How did the feud start? Was there a clash of egos while working on particular movie? Did someone replace the other as the studio head’s favorite? Were they fighting over the same man? How did these two giant divas end up hating each other so much?
And is there any truth to the oft-told anecdote of Bette Davis’s reaction to news of Joan Crawford’s death: “I was taught to speak only good of the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good!”?
Bette Davis always looked down at Joan Crawford, referring to her as a “movie star,” while Davis herself was an “actress.”
There were tensions on the set of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and the director recalled that after shooting for the day was done he would get a phone call from either Davis or Crawford, in which Crawford/Davis would invariably ask, "What did that bitch say about me today? Soon after that phone call was over, the other actress would call and the conversation would be repeated.
Much to Joan’s annoyance, Davis recieved an Oscar nomination while Crawford was passed over. But on Oscar night, Crawford managed to upstage and steal the spotlight from her rival when Bette lost. In winner Anne Bancroft’s abscence, Joan regally waltzed on stage watched by a stunned Davis to accept on Bancroft’s behalf.
Davis remembered Crawfords humiliation of her at the Oscars and reportedly drove Crawford to something of a nervous breakdown on the set of Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
Bette was lethal. To the OP, if you can pick up a bio on Bette, it’s a damn good read. I can’t remember the author of the particular one I’m thinking of, but look for a bio that has a stylistic, old-Hollywood glamour shot of Bette on the front. She was a diva in the true sense of the word.
Yeah. Never look into her eyes.
(Joan Crawford) “Jane, you wouldn’t be treating me this way if I wasn’t in this wheelchair.”
(Bette Davis) “But ya ARE, Blanche! Ya ARE in a wheelchair!”
Possibly the best line EVER.
A good gossipy read on Bette and Joan and the feud (which both actresses publicly denied and disavowed all knowledge of fairly consistently throughout their lives) is Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine.
Bestfactual Davis and Crawford books, which also get the best sense of their personalities and talents across, are Whitney Stine’s Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis (1974) and Roy Newquist’s Conversations with Joan Crawford (1980). Both include extensive, non-edited, interviews with the stars.
I love the SDMB! I’ve gotten a few new anecdotes about the feud as well as additions to my reading list!
I have to return books to the library tomorrow, so I’ll look for the recommended reads. Thank you all (with special genuflections to Otto and Eve for expanding my “to read” list)!
Stine and Davis also did a sequel, I’d Love to Kiss You…Conversations With Bette Davis. As I understand it, both of Stine’s books were sent to Davis and she responded extensively, and her comments were included in the published editions in italics.
Crawford wasn’t in Hush, Hush; what, was she just hanging around or something? 
Crawford was slated to star in Hush, Hush. After a few days of shooting, she became “ill” and Olivia de Havilland replaced her.
Ill? Or did Bette drive her to a nervous breakdown?
Hrm!
I admire Bette Davis very much as an actress, but she herself was the first to admit she was impossible to work with. She was even mean to Lillian Gish while shooting The Whales of August—I repeat, she was mean to Lillian Gish!!!
I would also recommend My Mother’s Keeper, by B.D. Hyman, Bette’s daughter. Her description of Bette’s method of cooking macaroni casserole had me ROFL.
:eek: There’s a place in hell for that!
I would most heartily not recommend My Mother’s Keeper. Poorly written tripe, although it did give Bette the opportunity to end her book This ‘n’ That with an open letter to B.D. with the salutation “Dear Hyman”. As more than one witty person commented at the time, she could hardly start off the letter “Dear C*nt” but she did the next best thing.
Yeah, I deliberately passed up My Mother’s Keeper while I was at the library on the assumption that it was, like Mommy Dearest, just an ill-tempered “she was mean to me” rant with significant amounts of bullshit thrown in. Got The Divine Feud, Conversations with Joan Crawford, and I’d Love to Kiss You, though. I’ll start those next week.
Rather than start up a new Crawford thread, I’d like to add a question here; hope you don’t mind, jayjay.
Mommy Dearest–Is there a general opinion on how much crap vs. fact this is?
Eve knows much more than I do, but it is telling that Considine, in The Divine Feud, picks apart the infamous rose garden scene by noting that:
a) Philip Terry was still in residence with the Crawfords at the time.
b) The rose garden had already been dug up long before to make way for a victory garden.
c) Joan was not unemployed when Mayer let her go, but already negotiating a deal with another studio.
The discrepancies with just this one scene make me doubt the veracity of the whole thing. I mean, the garden didn’t even exist at the time that the firing happened!
I’ve thought for a long time that Mommy Dearest was the greatest injustice ever perpetrated on Joan Crawford. Admittedly, she could be an iron-skinned bitch, but for the daughter she raised to attack her so viciously and falsely when Joan had no way to possibly fight back (being dead and all) was a monstrous thing.
Re: Mommie Dearest: Please don’t conflate the book with the movie. If you can find discrepancies in the biography, that’s one thing, but the movie wasn’t consistent with the biography. Eve, if you’re reading this, I know you’ve discredited the biography, and I’m not going to get into that. But the movie wasn’t Christina’s story; it was some screenwriter’s conception.
Yeah. A lot of people talk about “Baby Gladys” Pickford, but for my money, it was always her ex-flatmate, Lillian, who got my schnizzle stick… schnizzlin’. 
There’s already been a couple of threads on this—but it is 85% crap. Christina submitted a typical, dull memoir to the publisher (where a friend of mine worked, this is how I know this), and it was combined with an unpublished novel called The Hype—which is where a lot of the stories came from.
Joan was an overly strict mother, she herself admitted, and obsessive about cleanliness (read Conversations with Crawford for her unvarnished opinion of herself!). And she did have a drinking problem till she quit in the 1960s. But the two older kids, Christina and Christopher, were unmanageable, emotionally disturbed. The two younger daughters have said repeatedly, “Joan was a good mother—Christina made up most of that stuff,” but no one wants to hear that.
Joan did a lot of admirable things she never got credit for: nursed her dying ex, Franchot Tone, through his final illness; frequently gave young performers a hand up and bought them clothing; donated a wing to an L.A. hospital where people in the industry could be treated free of charge, at her expense . . . Plus, her coworkers always said she was 100% professional, a delight to work with.
. . . Well, OK, except Norma Shearer . . .