What Ever Happened to Baby Jane…?



AKA: What Ever Happened to…

Blanche Hudson is a former movie star who is currently confined to a wheelchair due to an accident she suffered 20 years ago. She lives with and is cared for by her sister Jane, who was herself a child star in her youth, before her fame fizzled out. A fact she’s still clearly quite bitter about, as evidenced by her paranoia and increased drinking. Both sisters are bitter towards the other and still try to “one-up” the other in any way they can. But when Jane finds out that Blanche is planning on selling the family home AND sending her away to a hospital, she really goes off the deep end and does anything she can to keep the house (that she paid for!) and the two of them together, by any means necessary.


I told you not to call collect!

Welcome to my humble page, ladies and gentlemen, where each year during the month of January we all occasionally become uncomfortably aware of at least one film remake that we never knew existed. This year I actually have a couple films planned that might fall into that category, but I expect the clear winner of that distinction this month to fall upon What Ever Happened to Baby Jane…?, a title I suspect many of you movie buffs may see and, like me, ponder “WTF? Why the heck would anyone remake that?” I assure you I do not have an answer to that question. Much like I never have one when any studio decides to remake a film largely considered to be a classic. Especially one that’s fondly remembered, was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, and stars bloody Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in what may be two of their most memorable roles. So no, I do not understand the thought process behind the choice to remake this, for had I been in charge I wouldn’t have touched it with a 150 ft pole, much less given it the green light to move forward… Especially as a TV project! Because even attempting to come close to Davis and Crawford’s performances just feels like an exercise in futility. Meaning I went into this fully expecting to absolutely hate it. So imagine my complete and utter shock when the movie ended and realized that it didn’t outright suck.


Well, some of the makeup did, BUT OTHER THAN THAT…

Now, don’t misunderstand me. There was still no point in remaking What Ever Happened to Baby Jane…?. Because beyond a couple of the minor quibbles that you could probably pick out from any movie, the original film is damn near flawless. So there wasn’t really much they could have found to improve upon. And in truth, they really didn’t. Because it was made for TV, the movie is shorter (around 20 minutes), resulting in the deletion of much of the backstory. Two of the characters are cut out and replaced with a single new one. There’s a con man trying to take advantage of Jane, who seems to primarily work with drug dealers and underage gay twins who are trying to shake him down for money. Oh, and he cross-dresses and sings at one point. So, yeah… Choices were definitely made, and not all of them were for the best. Though I didn’t mind the shorter run-time or the updated timeline, which changed Jane from a vaudeville star, to a regular child actor, a la Shirley Temple. That was probably a wise choice, since vaudeville was so removed from the 90s. So not every change they made was bad. But, suffice it to say, that fans of the original are probably not going to like most of the film’s many “updates.”


Yeah I’m…uh…not sure what they were thinking here…

But beyond that the movie isn’t actually all bad. The cinematography, color and lighting are all pretty good for your standard Made-for-TV film. There are a couple of scenes that are unnecessarily dark, because apparently people can never act like they ever pay their electric bill in these types of films. But they aren’t so dark that you can’t tell what’s going on. So thankfully the film looks and sounds pretty decent. The only real technical blip it has is that some of the editing comes across horribly choppy. But I’m pretty sure those sudden cuts are indicative of commercial breaks. Which… Would make sense. But a couple of them are pretty jarring, so you know that means they didn’t consider the “flow” of the film as a whole as they were making it.



Then there’s the acting. The film is headlined by real-life sisters, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, two women who have dozens of various nominations and awards between them for their work. So you KNOW they can act. But while Lynn does a good job chewing the scenery almost as good as Davis and looks appropriately ridiculous in her Pippy Longstocking wig, Vanessa seems almost sedate. Almost like her character has seemingly accepted her fate, despite her vocal protests to the contrary. Which is weird, because thanks to all the modern updates the Blanche here actually isn’t quite as helpless as Joan’s version was. Like, she has a few more options at her disposal. Yet despite her displaying resourcefulness she still ends up as the same helpless victim as the original. There’s this entire segment where she’s going around looking for food and water upstairs and the whole time she was doing it I kept thinking: 1) you have your chair and an empty bottle. If you’re that thirsty why aren’t you going to the bathroom and filling it up with water? And 2) there’s an electric stair-lift, and you’re clearly not locked in your room, why aren’t you using it to go to the kitchen?  Or why aren’t you just yelling out the window “Help! I’m trapped in my house!” Because the windows weren’t bolted, and the neighbors seemed to be outside in every other scene, so I feel that was a viable option. I assume the answer to my query is that some of these issues were just due to the holdovers from the original story and they didn’t know how to edit them out. But they still make for annoying plot issues.


See! Look! You did it before! What was stopping you from trying again?!

The one thing I did really like about the movie is that it looks like at least one of the writers picked up the original book the movie was based on at some point, because in this version it feels like the two sisters actually have a relationship. The original film, either because it wasn’t what they were going for or because Bette and Joan didn’t get along, just focused on how much the two sisters hated one another. Like, if they’d found themselves near a well and one of them almost fell in, the other would have gleefully pushed her the rest of the way down and continued to walk on and not thought a single thing about it. Because those two just come across like a couple of selfish, petty little bitches. Which isn’t to say they don’t occasionally act like that here. They do. It just isn’t nearly as bad.


Relatively speaking…

But in this version it’s actually established that the two sisters do, at least occasionally, like one another. I mean, the sisterly bond is there. It’s established. You see them having fun together as kids and reminiscing about fond memories as they get older. So the real villain wasn’t just one character or the other. It’s that they both (both!) let greed and jealousy go to their heads and THAT cracked that bond, not just the assholery. So this version actually humanizes them a bit and makes the film feel much more like a tragedy. Because they both wanted the same thing, but then fucked it up for the same reasons. So at the end when Jane says, “You mean this whole time we could have been friends?” the line hits differently, because in this version you can see that they actually DID want to be friends.


Look! A scene where they’re not trying to kill each other! Amazing.

And if anything, that one small addition changes the film’s perspective a bit and makes it feel more relevant today, because it almost turns the film into a cautionary tale about the dramatic pitfalls of child acting. Yeah, Jane was bratty towards her sister, but that was partially because she was literally supporting the entire family. Like the bills, the house, the car, everything. I can’t imagine the stress. Is it any wonder she turned out slightly mentally unstable and co-dependent on alcohol and drugs? Gee, that sounds familiar. And her parents enabled it all because she was raking in the dough. Which just fueled Blanche’s jealousy and resentment and made her feel like she had to punish her sister later in life, including framing her for an accident she caused to herself. It’s no wonder the both of them are crazy. They’ve been locked in a constant circle-jerk of tormenting one another since they were 8. So instead of merely watching two evil assholes duke it out, you actually feel a little bad for the pair.


It helps that their father didn’t outright suck in this version.

So no. I can’t say the movie sucks. It’s decently made, and decently acted, and actually includes a couple missing elements that were featured in the book, but not the 1962 movie. So I admit it was a valiant effort at an update. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good either. My personal view of remakes is that, if you’re gonna remake it, you either have to surpass the original or go in a completely different direction with it. And this film does neither. It’s just too similar to its predecessor and doesn’t manage to do anything to improve upon it. So while I think it’s still an okay little film, its existence still feels utterly pointless. But, it’s also not outright bad. Or at least not all of it is. So if you’re curious about it, feel free to give it a quick watch, even if its only to witness the higher body count. But if you want to see the superior product, then just go watch the ‘62 version.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane…? is available on a variety of streaming services.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane…? Is also available on DVD but…good luck finding it.

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