Comedians on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Let's go, let's Hello, I'm Bill Hader, your host for this month's TCM Friday Night Spooklight Festival devoted to all things horrific.

[00:00:09]We want to make sure we put you in the right mood for October 31st. So for our last two selections, we have movies with some very scary sisters. And our next film is perhaps the one that tops them all.

[00:00:21]It's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, one of the legendary thrillers starring two of the biggest screen icons of the golden age of cinema, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The film was released by Warner Brothers in 1962, and this was the only time Davis and Crawford ever worked together. Apparently, they disliked one another from afar for years, and this film did not in any way create any affection between them.

[00:00:48]In the film, they play two sisters, one a critically acclaimed actress who becomes paralyzed after a car crash, and the other a former child star unable to let go of her stage persona.

[00:00:59]Crawford plays Blanche, the former screen siren, and Davis is Jane, formerly known as Baby Jane, and now Blanche's full-time caregiver/nurse from hell.

[00:01:10]>> [music] >> I mean, the things that Davis does to Crawford in this film are wild.

[00:01:14]Apparently, life on the set was just as horrifying as what was captured on screen. Crawford felt physically abused by Davis in some scenes, so much so that at one point she told director Robert Aldrich they would have to use a dummy because Crawford knew Davis would not restrain herself from actually kicking the living daylights out of her.

[00:01:35]And once you see that scene, you'll agree with Crawford. From 1962, the very terrifying Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Two years later, director Robert Aldrich and Bette Davis for another gothic-style horror film, Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Joan Crawford did not return for that film, something which did not break Bette Davis's heart.

[00:01:55]Instead, it was Davis's good friend Olivia de Havilland who co-starred. Then I watched um the the last movie I watched, what the hell did I watch?

[00:02:07]I just went blank. I watched another good one. Oh, I remember.

[00:02:13]I watched uh Whatever Happened to Baby Jane starring Bette Davis and uh I don't want to say that Joan Collins, the other Joan.

[00:02:24]Let me see, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

[00:02:29]And I always heard they, you know, they they did a whole movie about how they didn't [ __ ] like each other and all of this type of [ __ ] I watched that movie. That's one of those movies that's it's like the performances and everything are really good. Then it it keeps going out off the road and then it comes back. There is sort of a major hole in it where, you know, some [ __ ] that's happened before you get to see them. It's like, and the cops didn't intervene and then they were cool with the two of them just hanging out. Is is that is that what happened?

[00:02:54]Oh, the studio fixed it.

[00:02:56]Um uh I actually really enjoyed it. And there's an actor in it who I really [ __ ] loved.

[00:03:05]And it turned out, I'm going to get his name here. It turned out that uh he actually was the one that played King Tut on the Batman series. He's a phenomenal uh actor. I was like, who the [ __ ] is that guy?

[00:03:17]What's his name?

[00:03:21]Oh, for [ __ ] sakes.

[00:03:25]Is it Victor Buono? Is that how you say his name?

[00:03:29]Yes.

[00:03:30]Larger than life.

[00:03:34]And we end with an eloquent king-size appetite for maniacal merriment. Who the [ __ ] wrote this [ __ ] Um Jesus Christ, he didn't live long, though. Died at 43. That must have been the old heart attack. But you people try to get the weight off.

[00:03:49]Try to keep the Get the weight up and try and keep it off. Don't eat a bunch of [ __ ] candy like I did. So anyways, I recommend all of those movies.