Mary Lucia: 'Buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night'
by Mary Lucia
March 14, 2017
Last month when I first saw the trailer for FX's upcoming eight-part series, Feud: Bette and Joan, I freaked. Now we're talking.
A depiction of the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the production of their 1962 film What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? I'm so in! And it stars two of my favorite actors no less: Jessica Lange as Joan and Susan Sarandon as Bette. Immediately I wanted to plunge my face into a basin of vodka and ice and smear red lipstick on my face.
Creator Ryan Murphy, a fan of Bette Davis since childhood, had the opportunity to interview Davis just months before her death in 1989. What was planned to be 20-minute chat turned into a four-hour interview. When Murphy asked Davis about Joan Crawford, Davis would go on and on about how much she hated her, then back-pedaling by saying, "She was a professional. And I admired her for that."
The wheels were turning for Murphy, who could've easily made a two-and-a-half-hour movie highlighting bawdy, bitchy behavior, but the subtext of sexism, ageism and misogyny in Hollywood is too rich a vein to not explore further: Davis and Crawford, two of the most powerful Oscar-winning actresses making movies and earning millions of dollars for the male-dominated studios, were suddenly relegated to playing grandmothers and spinsters once they hit the age of 50.
With her career waning, Joan Crawford pitches a horror film with two female lead roles to director Robert Aldrich, and suggests her rival Bette Davis as her co-star. Setting up a polarizing pairing — Crawford being consumed with vanity and the proper lighting compared to Davis's "Who gives a sh*t what I look like" — it's all about the work attitude. (Fun fact: Bette Davis was known to smoke while in the dentist's chair, it was so much an extension of herself.)
Both women created their own individual look for the characters in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane, including Bette's brilliant idea to smear her face in Kabuki white makeup and don a blonde fright wig. She certainly was fearless but also human. A particularly touching scene when Davis asks her director for assurance that he won't make her look ridiculous lets us know that underneath the bravado, there was a woman's genuine vulnerability.
Feud is a testament to the acting skills of both Lange and Sarandon, who don't play the larger-than-life women as caricatures or drag queens. Crawford and Davis had struggles of their own in their personal lives, and Lange and Sarandon seem mindful of that to great detail.
The supporting actors are rounded out by some powder-keg actors in their own right. Kathy Bates and Catherine Zeta Jones both shine, and Judy Davis's scene-chewing Hedda Hopper is nothing short of yummy. Stanley Tucci as studio head Jack Warner is an odious pig who delights in further stirring the pot on set by strong-arming director Robert Aldrich (played by Alfred Molina) into planting stories to the columnists of the stars' sniping and narcissism to generate interest in the film, but it comes at the expense of both women's dignity.
Feud manages to hit the notes of camp and bawdy humor without sacrificing the humanity and the pain. And the visuals of this series are a feast for the eyes. The sets, clothing and cars are their own staggering characters. I coveted every lamp and ashtray.
At the heart of Feud lies a fight to stay relevant, the fear of lost potential and the specter Hollywood's dirty politics. Two episodes in, and I am enthralled.
Resources
Feud - official site