Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (25 page)
There was also some trouble with a scene involving Claude Rains and his cat. Bette had recently lost her beloved dog, Tibby. (Laid out in a coffin lined with brown velvet and filled with gardenias, the dead dog had been taken to New Hampshire, to be buried at Butternut, at which time husband number two, Arthur Farnsworth, was dug up and reinterred in another state). That loss (of the dog) left Bette sensitive to the sight of small animals; so she asked that the cat scene in
Deception
be cut from the script. But the shot was necessary, the director insisted. Claude Rains was to hold the cat under his chin, stroke him, and look evil. "We must have wasted a week trying to sedate the cat so Claude could hold him without getting scratched," said Bette. "They doped the cat until it couldn't move, and when Claude got to the point where he could stroke the cat it was so heavily
drugged
that it looked
dead!"
The climax of
Deception
was subsequently changed by Bette. Originally, Paul Henreid, crazed with love for Bette, was to kill Claude Rains. ''It was supposed to happen off-stage," said writer John Collier. "Henreid shoots Rains and goes to prison, while Bette promises to wait for him." When the ending was shot, onstage, Bette, for a stronger finish, insisted that
she
be the killer. "She was listening to Oscar bells, to another Academy Award nomination," said Rapper, "and I was anxious to get the damn thing over and done with, so we did it her way."
After she pumped four bullets into Rains, Bette, it was said, packed away her gun and went off to chat with Jack Warner about finishing off her real-life nemesis, Joan Crawford.
''It became a knock-down dragged-out fight between the two ladies," said columnist Jimmie Fidler. "Bette wanted Jack Warner to boot Joan out of Burbank; and Joan held her contract option over his head. Warner was caught in a such a tight squeeze that his balls were turning blue."
In late August 1947, when the trade-paper ads and programs for Warner's twentieth anniversary of talking pictures appeared, Bette's photo, along with those of Bogart, Flynn, Cagney, and others, appeared prominently, together with a list of her entire Warner movie credits. Joan Crawford's name, and image, however, were absent, as was any mention of that year's award-winner,
Mil
dred Pierce,
or the forthcoming
Humoresque.
On September 21 the Chicago
Tribune
reported, "There's a honey of a tussle now going on between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Warner's wants to postpone Joan's picture
Humoresque
until next Spring and release Bette's picture before December, which would mean that Joan would not be eligible for an Academy Award this year."
On September 24 Hedda Hopper reported that "the themes of both pictures are the same—about musicians and both have similar endings. Joan made her picture first, so it would seem fair to release hers first."
"Yes, there is a problem," said Joan, "and I have no idea why Bette hates me so."
"I do not
hate
Miss Crawford," said Bette. "I hardly
know
her. The decision to release my picture first was made by my boss Jack Warner."
Joan called Warner. He confirmed Bette's statement. It was the exhibitors who had asked for Bette's picture to be released first.
Deception
was a Davis vehicle, she carried the picture, and the Warner theater owners needed that weight to kick off their fall season. "Don't bullshit me, Jack," said Joan. "Bette can't face the competition. Can she?"
Crawford knew she wasn't in every scene of
Humoresque,
but the picture revolved around her. "Furthermore," she told Warner, "I had my agent call a few of the big exhibitors in Boston, New York, and Chicago. They all said they're dying for a new Crawford picture."
On October I, 1946, Dorothy Kilgallen reported the latest round in the battle of the Warner stars. Davis' picture would be released in mid-October, with no definite release date for the Crawford film. "But you can bet it will be released this year," said Kilgallen, "because Joan's contract with Warner's has expired and she won't renew unless the matter is resolved in her favor."
Jack Warner cursed the feud and the fresh trouble. His studio, closed the previous year by union picketers when "participants were knifed, clubbed and gassed before police restored order," was facing the threat of a new strike between the unions of the stagehands, carpenters, and cameramen. He didn't need this "female trouble" from Bette and Joan.
On October 18
Deception
was released. The reviews were mixed. "It's like grand opera, only the people are thinner. I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said PM magazine.
"Bette is less neurotic than most of her recent assignments. Solid appeal for femme patrons," said
Variety.
On October 23 columnist Jimmie Fidler reported that Crawford 197 had been seen dining with Louis B. Mayer. "There is talk," said Fidler, "that Joan may be returning to M-G-M, to star in a new picture with Clark Gable."
With his union problems resolved, Jack Warner made some hasty moves to appease his leading ladies.
Deception
was bringing in good money, so to pacify Davis he bought her a new mobile dressing room. "It is a beautiful three room trailer, with a breakfast nook, a separate bedroom and all the latest modern conveniences, including venetian blinds and a telephone!" said the studio press release.
Warner then met with Crawford and told her he was going to release
Humoresque
in late December, to qualify her for an Oscar nomination. The release, however, was to be limited to one theater in Los Angeles, and it was supposed to be a quiet event (i.e., without alerting Bette) until trade reporter Mike Connolly, invited to a special viewing of the film by Joan, jumped the gun and reported how "ravishing and controlled" she appeared in the new picture. "Joan has Oscar written all over her performance," said Connolly. "She and not Bette will be the one to vote for next Spring."
The morning the Connolly item appeared, Jack Warner received a call from Bette.
"Jack!" said Bette. "Have you read the news?"
"I have not seen the trades yet," Warner lied, prepared for the worst.
"Not the trades,
Jack,"
said Bette, "the
Herald Tribune.
Louella's column. She is the first to break the story. I am
pregnant."
It was a big scoop, Louella reported that morning, and she virtually had to drag a confirmation out of Bette. They weren't on speaking terms, Louella explained, because she had sided with Joan during the recent Oscar dispute. "Told by a 'little bird' " (usually her husband, Doc Harry Martin, a proctologist, or "Old Velvet Finger," as Carole Lombard dubbed him) that Bette was pregnant, Louella called her six times until she made contact. "Listen, Bette," said Lolly, "I happen to know you're expecting a baby. I want to write this good news, but even more than that I want your friendship again."
"It's true, Louella," said Bette, "and I am happy we are friends again."
"It was a softer, gentler Bette that came to my house for dinner with her husband, a few nights later," said Parsons in her column the next week. "Of course, I wanted to talk to her about many things—about the baby, her plans for the future, and her supposed feud with Joan Crawford. But like good women, Bette and I sat back and listened to the war talk of our men, both of whom had served overseas."
"All
is
hearts and flowers
between Bette Davis and Joan
Crawford. They lunch in the
Green Room everyday. There
could be a shortage of tables of
course."
—SHEILAH GRAHAM
"If I knew she was going to get pregnant, I could have saved myself the expense of buying her that damn trailer," said Jack Warner, somewhat relieved that he would not have to deal with Davis for the next nine months. Joan Crawford was cheerful also. With
Humoresque
set to be released, the studio could concentrate on pushing her and the picture without interference from mother-to-be Bette. "I am so happy for you," Joan wrote in a note to Davis that December. "If I can be of any help, in any way, please let me know."
And, surprisingly, the "softer, gentler Bette" responded. "The feud must be over," Sheilah Graham reported. "Joan Crawford gifted Bette Davis with a fancy handbag, set with stones, and matching sandals."
"No one who spotted Bette Davis and Joan Crawford huddled over their knitting at the Warner Brothers studio can doubt the depth of their new friendship," Louella Parsons trumpeted that same week. "When mother-to-be Bette made a mistake with the little garment she was making, Joan took it from her, unravelled the entire piece and began it anew. As the two top stars laughed and joked together, only the most callous and suspicious of minds could doubt that this alliance is sincere. It is a friendship that will last for a long, long time."
13
I
n January 1947, when
Humoresque
was released and doing brisk business at the box office, Joan Crawford made herself available for contract talks with studio boss Jack Warner. For $250,000 per film, she agreed to make two films a year for the next five years. She would have approval over scripts, directors, cameramen, costumers, and costars; if Warner's failed to come up with suitable material, she could accept outside offers, a privilege requested by but denied to Bette Davis.
With Davis on maternity leave, Crawford now had first call on all scripts at the studio. From the top of the pile she chose
Possessed,
a script that had been tailor-made for Bette. For her performance as a tormented schizophrenic who shoots her lover in a jealous rage, Joan would also receive her second Academy Award nomination.
The director was Curtis Bernhardt, who had worked with Davis on
A Stolen Life.
"It was not difficult to get along with Bette," he said, "provided you know her moods and the proper time to approach her with ideas. It would be fatal to ask her something at the wrong time."
Crawford was "as easy to work with as can be," Bernhardt continued. "She was naturally a little subdued because she was the studio's second-ranking star. She threw her handbag at me several times when I called her Bette by mistake."
Encouraged by the director, Joan undertook extensive research for her role as the hallucinating psychopath who kills the man she loves. She discussed the character with several psychiatrists and spent time in a mental asylum, surveying a patient undergoing electric-shock therapy. Her homework ultimately impressed critic James Agee. "Miss Crawford is at her very best in the mad scenes," he said. "She has obviously studied the aspects of insanity to recreate a rather terrifying portrait of a woman possessed by devils."
The realism affected her emotionally at times, Bernhardt said. "Bette can snap in and out of a scene quite rapidly. Joan was not as facile an actress. Several times we had to call a break when her hysterics continued beyond the 'cut.'"
"While making
Possessed,
I wept each morning on my drive to the studio," said Joan, "and I wept all the way back home. I found it impossible to sleep at night, so I'd lie in bed contemplating the future. I fear it with all my heart and soul even as I fear the dark."
"Joan's dark moods affected everyone she worked with," said Louella Parsons. "It was frightening to observe the depth of her involvement with the role."
"She was touching nerves in herself," said Jimmie Fidler, "holding a mirror to her own neuroses."
"Helga, I'm not mad at you.
I'm mad at the dirt."
—JOAN TO HER MAID, 1947
She had never been on a psychiatrist's couch, and never found the need for one, Crawford boasted to many, but confessed to Katharine Albert that she did possess a few teensy-weensy personal disorders. "I'm no angel," she told her writer-friend. "I have a few compulsions that seem to drive other people crazy. I insist on punctuality, courtesy, and I have a passion for cleanliness." The latter fixation, shared by Bette Davis, was a constant obsession with Joan. "She never wore a dress, a hat, or a coat that wasn't sent to the cleaners instantly after wearing it," said Albert. "I used to wash my hands every ten minutes," said Joan. "I couldn't step out of the house unless I had gloves on. I wouldn't smoke a cigarette unless I opened the pack myself, and I would never use another cigarette out of that pack if someone else had touched it."
"In one scene in
Baby Jane,"
said Bette Davis, "I was to hand her two vitamin pills. She faked taking them, leaving them in her palm. I said, 'Miss Crawford, would you prefer that I hand the whole bottle to you?' 'Yes, thank you,' she said."
When she stayed in a hotel, no matter how many stars it had, Joan always scrubbed the bathroom herself before using it. At home, after a workman had installed a new bathtub and toilet, then used them, she had the plumbing torn out and replaced immediately. "Until Joan discovered she could cover her furniture in plastic," said Billy Haines, "there were entire apartments in Los Angeles that had been furnished with almost-new sofas and chairs that had been soiled once then discarded."
Doing her own housework not only guaranteed sanitized perfection, it served as a purification of the soul for the compulsive star. Frequently, after a wild night on the town, raising a few drinks and lowering a few male libidos, Joan could purge her guilt the following morning by cleaning her Brentwood mansion from top to bottom. "She is a woman driven by a great deal of energy," said writer Ruth Waterbury, who described how "Joan the drudge" would exorcise her private demons by scrubbing, cleaning, and waxing the floors and woodwork of her house each weekend. "She begins on Saturday morning," said Waterbury. "She starts with the kitchen, then the bathrooms, then goes through the library, through the music room, through the upstairs sitting rooms and bedrooms." Finished by dusk, she then relaxed with a drink and planned some fresh hell for that night.
"Love with Joan Crawford might
be a strenuous business, perhaps
a little difficult at times. But
well worth the run."
—AUTHOR JAMES M. CAIN
Crawford's obsession for cleanliness and order also permeated her love life. Actor-comedian Jackie Gleason met Joan at a party and went home with her. "She was neat. Like
real
neat," he told columnist James Bacon. "Minutes after I (bleeped) her—she got up and started making the bed with me still in it." By the mid-1940s Joan's psychosexual games kept pace with the sheer number of her male conquests. "She had men stacked up to the left and the right of her," said Adela Rogers St. Johns. 'As new lovers were recruited, she shoved the used ones to the rear of the line."
Like many attractive, promiscuous people, Joan Crawford could be seduced with flattery and attention on a first and second date, but if a man wanted to retain her interest, a challenge or a touch of danger was mandatory. "She liked men who gave her a hard time," said Adela Rogers St. Johns. "If a guy was always available when she called, she soon dropped him."
"She got bored quite easily and had unpredictable mood swings," said an agent who was physically enamored of Crawford for a short term. 'At night, alone, she went through different changes. Sometimes she would be this carefree sophisticated swinger, and the next night she acted like a little defenseless girl, all alone in the big world. The changes were O.K. by me, except it became tiresome to switch along with her. I didn't know who I should be at times—her lover or her daddy. Eventually I told her, 'Hey, Joan, I'm an agent, not an actor. I represent actors all day long, and at night I just want to unwind and be myself.' She gave me a long hard look, and said, 'You're so right, Joe. You
are
an agent, and a good one, but you're also a bore. Now get
out.' "
Fred De Cordova, producer of Johnny Carson's TV show, worked as a dialogue director on
Mildred Pierce
and dated Joan for a while. "She certainly knew how to make a man feel important," said De Cordova. "Before going out with you, she'd model several outfits and ask you to choose the one you'd like her to wear. She'd layout her jewelry for you to select. And whatever liquor was your favorite, it was hers too. Some weeks it must have been pretty confusing for her."
De Cordova and others were only stand-ins for the main man in Crawford's life during this period. He was Greg Bautzer, "the handsome young attorney who used to open night-club doors for Lana Turner."
Back in 1939, when Joan told Lana to hit the road because she wanted Greg, the attorney was no match for the older star; her games of sex and power intimidated the younger man. But by 1946, after a few hot romances with such stalwart Hollywood glamour girls as Merle Oberon and Sonja Henie, Greg was ready to play in the center ring with Joan.
He called her the week after she won the Oscar, but she refused the call. "George Raft sends flowers daily, but he can't seem to reach her either," said Jimmie Fidler. Bribing her secretary at the studio, Bautzer learned that Joan was going to Palm Springs for a weekend. He followed, checked in at the same hotel, the La Quinta, and called her from the lobby. "Look," said Greg, "I can't break through that telephone guard of yours in town. You're either busy, or not in, or not talking. But I'm here, you're here. It's a beautiful night. Let's go dancing."
"They danced until the place closed," said
Modern Screen.
"That was their first bond. There were others. Joan loves to swim. So does Greg. He plays tennis. She's learning."
Bautzer knew how to court beautiful women, the magazine confided. "He sends her orchids, almost daily. He sends gifts with the flowers ... a gold bracelet dangling a gold heart and key; a gold cigarette case encrusted with rubies and engraved 'Forever and Forever,' and a matching lighter that said 'Here's my torch and my love.' He is always available for her half-hour telephone calls. And don't forget Greg is a lawyer, so he makes the most convincing speeches."
"Joan Crawford has twenty-six telephones in her home," reported Cal York, "and she wears bells on her slippers so her servants would know where she is at all times. She spends as much as four hours a day on the phone and last month when Greg Bautzer was in New York her bill ran to $600."
Joan gave Greg the gift of a new car, a black Cadillac convertible, Hedda Hopper reported (while Bette Davis surprised "her fella," husband Grant Sherry, with his own plane—leased—for his birthday). Bautzer was also Joan's special cohost at a formal dinner for two hundred she gave at Le Pavillon, honoring her dear old English chum, Noel Coward. "It was the party of the year," said the Hollywood
Reporter.
"Joan's dear friend Billy Haines converted the restaurant into a small garden of Versailles, with showers of pink gardenias." "The menus were printed in French," said Hedda Hopper. "Tony Martin and Dinah Shore sang. Jack Benny played his violin and Noel and Celeste Holm did a party number. Other guests included Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, Jane Wyman, Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter; and Clifton Webb, who brought his mother. Two of the hostess's ex-husbands, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Franchot Tone, also showed, but Joan only had eyes for her handsome date, Greg Bautzer."
"Too many teeth," was Noel Coward's description of Bautzer, but the British playwright said Joan was "fabulous—I love her dearly—even though all I saw of her all evening was her left shoulder. She turned her back upon me to beam upon Bautzer. Nevertheless, I adore her. My enthusiasm for her increases every year."
Bautzer's affair with Joan was discussed frequently in Hollywood. He had qualities that attracted and repelled her, she said. He was a man's man. He liked to fight, drink, and gamble. "Greg loves to gamble on anything and everything. Joan has never so much as placed a two-dollar bet on a guaranteed winner," said Sheilah Graham. After an all-night poker game, heavily intoxicated, he was driving home when he plowed into a mailbox and lamppost on Wilshire Boulevard. The next day's newspaper coverage shocked the publicity-conscious Joan. She broke off with him for a while and took up with Lana Turner's ex-husband, restaurateur Steve Crane. Bautzer retaliated by being seen in public with Merle Oberon, whereupon Joan packed her bags and her children and left for New York for four months. A week later, after Bautzer flew to New York and begged for a reconciliation, he and Joan were seen dancing cheek to cheek at the Plaza and shopping at Saks. "Joan left for New York with four trunks and returned with eleven, loaded with gifts from Greg," Hedda Hopper marveled.
"These two battle anywhere, any time," said Dorothy Kilgallen. "They quarrel in Hollywood and make up in New York. They kiss in the Catskills and feud again at Malibu."
"Joan liked to be treated rough, and she made sure that Greg obliged her frequently," said Adela Rogers St. Johns. "One Saturday morning I ran into her at the Farmer's Market and she pulled me aside. 'Look, darling,' she said. Lowering her sunglasses she displayed a black eye. I sympathized with her but she wasn't having any of that. 'He loves me,' she said, showing off the shiner like it was a medal of honor."
When Greg lunched for two days in a row with Rita Hayworth, Joan changed her private number again and took up with British actor Peter Shaw.
"It's serious between Joan Crawford and young Peter Shaw," said Hedda Hopper in February 1947. "Joan gifted him with a pair of gold heart-shaped cuff links. 'He doesn't table-hop. He's completely attentive to the girl he's with,' said Joan. 'It's Spring and I'm feeling romantic.'"
"Joan and the handsome Peter Shaw are serious," said Mike Connolly. "He has been on lots of picnics with her and her children."
"I only have a minute as I'm rushing to meet Joan," Shaw told Sheilah Graham on March 4, 1947. "But I did want you to know I may soon be divorcing my wife in England. I am so in love with Joan and I think she loves me too."