Some things are better left alone. When ABC first broadcast the Made-For- TV remake of "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?," with the Redgrave Sisters, I knew I had to watch it, but it was so awful I blocked it out! The Bette and Joan version owns the story!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It still does, because, yesterday, I found the Redgraves' version on YouTube, and, with the distance of 24 years, watched it with a degree of more objectivity! They still get the basics of the story, compressed into about an hour-and-a half, but there are so many questions it raises. And not just, why do it?
The opening is so confusing, because you don't know what is happening. The viewer first sees a swirling mist of snow, and the camera pulls back to reveal a little girl, made up to resemble Melissa Gilbert, on the 'Little House' set, singing a song to a doll. What does this have to do with 'Baby Jane?' Then the camera pulls back all the way, and you see that you are on a movie set. This Baby Jane Hudson was a child star, in the Shirley Temple/Margaret O'Brien vein--the time is now the 1940s--when she was famous for a series of films referred to as the "North Post" series. Blanche is assigned the role of her sister's stand-in, and the parents are just living off their children's money. Just like in the original movie and Henry Farrell novel.
What the sequence lacks is background. You get a sense of the tension between the sister's, even as children, but nothing like Gina Gillespie's classic line, "I won't forget! You BET I won't forget!" Nothing is explained as to how the parents died, and Blanche here becoming the adult star that Jane could not become, and worst of all--the accident is not shown! These were major mistakes, made either because the filmmakers were trying to compress the story, or felt viewers were so familiar with it they could fill in the dots! Bad move, guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the present day, Blanche is so hale and hardy, she looks like she could knock Jane across the room. Vanessa is so over sized they could not find a wheelchair big enough for her to sit in. The mother and daughter of the original are now this California yuppie couple living next door; the husband actually has one of the film's best lines; upon seeing Lynn, as Jane, he says to his wife, "She looks like she was trapped at Woodstock." My beloved thought she looked made up to play Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd," and you know, he was not far off!
There is a sadistic sort of pleasure in seeing Vanessa knocked around. This is the film that established her as a dying hag, which is who you now call when you need someone to play just that!
As for Lynn as Jane, she skips around, going back and forth from childishness to Sixties chic that is inconsistent with the story's character, who wanted the permanence of childhood. I think she was so determined not to channel Bette Davis--as if she could--that she comes across as some sort of transsexual in evolution. Except you are never sure from which gender to what.
Elvira, the housekeeper in the original (so brilliantly played by the great Maidie Norman--"See you next Tuesday!") now becomes Dominick, a black masseuse straight out of Tennessee Williams' short story, and one wonders about him coming to live with Blanche! Uh huh!!!!!!!!!!!! What is done with the Victor Buono's character is fascinating; Edwin Flagg, the over aged Mama;s Boy, is replaced by a sleazy hustler on the make named Billy Korn, played by John Glover, giving the film's best performance. He works in a sleazy video store, lives in a sleazy rat hole of a room, probably in a sleazy hotel in the L.A. red light district, amid druggies, whores and hustlers, so that, during these moments, the film morphs into an interesting blend of "Sunset Boulevard" and "Midnight Cowboy." If this had been maintained, instead of so blatantly copying the Farrell novel and classic film, this might have gone somewhere. The most interesting shot in the entire film is of Glover crossing a street, and the camera pulls back, revealing an enormous wall, onto which is painted a mural of three Golden Age movie stars--Humphrey Bogart,, center, Clark Gable, far right, and, on the far left, the one the camera falls on and lingers on the longest.....Bette Davis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Uh huh!!!!!!!!!! Homage, or what?????????? Bette would have been pissed, and so would Joan!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God they weren't alive to say this. They might have agreed on the only time in their lives, and jointly decided to burn the negative!!!!!!!!!!
Having blocked out my memory of the initial viewing, my memory of the ending was of Lynn skipping around in a public park. But, no, it's still at the beach, Blanche in the sand, confessing to Jane, but the line delivery is so poor that when Lynn says the now classic line, "Then you mean all this time, we could have been friends?," it lacks the pathos and poignancy that Davis gave it, and Vanessa's confessional lacks the malevolence of Blanche; here, she tosses it off, more or less as an after thought. Like, "Oh, Jane, I'm dying, so by the way...."
Blanche's death, which I maintain happens, is something that has been argued over for fifty years. The novel makes it clear she dies. So does the 1962 film, even though, in the final long shot, you see the police finding Blanche. But she has been so dehydrated, and now out in the blazing sun for twelve hours, how could she survive??????? This version has a still alive Blanche being hauled into an ambulance on a gurney, but she could die later.
What is interesting is how the film ends, with Jane. Except for Billy, no sign is ever given of anyone remembering her old movies. In the original, crowds thronged to the spectacle of a nutty woman, acting like a child, giving Jane the "audience" she wanted back again! In this version, Jane is denied this; which says something about public apathy, and the lack of historicity in today's culture; she walks into the ocean, where I thought she was going to commit suicide, like Norman Maine in "A Star Is Born." She is carrying her Baby Jane doll, and at some point, the doll is let go, and seen floating on the ocean, in a lingering shot, and I thought, "Oh, well. Jane could not face being alone without Blanche, so she drowned herself," which the doll symbolizes. This would have been tragic and poetic.
But, no, this is a Made-For TV film, so crassness rules. A cop goes into the waves after Jane, pulls her out, and she looks at him quizzically, calling "Papa?" He ushers Jane onto the land, where she delivers the last line, "Let's go live at the beach!" Then the camera freezes on Jane's obviously insane look, and there you have it--trapped in that body, in a mental hospital. And ripped off from the final shot of that underrated 1972 Twentieth-Century Fox film, "The Other!"
Hell, as long as the filmmakers here were deviating so far from the plot--Jane is even dolled out in adult Sixties garb to Glover's playing he r sister in drag, which sends her off the edge, when she sees a whole theater of freakish looking people laugh at her--they might as well have used the ending I always envisaged for the film, before actually seeing it. A close shot on Jane in the dark, a spot hitting her face. She begins to sing, in a genuinely talented voice, dressed as a child. The camera pulls back, and as it does, the image fades, and morphs into Jane in rags and where she really is--in an an auditorium of the asylum she is now in, where she can now be the "STAR" attraction.
It would have made more sense than how this film ends!
To think William Aldrich, Robert's (who directed the original) son, and who was the little boy in the vaudeville sequence, was this version's Executive Producer! He should have been haunted by his father's ghost--like Hamlet! Maybe he was! Or, he must have been hard up for cash! That's Hollywood, darlings; anything for a buck! To hell with art!
'Baby Jane' deserved better than this! But, when I get to play her, dolls, she will! I practically live the part, anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!
Even the rat scene got shortchanged, to a sandwich crawling with worms! And a meat loaf designed to resemble the neighbors' dog, whom Jane killed!!!!!!!!!!!
Since yesterday was Hayley Mills' birthday, how about she and Juliet doing Jane and Blanche???????? Now, THAT could be interesting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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