What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a 1962 American psychological thriller film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, about an actress who holds her crippled sister captive in an old Hollywood mansion. The screenplay by Lukas Heller is based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Henry Farrell. Upon the film’s release, it was met with widespread critical and box office acclaim and was later nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one for Best Costume Design, Black and White. The intensely bitter Hollywood rivalry between the film’s two stars, Davis and Crawford, was heavily important to the film’s initial success. This in part led to the revitalization of the then-waning careers of the two stars. In the years after release, critics continued to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy, camp, and creation of the psycho-biddy subgenera. The film’s then unheard of and controversial plot, meant that it originally received an X rating in the UK, Because of the appeal of the film’s stars, Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times has identified it as being a “cult classic”.
