“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” was on television last night. This is the first Bette Davis I knew — Baby Jane Hudson, the evil/good twins in a film I want to say was called Dead Ringer, the haunted alcoholic in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte. These films seemed to play a lot on the Sunday afternoon movie shows in Baltimore, one of which was known as Picture for a Sunday Afternoon. Was there anything better, in a world of just three channels and endless sporting events, then finding out that the Picture for a Sunday Afternoon was something really good. (Like a women-in-prison film, which were my personal favorites.)
Now, my family had photo albums, so of course I was aware that people all around me had changed over the years, including myself. (Overfed as a child, seldom wearing more than diaper in the Atlanta heat, I had such fat cheeks that my eyes appeared to have an Asian cast. In other words, I looked like a tiny sumo wrestler.) But I still remember my profound awe at seeing a photograph of Davis as Jezebel and realizing what a great natural beauty she was.
And then, finally, I found All About Eve. “You’re much too short for that gesture!” I’ve always wanted to find a way to work that into a conversation.
I don’t know if the Jezebel promo still is the same one that appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine, but the latter picture was indeed astounding, because Davis really *was* beautiful–but somehow, she’d managed to (or the studios did) conceal that fact. Probably because she had odd features that didn’t exactly fit together, especially when she spoke or moved.
As an actress though, I often wished she could have just calmed herself down and been more subtle. But then again, who could do melodrama quite like Bette? (Joan Crawford, I suppose, but hers was always a more grotesque portrayal of such.)
_That’s_ the photo. It was in a coffee table book about Life magazine that my maternal grandparents owned, and I never tired of looking at it.