"Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanche!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Will Yuh Talk Tuh This Man From Johnson's??????????????????"

                                      No, darlings, that line is not in the novel.

                                      If I had to make of list of the Top Ten topics written about on this blog,"What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?" would be one of them.

                                        You all know--how it influenced my early life, how I wanted the childhood Baby Jane had, how I resented the attention I felt I should have got when I was older--and maybe feel I still should get--and so on, and so on.

                                          So, what more is there to say?

                                           Well--

                                            For starters, the novel is structured differently from the movie. Where viewers are used to getting the Prologue in one fifteen minute swoop, here it is stretched out the course of the novel, by having internal past memories intrude upon the present day thoughts of Jane and Blanche.

                                             For another, it uproots the traditional Show Business Monster--the Stage Mother.  Here, it is the father, Ray Hudson, a wanna be performer, who can barely eke out a living, but, once those children come along, especially Jane, he hits pay dirt, and the glory road.  Leaving no talent Mom and sister Blanche to brood and stew--Mother, knowing Jane's stardom will not outlast childhood, Blanche resenting what her sister has now.  The sisters had their issues back then, but Daddy created them.  Mother tried to intervene, but was too passive.

                                            The novel is set up to be read objectively.  As impossible as it may be, try to remove all traces of the movie from your brain as you read the novel. What you get is a truly
disturbing, and truthful story, that never plays into the realm of camp, because it is told mostly in prose, not snappy dialogue.  It also enables one to feel sympathy for Blanche, and then to switch, at the end, to Jane.  Also, removing the film, one hardly pictures either Davis or Crawford in the roles.
Once the film came out in 1962, all bets were off; they owned,  and continue to own, those roles!!!!!!!!!

                                            Henry Farrell's schtick was the vagaries of show business and mental illness.  It was never realized more brilliantly than in 'Baby Jane,' but there are three short examples in this edition that further solidifies his skill at this gimmick.

                                               The first is his second most famous work, "What Ever Happened To Cousin Charlotte?," which became the basis for the 1964 film, "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte."  Everything is there---the Mayhews, cousin Miriam, Charlotte, Sam Hollis, suggestions of incest, Velma Cruthers--but condensed into short story form.  The story does not go into details about Miriam's white trash social origins, and her inflated sense of entitlement, which is why she hates the Hollis family, what she witnesses, what she does to Jewel.  You get the bare outlines of the script, a kind of Southern Gothic "Gaslight." The film was much more. However, that flower urn still crushes Miriam and Hugh (called Drew in the film). And Charlotte is taken away, though one is never sure where--to jail or a mental institution.

                                                Farrell continues, with a wonderful tale that should have been dramatized on "The Twilight Zone," a story entitled, "The Debut Of Larry Richards," in which a down-and-out Broadway actor (that theme again!) gets work in the brand new medium of television, and is menaced by an emotionally distraught young man he gave the brush off to.  Fits in with the
Farrell oeuvre.

                                                   Not so the last story, with the unusual title "First, The Egg." This seems influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," or more particularly, the 1925 silent film version of it, wherein a brontosaurus egg is brought back to London, to wreak havoc.  What happens here is different, but the potential is there.  The least Farrell of the three, despite the
Hollywood background.

                                                     If there are more Farrell stories out there, I would be delighted to read more. But this book you buy for two reasons--'Jane' and 'Charlotte.'  They are the ones that satisfy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                      And both, especially 'Baby Jane,' engender compassion for the lead  characters.  But I still like Bette Davis, as Charlotte Hollis, when she says--

                                                       "Waddaya think I asked you here for--COMPANY???????"

                                                         Actually, I may be the one needing that nice Dr. Shelby.  If I work here five more years, dolls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!