Strait-Jacket: William Castle on the influence of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane
Joan Crawford's career was changed forever when she starred alongside Bette Davis!
''What Ever Happened to Baby Jane'' was huge
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane was successful on multiple fronts. It was a box office blockbuster, earning $9 million, more than ten times its budget. It was a critical success, garnering many Academy Award nominations, and its cast was praised for their performances. Most importantly, perhaps, was the fact that it revitalized the careers of its two stars, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.
That movie's role in changing roles
Baby Jane marked a significant change in Hollywood norms. Women "of a certain age" were (and still are) notoriously rejected in the movie industry, with very few notable roles offered to actresses over forty. However, this 1962 film featured not one, but two significant, emotionally rich characters for its two female leads, both of whom were in their fifties. Crawford and Davis secured their biggest hit in decades, and suddenly, older actresses were a bit more bankable at the box office.
An emergent subgenre
The resultant wave of similarly themed "psycho-biddy" horror movies may not initially seem particularly dignified, but the grouping of films (also known as "hagsploitation") allowed actresses a new kind of role to play, that of the grand dame guignol. These glamorous women terrorized audiences for years, and Crawford, Davis, and many others found career revivals and fun, interesting parts.
Among the movies that followed in Baby Jane's wake was Strait-Jacket, a horror-mystery from schlockmeister William Castle. The gimmicky auteur spoke with Cinefantastique in 1974 about how Strait-Jacket was made in the years following Baby Jane's success, and how that movie affected his vision.
"Strait-Jacket" and the legacy of ''Baby Jane''
"I was influenced by it on two accounts," said Castle. "I think that [director] Bob Aldrich is a very fine talent. I saw Baby Jane and I was amazed at the business it was doing, and I was also amazed at really how good the film was. I was amazed at seeing two great superstars play in this shocker— one Bette Davis, one Joan Crawford. It was just an amazing phenomenon.
"I saw it three or four times, and I said I must do a film with either de Havilland or Crawford or Davis, because they're fabulous. I developed Strait-Jacket from an idea of my own. While it was in no way the same story, we used half of the starred team of Crawford and Davis, we used Crawford. The film, I think, did more business than Baby Jane. It was one of my most successful films."
