By the time Whatever Happened to Baby Jane entered pre-production, Bette Davis was already a legend in Hollywood. Her career had been through plenty of ups and downs, with more than 30 years of experience in movies, both great and not-so-great. Davis' box office numbers ebbed and flowed as she rode the wave of a long life in Hollywood. She was in fashion, then out of fashion, then back in fashion more often than bootcut jeans. 

When the pieces were being assembled for an adaptation of Henry Farrell's 1960 novel, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Davis was briefly away from the cameras, instead living on the East Coast and starring in Broadway's Night of the Iguana. How, then, did director Robert Aldrich attract the talents of one of history's greatest leading women? According to an interview in Cinefantastique, Aldrich employed flattery. Only, it wasn't Bette Davis he chose to praise, but the movie's screenplay instead.

"I took a lot of time composing a letter that was arrogant, but I thought necessarily so, saying that if this isn't the best screenplay you've ever read, don't do the picture. But if it is, I'd like an appointment and I'll come to New York to see you."

So, did the gambit pay off? Was Aldrich's risky maneuver enough to capture the actress's interest? Was his comment about the screenplay being the best of all time the right way to secure her talents? Well... Yes and no, really.

"About a month went by and then I got a very long, very polite, but very aloof letter from Miss davis saying that, no, it wasn't the best screenplay she ever read, but that it came close She'd be delighted to meet with me, but didn't know if she'd want to make the picture or not."

In the end, it was the quality of the writing that really paid off, not just Aldrich's lofty words about it. But who knows whether the script would have spoken for itself had Aldrich left it alone? Davis joined the cast, and her former "rival" in Joan Crawford, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? became one of the best movies of all time!