diagnosed with cancer. Number three, Joan Crawford learned the most about acting from Lon Chaney. Got him. Okay, now, as you’re listening to our story today, see if you can figure out which one of those is alive. And if you’re watching the video version on YouTube, you can see I’m holding up an envelope.

00:03:46:24 – 00:04:07:11
Dan LeFebvre
And this has the answer inside. So we’ll open this at the end of the episode to see if you got it right. Okay. Now it’s time to connect with Scott Simon about the historical accuracy of feud.

00:04:07:14 – 00:04:31:01
Dan LeFebvre
Everyone knows TV shows can stretch the truth. However, since each show is different with the creative liberties that they take. I was like to start up top with an overall ballpark idea for how accurate something is. So with that in mind, if you were to give the first season of the TV show feud a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would it get?

00:04:31:04 – 00:05:01:27
Scott Eyman
Well, it’s a it’s a network, a mini series, produced and directed by Ryan Murphy. So if you approach it with, with a certain, a certain, delicate, approach, c c minus and it’s subtle and some of the inaccuracies don’t matter. They’re irrelevant, essentially. So I’m not hung up on those other inaccuracies I think do matter.

00:05:02:00 – 00:05:31:21
Scott Eyman
For instance, and this doesn’t matter. This is an inaccuracy. That doesn’t matter when the show opens. She’s living in California in a vast Beverly Hills mansion, where everybody comes to visit her, you know, at an opera and or her, aide de camp. Mamacita, a German woman that for some odd reason. Crawford called Mamacita. Actually, she was living in New York, by 19.

00:05:31:24 – 00:05:54:26
Scott Eyman
She moved to New York in 1955 for her marriage or last marriage to Alfred Steele. They had a very nice, two story, apartment house across the street from the Frick Museum. And she was still in there, in 1960, and 62. She didn’t move until 1964, until several years after the film was made.

00:05:55:02 – 00:06:22:23
Scott Eyman
So she had an apartment in LA in a little building that Loretta Young owned. But, I mean, she didn’t she had sold the house in, in in Brentwood, I believe, in 1959 or 1960 and bailed. So that’s a small inaccuracy. That doesn’t matter. I understand it’s just easier rather than going having a logo, say New York, and then you have her, you know, fancy New York apartment and you’re cutting back and forth between now, like, just everybody now, like, okay, fine.

00:06:22:25 – 00:06:35:25
Scott Eyman
That’s a small inaccuracy. Other inaccuracies, bothered me a lot more than that, frankly. But we can get into that. We should, of course.

00:06:35:25 – 00:06:59:21
Dan LeFebvre
Of course. What? In the first episode of the series, we see Olivia de Havilland talking about the feud by saying this is a quote from the series. It says for nearly half a century, they hated each other and we love them for it. She’s speaking, of course, about Joan Crawford and Betty Davis, and the TV show is set mostly in the 1960s around the filming of the only movie that those two starred in together called Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

00:06:59:23 – 00:07:23:08
Dan LeFebvre
So based on the Havilland’s quote and the fact that TV series takes place in the 1960s after both Crawford and Davis are already established stars, I got the impression that there had already been a feud going on long before the timeline of the TV series. So can you give me an overview of how and when The Few started between Joan Crawford and Betty Davis?

00:07:23:14 – 00:07:43:06
Scott Eyman
Well, feud is a good, awfully strong word. Actually, it’s not like a feud implies to me that that other person is in the forefront of your consciousness all the time, or almost all the time. And I’m sure, you know, decades went by when they really didn’t speak to each other that much because they weren’t really a part of each other’s life.

00:07:43:08 – 00:08:05:18
Scott Eyman
As far as I can tell, the animus, began in 1935 when Franchot Tone went over, left MGM, where he was having a torrid affair with, Joan Crawford to went over to, Warner Brothers to do a movie with Betty Davis called dangerous and Betty Davis stuff. And shot down was the most gorgeous thing she ever seen in her life.

00:08:05:21 – 00:08:29:19
Scott Eyman
And she made every effort possible, to, to seduce him. And he really wasn’t interested because he just wanted to get back to MGM and Joan Crawford, which didn’t, didn’t, endear him, to, to, to Betty Davis. And it didn’t endear Joan Crawford to Betty Davis either. But really, they weren’t in each other’s life.

00:08:29:20 – 00:09:00:08
Scott Eyman
They weren’t part of each other’s social circle at all. Until, Crawford came to Warner Brothers in 1944 after leading MGM. Basically her entire career picture career was at MGM from 1927, not 1925 to 1943. She was the MGM, and she only did a 1 or 2 loan out in all that time, and she left MGM in 1943 and sat around the house in Brentwood, for about a year.

00:09:00:09 – 00:09:29:27
Scott Eyman
But she said it was like three years. It wasn’t three years. It was more a year, more like a year. And, then, she signed with, Warner Brothers where Betty Davis was the Queen B Gurley. So I’m sure at that point Davis was looking over her shoulder, you know, at, at this, pretender to Earth row, because there was no one at Warner Brothers bigger than Betty Davis on the female side of the cat roster against, roster of actors.

00:09:30:00 – 00:10:04:04
Scott Eyman
But they again. Yeah, they didn’t they were really they didn’t play the same kinds of parts for the most part. I you could theoretically put Betty Davis in Mildred Pierce. You could theoretically cast her in Humoresque. But I think she’d fit better in Mildred Pierce than she would at Humoresque. Because Humoresque is is, the woman is a an alcoholic, the very highly sexed.

00:10:04:06 – 00:10:32:11
Scott Eyman
And Betty Davis didn’t really give off those vibes. You know, she always had a kind of Puritan thing because it was an authentic projection of her personality, even though she did drink. Obviously, they both drank, but they weren’t really up for the same parts. She might have turned down Mildred Pierce, so it’s possible that was passed, by her a Davis, and she might have turned it down.

00:10:32:13 – 00:10:54:14
Scott Eyman
But it was always kind of slotted for Crawford because they had signed her and they had to give her something. And that thing was that script was, hanging fire. You know, once they figured out how to do it, it wasn’t a terribly art picture shoot, but there were a lot of writers on that picture. They had north of six writers, eight writers.

00:10:54:18 – 00:11:22:08
Scott Eyman
It was a lot of different scripts floating around at that, and nobody was quite sure how to get past the ace office number one and, how much sex it could have. And it was Jerry Wald’s idea. Basically, he saw Double Indemnity one day and decided, a murder flashback. Murder flashback because there, you know, murder in the book.

00:11:22:10 – 00:11:41:27
Scott Eyman
And the book is told, not told in flashback form either. But he thought the secret to Double Indemnity was a murder. Be the flashback. And, so that’s Jerry Wald injected that into Mildred Pierce, and nobody was sure it was going to work or not. But Wald was the was the producer of the picture, and they let him run with the ball.

00:11:42:00 – 00:12:11:14
Scott Eyman
And it turned out to be. Yeah. The as Crawford, and James McCain, the author of Mildred Pierce aided edit that aided the murder. And the only thing Crawford told of what we tried it without the murder, but the murder kind of tied it all together, which was true. The murder does tie it all together. So a long answer, a short question, admittedly, but, they, they kind of regarded each other warily from opposing corners of the ring.

00:12:11:17 – 00:12:37:14
Scott Eyman
You know, at Warner Brothers, because basically they were different kinds of actresses. Crawford at a sexual component that Davis had less of. I think it’s fair to say Davis was regarded as the superior actress. I think it’s fair to say, but they they weren’t really the they didn’t they weren’t developing the same kind of scripts for both women by any stretch of the imagination.

00:12:37:16 – 00:12:49:21
Dan LeFebvre
And you mentioned, you know, maybe feud is a strong word to use. Would you go the other way and say that at any point where they friendly with each other, or were they just kind of professional rivals? Almost.

00:12:49:24 – 00:13:20:29
Scott Eyman
No, they were never friends. They were never. Crawford had, actress friends. She was very close with Barbara Stanwyck, for instance. She was very close with Virginia Gray. Myrna Loy was a friend for, almost 50 years. She had a lot of friendships with actresses on her level or close to her level. But, no, she and she and Crawford would never friendly.

00:13:21:01 – 00:13:49:18
Scott Eyman
As Robert Aldrich says. I quote him in the book. He says, I think it would be fair to say they detested each other, but they were actually completely professional, which is true, which is one of the big, inaccurate things about the TV show. They make it sound like it was like Ali versus Frazier in the third fight, and they just went to their opposing quarters, and they came out trying to kill each other.

00:13:49:20 – 00:14:19:13
Scott Eyman
And it really wasn’t like that. Not even close. And the reason it wasn’t like that is because Robert Aldrich had $900,000 to make that movie all in, that’s all in. And the movie runs two hours and ten minutes, and they had a six week shooting schedule. So work the work, the logistics out. There was no time for an afternoon spent haggling over what that bitch said to me, or what the other bet that wasn’t going to happen.

00:14:19:16 – 00:14:43:00
Scott Eyman
This was a sprint. It wasn’t a straw. The only way to get that picture made was, was absolutely everybody showing up, knowing their lines. Rehearse it once, rehearse it twice, shoot it. Move on. Otherwise, you weren’t gonna get the picture done in six weeks and there was no more money. There was no more money. There was no overage because it was independently financed.

00:14:43:03 – 00:14:55:27
Scott Eyman
It wasn’t financed by Jack Warner, was financed by, Ken Hyman. $900,000. And that was all in. And if Robert, if they had gone over budget, Aldrich would have had to come up with the extra money.

00:14:56:00 – 00:14:58:24
Dan LeFebvre
Which isn’t likely to do or want to do.

00:14:58:24 – 00:15:13:22
Scott Eyman
Fisher wanted to do it. He certainly didn’t want it. That wasn’t the business. It was that he would do that. He did do that. A fair number of occasions. A lot of the pictures he made, both in the latter part of the 50s, in the 60s, things like The Big Knife and Attack essentially were financed by Robert Aldrich.

00:15:13:24 – 00:15:41:16
Scott Eyman
He’d get an advance from distributor, he contribute, a portion of the budget out of his, his own coffers. But his own coffers came and went. You know, it’s when you’re an independent, filmmaker like that. Not everything makes money. And, you know, when you when you when you’re when you’re when your wallet is low, there’s it’s not like you could just go to, you know, your rich uncle, and get a, get a couple hundred thousand dollars to tide you over.

00:15:41:19 – 00:16:05:29
Dan LeFebvre
True. What you may have already answered my next question, but in episode two, when we start to see the filming underway, according to the series, it. It doesn’t take long to realize that Joan Crawford and Betty Davis are just a nightmare to work with. They’re constantly trying to undermine each other. Even force the hand of, You mentioned Robert Aldrich, the director, to fire a younger actress after she makes Joan feel old.

00:16:06:01 – 00:16:20:24
Dan LeFebvre
Was Baby Jane a particularly hostile set like we see in the series? Was it because Betty and Joan were working together? That seems to be what the series is implying. Or did the real Joan Crawford have a history of being difficult to work with even without Betty Davis there?

00:16:20:26 – 00:16:43:01
Scott Eyman
No. Well, the the dynamic Crawford wanted a happy set always. And that’s why she had this routine of on the first day of the picture, she would greet everybody on the crew personally, work under the picture, tell them she looked forward to working with them during the shoot. She would give people presents. Certainly the director, occasionally the cameraman.

00:16:43:01 – 00:17:04:23
Scott Eyman
She would also get presents to. She wanted a happy set. Now, there might have been an element of calculation in some of this. Certainly. But she wanted everybody, on her side, and she was willing to do what, you know, to act like, a generous, spirited granddaughter in order to get that the vibe. Got the vibe.

00:17:04:23 – 00:17:32:26
Scott Eyman
She wasn’t going. She didn’t like a hostile set. She didn’t function well in hostility. She had enough of that in her early life. She had a wretched, wretched childhood. And. And she didn’t go out of her way looking for contention, looking for aggravation. Betty Davis was stimulated by aggravation. Betty Day, always Betty Davis was stimulated by confrontation. She enjoyed it.

00:17:32:29 – 00:17:57:25
Scott Eyman
She had a gladiatorial frame of mind. I was friends with Lindsay Anderson, who directed her in Whales of August, which was she did with Lillian Gish. Was Lillian Gish last picture. And, I talked to Lindsay about the experience of working with her. And Lillian Gish at this point was 92 or 93 years old, literally. She was over 90, and she showed up every day with her lines.

00:17:57:27 – 00:18:24:22
Scott Eyman
And except for one day when she came on the set at 8 a.m. and she didn’t know where she was, and, and Lindsay thought the film was about to collapse because there’s no way to cut around it. This is the gamble you take with a very elderly performer, you know, and if suddenly they can’t remember their dialog, well, you can cover that with, cue cards, you know, but with an actress who doesn’t know where she is.

00:18:24:25 – 00:18:52:21
Scott Eyman
But, yeah, it was panic time, but, but, but 75, 90 minutes later, she was fine. She realized she was making the movie. She asked, and she remembered her dialog was the only time she had a memory slip on the picture. But Davis was very volatile and very angry and very hostile. Sluggish for no reason. Because, as Lindsay would said, Lillian was a sweet old lady.

00:18:52:24 – 00:19:17:19
Scott Eyman
She never had a bad word to say about anybody, but that just made Davis all the more angry, really, because she wanted someone to push back against, you know? And Gish wasn’t going to fight. She needed every ounce of her energy to get through the day. When you’re 93 and you’re making a movie, and he and Lizzie said, I began to think that Betty was insane.

00:19:17:25 – 00:19:43:20
Scott Eyman
Literally crazy. Now this is down the road from Baby Jane. This is in, the late 80s, 1986, 1987. But it was a harrowing experience for Lindsay because he didn’t expect this, because he worshiped Betty Davis. He never he liked silent movies, but he grew up watching Betty Davis in 30s and 40s in England. And, he’d always loved her.

00:19:43:23 – 00:20:03:28
Scott Eyman
And here she was, a bitch on wheels. And he wasn’t prepared for that. Well, if he talked to some people from Hollywood, he would have been more prepared for it because she could make you. It was glad it. Or it could be glad it’s real. With Betty Davis. So, as Aldrich said, it’s fair to say they detested each other.

00:20:04:05 – 00:20:26:16
Scott Eyman
But there was never a harsh word spoken because a there wasn’t time. And B and if you look at the picture, Crawford doesn’t have that much to do. She’s up in the room in the second floor. It’s basically big baby Jane’s movie. It’s Betty Davis, this movie. She’s got most of the screen time. She’s got most of the movement.

00:20:26:16 – 00:20:56:23
Scott Eyman
The character Crawford never leaves the house until the last scene in the picture, baby Jane is got. She’s doing banking. She’s messing around with Victor Buono, who hates his mother. You know, there’s she’s actually interacting with other people. Crawford character does interact with anybody except her sister, Baby Jane. So Crawford is basically working in one room for the production, whereas Baby Jane is out and about and she’s shopping.

00:20:56:23 – 00:21:19:24
Scott Eyman
We see her going in the car. That’s old car. They haven’t, but she’s much more, everything happens because of Baby Jane and that sense she’s not only the title character, she’s the fulcrum of the movie. She’s the she’s she’s the movement of the movie. Everything happens because of Jane Hudson. And not because of anything. The Crawford character does.

00:21:19:28 – 00:21:40:18
Scott Eyman
The Crawford character is completely reactive, completely reactive. So that’s a but but she knew that going in. And another thing is, is that the idea of the two of them doing a movie together was Crawford’s idea. Crawford and Aldrich had done a film before. Autumn leaves, a very good movie, by the way.

00:21:40:20 – 00:22:07:02
Scott Eyman
And at some point between Autumn Leaves and Baby Jane and six years, I believe, 6 or 7 years between the two pictures, she had mentioned to Betty Davis somehow I don’t know what the where they were, but Aldrich said the you know, his letter to Betty Davis sending her the novel A Baby Jane. This is in Aldrich’s papers, which is where most of my information came from.

00:22:07:02 – 00:22:28:06
Scott Eyman
The Robert Aldrich a collection at UCLA. He mentions that Betty Davis had mentioned to you, Davis, I mean, that Crawford had mentioned to, Davis at some point in the future that they should do a movie together. And it got Aldrich thinking, and he said, I think I’ve got the property. And he sent her a copy of the novel.

00:22:28:06 – 00:23:04:20
Scott Eyman
Script had been written yet, and he wanted to gauge your interest in the story. So he sent her a copy of a cover letter and a copy of The End. Farrell mobile. And her agent Davis had her agent write back inquiring about money and billing. And, you know, the negotiations started. Now, at this point, Davis is going into, night of the Iguana on Broadway playing Maxine, which is alluded to in the first hour to show, not one of her finest hours.

00:23:04:23 – 00:23:31:01
Scott Eyman
And, she’s working. But the reviews for this show and her weren’t great. Not that she cared, and, but basically she had, I think, a six month contract or a run of the play contract that she got out of it after six months because Tennessee Williams wasn’t happy with the show and the performance, and she wasn’t happy with the play and whatever.

00:23:31:04 – 00:24:03:09
Scott Eyman
So at that point, when she leaves night of the iguana, she’s available. And the doors were not being beaten down for her or for Crawford. Neither one of them was getting any work in movies at at all. Crawford had made a movie since 1959, and we’re talking 1961 here, 1960 or 61 at this point. And nobody’s beating down her door and her husband has died, and she’s sitting alone in her huge apartment in New York City, twiddling your thumbs, wishing the phone would ring.

00:24:03:12 – 00:24:29:02
Scott Eyman
And the phone’s not ringing. But Aldrich was very much in the game that had a successful run with Autumn leaves, and, she had mentioned him that she thought she and Betty Davis should make a movie. Okay, so it got Aldrich thinking. He sends the book to Betty Davis, and the dance begins and they start talking contracts. And that goes on for six months while the script’s being written, basically.

00:24:29:04 – 00:24:52:18
Scott Eyman
And, the show moves and but he can’t get it financed. Nobody wants to finance that one because they’re both both Davis and Crawford regarded as washed up. Nobody wanted to put up the money, so he went shopping for independent money, and he got Ken Hyman to, put up $900,000. And Jack Warner agreed to distribute the film on a straight percentage basis.

00:24:52:21 – 00:25:12:04
Scott Eyman
Just 30% off the top. Okay. I’m sure Warner didn’t think much was going to happen, but he didn’t have any money involved in it. So what did he care if it did? It did if it did $800,000, we get 30% of $800,000 or whatever. So that’s the way the picture went forward. So it was done on a shoestring.

00:25:12:04 – 00:25:36:16
Scott Eyman
What amounted to a shoestring, and there was some haggling over, but there was some haggling over percentages. There was haggling over billing. Davis got top billing, I believe I don’t have I don’t have my book in front of me. I believe Crawford got a slightly higher percentage of the profits because Davis got top billing. But that was it.

00:25:36:16 – 00:25:58:18
Scott Eyman
In the end, the film was shot basically on time. I think they went three days over schedule or something like that, but it had to be shot on time because there was no extra money. And it was not, as Aldrich said, they detested each other, but they were absolutely professional. There was never the only incident that Aldrich alluded to involved.

00:25:58:21 – 00:26:20:02
Scott Eyman
There’s shooting a scene with the two of them, and Crawford had a cold and they’re haggling, and there was some problem with the lighting. So it was going to take 20 minutes or half an hour or so, Crawford said. Would you mind if I go to my dressing room? And Aldrich said, no, of course. And Davis said, well, you’d think we’d all be professionals by now.

00:26:20:04 – 00:26:37:01
Scott Eyman
That was it. And Crawford just looked at her and got up and went to her dressing room, and when they were, the problem was solved. They called her, and she came right back out and they went into the scene, you know. But that was actually that was Aldrich says. That was the only actual unpleasantness on the picture, that one incident, you’d think we’d all be pros by now.

00:26:37:07 – 00:26:38:20
Scott Eyman
That was it.

00:26:38:22 – 00:26:46:10
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like, Betty Davis just kind of trying to push a button there cause some drama, if that’s something that she was feeds on.

00:26:46:13 – 00:26:57:13
Scott Eyman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That was her M.O.. And Crawford wouldn’t be goaded. She is. Wouldn’t be that bigoted because a she wanted the picture.

00:26:57:16 – 00:27:25:21
Scott Eyman
She just desperately needed to work. She she was okay about money at that point. It wasn’t about money. It was about the work. She was desperate to work. And because she’d been working since she was 13 years old, literally. And I once their mother, you know, whether it was cookie in a, you know, in a school or a chorus girl for the Schubert’s and Broadway or at MGM, she was a worker worker.

00:27:25:21 – 00:27:48:21
Scott Eyman
B that was how she defined herself. The movie stardom was kind of an accident because she never dreamt she could ever achieve that. I don’t think that was a a wild, you know, something? You wake up, you lure yourself to sleep at night thinking a buck wouldn’t be wonderful to be a big movie star when you rub dirt or in Kansas and and and Texas, good God.

00:27:48:27 – 00:28:16:02
Scott Eyman
You know, and Oklahoma or. So it was it, you know, stardom was something it was hard for her to grasp, but hard for her to accept. Whereas Davis was always going to be an actress, she always going to be an actress. I think in her own mind, stardom was always a distinct possibility. But no, because her goal was to be the the very best, the very top of the League of the elite.

00:28:16:04 – 00:28:29:02
Scott Eyman
And whereas Crawford’s goal was survival. Stardom was stardom was accidental in her mind. And and she never felt.

00:28:29:04 – 00:28:50:23
Scott Eyman
She said the person who taught her the most about acting was Lon Chaney. She made one picture at lunch in 1927 called The Unknown, and it’s a remarkably good movie. And you really. But she said, is total concentration. Nothing interfered with his concentration when he was working. There was nothing else. World War Three could have broken out.

00:28:50:23 – 00:29:18:12
Scott Eyman
World War Two could have broken out. And he would have continued with his take with the take. You know, he just he was totally, focused on being an actor, acting that scene, communicating the character’s emotions to the audience. And that’s where Crawford got her M.O. as an actress from Lon Chaney and and, but stardom, that was a role as a crazy roll the dice.

00:29:18:15 – 00:29:26:16
Scott Eyman
And given her background and her lack of education, why would she think that? Why would you think that was something attainable? No.

00:29:26:19 – 00:29:42:21
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. No, that makes sense. It, a dream perhaps, but sometime, I guess it sounds like she had imposter syndrome. Like she would never believe that she was the star, that a lot of other people saw her as being.

00:29:42:24 – 00:30:04:24
Scott Eyman
I think she settled into it after a time, but I never think. I don’t think she ever felt entirely secure with it because she grew up with nothing. When you grow up with nothing in the back of your mind, there’s always the possibility that nothing can come back, not back knocking at your door. You know, catastrophe is always a possibility.

00:30:04:26 – 00:30:08:09
Scott Eyman
And,

00:30:08:12 – 00:30:34:07
Scott Eyman
So when things went south, as they tended to do for actresses in that era, because there was nothing but the movies, really, television was in its infancy and it was a lower form of showbusiness life. And movie stars generally didn’t do TV, you know, in the 50s it just wasn’t done. A number of them tried it. Irene Dunne at a, show that didn’t work.

00:30:34:14 – 00:31:03:28
Scott Eyman
Stanwyck had a show that didn’t work. Then in the 60s, she had The Big Valley, which kind of worked. It’s not a great show, but it was offered, I don’t know, four years, maybe five years. Okay. But for that generation of actors and actresses, you worked. You didn’t just sit around the house and watch the flowers grow in the garden, in the backyard in Beverly Hills, you know, because they were all almost all of them came from nothing came from blue collar backgrounds.

00:31:04:00 – 00:31:36:22
Scott Eyman
Or if you weren’t working, you weren’t earning. And if you were earning, next month’s groceries were going to be a problem. So they believed in work. But on the other hand, TV was so dumb down market in the 50s, you know, nobody really took it seriously. People who succeeded in television were often people who had failed in the movies, like Milton Berle, you know, who was huge in television in the 50s and, and people like that, or Red Skelton, who had worn out his welcome in the movies, and he became a big star in TV.

00:31:36:25 – 00:32:08:05
Scott Eyman
But he downshift. It was sense of downshifting. They were still good money, but it wasn’t the same prestige. So and especially for a Crawfords born in 1905. So, in the she’s when she does Autumn leaves for Aldrich, she’s 51, 50 or 51 when she’s doing Baby Jane, she’s 57, 58, and she looks older than 57 or 58 because she’s made up to look on the 50 certificate.

00:32:08:07 – 00:32:26:04
Scott Eyman
You know, her hair’s a messy. She’s not she’s not actually not she’s not. They’re dressed. They didn’t dress them up. They’re making them look as horrible as possible to emphasize the squalor they’re living, the emotional squalor as well as the impending physical squalor.

00:32:26:06 – 00:32:44:26
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I’d like to ask about another side of Joan Crawford, because in the TV series, in episode three, we see Joan Crawford’s personal life a little bit more. When we see her twin daughters, Kathy and Cindy, they’re having dinner with their mom. And then, you know, Joan seems to be spending time with them. But we also hear a mention of another daughter named Christina, who is opening in a play.

00:32:44:29 – 00:33:05:21
Dan LeFebvre
We never see Christina in the episode, but John’s made you mention her before. Mamacita gives Joan and a card to mail to Christina, and for a moment she almost refuses to sign the card, almost refusing to give any words of encouragement for Christina, which seems to be pretty a stark contrast to her talking to her twin daughters for dinner.

00:33:05:21 – 00:33:10:16
Dan LeFebvre
So can you explain what Joan Crawford was like as a mother to her children?

00:33:10:18 – 00:33:14:07
Scott Eyman
It depends on which of the children you ask.

00:33:14:10 – 00:33:18:06
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, that’s fair. It seems like there’s this contrast even in that scene. I mean, that they’re one.

00:33:18:09 – 00:33:55:05
Scott Eyman
That’s lit, that that’s actually accurate. She adopted four children. The twins, and Christina and, a boy, they were four, she batted 500. The boy turned out to have a lot of problems with the law. Was arrested many times. Christina and Joan, it’s fair to say there was a, they never got along or they did get along, but not for very long.

00:33:55:12 – 00:34:27:17
Scott Eyman
It was constant grinding gears, constant grinding of gears. Christina, of course, wrote Mommie Dearest after her mother died, after Joan died, and the twins, said none of that happened. It was nothing that Christina describe, or very little that Christina described actually happened. There were no beatings at Saratoga there. But Christina insisted this was God’s honest truth.

00:34:27:19 – 00:34:56:10
Scott Eyman
Well, you can read my book. But you, she and Christina, even when Christina was a teenager, it was a constant thing, you know, they just didn’t get along. And whereas the twins were, she always basically had a good relationship with them. And in her will, Joan disinherited Christina and the boy, whereas the twins were included in her in her estate.

00:34:56:12 – 00:35:18:12
Scott Eyman
So there are various reasons for the, for the, imbalance between them. But, and Crawford talked about that. It even got into the print when they were, when Crawford was alive, Christina would give an interview blasting her mother, and then the reporters would go over to Crawford, and Crawford would give an interview about her difficulties with Christina.

00:35:18:14 – 00:35:36:20
Scott Eyman
It was just one of these kind of soap opera ish, thing where two people just really couldn’t get along, you know, and, and, as I write in the book, you know, five under is a pretty good average for baseball. It’s not too good with Joan.

00:35:36:22 – 00:35:56:26
Scott Eyman
But it does happen. You know, it does happen. But, the twins are both gone now. They died in the last, 6 or 7 years. But, in her will, Crawford disinherited both the Christina and her son.

00:35:56:29 – 00:36:14:17
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Yeah. It seems like there’s there is a contrast there. So. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. The episode the or in the episode where we see that stark contrast of having dinner with, with the twins and then almost like refusing any sort of encouragement, it just seemed like, yeah, I was seeing the contrast in there.

00:36:14:17 – 00:36:23:29
Scott Eyman
So that’s an allusion, I’m sure, to the the ending. Mommie dearest, which everybody you know is in the back of her mind when it comes to Joan Crawford, especially at that stage, your life.

00:36:24:01 – 00:36:40:08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Well, I think the episode is even called Mommie Dearest, so it definitely alludes to, because she writes that in the card, I think is what she ended up writing to Christina, in which I’m sure the specifics of that part of it was probably fictionalized, but just the concept getting across. It sounds like was pretty, pretty spot on.

00:36:40:10 – 00:37:07:13
Dan LeFebvre
We’re up to episode four of the TV series now. The filming of Baby Jane is completed, but it’s not released yet and no one really expects it to be good. Meanwhile, Joan Crawford and Betty Davis both seem shocked that they’re not getting offers since they thought Baby Jane would immediately rekindle their careers. As I was watching this episode, my takeaway wasn’t so much that their struggles in finding work had anything to do with Baby Jane since that hadn’t been released yet.

00:37:07:15 – 00:37:22:18
Dan LeFebvre
But the reason Joan and Betty weren’t getting offers seems to be because that’s how it was in the 1960s for older actresses in Hollywood. Is the series correct a show? It’s difficult to find parts, even for someone of Crawford’s career, simply because of her age and gender.

00:37:22:21 – 00:37:44:12
Scott Eyman
See? See, the difference between then and now is an actress in there? Well, I mean, to Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, we’re playing Betty and Joan. They’re six two in their 60s. They work all the time because there’s different strategies of show business now. But in the period we’re talking about, there was the movies or there was. That was it.

00:37:44:17 – 00:38:13:15
Scott Eyman
There wasn’t anything else. Now you’ve got streaming, you’ve got cable, there’s all these different things and they’re all needing product. And so there’s a lot more work for actresses after they’re no longer leading ladies. 28 to 35, shall we say. You know, where they’re playing. Women who don’t have necessarily families and two husbands or three husband.

00:38:13:17 – 00:38:39:20
Scott Eyman
There’s a lot more work now for actresses of a certain age than there was in the period that we’re talking about. That’s just the reality of it. And but there was no the not until the film broke and suddenly became a smash hit. And then suddenly everything changed. Suddenly the phone started ringing again. It must have been a wonderful, you know, and then and then Aldrich gets an offer from Fox to come over there and do our show.

00:38:39:20 – 00:39:16:17
Scott Eyman
Sweet Charlotte, you know, and do another Betty Davis Joan Crawford movie. And I’m sure he thought long and hard about. Long and hard about it and but and so the negotiations start again. And then the Oscar nominations come out for Baby Jane and Davis gets a nomination and Crawford does it. And then it gets interesting because, Crawford announces that she’ll be happy to accept the award for anybody that can’t make it to the ceremony.

00:39:16:19 – 00:39:35:07
Scott Eyman
And because she’s a previous winner of the Best actress Oscar, of course, she always is asked to present, you know, as former, former, winners are if they’re not working and they can get there, they’re often asked to present an award to this year’s winner. So she was asked to present. So she said she’d be happy to present.

00:39:35:10 – 00:39:59:07
Scott Eyman
And she also be happy to accept the award for whoever won. Well, Davis is there, of course, hoping she’s going to win and she doesn’t win. And Bancroft wins for the miracle worker. And Crawford gets up and accepts that. And she reads Bancroft’s note of acceptance that Bancroft, etc.. In case you want.

00:39:59:10 – 00:40:33:03
Scott Eyman
And in the during the broadcast, Crawford had been holding court actually had a little bar open in the back of the stage. And there was Pepsi-Cola, of course, as well as vodka and bites and things to eat for people because you get hungry, because the show goes out for 3 or 4 hours as she well knew, and everything was very convivial and, and Davis took I’m sure she took it took and Bancroft winning as, untoward.

00:40:33:05 – 00:41:02:11
Scott Eyman
And she wasn’t thrilled about, Crawford being the belle of the ball backstage, either. And at that point, that’s when that was when the situation went to the third degree between the two. And Crawford seems to have been unaware of it until they got on the set of Hush Hush with Charlotte. But that was the point at which Davis really dug it and dug in and said, I got really angry.

00:41:02:13 – 00:41:08:19
Scott Eyman
And de Betty Davis angry was quite a sight. It was like Vesuvius, you know, just.

00:41:08:21 – 00:41:09:24
Dan LeFebvre
Something I want to see angry.

00:41:09:27 – 00:41:13:19
Scott Eyman
So you don’t want her coming at you? You really did want to know.

00:41:13:22 – 00:41:33:05
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we see that in, episode five. We see how that play out in the Academy Awards. And if we’re to believe the TV version, then Joan Crawford was the one that kind of went around and called the nominees to see if, you know, she could accept on their behalf. And she kind of seems to be the one driving a lot of that.

00:41:33:05 – 00:41:43:26
Dan LeFebvre
Was, was she actually driving a lot of that, or was that just because she was, a former winner then she can present and since she’s already going to be there, or was she kind of driving it?

00:41:43:28 – 00:41:46:23
Scott Eyman
I think she was probably driving.

00:41:46:25 – 00:41:48:22
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, okay.

00:41:48:24 – 00:41:54:20
Scott Eyman
I can’t I can’t speak with 100% certitude, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

00:41:54:22 – 00:41:58:19
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. So it she knew what was going on there pretty much.

00:41:58:22 – 00:42:04:29
Scott Eyman
Well, she was not averse to getting a little time in front of the camera, let’s put it that way.

00:42:05:02 – 00:42:07:18
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, that makes sense. She’s an actress, too.

00:42:07:21 – 00:42:32:08
Scott Eyman
And the Academy Awards, everybody watched the Academy Awards in that era. You know, everybody watched the Oscars because everybody went to the movies. Now, not that many people go to the movies, and not that many people watch the Oscars, because not that many people see the movies that are being nominated. So it’s an entirely different moviegoing environment now than it was in 1963, when they’re giving up the Oscars for the 1962 films.

00:42:32:11 – 00:42:44:06
Scott Eyman
But in that era, everybody watch the Oscars until you got sleepy, you know? And and round about 10:00, America went to bed, but they were still giving out the awards.

00:42:44:09 – 00:43:03:08
Dan LeFebvre
So it sounds like it may have been more, that that more about the awards themselves. Not necessarily as much. I mean, the TV show it obviously plays up on. She’s doing this because she knows Betty Davis is going to hate this. Right? That’s the reason she’s doing it more than she wants, you know, to be on camera.

00:43:03:10 – 00:43:23:19
Scott Eyman
I can’t speak to her, her or her, her intent, you know, on the other hand, I mean, there was no guarantee she was Betty Davis going to lose. She could have won. Maybe she was number eight. She lost to Anne Bancroft by three votes. Who knows? You know, they don’t announce the vote of, Bancroft did give a great performance.

00:43:23:25 – 00:43:53:13
Scott Eyman
There’s no question about that. Hollywood loves a comeback story. But Bancroft is great in The Miracle Worker. She was always great. She was a wonderful actors. But, Davis took it personally, took as a personal affront, and, probably took it to her grave. There’s a a quote from Robert Aldrich I found. He said, Joan Crawford, Woody could be angry for 2 or 3 days.

00:43:53:15 – 00:44:14:02
Scott Eyman
Eddie Davis would be angry forever. She’d share a grudge and she yelled out it was forever. Crawford would get over it, but Davis would not get over it. And Davis never did get over it. She always thought that that Crawford somehow didn’t ace her out of the Oscar.

00:44:14:04 – 00:44:34:18
Scott Eyman
But shoehorned her way in front of the camera. That was it. That was that was what really pissed off Davis. That she was up there getting some of Anne Bancroft, glory by accepting the award. Even nobody. No, nobody thinks of it that way. But for Davis, it seemed that way.

00:44:34:20 – 00:44:53:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, there is a brief line of dialog in episode six where Betty Davis mentions Anne Bancroft probably hasn’t even laid eyes on her Oscar since Joan accepted it. Do we know if Joan Crawford kept the award like the TV show seems to imply? Or did she actually give Bancroft or her Oscar? I would assume.

00:44:53:12 – 00:45:13:20
Scott Eyman
She gave Bancroft her Oscar this picture Bancroft hugging her Oscar in her apartment in New York City. She was she was married to Mel Brooks by that time. And they were living in an apartment. Not a terribly fancy apartment at that point, because neither one of them really made much money at that point. Yeah, but she got her Oscar in is remember, Crawford lived in New York.

00:45:13:23 – 00:45:25:09
Scott Eyman
She was going to leave. She was going to leave after the ceremony and go back to her house in her apartment in New York. So it was perfectly normal for her to get it to to Bancroft a couple days later.

00:45:25:12 – 00:45:30:00
Dan LeFebvre
Make sense? Yeah, I do feel like that was. No, that’s not true. But that seems a little far.

00:45:30:06 – 00:45:32:06
Scott Eyman
That would be pathological behavior.

00:45:32:09 – 00:45:54:07
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Well, you mentioned the movie before, and in episode six, director Robert Aldrich seems it’s time to recapture the success of Baby Jane. And this time it’s a film called hush, Hush, cousin Charlotte brings back Joan Crawford and Betty Davis, and this movie set doesn’t really seem to be any better than what we saw with Baby Jane. Joan is constantly drinking.

00:45:54:07 – 00:46:00:18
Dan LeFebvre
There are strong hints that Betty Davis and the director are sleeping together, which only makes Joan even more angry with that situation.

00:46:00:21 – 00:46:02:02
Scott Eyman
Once sleeping together.

00:46:02:04 – 00:46:03:03
Dan LeFebvre
They weren’t sleeping together.

00:46:03:03 – 00:46:23:18
Scott Eyman
Aldrich was not. Aldrich was not attracted to 60 year old women. No, he wasn’t a he didn’t make a habit out of sleeping with his late. Actually, Alfred Molina is very good in that in this film he actually gets a sense of Aldrich across. He, he’s bulked up. I think he’s padded. But he’s got his tie exactly the way Aldrich wore his tie.

00:46:23:21 – 00:46:41:05
Scott Eyman
You know, you didn’t, it it was just kind of crossed with with the thing, and halfway down his chest, was exactly how Aldrich was, you know, with an open shirt. That’s how Aldrich dressed. He never had it. Were in their era, a lot of directors wore, you know, a coat and tie when they’re working. Orders didn’t do that.

00:46:41:07 – 00:47:10:21
Scott Eyman
He was very much more casual dungarees and stuff. But, Molina, actually, I think did get, he must have talked to somebody or looked at stills of Aldrich and tried to replicate what he was actually like because Ortiz was a big split ball player. You know, he was a burly guy, came from money. The Rockefeller had branch, the Rockefeller estate, wanted to he didn’t share their politics and didn’t care about their money.

00:47:10:24 – 00:47:19:09
Scott Eyman
So he went out on his own, became a really, really fine director. But he was a he was a born nonconformist, ordered.

00:47:19:11 – 00:47:44:01
Dan LeFebvre
For the believe, the TV show. And in that episode, the impression I got for Joan Crawford on the set of Cousin Charlotte was that she basically seemed like she hated being there, but she’s also a workaholic, and so she kind of seemed to rely on alcohol to help her get through it. Would you agree with the TV shows depiction of the way it portrays Joan Crawford doing her shows?

00:47:44:03 – 00:47:45:07
Dan LeFebvre
Because it’s early.

00:47:45:09 – 00:48:09:00
Scott Eyman
I talked to a number of people who work with Joan Crawford. They’re still a lot. Well, 3 or 4, and they all say the same thing. She didn’t drink. She sipped. She was never drunk. And David Ladd, Alan Ladd, son, who worked with her. The last thing she did, actually, for television. Last thing she did forever in 1971 or 2.

00:48:09:02 – 00:48:32:14
Scott Eyman
He said a lot of the studio people, people from the studio era did that. They would sip vodka or whiskey, whatever it was through the day. They were never drunk. He said. Including my father. He said they didn’t get drunk, but they weren’t. But but it was it was their it was a way of medicating themselves, of their anxiety, of professional anxiety.

00:48:32:16 – 00:48:53:03
Scott Eyman
And they could and they had been doing it long enough so that they, they could kind of knew what their, capacity was, and they wouldn’t go beyond a certain point because it would be unprofessional if at 3:00 in the afternoon, you suddenly can’t get up out of your chair to do it because, you know, and I never got to that point, she said.

00:48:53:03 – 00:49:13:11
Scott Eyman
She sipped. She didn’t guzzle at all. She was she was. She appeared sober, even if she was sipping like it was always vodka. So I guess that that’s accurate in terms of the film. But she wasn’t drunk working. She wasn’t working.

00:49:13:14 – 00:49:18:29
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. The impression I get is that she was drinking all the time, but not necessarily not just sipping. It seemed like she was.

00:49:18:29 – 00:49:19:17
Scott Eyman
No, I know.

00:49:19:18 – 00:49:20:09
Dan LeFebvre
Full on drinking.

00:49:20:16 – 00:49:50:18
Scott Eyman
It was not, a blackout drunk. Because who’s going to hire a blackout drunk? Really? Because we’re gets around fast. If you’ve got a drug problem or if you’re, like, drunk on the set, that’s really tough to get a past, you know, any time, any time, Errol Flynn got away with it some of the time because he, he was an alcoholic, not just sipping, I mean, either at as, after two in the afternoon, you didn’t get a lot of footage on Flynn.

00:49:50:21 – 00:50:14:17
Scott Eyman
Yeah, that was just the way it was. And everybody knew that. If you factored that into your day, there were maybe 5:00 scenes with Flynn. He weren’t going to be there. He was going to be in his dressing room sleeping. And I’m sure there probably were a couple other people like that, you know, but they didn’t work much, you know, and Flynn, they put up with Flynn because he was a huge, huge star.

00:50:14:20 – 00:50:22:16
Scott Eyman
You got to be a huge star. Guaranteed gold at the box office to get to for Dale. But for them to put up with that kind of behavior.

00:50:22:18 – 00:50:46:22
Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of not working in episode seven of the TV series, Joan Crawford seems kind of fed up with the Cousin Charlotte film. And after finding out that some of her lines are cut, she ends up in the hospital where she’s diagnosed with pneumonia, and this forces the film to a grinding halt. Production company 20th Century Fox doesn’t believe she’s actually sick, and they threatened to sue Crawford if an independent doctor determines that she’s not actually sick.

00:50:46:24 – 00:51:04:13
Dan LeFebvre
She’s just saying that she is, for the purposes of delaying the film. And of course, the series. In the series, the doctor determines that she’s healthy, but she still refuses to leave the hospital. So the studio fires her from the film and instead hires Olivia de Havilland to play Crawford’s role. Is that what really happened?

00:51:04:19 – 00:51:39:06
Scott Eyman
No. What happened? And this is again from the Robert Aldrich Papers, which has all the medical reports, her doctors reports from the hospital, etc., etc., etc.. Two things happened. Davis started sniping verbally at her, and Crawford got sick and she started calling in sick, which she never did in her career, ever. She always showed up, you know, MGM, if you had a major, massive coronary, you’d better show up.

00:51:39:06 – 00:51:59:13
Scott Eyman
I mean, they made it. There were some exceptions. There was a Judy Garland problems. You know, speaking of the kind of thing we were talking about a little bit ago, they put up with things from Judy Garland. But again, Judy was a huge, huge star. And also she was kind of grew up at MGM. So she was family in a way.

00:51:59:15 – 00:52:19:26
Scott Eyman
Crawford started went to the hospital. This is like the second week of the picture. They shot for a couple days in Louisiana for for the long shots of, because it takes place in the South. So they needed to get the location stuff out of the way. So they shot for a week or so in Louisiana, and that was okay.

00:52:19:28 – 00:52:46:03
Scott Eyman
And then they got back to Hollywood, and Crawford started calling in sick. She went to Cedars. She got a lot of doctors examinations. The reports are in the Robert Aldrich papers that I’ve gone through. Basically, she had a lung infection and her white blood cell count was sky high. So she wasn’t faking. She was sick. She got to the hospital.

00:52:46:03 – 00:53:13:11
Scott Eyman
She went back. They shot for a couple days. She felt sick again. Went back in the hospital. Just. This went on for some weeks. Davis was sniping at her, and it was partly, I’m sure, psychiatric psychological, partly physical. You know, but Davis had taken the whole Oscar thing as a personal insult and and and was make. Is that the way you’re going to do it?

00:53:13:14 – 00:53:37:12
Scott Eyman
Is that you’re good. That’s the way you’re gonna play the scene kind of thing. And and Crawford began to feel derailed. I think, whatever, increased sense of, security. She’d gotten from the success of Baby Jane dissipated. And then she got this lung thing and is old. Robert Aldrich says. Said you can’t fake a high blood, high white cell blood cell count.

00:53:37:15 – 00:53:56:01
Scott Eyman
I mean, that’s you can’t you could make some stuff that you’re not going to fake. White blood cell count. They thought she might have leukemia. So this went on for several weeks. She. She’d be there for a while, then she’d have to go back to hospital. They even put a, detective on her tail to see if she was faking.

00:53:56:03 – 00:54:23:09
Scott Eyman
And, the results of that were inconclusive. And ultimately, they had to make a decision. This is about, 4 to 5 weeks later where they’ve got maybe a half hour of film after four weeks, and they should be finished or more. And they didn’t have a lot of film, and they basically had to make up their mind as Fisher cut bait, but then they had to decision.

00:54:23:09 – 00:54:47:24
Scott Eyman
Okay, well, if we fire, if we let her go, who do we get? So, Joe Cotton, who was playing the male lead in the picture, said that Aldrich asked Vivien Leigh if she’d like to come and do part in Vivien Leigh wired back so I could just about stand to be in a Louisiana plantation with Joan Crawford, but not with Betty Davis.

00:54:47:27 – 00:54:51:24
Scott Eyman
So Vivien Leigh out of it. She to my God, that’s a.

00:54:51:27 – 00:54:53:00
Dan LeFebvre
Wonderful way to say no.

00:54:53:03 – 00:55:18:26
Scott Eyman
Yeah, exactly. And part of the problem was that, Davis had approval in her contract of her costar, which she had given, and she would have approved Vivien Leigh Aldrich wanted to get it to Katharine Hepburn and see if Katharine Hepburn would do it. Now, I don’t believe Katharine Hepburn would ever have done a movie. This movie, if you’ve seen the movie, this is not a movie Katharine Hepburn is going to do.

00:55:18:28 – 00:55:42:29
Scott Eyman
I mean, at one point, Bruce Dern’s head bounces rather jauntily down, up, down a long, winding staircase. That’s not a Katharine Hepburn picture. It’s it’s not. But Davis had approval and she didn’t want her to work opposite. So Hepburn’s out. Even if she wanted to do it, Ephron would. She wouldn’t accept her. So who will you accept?

00:55:43:01 – 00:56:09:09
Scott Eyman
She’d accept a lady to Harvard because they were friendly. So the Warner Brothers dealt then. So Aldrich gets on a plane to goes to Switzerland, where they have living at that point. And, basically they, he talks her to taking the picture as a favor to Betty. So that’s the scenario. Then they announce it. Once they’ve got to Havilland, they can let John go, they can say what she’s indisposed, etc., etc., etc..

00:56:09:11 – 00:56:31:15
Scott Eyman
And, John was, unhappy. I’m not sure why, because she hadn’t worked. She’d worked less than 50% of the days they were supposed to be working, you know, and they were basically they had a choice. I had to recast the part or cancel the picture. And if you cancel the picture, then you’re going to make an insurance claim, and then it gets into lawyers.

00:56:31:17 – 00:57:02:03
Scott Eyman
And three years later, the lawyers will still be haggling the reality of it. That’s what happens when you cancel a whole movie because of something. And she I mean, the white blood cell count was sky high, etc., etc.. So she felt, Crawford was upset and as I said, I think it was her upset was unjustified. The Fox put up with quite a bit a lot of absences, orders put up with quite a lot of absences.

00:57:02:05 – 00:57:24:21
Scott Eyman
They had a picture hanging there. They wanted to get it done, so they got it done. And it did okay. Didn’t do anywhere near as well as Baby Jane. It did about half as well as Baby Jane. It probably would have done a lot better if Crawford had been the picture, frankly. Although Aldrich said he actually thought the Avalon was better for the picture.

00:57:24:24 – 00:57:46:22
Scott Eyman
Because if you’ve seen the movie, to have one is the heavy had to have the Crawford characters the heavy and and because it’s a flip on baby Jane, whereas Baby Jane is the heavy in the original picture. But in this picture, Crawford was going to be the habit. So, he said, you don’t expect Italy to. Olivia de Havilland Melanie for Gone with the wind to be the heavy.

00:57:46:28 – 00:58:01:10
Scott Eyman
She didn’t play heavy, you know. So he thought in that sense that it worked better for the audience. But it didn’t work as well commercially because Olivia de Havilland didn’t have the same cachet the Joan Crawford did in concert with Bill gates.

00:58:01:13 – 00:58:10:16
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. It sounds like there was a lot made up for the TV show. I appreciate you clarifying a lot of that.

00:58:10:18 – 00:58:33:06
Scott Eyman
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, that’s a it almost goes off the rails. I thought at that point because they’re just making they’re really kind of making wild, melodramatic. I think it was I mean, melodrama is bad enough when you’ve got private detectives tailing actresses around Beverly Hills to see if they’re going shopping at bullocks. Oh, it’s got this.

00:58:33:06 – 00:58:55:05
Scott Eyman
When they’re when they’re too sick to work, you know, that kind of, but but that’s, that’s the movie business. Yeah, it’s a little crazy, but Aldrich said, and then he put it, he said he thought it was. He liked the picture. He thought it worked out okay. It’s a good picture. It’s a surprise, considering the trouble they had on it.

00:58:55:07 – 00:59:10:21
Scott Eyman
It’s a good picture. It’s too. It’s two like that. But he said in retrospect, he thought it was a mistake for him to do it because he didn’t want to be Alfred Hitchcock. He didn’t want to come out of the same, same hole twice, he says. He wanted he wanted to make all different kinds of pictures, which he did.

00:59:10:26 – 00:59:34:26
Scott Eyman
If you look at his filmography, there’s Westerns, there’s there’s wars, there’s character pieces, there’s war films, there’s romances, there’s there’s melodrama, a lot of melodramas. He really did direct every kind of movie. And, he said he thought it was a mistake to do, a story that was so similar to Baby Jane. Right after Baby Jane.

00:59:34:28 – 00:59:58:18
Scott Eyman
He said I didn’t want to be Alfred Hitchcock. I never wanted to be Albert Hitchcock, who basically did one kind of movie over and over again, over. And I could see his point and his filmography, backs him up that he wasn’t that kind of director. Who wants it, who wants to type himself? There are directors who want to type themselves, you know, so the audience will know what they’re going to get, more or less, more or less when they go to see the movie.

00:59:58:21 – 01:00:20:20
Scott Eyman
That can be a commercial advantage. But there are directors who want to do all sorts of different stuff and reinvent themselves every, every, every picture, every other picture in Aldrich with one of those guys, all of the emotional temperature in Aldrich picture is always I, you know, it’s never casual, relaxed. Well, let’s let’s have a mint julep under the tree.

01:00:20:22 – 01:00:31:07
Scott Eyman
No, no, no, people are screaming. Hatchets are coming down. Cars are going off cliffs. The Aldrich love melodrama.

01:00:31:09 – 01:00:55:27
Dan LeFebvre
But, speaking of things a little different. And episode eight is the final episode of the series, and we see Joan making one more attempt at film in 1970. And this is a low budget horror movie called Trog that seems to be quite different than what Joan Crawford is used to doing. She also gets a book deal from Simon and Schuster, but then at the book signing, she realizes her public image isn’t really something that she likes.

01:00:55:27 – 01:01:05:07
Dan LeFebvre
And then with that, she calls her agent and tells him to stop submitting her for new roles. Is that really how Joan Crawford retired from the film business?

01:01:05:10 – 01:01:40:21
Scott Eyman
Yes and no. She had done films, but in between, Charlotte and Trog, she’d made, I think, 3 or 4 films. None of them I would recommend, particularly. But at that point, her need to work, was far greater than her. Her sense of discretion about her screen image or career. She just wanted to work. It was important to her to worry, to her identity that she work because she’d always been a worker.

01:01:40:26 – 01:02:12:28
Scott Eyman
From the time she was, like I said, 12 or 13 years old. They were they were, riffs on, riffs on Baby Jane, essentially. And Charlotte, you know, slasher movies on the low budget side. The advantage of that was she got a percentage, and a couple of them were quite lucrative at that point, money began to get more important because she had this gorgeous apartment across the street from the Frick two floor apartment.

01:02:13:00 – 01:02:33:28
Scott Eyman
But it was very expensive, and she’d had to move out. She had to cut thick cut bait because it was just eating up too much cash. And she moved out in 64, I believe, of the apartment and into a different building where she spent the rest of her life. It was a perfectly nice five room apartment.

01:02:33:28 – 01:03:11:03
Scott Eyman
Five, six room apartment. But compared to the place she’d been in and compared to the place in Brentwood that she’d sold in 1960, it was kind of claustrophobic. So there was a sense of diminishment, you know, professional diminishment as well as smaller space. And Mamacita was still with her, you know, a friend of Crawford’s that I interviewed for the book said, last time she saw John was at Christmas time in 1976, and Joan died in May of 77, and she came over to visit.

01:03:11:03 – 01:03:36:23
Scott Eyman
And Mamacita had gone back to Germany. And at Christmas time, at 76in. And then I knew that she was dying. The joke died because Mamacita would never have gone back to Germany unless it was over. You know, she did a couple films in between. Then she did Trog, which is an atrocity, an embarrassment. I talked to the girl who was in.

01:03:36:23 – 01:04:07:08
Scott Eyman
It’s got the second female lead in the picture. Marvelous woman, Jim Brady. And that was it. And there was a TV film after that TV episode after that, and then that was it. And about 72 or 73, she did an event in New York City, and there was some pictures taken of her and Rosalind Russell together. And Rosalind Russell was on massive a doses of steroids because she had terrible arthritis and she was puffy.

01:04:07:10 – 01:04:34:09
Scott Eyman
Rosalind Russell was very puffy. And between Russell and and the angle the photographs they picked really unflattering, shots. And Crawford looked at herself until, well, that’s what I look like. I’m not. They won’t see me anymore. So she never worked out that she’d go out. I mean, she didn’t become a hermit in her apartment. She would go out to dinner, her grandchildren would visit once a month.

01:04:34:11 – 01:04:57:17
Scott Eyman
Did the children of, one of the twins who lived, two hours away in Pennsylvania. The parents would drive them down to New York on Saturday to drop the kids off at Crawford’s apartment, and they’d go out at the parents would go out on the town, you know, go out to dinner and show, and Crawford had the grandchildren for the day.

01:04:57:19 – 01:05:20:17
Scott Eyman
This happened every month, you know, for years. And she was great with the kid, with the grandchildren. The grant the grandson assisted me with the book, gave me access to a lot of family material. But she did. And she saw friends, and she was there. 21 was your favorite restaurant in New York City. That was the place you could always find her on the second floor.

01:05:20:20 – 01:06:02:13
Scott Eyman
21. And she go. She went out to the theater. She went out to restaurants like, 21. But she pulled back from show business. She really did pull back show business. And, her world got smaller and smaller and smaller. And then she got sick. And because she was a kind of queasy, half assed Christian Scientist, not completely, but she always believed and, you know, cold, cold showers and, you know, buck up and healthy, healthy, healthy and had enormous animal energy, you know, very energetic, naturally.

01:06:02:15 – 01:06:24:16
Scott Eyman
Old age didn’t really sit well with her. She was 72 when she died, which is not old age as we think of it. 892 was old age, like Lillian Gish. That’s old. But she was 72. But the last five years where she slowed down, she did slow down considerably. And I think it was a low level depression, frankly, because she had to find herself as a worker.

01:06:24:16 – 01:06:49:19
Scott Eyman
She had to find herself as a as an actress, as a star, and suddenly that kind of drifted away. It just drifted away. And she didn’t really replace it with, you know, all stars have that problem. At a certain point, you know, nobody just start for in their 20s, like she was and also a star in their 70s, mid 70s.

01:06:49:19 – 01:07:15:11
Scott Eyman
I, you know, at some point things drop out, and, you know, you replace it with family, you replace it with other, other activities. Golf, palm Springs, you know, summers in Europe, you can replace it with all sorts of things. She didn’t have anything to replace it with, really. Her life just got smaller, and then she got sick and then she died.

01:07:15:13 – 01:07:28:23
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we do see hints of that in this series. At the very end, it it seems like her health kind of declines pretty quickly. She does seem to be a recluse. She’s diagnosed with with cancer. And then the TV show.

01:07:28:23 – 01:07:29:02
Scott Eyman
She was.

01:07:29:02 – 01:07:30:03
Dan LeFebvre
Never and.

01:07:30:05 – 01:07:31:23
Scott Eyman
She was never diagnosed.

01:07:31:25 – 01:07:33:09
Dan LeFebvre
She was never actually diagnosed. Okay.

01:07:33:09 – 01:07:36:13
Scott Eyman
Or actually diagnosed. There was serious weight loss.

01:07:36:16 – 01:07:36:27
Dan LeFebvre
Okay.

01:07:36:27 – 01:08:01:01
Scott Eyman
And she started, she was in terrible pain and there was a lot of weight loss. And she had back pain. Very bad back pain. So the general feeling within the family was that she had pancreatic cancer, but she wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t go because of the back. And also pancreatic cancer. By the time is diagnosed, it’s too late.

01:08:01:04 – 01:08:16:07
Scott Eyman
There’s there’s no treatment because the pancreas is inaccessible. Unlike other areas of the body where you get at it. The pancreas is inaccessible. So by the time it’s diagnosed, it’s already stage three.

01:08:16:09 – 01:08:38:24
Scott Eyman
But she never actually was diagnosed. She just lost weight. She had a hospital bed, moved into her bedroom in the apartment. She had some friends that would come in. She ordered takeout. The restaurant she liked would send over food for her, people that her friends within the building. The apartment building? She had a dog. She adored dog.

01:08:38:24 – 01:08:58:27
Scott Eyman
She always had a little dogs. Little dogs? She always had dogs. And she had a dog in this building. And the dog would get housebound apartment because she couldn’t get any exercise. So the neighbors were to take the take the dog and run the dog up and down the hallway to get exercise, you know, get a tired out of it because she couldn’t do it.

01:08:58:29 – 01:09:08:10
Scott Eyman
So it was kind of a, self-imposed sad ending, really very isolated set it.

01:09:08:12 – 01:09:20:27
Dan LeFebvre
One of the towards the end. You mentioned her friends, and towards the end, we we see her kind of hallucinating with some some friends around her table, like Hedda Hopper and Jack Warner and even Betty Davis.

01:09:20:27 – 01:09:22:12
Scott Eyman
She was never friends with Hopper.

01:09:22:19 – 01:09:31:08
Dan LeFebvre
That’s something that was going to be my question, because it seems like in the series, she’s like one of her best friends is Hedda Hopper. And she even helps, like writing things about Betty. And it just seems to fuel this feud.

01:09:31:08 – 01:09:55:00
Scott Eyman
You know, had a hopper, was was a bitch to everybody. Basically. It wasn’t personal with Crawford. But but Hopper, she were not friends. And you could. They’re. Hopper’s papers are voluminous. They’re at the academy, and there are interview transcripts of her interviewing Crawford. And there’s no intimacy whatever between the two of them. It’s very formal, very formal.

01:09:55:03 – 01:10:17:23
Scott Eyman
There’s no girlish give and take about, or there’s no social aspect. Whatever it’s. She’s asking Crawford. Hopper’s asking kind of professional questions, and Crawford is giving her professional answers. No intimacy, no insight. Really? No. They were never friends because,

01:10:17:25 – 01:10:27:26
Scott Eyman
Hopper was a tough, tough, broad. Really tough. She knew where the bodies were going to be buried that weren’t dead yet.

01:10:27:28 – 01:10:29:15
Dan LeFebvre
Well.

01:10:29:17 – 01:11:00:04
Scott Eyman
Really, I mean, he was tough, and not a lot of fun and not a lot of fun. Kind of mean spirited as a as a human being. She didn’t like Crawford. She thought she. Although they had similar backgrounds. Both came from nothing. Nothing. And were self and self invented, essentially. Well, Crawford gave her mother money, but she never gave her time.

01:11:00:07 – 01:11:23:04
Scott Eyman
She didn’t like her mother particularly. And chances are, she probably shouldn’t have liked your mother. Frankly, she kept her mother arm’s length. Her mother never wanted for anything. She had a house. She had all the money she needed. Crawford supported her. But Crawford would go 2 or 3 years without seeing they talk on the phone. So that was about it.

01:11:23:06 – 01:11:48:22
Scott Eyman
She wanted her mother at arm’s length. And there were good reasons for that. Hopper. Hopper. Kind of like the mother when she thought Crawford was a bad daughter. She didn’t know the whole story. I found a husband of Crawford’s mother that nobody knew existed. And there was with her for I think there were four that we know about.

01:11:48:25 – 01:11:52:00
Dan LeFebvre
It’s bad when you start to lose. Lose count of how many husbands there were.

01:11:52:00 – 01:12:00:29
Scott Eyman
Yeah, I think there were four, but it could have been three. But there was. There were other guys passing through to at the same time, uncles, you know, uncles.

01:12:01:01 – 01:12:01:23
Dan LeFebvre
These uncles.

01:12:01:24 – 01:12:02:12
Scott Eyman
They would be.

01:12:02:14 – 01:12:02:27
Dan LeFebvre
With.

01:12:03:00 – 01:12:24:09
Scott Eyman
Uncle. Yeah. Your uncle. Your new uncle. Yeah. That you know that. Yeah. She had a lot. So. Crawford. Now, Hopper. Hopper probably didn’t know about all that. You know, she just thought, well, Joan’s wealthy, she lives well, and her mother’s got a nice little house, but she never spent any time with her mother. That’s not nice. She’s a bad daughter.

01:12:24:11 – 01:12:41:06
Scott Eyman
She didn’t get the whole picture. And Crawford was certainly not going to try to justify herself that, she didn’t feel she had to justify herself to anybody. So they were never friends? No. That’s a pure invention on the part of of of, the filmmakers.

01:12:41:09 – 01:13:00:06
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the friendship that they had and, and the TV show was the kind of friendship that. Yeah, she would have known that because they were talking like best friends. They were telling each other everything, so. No. Yeah. No. Okay. No. Makes a lot more sense. Thank you so much for coming on to chat about the TV show feud.

01:13:00:09 – 01:13:33:22
Dan LeFebvre
Since the show mostly focuses on the later years of Joan Crawford career, we didn’t have much time to talk about her earlier life and career, but that leads me right into my final question for you, because you have a brand new book out now called Joan Crawford A Woman’s Face. And having had the chance to read the advanced copy, there’s so many details and fascinating elements of Joan Crawford’s life and career that we’ll never get to cover on the podcast today, but I’ve got links in the show notes for everyone to get their own copy of your new book, and while they do that, can you share one of your favorite stories about Joan Crawford

01:13:33:22 – 01:13:36:15
Dan LeFebvre
that you came across while writing your book?

01:13:36:18 – 01:13:43:18
Scott Eyman
Well, I mentioned how the biggest influence on her as an actress was Lon Chaney.

01:13:43:21 – 01:14:06:20
Scott Eyman
And I found that very moving because this is a chorus girl, basically. She spent a year in New York working for the Schubert’s as a chorus girl, and then she got signed to the standard $75 a week beginners contract with MGM. Six month contract, all options on the studio side. And they threw her into the deep end of the pool.

01:14:06:21 – 01:14:32:21
Scott Eyman
You know, you’re doing bits, you’re doing walk ons, you’re posing for stills. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares who. Epoch. And she slowly begins to get a little traction. And then they start throwing her into different movies, trying to be Westerns. Opposite to McCoy, big western star. And then they put her up against Lon Chaney, who was a huge, huge star.

01:14:32:23 – 01:14:59:18
Scott Eyman
And generally speaking, in Lon Chaney’s movies, the actress is just the girl. You know, Chaney’s the star. The girl is just window dressing. But in this movie, it’s not just that she holds her own as an actress, which she shouldn’t have by all. By all means. I mean, she’s been in the movies for 18 months at this point, you know, and she’s a great actor at the top of his game.

01:14:59:21 – 01:15:07:22
Scott Eyman
And she’s just the girl. But she holds her own. She’s startlingly beautiful and compelling.

01:15:07:24 – 01:15:34:18
Scott Eyman
When she’s in a two shot with Lon Chaney, you watch her, not Chaney. And Chaney is a great actor and a great star, but she’s holding her own opposite Chaney. And when you see the movie, you realize, oh, that’s how it happens. You know, you throw them in the deep what amounts to the deep end of the pool, and most of them drown.

01:15:34:20 – 01:16:04:27
Scott Eyman
But every once in a while, there’s someone who just they may not have a great set of professional skills, but they’ve got magnetism, they’ve got charisma. There’s something about them that compels attention. And she’s doing scenes with Chaney, and you’re watching her, not Chaney. And I found that very moving because she didn’t know she was as good as she was.

01:16:05:00 – 01:16:26:09
Scott Eyman
You know, I think she thought she needed everything going for her. She needed the script. She needed the best cameramen. She knew the director. Everything had to be just so for her to get away with it. She didn’t. I’m not sure she realized how good she really was and how fast she got good. You know, because she always had doubts.

01:16:26:09 – 01:16:46:06
Scott Eyman
She always had those voices in her head and a lot of the Joan Crawford on a lot of the style with which she lived, the larger than life persona, the, telegraphing ahead when she’d be getting on the train would bring her into New York so her fan club would be there to meet her. All of that.

01:16:46:08 – 01:17:10:17
Scott Eyman
I think she thought she needed that, and I don’t think she needed that. I think she was extraordinarily gifted, naturally gifted. And, training would only have gotten in the way because she learned by doing it. She didn’t learn by being at Broadway for eight years or ten years and watching evil a galleon or Elena’s. She learned by watching Wayne Chaney and other actors.

01:17:10:19 – 01:17:37:09
Scott Eyman
Eleanor Boardman, she thought, was a wonderful actress, and she learned by also seeing actors who weren’t very good and what they did wrong. She talked to the cameraman, who told her what to do and what not to do more than the directors did, because the cameraman understood. There are certain people that the camera loves, and there are certain people that the camera hey, not the not the it doesn’t come across, but the camera loved her.

01:17:37:11 – 01:17:57:06
Scott Eyman
And over time, I don’t know that she ever loved herself. I think she learned to tolerate or so you know. She had a lot of insecurities. That’s what the book’s about dealing with insecurities, dealing with professionalism, learning how to act, learning how to be a star. Learning how to be a human being.

01:17:57:09 – 01:17:59:24
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you again so much for your time, Scott. Really appreciate it.

01:17:59:25 – 01:18:09:10
Scott Eyman
Happy to do it. Thanks for your time.

01:18:09:12 – 01:18:27:22
Dan LeFebvre
This episode of Based On a True Story was produced by Dan Lapham. Thank you once again to Scott Simon for helping us separate fact from fiction in the first season of feud. Scott’s new book is called Joan Crawford A Woman’s Face, and it adds yet another amazing biography from the Golden Age of Hollywood to Scott’s list of works.

01:18:27:25 – 01:18:49:16
Dan LeFebvre
If you’ve read any of Scott’s other biographies, you’ll appreciate his incredibly researched and narrative driven style. And as always, you’ll find links to Joan Crawford. A Woman’s Face by Scott Simon in the show notes for this episode, as well as on the show’s home on the web over at based on a True Story podcast.com. Okay, now it’s time for the answer to our Two Truths and a lie game from the beginning of the episode.

01:18:49:24 – 01:19:13:07
Dan LeFebvre
And as a quick refresher, here are the two truths and one lie again. Number one, Joan Crawford’s best friend was Hedda Hopper. Number two Joan Crawford was never officially diagnosed with cancer. Number three, Joan Crawford learned the most about acting from Lon Chaney. Did you figure out which one is a lie? I’ve got the answer in the envelope right here.

01:19:13:07 – 01:19:37:24
Dan LeFebvre
So let’s open this up. And the lie is number one. Even though the TV series has columnist Hedda Hopper as one of Joan Crawford’s best friends throughout the entire season, Scott explained, that is simply not true. Hedda Hopper was a real person. She was a real columnist who interviewed many of the actors and actresses of the time, Joan Crawford included.

01:19:37:26 – 01:20:00:14
Dan LeFebvre
But they weren’t super close friends like we see in the TV series. Thanks for sticking around to the end. If you are watching the video version on YouTube here, in a moment you’re going to see the credits roll. If you want to get your name in the credits for the next video and on the website, you can learn how to become a based on a true story producer using the link in the description or over at based on a True Story podcast.com/support.

01:20:00:17 – 01:20:10:25
Dan LeFebvre
Once again, that’s based on a true story podcast.com/support. Until next time. Thanks so much for spending your time with Scott Nye today, and I’ll chat with you again really soon.