I can't remember the last time I saw this picture in its entirety. I've seen the parodies and the drag homages a number of times fairly recently, but it's quite possible that it's been more than a decade since I watched the original.

Here's how the movie got back on my radar: A couple weeks ago, I saw Rain again and was feeling pretty sympathetic toward Joan Crawford. That got me in the mood to watch Mommie Dearest again, which I thought was hilarious when it came out and kind of boring and irritating* last weekend when I gave it another go. One of these days, I may write about that movie here, but don't hold your breath. It's a screechy, clunky, slog.

Naturally, Mommie D got me thinking about My Mother's Keeper, B.D. Hyman's awful, mean-spirited, whine-fest about growing up with Bette Davis for a mother, which I read and detested** when it came out in 1985. And B.D. Merrill (at the time) was the worst thing in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

So here we are back in 1962. 

And B.D. Merrill is still embarrassingly bad as the teenager who lives next door to former Hollywood star Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford) and her sister, Jane (Bette Davis). No one ever really sees Blanche, because she has been confined to a wheelchair since the mid-1930s, the result of a car accident for which Jane was responsible.

In the days of vaudeville, Jane was famous nationwide as "Baby" Jane Hudson, precocious singer, dancer, and breadwinner for the Hudson family. Father Hudson accompanied Jane on stage, spoiled the pants off her, and was cruel to and neglectful of plainer Blanche. Mother Hudson is cowed by her husband and younger daughter, but is comforting to Blanche, asking her after one particularly stinging slight, to please, as the years go by, remember to be kinder to Jane than their father is to her now.

Blanche does not forget this exhortation. 

Indeed, after talking pictures kill Jane's vaudeville career, Blanche finds her talent in the movies and becomes a big star. As part of her contract, Blanche insists that the studio find pictures for Jane, even though Jane can't act her way out of a paper bag, but Blanche made a promise. Now in her sister's shadow, adult Jane not only stinks, but drinks, and was stinking drunk the night of the crash that crippled her sister.

Back in 1962, Blanche is a virtual prisoner in her room with only a parakeet, a television, some books, a one-day-a-week maid named Elvira (Maidie Norman), and a summoning buzzer, to keep her entertained. Jane has become a blousy, overly-made-up, beslippered wreck, who is eaten up with jealousy when a TV station begins playing Blanche Hudson movies. This has been putting the color back in Blanche's cheeks and an extra drag in Jane's steps as she schleps three meals a day on a tray up to Blanche's room.

Concerned about Jane's increasingly erratic behavior (see parakeet), Blanche has been plotting to sell the house, put Jane in some kind of hospital, and move someplace where Elvira can take care of her full time. Elvira has had her suspicions about Jane for some time, particularly after finding out that Jane has been intercepting, opening, and writing obscenities on the wave of fan mail Blanche has been getting from the TV revival. 

Eventually, Jane gets wind of her sister's plan and begins to hatch one of her own: one that involves starving her sister to death*** and reviving her own career. She puts an ad in the paper for an accompanist and attracts a creepy young composer named Edwin Flagg (an extra young, extra creepy Victor Buono), whose goal is to bilk Jane of every spare penny she has.

Blanche, who has already missed a few meals, has begun to put two-and-two together. While Jane is out picking up adult-sized versions of her old costumes, Blanche wheels herself into Jane's room where she discovers that Jane has been practicing and perfecting Blanche's signature. There are also a few conspicuous check stubs for items that Blanche did not purchase. Completely wigged out, Blanche painstakingly hauls herself down the stairs to the telephone and calls the nuthatch doctor and begs him to come over.

At the exact moment Jane returns from her errands. 

It all goes south pretty quickly for Blanche from there. Jane hauls her back upstairs, ties and gags her, and calls the doctor back in Blanche's voice (actually Joan Crawford's; Davis couldn't imitate her) to say it was all a mistake and everything's fine. Jane also gets an opportunity to fire Elvira, who instantly becomes wicked suspicious and tries (and fails) to save Blanche. That part scared me pretty bad when I was a kid.

Things begin to spiral out of control for Jane. She's done one horrible thing after another and becomes completely unhinged. While Blanche is starving and dying, Jane takes her to the beach -- the last place the sisters were ever happy together. With her dying breath, Blanche tells Jane a secret that softens them both in a way you didn't think possible.

Bette Davis is truly excellent in this film. Her anger, jealousy, weird bits of delight, and even the crazy all worked for me. Joan Crawford is also remarkably understated for her and is very affecting.

But it's Bette's picture. 

I know there's a lot of talk about their famous feud during the making of this film -- how much they hated each other, the pranks they pulled on set. I'm not sure how much of those rumors are true. It seems that after the film's success, the two developed a well-documented hostility toward one another: Bette was nominated for an Academy Award and Joan was not and when Bette lost, Joan went out of her way to rub it in her face. Not nice, but who cares?

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is one hell of a good movie that I shouldn't have waited so long to revisit.

I admit to confusing scenes from this picture with those that are really from Red Dust (1932) and Possessed  (1931) and for what are probably obvious reasons: the time, the themes, and the association with Joan Crawford,* when she was really really good ("before her shoulders went to her head," as my grandmother used to say).

Here's what else I forgot about Rain until we watched it again a couple of days ago: 

• The cinematography is pretty modern and inventive; 
• Lewis Milestone is a moodier director than I remembered (All Quiet on the Western Front notwithstanding);
  
• Beulah Bondi was in it, and was, of course, excellent in a thankless role; and
  
• It's kind of a long 92 minutes.

This is the situation: A ship bound for Samoa becomes delayed on Pago Pago when it is discovered that some of the passengers have contracted cholera. In the two weeks it will take for the threat to pass, several of the ship's company bunk down at ex-pat Joe Horn (Guy Kibbee)'s store and hotel. These are an arrogant missionary named Davidson (Walter Huston), his wife (Bondi), their friends Doctor and Mrs. MacPhail, and a prostitute (not their friend) called Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford). 

Nobody is happy with the living arrangements (except possibly Joe Horn) and there is much sniffing and harrumphing on the first class passenger side at Sadie's record-playing, heel-kicking, good-time having with local marines. 

Sadie is a "go-with-the-flow-live-and-let-live" kind of gal. She's been around the block and doesn't expect too much out of life, but figures why not have some fun? This attitude infuriates the Davidsons, particularly Reverend Davidson, whose frequent steely, disapproving glares send shivers up Sadie's spine.

And for good reason. Davidson has taken it upon himself to redeem Sadie by skipping (as gravely as possible) off to the governor's office to see what can be done about getting Sadie deported. He figures if she goes back to San Francisco, whence the ship came, and takes the rap for some crime she is on the run from -- and which she swears she didn't commit -- that'll help her find Jesus or something.

For most of the picture, she is rightly mystified and indignant about this meddling, but somehow (and this is were the story loses me) she slowly comes around to Rev. Davidson's way of thinking. Maybe it's the drums. Maybe it's the incessant rain, rain, RAIN. But eventually, Sadie agrees to go back to California to face (someone else's) music and renounce her sinful ways. 

Davidson is ecstatic at the news. 

But the drums. The rain. 

At the moment of his triumph, Davidson gives in to his baser instincts and forces himself on Sadie. The next morning, he is found dead, an apparent suicide, and Sadie is back to her normal, understandably jaded self. She decides not to go back to San Francisco after all, but runs off with one of the handsome marines to Australia to start afresh.

As much as I love Walter Huston, I was thoroughly unconvinced of his sudden desire for Joan Crawford. Maybe if there had been more of a build up; some struggling with desire at any other point in the picture, but nah. After all his pontificating and her repetitious repenting speeches, it did seem to come out of nowhere. 

Still. It was nice to see her back in the checkered dress. All in all, a happy ending. 

I believe I first saw this picture on a small black and white television, and it wasn't nearly the same experience as watching two angry women on different sides of 40 shoot daggers at each other in Trucolor. Johnny Guitar is a really good movie, don't get me wrong, but there is much hilarity to found a half century after its release.

First of all, "Vienna?" That's the Cher/Maddonna/Beyonce name of Joan Crawford's character in Johnny Guitar, the tough saloon owner embroiled in a standoff against intolerant small town burghers.She wants a railroad to come through, and with it, progress. Emma Small (the miscast Mercedes McCambridge) is a town princess whose brother has been killed, most likely by the man of her dreams, an outlaw called (seriously) "The Dancin' Kid" (Scott Brady). But the Dancin' Kid has the hots for Vienna, which makes Emma especially vindictive.

And shrill. Did I mention shrill? Mercedes McCambridge has never been my favorite actor, in large part because of her voice. Indeed, her Hamlet is truly as Pazuzu, the demon speaking through Linda Blair in The Exorcist. In Johnny Guitar, she plays Vienna's nemesis, a relentless, vindictive woman who (in my humble O) is clearly in love with her rival and furious about it. 

Meanwhile, Vienna has built her saloon and sad gambling den after five years of hard work, which clearly has involved some unpleasant sexual encounters. To defend it, she's hired a former beau, Albuquerque gunslinger Johnny Logan, who, unbeknownst to Vienna, has forgone gun fightin' for guitar pickin' and now calls himself "Johnny Guitar.' Johnny is played by Sterling Hayden, who many of you know is not my ideal of a leading man (I refer you to The Come On). But Hayden is quite excellent as the forgiving, relatively peace loving hero.

Vienna hooks up with Johnny again and while making a routine, expository transaction at the bank, is caught up in the robbery of said bank by her former boyfriend, the Dancin' Kid. Her proximity to this event is all Emma needs to launch an all out vigilante assault on Vienna, the Kid, and his compadres, who include Ernest Borgnine and character staple, Royal Dano.

Everyone is now on high alert and the scent of blood. Crazy-ass Emma is wild to avenge herself on Vienna for, I dunno, having sex, being successful, having the business savvy to push Emma's family out of power, having the better color wardrobe, and possibly for being the hottest roulette dealer in town (if you know what I mean).

Well, one group chases the other until the group in the wrong loses the most people, but not before Emma sets Vienna's place and some other stuff on fire.

The accidental hilarity in this picture is in the staging and casting. Joan Crawford is superbly accidentally jaw-droppingly funny and heroic when she stands down or faces off the opposition -- with blood-red lipstick and expressive black eyebrows. Even when she's dressed in a white dress, playing piano against the rock-hewn natural foundation of her saloon facing her detractors.

It's also (and mostly) in McCambridge's hysterical glee at the thought of seeing her girlfriend/rival swing from the nearest hickory tree. There are several close-ups of McCambridge in disturbing vengeful rictus; her shrill calls to "string her up;" her insane laughter. So funny. So disturbing.

But this remains an excellent movie, in spite of the many many yuks you'll get at the wardrobe, the dialog, the intensity of misdirected feeling, and most likely, Mercedes McCambridge in her best mentally unstable reading of Emma Small.

I do think Sterling Hayden is pretty nuanced and (dare I say) attractive in this role; the men are complicated and interesting for a Western -- the Dancin' Kid isn't a complete tool, and his henchmen have layers. Like onions. If only it were the same for the two female leads.

Hilarious.

The funny thing about this movie -- at least for me — is that I always look forward to seeing it (and I've seen it 65 million times) and always forget that there are a staggering number of cringe-worthy moments in it: racist (Butterfly McQueen has to hear some choice anachronisms), sexist, elitist, you name it.

But...

For all its faults, The Women is an infuriatingly well-written story about a bunch of rich, mean-spirited, unhappy white ladies who give horrible relationship advice to one another and treat each other terribly. Honestly. The best/worst character who does this is Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell), the nasty cousin of sweet Mary Haines (Norma Shearer), the beautiful protagonist whose husband (it turns out) is having an affair with scheming shopgirl Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). 

All of New York Society has learned of Mr. Haines's dalliance by way of a gossiping manicurist named Olga (Dennie Moore), who knows the other woman in question: "She's got those eyes that run up and down a man like a searchlight." Unhappily married Sylvia has been sending all her friends to Olga so they can hear the story about how her cousin, whose marriage is considered by all (including Mary) to be idyllic,  is living in a "Fool's Paradise." In a moment of spite, Sylvia sends Mary to Olga, where Mary finally learns the truth.

(Sylvia really puts the "Freud" in Schadenfreude.)

The remainder of the picture is about how Mary deals with her husband's infidelity and what the rest of her circle — Nancy, speaker of great lines (Florence Nash); Peggy, simpering, slouching newlywed (Joan Fontaine*); and Edith, bearer of many children (Phyllis Povah) -- do and think about it. Even her mother (Lucile Watson) gets in on the action and tries to explain that men are just funny that way when they reach a certain age. They want to feel young, so they mix it up a bit with other women. Don't take it personally. "I suppose a man could do over his office, but he never thinks of anything so simple," she says. A line I love, but wow.

They're so helpful, Mary winds up on the train to Reno to get a divorce, where she meets more helpful (rich) women: Flora, the Countess DeLave (the best Mary Boland role of all time); and Miriam, the chorus girl (Paulette Goddard). They wind up at the ranch of (not at all rich) Lucy (Marjorie Main), whose husband sounds like an abusive wretch, but she'd never divorce 'im, because she's simple farm folk, I guess.

It all works out in the end and not a man in sight, though as the posters say "It's all about MEN!" Contemporary PR reassurances notwithstanding, the film does pass the Bechdel Test — in letter, if not in spirit.

You could look at this picture a couple of ways: it either glorifies the idle rich and their bored, catty ways, or it sends them up. I am inclined to believe it's the latter. Some of the truest, most realistic expressions of "sisterhood" are between the working class women who serve and pamper these females. And of course, in the character and treatment of Little Mary (the excellent Virginia Weidler), the Haines's young daughter, there is more truth than comedy.

Oh yeah. There's a fashion show.