The Most Famous Feud in Hollywood History
Bette Davis and Joan Crawford hated each other. This is not gossip; it is historical fact, confirmed by both women in numerous interviews, memoirs, and public statements. The feud began in the 1930s — some say over Franchot Tone, the actor both women loved; some say over professional jealousy; some say it was simply a collision of two massive egos who recognized in each other a worthy adversary. Whatever the cause, it lasted for decades and produced some of the most entertaining bitchery in Hollywood history.
Davis’s assessment of Crawford was characteristically blunt: “She’s a movie star. I’m an actress.” When Crawford died in 1977, Davis was asked for comment. She replied: “You should never say bad things about the dead. You should only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” It was cruel, it was funny, and it was pure Bette.
But the feud reached its apotheosis in 1962, when the two aging stars — both considered has-beens by the industry — were cast together in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Robert Aldrich’s Grand Guignol horror film about two elderly sisters, former child star Baby Jane Hudson (Davis) and crippled former movie star Blanche Hudson (Crawford), locked in a house of mutual torment. It was exploitation, pure and simple — Aldrich knew exactly what he was doing putting these two enemies together — but it was also genius. Davis and Crawford, hating each other in real life, played sisters who hated each other on screen, and the result was electrifying.
The stories from the set are legend. Crawford, who was notoriously vain, filled her trailer with Pepsi-Cola (she was on the company’s board) and allegedly put weights in her pockets so Davis would hurt her back dragging her across the floor in the film’s climax. Davis, in turn, kicked Crawford in the head (for real) during a scene where Baby Jane abuses the helpless Blanche. “It was the only time I ever hit her,” Davis later joked, “and I enjoyed it.”
Baby Jane was a massive hit, and Davis received her tenth Oscar nomination. She lost — to Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker — but she had proved, once again, that she could not be counted out. Crawford, who was not nominated, reportedly campaigned against Davis behind the scenes. The feud continued until Crawford’s death. It was petty, it was childish, and it was utterly human — two proud women who had given everything to an industry that discarded them, taking it out on each other because there was no one else who understood.
The Warner Bros. Wars
Before Crawford, there was Jack Warner. Davis’s battles with the Warner Bros. studio boss were the stuff of Hollywood legend and established her as the first true rebel against the studio system.
The conflict began in the mid-1930s, when Davis — fresh from her Of Human Bondage triumph — demanded better scripts. Warner, who saw actors as interchangeable parts in his factory, refused. Davis wanted to play strong, complex women; Warner wanted her in routine melodramas. She complained. He ignored her. She walked out. He sued her.
In 1936, Davis fled to England to make films there, breaking her Warner contract. Warner sued, and the case — Warner Bros. v. Davis — became a landmark in entertainment law. Davis lost the legal battle (the British court upheld the studio’s contract), but she won the moral war. The publicity exposed the studio system’s abuses, and Davis returned to Warner Bros. with a new contract, more money, and — crucially — script approval. She had, through sheer stubbornness, carved out a degree of autonomy no actress had enjoyed before.
She used that power relentlessly. She fought for Jezebel, for Dark Victory, for The Letter — films that became classics because Davis insisted on quality. She clashed with directors she considered incompetent. She demanded retakes. She rewrote dialogue. Her co-stars found her intimidating; her directors found her exhausting; her audiences found her electrifying.
Jack Warner, who both admired and despised her, summed it up: “She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s my pain in the ass.” It was, from Warner, high praise.
The Truth-Teller
What drove Davis’s combativeness was not ego — or not just ego. It was a fierce, almost religious belief in truth. She believed acting was about revealing human nature, not concealing it. She believed audiences deserved honesty, not comfort. And she believed the studio system, with its pretty lies and manufactured glamour, was the enemy of truth.
This made her a difficult colleague but a great artist. She insisted on playing women who were unlikable, who made mistakes, who were cruel or selfish or broken. When Warner wanted her to soften a character, she refused. When directors wanted her to look beautiful while suffering, she insisted on looking real. Her famous eyes — those huge, bulging, expressive eyes — were not a conventional beauty feature, and she knew it. She used them as instruments of truth, letting them convey rage, pain, and intelligence in ways dialogue never could.
She was also truthful about herself. In her memoirs — The Lonely Life (1962) and This ‘n That (1987) — she wrote with startling candor about her failures: her disastrous marriages, her estrangement from her daughter, her alcoholism, her cruelty. She didn’t excuse herself. She didn’t ask for sympathy. She just told the truth as she saw it, which is all she ever asked of anyone.
The Mother and the Daughter
Davis’s relationship with her daughter, B.D. Hyman, was the great tragedy of her later life. Hyman published a memoir, My Mother’s Keeper (1985), that portrayed Davis as an abusive, alcoholic monster. Davis was devastated — not just by the betrayal, but by the public airing of family pain. She disinherited Hyman and never spoke to her again.
Those who knew Davis were divided. Some said Hyman’s account was exaggerated, the revenge of a neglected child. Others said it contained painful truths Davis couldn’t face. What is certain is that Davis, who had fought so brilliantly for professional autonomy, was less successful in her personal life. She married four times, and none of the marriages lasted. She was, by her own admission, difficult to live with — demanding, self-absorbed, and incapable of compromise.
But she loved her children, in her way. And the pain of the estrangement was real. In her final interviews, conducted as she was dying of cancer, she spoke about Hyman with a mixture of anger and sorrow that suggested the wound had never healed. The woman who had faced down Jack Warner and Joan Crawford without flinching was undone by her daughter’s rejection. It was, perhaps, the one fight she couldn’t win.
The Last Word
Bette Davis died in Paris in 1989, at the age of eighty-one, while traveling to receive a film festival tribute. She had worked until the very end, her body ravaged by cancer, strokes, and decades of cigarettes, but her will unbroken. Her tombstone, in Forest Lawn Cemetery, bears the epitaph she chose herself: “She did it the hard way.”
It is the perfect summary. Bette Davis did everything the hard way — she fought for every role, every script, every inch of respect. She made enemies easily and friends rarely. She was cruel and kind, generous and selfish, brilliant and blind. But she never lied, never compromised, never gave less than everything she had.
In an industry built on illusion, Bette Davis was real. That was her gift and her curse. And that is why, decades after her death, we still watch her — still marvel at those eyes, that voice, that ferocious intelligence — and recognize in her something we rarely see on screen: the truth.
The Davis Legacy: Truth as Art
Bette Davis’s influence extends far beyond her films. She redefined what a female star could be — not a passive beauty but an active force, not a victim but a warrior. Actresses from Meryl Streep to Cate Blanchett to Jessica Lange cite her as inspiration, not just for her talent but for her courage.
She proved that women over forty could be stars, that villains could be protagonists, that truth was more compelling than glamour. She fought the studio system and won concessions that benefited all actors. She was the first woman to be president of the Academy. She was a trailblazer in every sense.
But her deepest legacy is artistic: the idea that acting is about revealing, not concealing. She showed her characters’ flaws, their cruelty, their pain — and in doing so, she showed our own. She didn’t ask us to like her characters. She asked us to recognize them.
In an era of manufactured perfection, Davis was defiantly real. That reality — raw, uncomfortable, magnificent — is why we still watch her. She did it the hard way. And she made it look like the only way worth doing.