Of all the feuds during the golden age of Hollywood, one continues to intrigue and captivate today, decades after the deaths of the combatants.
One can still sense the venom that flowed between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Their rancour reached its toxic peak during the filming of the 1962 horror classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? – the only time the legends shared a screen.
Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon, as Crawford and Davis respectively, superbly recreate the pair's viciousness – but also their pain – in Feud: Bette and Joan. The eight-part docudrama, which begins on Sunday (April 2) on OSN First HD, is a deeply emotional exploration of why Hollywood, then as now, slaps a best-before label on so many of its female stars.
This is must-see TV in the truest sense, as Oscar-winners Lange and Sarandon recreate the tense on-set drama during the filming of Baby Jane – the story of former child star Jane Hudson (Davis), who torments her paraplegic sister Blanche (Crawford) in their decaying Hollywood mansion – and the off-set moments of fear and desperation experienced by two stars in the twilight of their careers.
"I think that a big part of this show is what Hollywood does to women as they age, which is just a microcosm of what happens to women generally as they age," says Lange, 67, a two-time Oscar winner, for Tootsie (1982) and Blue Sky (1994).
“Whether you want to say they become invisible, or they become unattractive or they become undesirable, or whatever it is. And I think with this film, we’ve touched on that in a very profound way. Joan was 10 years younger, than I am now, when this takes place, and yet her career was finished because of her age.”
Sarandon, who won an Oscar for her 1995 death-row drama Dead Man Walking, is three years older than Lange. Last year, she became the new face of L'Oreal Paris.
“Ageing actresses still have the same problem,” Sarandon says.
“I can guarantee that. When I started, it was over by 40. So definitely the line has been pushed.”
Feud shows the legends struggling to cling to fame in the face of ageism, sexism and misogyny, according to its Emmy-winning showrunner Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story).
“Women are still going through the same sort of stuff they went through 50 years ago. We wanted to show that,” he says.
When the first episode was shown in the United States last month, Feud attracted 5.17 million viewers, the highest-rated series debut on the FX network since last year's The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (on which Murphy was an executive producer). Feud also scored ratings of 91 per cent from critics and 93 per cent from viewers on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregation website.
Feud, like The People v. O.J., also revels in a star-studded cast: Lange and Sarandon are supported by Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Frida, Love is Strange) as down-on-his-luck director Robert Aldrich; Stanley Tucci (Big Night, Beauty and the Beast) as imperious studio head Jack Warner; Judy Davis (A Passage To India) as cruel gossip columnist Hedda Hopper; Jackie Hoffman (Gilmore Girls) as Crawford's housekeeper Mamacita; and Alison Wright (The Americans) as Aldrich's assistant, Pauline.
Notable guest stars include: Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago) as film star Olivia de Havilland, Sarah Paulson (American Gothic) as Geraldine Page, Kathy Bates (Misery) as actress Joan Blondell; and Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men) as Davis's daughter.
In real life, Davis – a 10-time Oscar nominee and double winner for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938) – was celebrated for her ability to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and had an off-screen reputation as a combative perfectionist.
Unlike Crawford, she received a best-actress Oscar nomination for Baby Jane, which garnered five nods overall. She died in 1989.
Crawford, who began her career as a dancer and showgirl, was nominated three times and won an Oscar for her role in for Mildred Pierce (1945).
She found fame with her Depression-era roles of hard-working women in search of romance and success.
Mommie Dearest, a bestseller written by her adopted daughter Christina – and published in 1978, a year after her mother's death – painted her as emotionally and physically abusive, and madly ambitious.
Davis once said: "The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
Crawford did not hold back, either, saying: “[Davis] has a cult, and what the hell is a cult except a gang of rebels without a cause. I have fans. There’s a big difference.”
Even after Crawford’s death, Davis twisted the knife, saying: “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good.… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”
A second season of the docudrama has been commissioned, which will focus on the troubled relationship between Britain’s Prince Charles and his first wife, Diana.
• Feud begins at 11pm Sunday (April 2) on OSN First HD
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