I've been watching HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE on some broadcast station (despite my having the DVD and a Blu-ray) tonight. Irritatingly, even in 2026, they've bleeped Bette's
"bitch!" assessment of her northern cousin over dinner, and the 8:30 grandfather clock "twang" in the prologue has been softened by some goddamnedable lab tech.
At this viewing though, I've been thinking more, as I watch once again, about what the movie might've been like with Joan Crawford in the role of Miriam instead of Olivia de Havilland (had the two über-divas, Bette & Joan, not spent so much effort in their ongoing one-upmanship campaign)... It's easy to picture: a more overtly-malevolent, able-bodied Crawford skulking around the mansion's shadows, the back of the closet containing her shredded gown somehow darker than it would be with Olivia.
And, had Davis & Crawford successfully re-paired to do CHARLOTTE, its memory -- and the memory of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? two years earlier -- would likely be different in the decades that would follow. CHARLOTTE might be the better-recalled film because, quite frankly, it's the superior picture (as numerous viewers have observed, though the critics are loathe to concede the point) despite the inexplicable costume-n-coif anachronism error in CHARLOTTE's 1927 prologue.
I like de Havilland in the latter film, and she brings a breezy contrast to Davis (which totally works). But if Crawford, sleek and evil, had appeared in JANE and CHARLOTTE as well, then the two movies would have been even more in competition with each other in collective memory than they already are, and the comparisons (and distinctions) would have been even more apparent. (Or perhaps less). CHARLOTTE's creepy supremacy might have eventually trumped BABY JANE's proportionately quaint hostage narrative (which always makes a picture drag, no matter the quality of execution) even though JANE was the one which initiated the
grande dame guignol genre of the '60s. The point accentuated by the fact that none of the other 'hag horror' entries are anywhere near as good as these two. (Although I'll always argue that Davis' THE NANNY is right up there, in its quieter way).
Had Joan Crawford not walked-off of CHARLOTTE, had Bette Davis not done everything to encourage her rival to do just that, then we might have had a picture that was even pitch-blacker than it already was. Some people on the set -- who liked de Havilland -- nonetheless claimed that Mary Astor's scene with Miriam on the steps of the Hollisport courthouse (which had to be re-shot in Hollywood with Olivia, a Coca-Cola truck gliding by in order to besmirch the Pepsi queen gone AWOL) was even better with Astor &
Crawford, Jewel Mayhew's dowagerial diss, "
Murder starts in the heart, and its first weapon is a vicious tongue!" one of the unacknowledged best lines in cinema history -- especially
shocker cinema history.
But, who knows? Maybe the continuation of Crawford in the role of Miriam might have thrown off CHARLOTTE's karma in some unforeseen negative way, reducing the fabulously macabre semi-sequel to something less than the sum of its parts... As it is, with de Havilland as the co-star, the status of HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE remains that of the secondary, supposedly-lesser film (a position higher-caliber product often occupies).
Bette Davis once said of the other star, "
Crawford has a cult; I have fans!" And it would appear to be true. Even today, Joan's remaining dark admirers
detest CHARLOTTE, still asserting that it's "cheap trash," a middling knock-off of BABY JANE.
Although there's no question that the two movies are sisters, Velma; they know each other very well.
