The dynamic on set became, in subsequent retellings, as famous as the film itself.
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WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED ON THE SET—AND WHAT WE CAN VERIFY
The mythology of the *What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?* production involves a litany of specific incidents: Davis kicking Crawford in the head during a scene, Crawford retaliating by weighting her costume with hidden lead to strain Davis’s back during a dragging sequence, Davis’s open contempt for Crawford’s drinking. These stories have been repeated so often and in so many contexts that they have achieved a kind of legendary solidity.
The primary sources do not support that solidity.
What the primary record shows is more complicated. In August 1962, while the film was in production, Variety ran a story describing the set as notably civil. In 1962, Crawford told the press that accounts of feuding between herself and Davis were exaggerated. Davis told Variety that the two “had too much pride to quarrel.” These are public statements, and public statements from performers with a professional interest in the film’s publicity are not neutral documents—but they are contemporaneous, and they exist.
The kick. Davis said, in accounts she gave years after the film, that during the phone scene she used her foot to connect with Crawford’s head, but said she used minimal force. Other accounts—none of them easily traced to an eyewitness present at the specific moment—described a more serious blow. The Wikipedia production notes for the film describe the incident as “rumored,” not documented.