Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (26 page)
"It sounds like marriage," said Graham.
"It could be," he said happily.
Two days later Graham reported that Joan had dropped Shaw and reconciled with Bautzer. 'All I know," said Shaw dejectedly to Graham, "is Joan's secretary phoned to say that Joan is still thinking it over and not to feel badly. So you see things may still be in my favor. I've spent every evening with Joan for weeks and weeks. She knows how I feel."
*2
"Joan Crawford
is
so much the
star, her acting spills over into
her private life. If she
is
a
mother, she acts like a mother,
the best mother in the world. If
she
is
a mistress—which
I
don't
know about—she
is
the best
mistress there is. Everything for
her
is
acting, this
is
her life, her
food, her drink."
—DIRECTOR JEAN NEGULESCO
In May 1947 Sidney Skolsky reported that Greg Bautzer and Joan Crawford were planning to marry, but a more skeptical Hedda Hopper doubted the ceremony would ever take place. "Greg would love to marry Joan, but he refuses to live in her house," said Hopper. "With two cats, three dogs, and two children already in residence he may find his honeymoon a little crowded. And separate residences are out of the question. To Joan, her kids come first."
"To the world I may be Joan Crawford, but to my children I am 'Mommie Dearest,' and those two words mean everything to me," Crawford said in 1943 to
Motion Picture
magazine.
"I am an adoptive mother," she told
Modern Screen
that same year. "I do not believe that there is such a thing as illegitimate children. But I do believe there are illegitimate parents."
"Should adopted children be told?" reporter Helen Walker asked. "Yes," said Joan Crawford.
"Darling, where did Mummy find you?" the star asked Christina.
"On a cloud of love," the four-year-old answered.
"And how did you come to live here?"
"Because you loved me more than any other little girl in the world. That's why you picked me out."
The curse of the word "adopted" should be removed before children start school, Joan believed. "It damages if they're not told until they're older, because they can turn on you."
Although her friends and co-workers would later claim that there was never a sign of child abuse in the Crawford household, there were frequent hints in the press that Joan might encounter trouble when it came to controlling the spirited ids of her two blond children.
In 1945, on an early visit to Joan's house, Louella Parsons said that Christopher was one of the most adorable children she had ever met. "You just want to bite a chunk out of his little knees and arms. He is the cutest thing. He mutters under his breath when he isn't included in the conversation."
Visiting a year later, Louella still found the boy to "be the most loving of all children, but Christina is at the age when she's a bit bossy. So Joan has put her in school even though she is only five."
Mildred Pierce
novelist James M. Cain paid a visit to Joan shortly after she won her Oscar. He later described how the star entered the room, "coming in with a swirl of skirts, like a well-bred tornado." Her son, Christopher, followed, making "a grinning, correct little bow, as though he didn't really believe in the stuff, but would do it anyway, just to humor his mother." Daughter Christina, according to Cain, was "a prim, smiling little thing" who threw tantrums when she was not allowed "to take part in things."
"She was a miserable little kid, who deserved to be beaten up," said Joe Mankiewicz. "I was there when Christina would deliberately bait Joan," said author Larry Carr. "She was a willful and devious little monster."
Joan and Christina
"Personally, I think alligators have the right idea. They eat their young," said Eve Arden as Ida in
Mildred Pierce.
"If you want Veda to do anything," said Jack Carson in the same movie, "knock her down first."
"I never use soap or shampoo when washing my children's hair," said Joan for a story on child-raising. "I wet their hair first and then rub in six whole eggs—one by one—a trick I learned from Katharine Hepburn."
"She dolled the kids up, trotted them out to be inspected by guests, then told us not to flatter them," said one actress.
"Don't compliment Christina," Joan warned her friends. ''A conceited young girl is slated for plenty of trouble."
As a baby, Christina was promised she would have everything that Joan had been deprived of as a child. But growing up, the girl became too greedy. At her fourth birthday party, when she opened and tossed her presents aside, she was stopped by Joan. "I made her take each gift around the room and show it to her guests. I even kept some gifts back. On days when she was especially good I let her open one. Christina must not take things for granted."
Demanding absolute quiet when she was on the phone, Joan told Carl Schroeder that in the midst of an important call one morning "my two angels dropped their halos and began to yell at each other. When I hung up I gave them what for. Then I took Christopher on my lap for a session of hugging, because I don't think any child should be disciplined without being left with the idea that you love him very much."
"She held the children's hands when they were on the operating table, having their tonsils out by Doctor Joel Pressman (Claudette Colbert's husband)," said Sheilah Graham, who then debated Joan's tough in-house rules. "No matter how strict you are kids leave toys behind, or they draw pictures on the wall, bring garden dirt into the kitchen. No one can be perfect all the time, except for Joan. When she takes up swimming she wants to be as good as Esther Williams. When she practices tennis she wants to be good enough for Wimbledon."
"The image of the mother was all wrong for
Joan,"
Bette Davis told
Playboy.
"She should have had puppies, not children," said Oscar Levant.
"She was a neurotic bitch; she used us only for publicity," son Christopher told
Newsday
when he was grown.
"Question—'Do you ever spank your children?'
"Answer—'Yes Ma-am—with a
capital S. I spank them almost
daily. Spare the rod and you
have brats, I believe.' "
—JOAN CRAWFORD,
MOTION
PICTURE,
DECEMBER 1944
Christopher as a child could also be willful and devious, said Joan. He frequently baited and irritated her in public. In her autobiography,
Child Star,
Shirley Temple told of the time she invited Joan, her husband, Phil Terry, and the two children to her home. In the bedroom, Christina headed straight for Shirley's closets and, goggle-eyed, she gasped: "Look at all those clothes." "Those aren't clothes. They're costumes," Shirley corrected, closing the door to the covetous child. Then Christopher wanted attention. "Without warning," said Shirley, "he drew back his fist and punched her [Joan] in the thigh. Reaching down she slapped him on the cheek. 'He struck me,' she wailed in defense to husband Terry."
*3
When Christopher was five, he began to request autographed photographs of his movie-star mother, to give to his schoolmates. "After the fifth or sixth request, I got suspicious," said Joan, who investigated and learned the boy was selling them at school for a quarter apiece. Nor was she happy when Christopher, forewarned, insisted on helping himself to an extra piece of candy from an open box on Joan's coffee table. By way of punishment, she made him sit down and eat the whole box; "then she watched as the boy became violently ill."
Greg Bautzer told writer Barry Norman of the Sunday dinner at Joan's house when Christopher, left-handed, used the wrong hand to cut his meat. "Crawford immediately leaned across the table, knocked the food out of his hand and hit him across the face. He started to cry. So I immediately went over and put my arms around him. As I was holding him—we were having a roast leg of lamb—I got it right in my face."
"I intend that my children grow up to be ladies and gentlemen," said Joan when anyone questioned her harsh methods. "Success only comes with order and discipline." During Christmas 1947, when she invited Hollywood writer Norbert Lusk to her home, she told him that Christina would play the piano while Christopher sang "Silent Night." But Christina balked.
"I've forgotten," said the little girl.
"Play it!" Joan commanded.
"I can't."
"Don't say you
can't,"
the star ordered. "Don't say you can't do
anything.
Try!"
Christina was stubborn and Joan's temper was rising, said Lusk.
"Let's go to the piano and try," said Crawford.
"But, Mother, I tell you, I've forgotten," the girl whispered.
"You haven't forgotten this," said Joan, hitting a note. "Nor this," sounding another.
By now Christina had her hand on the keyboard and slowly, tentatively began to play "Silent Night."
"Be afraid of
nothing,
Christina," said Joan, pushing her son forward and lighting the candles for a Yuletide finish.
Mother Bette
Bette Davis answers a fanzine questionnaire, May 1947.
Can you knit? "Vaguely."
Play an instrument? "Afraid not."
Favorite actor? "Have many."
Favorite actress? "Have many."
Favorite hobby? "Home tidying."
Do you slam doors? "Upon occasion ... doesn't everybody?"
Your ambition? "To be an intelligent mother."
She said being pregnant did not make her feel special. Her husband, William Grant Sherry, told her that "creating a baby is the only creation for most women. You have been creating for years." That made Bette feel much better about her condition.
Her child would be born a Yankee, she declared, so in January 1947 she and Sherry moved to her farm in New Hampshire. But the winter became severe, and in March the Sherrys returned to the warmer climate of Laguna Beach.
As the time for the birth grew closer, Bette emphatically stated that she could not envision any joy in natural delivery. "Just imagine Bette in the throes of labor," said writer Neal O'Hara. "Not a pretty picture, I daresay. One imagines her sort of scaring the child from the womb. 'I said,
Out!'"
When it was discovered that the baby wasn't in the right position, her doctors suggested that a caesarean be performed. Bette decided on the day—May Day—and the sex of the child. "Sherry was sure it would be a boy, an infant Hercules. I knew it would be a girl because I did not
want
a male child." (When Bette and husband number four, Gary Merrill, decided to adopt a second child, they agreed it would be a boy. Merrill was overseas when Bette called to tell him she had found a child, a girl. "Wrong fucking sex," said Merrill.)
As willed, a daughter was born to Bette. She was christened Barbara Davis, but called B.D. in perpetuity by her famous mother. "Talk about cosmic revenge," said Neal O'Hara. "Even Joan Crawford couldn't have gotten away with
that.
After all, there is an even higher authority laying claim to the initials, J.C."
B.D. was a seductress from the beginning, Bette declared. "For the first time in my life I became a willing slave to another human being. I was thrilled it was a girl. I dressed her up and brought her to the beach when she was eight days old. She was blond and golden within a week."
When she was asked to pose for some mother-and-daughter fanzine photos, Bette declined. "I am unable to bill and coo publicly with my child," she told Hedda Hopper, putting in an obvious dig at Crawford. "I did not have her for publicity reasons," said Davis, "and I am rather bored with the Mother role—as exploited by some of my cohorts."
She could not, however, refuse to allow the powerful Hedda to enter her home when the columnist showed up uninvited at Laguna Beach. "When I walked in Bette was cradling daughter Barbara on her knees," wrote Hedda. "Bill Sherry came up from the beach in a pair of bathing trunks. With his tanned and muscular body he looked like a bronze statue."
Bette and B.D.
Bette told Hedda that she felt "complete, happy at last." While husband Sherry painted and swam in the ocean, diving for abalone, she cooked, cleaned, and took care of her robust family. "She laughs more and broods less," said Hedda.
Louella Parsons, not to be outdone, also trekked to Laguna to see Bette and her baby daughter. She waxed eloquent about the "shining Madonna" and her beautiful infant. "She is blond and plump and tanned, with big blue eyes, the most gorgeous little baby I have ever seen," said Louella when she just happened to bump into Joan Crawford at La Rue's restaurant the following evening. "Prettier than my Christina? Cuter than my Christopher?" Joan wanted to know, obviously disturbed.
"Joan became upset with the attention that Bette and her baby were receiving," said writer Hector Arce, "so a short time later all heads in the Green Room at Warner's turned in her direction when she arrived one day with Christina and Christopher, followed by a nurse who was wheeling a double pram. When they arrived at their table, everyone watched as Joan reached into the baby carriage and pulled out not one but
two
brand-new babies. She had gone out of state that weekend and adopted two more kids."
"Well, I think it's
disgusting,"
said Bette Davis when she heard the news of the addition to the Crawford household. "She buys babies like she's in a supermarket."
Calling the babies Cathy and Cindy, Joan told the United Press, "I intend to adopt four more. Two boys and two girls. I already have the names picked out. Carol and Cal and Connie and ... I forgot."
"It's a
hoot,"
said Bette. "She brands everything she owns with her last initial." (A dog, Cliquot, and a parakeet, Crazy Crawford, would follow.)
On the weekends Joan and her "twins" (they weren't) had their "gayest fun," said columnist May Mann in
Silver Screen.
"When Joan is dressing to go out for the evening, the babies are placed in a drawer on either side of her dressing-room table. As she puts on her makeup the two little girls can play with her jewelry."
Taking a cue from Davis, Joan put a veto on anyone's taking photographs of her new babies. "You can only shoot the back of their heads," she told photographer Hymie Fink. Her ban was part fear, part vanity. "I am terrified that if their natural mother sees and recognizes them, she'll want them back," she said. "And anyway, in a few months they'll look different, much prettier, like their real mommie, Joan Crawford."
"Can Women Trust Each Other?" was the lead to a feature story in August 1947. "Yes," said Joan Crawford, adding that the renewed talk of a feud between her and Bette Davis was untrue. "Why should there be a feud?" said Joan. "I believe there is a place for every actress in this wonderful business. Certainly Bette and I don't fear each other."
That same month in Laguna Beach, Bette Davis had grown tired of being a full-time mother. Babies and small children bored her, she said. "They can't hold their own in a conversation until they're at
least
five or six." In September she told her husband, Sherry, that she was "sick of being a fat cow." She wanted to return to work, and after depositing B.D. with a nurse, she drove to Burbank and asked Jack Warner for scripts. Two came from Jerry Wald, including
Time
to
Sing,
the story of two retired stage actresses who team up for a tour of summer-stock theaters. The second was
Women Without Men,
about a female prison warden who attempts to rehabilitate a prisoner before she becomes a hardened criminal. For both projects, Jerry Wald wanted Joan Crawford to costar with Bette.
"I know
nothing
of those projects," said Bette in 1987.
"I knew of the women's-prison picture," Crawford said in 1973. "It was written by Virginia Kellogg and later became
Caged,
with Eleanor Parker and Agnes Moorehead. Certainly I wanted to work with Miss Davis, but from what I recall, the studio did not want to put two of their top stars in one picture."
"Certainly I could understand Jack Warner's position," said George Cukor. "Davis and Crawford were both powerful stars at the time. If they collided, World War Three would have been declared."
Irving Rapper agreed. "I don't believe there was a producer or a director on the lot who was willing to tackle a project starring the two."
"There is a wonderful story about Kate Hepburn and Ginger Rogers when they were doing the movie of
Stagedoor
at RKO," Cukor continued. "Both of them were stars at the studio. Kate already had one Oscar and Ginger was very popular because of the Fred Astaire pictures. When the producer, Pandro Berman, was asked how he intended to handle them in
Stagedoor,
he said, 'It's simple. I told Hepburn she could rule the set from eight
A.M.
to one; and Ginger could take over after lunch."
* * *
It was Katharine Hepburn who picked up a part Bette Davis refused in 1947. The picture was
The African Queen,
with Davis cast as the missionary spinster. "Are you
out
of your fucking
mind,
Jack?" said Bette to Warner when he announced his plans to shoot on actual locations in Africa. "If you can't shoot the picture in a boat on the back lot, then I'm
not
interested."
"They'd have me rocking and bouncing all over the damn boat for weeks," she explained to Hedda Hopper, "and I'm much too old for that nonsense."
Irving Rapper spoke of yet another lost role, one that Bette wanted to do that year. With Joan Crawford being touted as a strong Oscar candidate for
Possessed,
Bette planned to regain her dramatic ground by giving a tour-de-force performance as the nation's first crazed first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. The director of the project was Irving Rapper, who met with Bette to discuss the character and the script.
"Mrs. Lincoln would have been a great role for Bette," said Rapper. "She was a powerful character in history, the maddest bitch in the White House. She was the first woman to have a black friend [her seamstress] in the White House, and the first wife to influence her husband as President. She uncovered the conspiracy to kill him, and later, after his murder and the death of her second son, she went insane and was placed in a mental institution by her family. My God, Bette Davis could have torn that part to shreds, but Jack Warner at the last minute changed his mind. He said the story was true, but unpatriotic. 'I'll be the last man to denigrate a man like Abraham Lincoln,' said Warner, and he canceled the picture."
Without recourse, Bette accepted the lead in a film based on the popular best-selling book
Winter Meeting,
about a wealthy New England spinster-poet who falls in love with an ex-naval hero who wants to become a priest. Her director was Bretaigne Windust, who staged
Life with Father
and
Arsenic and Old Lace
in New York. Prior to shooting, Windust and his wife visited Bette in Laguna. "After dinner," said William Grant Sherry, "while Bette was showing his wife our house, Windust spoke to me in the living room. He explained that he wanted to bring out a new quality in Bette for this picture, to make her more restrained and softer. I said it was exactly what she needed at that point. He was a charming, sophisticated man, but Bette would not listen to him when they began the picture. It was half finished and not going well. There was a meeting with the producer, Heinz Blanke, and he said, 'The rushes are terrible; what is going on?' Bette said she was doing what the director wanted, but she wasn't. She was overacting. Basically she was a ham, and if not controlled she could be a mess. Her best films were directed by men whose egos were stronger than hers, and she had to give in to them. Windust was too much of a gentleman, and she had to show him she was superior."
When
Winter Meeting
was released the following April, and flopped ("It was the censor's fault," said Bette; "they cut the guts out of the story"), she was already at work on
June Bride,
a sophisticated comedy that would show "a new Bette," in "a new look" wardrobe by Edith Head, and "a new full bouffant hairdo." "That was her second mistake," said a Warner's publicist. "The times and postwar audiences had changed. The old-fashioned women's pictures and easy comedies were passe. Stars like Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, and Susan Hayward were doing stark dramas like
Possessed, The
Snake Pit,
and
Smash-Up,
and here was Bette playing parts that Joan walked through back in her heydays at M-G-M."
In
June Bride,
Bette was bolstered by a few former Crawford colleagues. Ranald MacDougall, who wrote
Mildred Pierce
and
Possessed,
penned this new script for Bette. Her costar was Robert Montgomery, a steady Crawford leading man of the 1930s. Described by Joan as "smooth and handsome, a thorough gentleman," Bette at the first meeting with the actor agreed with that assessment. But when Montgomery failed to respond to her "rather girlish flirting" during the filming, she began to complain that there was "no chemistry" between them. One afternoon, after finishing a winter's scene in a horse-drawn sleigh, she complained to visitors Lew Wasserman and her husband, Sherry, that Montgomery had misbehaved during the shot. "Robert still has to prove he's a sexy man," said Bette. "He's been feeling around my legs under the blanket all during the take." The stalwart Sherry, known for his equally strong temper, excused himself and went to the actor's trailer. He knocked on his door. "What can I do for you?" the polite Montgomery asked. "You can keep your hands off my wife's legs, for one thing," said Sherry. The bewildered actor said he didn't know what he was talking about. "I'm sure you do," said Sherry. Shaken and confused, Montgomery left for home a short time later, and shooting was shut down for the day. That night in Laguna, Bette told her husband that she thought it would be best if he stayed away from the studio for the rest of the picture. "She seemed rather pleased about the incident," Sherry recalled later.