What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? — Johanna Isaacson

DieDieBooks publishes books about scary movies written for horror fans by horror fans who approach their work from a smart, personal, and critical perspective. Each DieDieBook covers a different horror movie and is written by a different author, bringing a range of idiosyncratic worldviews and approaches to the material. 

For some, Robert Aldrich’s 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?—which galvanized the hagsploitation genre through its depiction of a murderous feud between two deranged “old biddies”—is one long insult to older women. However, this reading ignores the political power of camp. The film’s “bad taste” excesses create space for its talented actors, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, to perform monstrosity as pitch-black humor and rage toward a society that devalues older women. Read this way, the film’s saccharine children, creepy dolls, emotional pyrotechnics, cat fights, and displays of madness are theatrical refusals of a patriarchal society that wants its old women to shut up and disappear until it’s time to serve the milk and cookies.

Offering a close reading of the film, its production, and its reception, alongside historically contextualized examinations of the lives, filmographies, and gossip surrounding the film’s actors and director, Johanna Isaacson’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? offers a detailed examination of the film’s cultural significance while tracing its relevance for an anti-ageist feminism.