Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (42 page)

Using a long lens, Stem was up in the flies, confident that no one could spot him. "Except for Joan. The woman had radar up her ass. Maybe she heard the clicking of my camera, because she straightened her spine and started smiling and acting very gracious to Bette and Joseph Cotten and the rest of the cast. Then she began to inch her Pepsi bottle towards the middle of the table, so it would be in the shots. Bette noticed this and leaned forward, blocking the Pepsi bottle. When Joan pushed the bottle out further still, Bette moved forward again. It was a riot. They were competing for space, with the Pepsi bottle between them."

During the rehearsals, it was said, Davis held up the proceedings by questioning every line. There
were
problems with the script, Lukas Heller recalled. "Bob Aldrich had originally hired Henry Farrell to write the story and script of
Charlotte.
They had a disagreement over protocol. Aldrich had kept Farrell waiting, and he walked out. I was called in to rework the script. Aldrich was a great director, but story was not his strongest point. He wanted a bit of
Diabolique,
a bit of this, a bit of that. We didn't have the time we had on
Baby Jane,
which was reworked over a period of six months."

Bette Davis made only the usual actor's comments about lines, "which is the object of rehearsals," said Heller. Joan Crawford then insisted that she have her say. "She would query lines with absolutely no concept of the emotional or dramatic content—but purely on the grammatical or logical element. She argued for hours, being very literal in her interpretation, and always putting it in this beautiful, modulated voice. She was giving a performance. She wanted to establish her authority on the picture, and everyone had to go along with her."

Motion Picture
reported that Bette slapped Joan's hands away from her while they rehearsed a scene where Cousin Miriam had to help poor mad Charlotte into bed. "'I'm not going to do the scene until it's written right,' said Davis and strode off the set."

"We leave for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this weekend, for ten days of location shooting," said Bob Aldrich at the end of rehearsals. "I hope we live through it."

"Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte wardrobe tests

Cannibal Time in Dixie

"You're a vile, sorry little bitch!
[pause] What is it you say you
do? [pause] Public relations? It
sounds like something pretty
dirty to me."

—COUSIN BETTE TO COUSIN
JOAN IN
SWEET CHARLOTTE

On Sunday, May 31, traveling in a chartered plane, the
Hush .
..
Hush, Sweet Charlotte
company arrived at the airport in Baton Rouge. When they posed for a group photograph for the Louisiana
News,
it was noticed that Joan Crawford was not with the troupe. "Why? I don't know why," said unit publicist Harry Mines. "Bette went both ways—round trip with the gang. I guess Joan wanted to travel on her own."

The entire company were put up at the Belmont Motel, a mile outside the city. "The accommodations were always first-class with Aldrich," said Bob Gary, on hand again as script supervisor. "No one had to double up. Everyone had their own bungalow."

Three locations were chosen for filming: an office on Government Street in Baton Rouge; a house in Oak Valley, Vacherie (where Mary Astor's character would reside); and a moss-covered antebellum mansion near Burnside, Louisiana, overlooking the Mississippi River. It was here that the next duel between the leading stars would be played out, before and behind the motion-picture cameras.

With Crawford not scheduled to arrive until the fourth day of filming, Bette used that time to make friends with the local and visiting press. "Never overly partial to giving interviews, Bette called in all the reporters and entertained them for an hour with the best copy she'd ever given," said Hedda Hopper. Bette also became tight with the
Charlotte
crew. "Her trailer was parked at the front side of the mansion," said Harry Mines, "but Bette was seldom there. She set up this huge mirror in the hallway of the house and she put on her makeup there. At lunchtime she had her meals outside, with Aldrich and the grips."

On Wednesday, June 3, Crawford; her maid, Mamacita; her hairdresser, Peggy Shannon; her makeup man, Monte Westmore; and her luggage arrived at the Baton Rouge airport. Expecting a VIP welcome, perhaps the mayor or a marching brass band, the star was chagrined to learn that no one, not even a member of the
Charlotte
production company, was there to meet her. "There was a foul-up in the schedule," said Harry Mines. "Everyone was filming at the plantation house, and somehow Joan's arrival was not relayed to the proper driver."

When she reached the Belmont Motel, Joan found her rooms were not made up, and she had to sit for an hour in the motel's lobby. Then she was put in a bungalow next to the garbage-disposal unit. That evening, as soon as the unit had returned from filming, Joan complained to the wrong person—Bette Davis. "Oh, Joan! Pull yourself
together.
This is Baton Rouge,
not
Beverly Hills," said Bette, who was settled in the slightly larger, more luxurious bungalow across the way from Crawford.

"The trouble between the two was still there," said publicist Harry Mines. "We were the wave that followed the wave. Aldrich was the referee, and all of us knew we were going to have to work around the unpleasantness."

On location the wakeup call for the entire company was 7:00
A.M.
, except for Joan Crawford, who was up an hour earlier. "It was a regular three-hour routine," said Monte Westmore. "I'd wake her up at six. She'd exercise a little bit while I set out her makeup. Then she'd make breakfast, which I had to eat:" Under the special lights at her makeup table, while Joan sat and worked on her face, Westmore stood by her side for two hours and worked on her obligatory false eyelashes. "They always had to be just right. Trimmed perfectly in line, then curled in a circle. I would layout six pair for her on the table. She would then inspect them. 'This one's good, that isn't,' she would say, going down the line. When I glued them on her eyelids, and she was finished spitting and putting the mascara on them, they'd be uncurled and look right. We went through a gross and a half of eyelashes per picture, and later, when she was traveling for Pepsi, she'd send me more to work on. I'd clean'em and set'em and roll 'em and curl 'em, and send them back to her in Europe or wherever. She was very particular about her eyelashes, and so was Bette Davis."

Neither Westmore nor Bob Schiffer, Bette's makeup man, ever touched the stars' faces. "Joan did her own face and mouth," said Westmore. "And they were welcome to their mouths," said Schiffer. "I didn't believe in all that heavy lipstick, or the thick pancake around their eyes. On
Charlotte
I had my own makeup concept for Bette, which lasted about five minutes. She would say to me, 'Don't fuck with my face.' But she was a pro, with a great sense of humor. Once she gave me an eight-by-ten photograph of herself, with her face superimposed on the body of a
Playboy
cover girl. It was a very erotic pose. Some people thought it was really Bette. 'If this gets out, it's your ass,' she told me. She was very frank and was always a trouper, but inflexible about the look of her face and lips. Crawford wouldn't listen to you either. All you did was work on the eyelashes, then hold the mirror for her between setups. It was a servitude position, and Joan made the slaves look like Boy Scouts."

Arriving for her first day of shooting at the Mississippi mansion, Crawford let it be known that, unlike Bette, she didn't intend to become too chummy with the film company. "She had her trailer set up at the back of the house, with her own golf cart to take her back and forth when we were filming," said Harry Mines.

"While Crawford rides around in her golf cart, Bette walks," Hedda Hopper reported.

"Bette lets her hair down but Joan surrounds herself with the aura of a great of yesterday. Times have changed and she doesn't seem to realize that," said Sheilah Graham.

"Bette was crazy in some areas, but she stayed a human being," Bob Gary recalled. "But Joan always had 'the act' going. She expected obeisance from everyone. When you approached her it was almost like you had to genuflect."

It was in Joan's contract that her trailer be placed so many yards away from Bette, "which was understandable," said Harry Mines, "but it caused difficulties for all of us."

"Whether by design or accident, everytime a shot was set up for the two stars there would be a sweltering delay in the sun waiting for Joan Crawford to emerge from her ice-cold trailer," said writer Gail Cameron for
McCall's.

There was only one scene involving Bette and Joan at the mansion, and that was deliberately delayed by Aldrich. "First we shot all of Bette's scenes with Agnes Moorehead and Cecil Kellaway," said Bob Gary. "Then we did Joan's scenes with Joseph Cotten and the other actors. Bob Aldrich wanted to put off the moment when the two warhorses got together."

It was publicist Harry Mines who had the arduous task of bringing the two ladies together for interviews. Working with temperamental and tormented stars was not unusual for him, he claimed. A few years before he had been the unit publicist in Nevada for
The Misfits,
Marilyn Monroe's last picture. He remembered: "She was in bad shape, overweight and on pills. When she arrived in Nevada, she said she wasn't going to see any press. She was rude. I became angry. I told her, 'OK, we'll close the set to everyone. You can work and I'm leaving.' She acted surprised. She said, 'No one ever spoke to me like that.' I said, 'Well, it's about time someone did.' She looked at me a long time and said, All right. I'll work with you.' I said, 'If you don't like any reporter or photographer, we'll use the old dodge of stroking your ear or something, and I'll get rid of them.' She said, 'No, I'll go through with it.' But even then it was tough getting her together with the press. You always had to go look for her. Clark Gable saved the situation many times for me. He was a wonderful human being. He would say, 'Look, when you have these people out here and you have trouble finding Marilyn, just call me. I'll keep them entertained until she shows up.' He was a magnificent man."

The shooting begins

Working with Crawford and Davis on
Hush
...
Hush, Sweet Charlotte
was "double trouble," said Mines. "The two stars didn't want to pose for pictures, not even for the still photographer. Then
Life
magazine decided to do a piece on the filming, and that made it a little easier for me, because neither Bette nor Joan could say no to
Life."

The photographer assigned to that story was Flip Schulke. "Bette was fantastic," he said, "but Crawford was a bum. Bette joked around a lot, wearing blue jeans and carrying a big box of matches and a Coke bottle. Crawford had Pepsi machines installed around the place; she was a very cool customer. She never seemed to show consideration for anyone. She always arrived three or four minutes late for her scenes. Bette would turn to me and say, 'She's making a grand entrance just for you.' I wanted to photograph the two of them making up. Bette started from scratch in her dressing room. When I got to Joan's trailer, she was already made up, and she posed very grandly with an eyebrow pencil, as though she was just beginning. Everything was posed with her. Nothing could be candid, and she would tell me when to take the picture."

The idea of having the two ladies pose for photographs sitting on tombstones in a cemetery came from director Bob Aldrich. "Bob appreciated the publicity value of the feud between the two stars," said Harry Mines, "but he never took sides, as far as I knew. He had a fake cemetery built on the plantation property, and when he suggested the two pose sitting on the tombstones, I thought, 'What a great shot, but who is going to ask them to do it?' Aldrich wouldn't. The photographer wouldn't. I suggested it to Bette first, and she roared with laughter. She was all for it. Joan was a little reluctant at first, but it was for
Life
magazine, so she went along with it."

When it came time to do the tombstone photographs, the session lasted for hours due to the stars' egos and conflicting schedules. "There were three or four different sessions," said Mines. "It was done between filming. Joan would be ready when Bette would be called away. When Bette returned, Joan would be gone, back in her trailer, with her clothes off, resting. She would take a long time getting ready. Eventually, the last time, when Bette came back to do the shots and Joan was missing, she said, 'I'm going to settle this once and for all, because I know you guys have a job to do.' She went to the back of the house to Joan's dressing room. She rapped on her door, then stood outside and yelled, 'Joan Crawford! Get your clothes on and come and do these photographs, right away!' Joan said, 'Oh, Bette. I'm coming. I'm coming.' She came hurtling out the door. They did the photographs, and when it was all over, the photographer, who was just as nervous as I was, said, 'My God! I forgot to take some color.' I said, 'Oh, Jesus!' He said, 'We've got to get them together again.' 'Not on your life, or mine,' I told him. I wouldn't ask them, even if it was for a cover. As it turned out,
Life
never used any of the shots. They were only interested in Bette and Joan as a team, so when Joan left the film, they killed the story, and the tombstone photographs were never published."