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baby jane strikes back from the grave
Published Oct. 12, 2008
Smoke 'em if you've got 'em
By Roger Ebert on October 11, 2008 6:46 AM
This stamp honoring Bette Davis was issued by the U. S. Postal Service on Sept. 18. The portrait by Michael Deas was inspired by a still photo from "All About Eve." Notice anything missing? Before you even read this far, you were thinking, Where's her cigarette? Yes reader, the cigarette in the original photo has been eliminated. We are all familiar, I am sure, with the countless children and teenagers who have been lured into the clutches of tobacco by stamp collecting, which seems so innocent, yet can have such tragic outcomes. But isn't this is carrying the anti-smoking campaign one step over the line? ....
The great Chicago photographer Victor Skrebneski took one of the most famous portraits of Davis. I showed him the stamp. His response: "I have been with Bette for years and I have never seen her without a cigarette! No cigarette! Who is this impostor?" I imagine Davis might not object to a portrait of her without a cigarette, because she posed for many. But to have a cigarette removed from one of her most famous poses! What she did to Joan Crawford in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" wouldn't even compare to what ever would have happened to the artist Michael Deas.
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October 12, 2008 5:36 p.m.
I need to talk to Dr. Phil. I think I know what started me smoking now. It was all of those photos of Hollywood stars smoking.
Yeah. That's it.
Forget suing the tobacco industry. I think I'll sue Hollywood instead.
(or, maybe not..)
GOLO member since July 15, 2007
October 12, 2008 4:15 p.m.
GOLO member since July 7, 2007
October 12, 2008 3:56 p.m.
Beautiful photo of her too...
GOLO member since February 21, 2008
October 12, 2008 3:09 p.m.
GOLO member since July 3, 2007
October 12, 2008 2:39 p.m.
http://www.filmsite.org/what.html
GOLO member since July 2, 2007
October 12, 2008 2:38 p.m.
Blanche: "You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me if I wasn't in this chair." Jane: "But ya AAH Blanche, ya AAH in that chair!" - Jane garishly dressed up as a little girl as she is being coached by impoverished pianist and musical director Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono in his film debut) for an improbable comeback. She croaks, "I've Written a Letter to Daddy." [The scenes of her attempts to recapture her former glory are reminiscent of Norma Desmond's similar efforts in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950).]
- The concluding beach scene finale (filmed in Malibu, CA, at reportedly the same location where Aldrich filmed the final scene of Kiss Me Deadly (1955)), when a past secret is revealed to Jane and she replies, "You mean, all this time we could've been friends?" The film's ending echoes the beginning when Jane purchases two strawberry ice cream cones and then insanely spins, pirouettes and dances
GOLO member since July 2, 2007
October 12, 2008 2:37 p.m.
A grotesque "Baby Jane" Hudson (Davis at 54 years of age), a former vaudeville child star, and paralyzed invalid sister Blanche (Crawford) from a mysterious, career-ending car accident (for which Jane was blamed but never charged), also a former movie star, live together in a gloomy, crumbling mansion in Los Angeles. [The mansion was located at 172 S. McCadden Place in the Wilshire district of Los Angeles.]
Pasty white-faced Jane, whose career faded long ago, is now a deranged alcoholic, and vengefully bitter and jealous toward her wheelchair-bound sister secluded in an upstairs bedroom. Enmity worsens when a local TV network airs a marathon tribute to Blanche Hudson movies, and Jane learns that Blanche is planning to sell the mansion and put her in a sanitarium.
There are many stunning scenes and excessive performances, particularly Jane's relentless tormenting of her sister:
- Jane serves an ex-pet and a roasted rat to Blanche for "din-din."
GOLO member since July 2, 2007
October 12, 2008 2:36 p.m.
October 12, 2008 2:34 p.m.
GOLO member since July 15, 2007
October 12, 2008 2:33 p.m.
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