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THE INDUSTRY THAT CREATED THEM AND THEN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THEM
To understand why *What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?* happened—why two major actresses of the previous generation ended up in a horror film together in 1962—you need to understand the Hollywood industry of that moment and what it was doing to women over forty.
The studio system that had made Crawford and Davis into stars was in advanced decline by the early 1960s. Television had taken a substantial portion of the audience that had once gone reliably to the movies. The breakdown of the major studio contracts—accelerated by a 1948 Supreme Court ruling that forced the studios to divest their theater chains—had fundamentally altered the relationship between stars and studios. The massive overhead of the old studio system was no longer economically rational.
What replaced it was an independent production model in which projects were assembled deal by deal, star by star, script by script, without the guaranteed distribution and exhibition infrastructure that had supported the classic era. This was better for some people and worse for others. For women of a certain generation and a certain age—for women who had been shaped by the studio system and who had always existed within it as commercial properties as much as as artists—the new Hollywood was treacherous.
The industry in 1962 did not know quite what to do with Joan Crawford, who was fifty-something, famous, and between significant film commitments. It did not know quite what to do with Bette Davis, who was fifty-four, who had won two Oscars and received ten nominations and was among the most respected actresses in American film history, and who had not had a significant film role in several years.