Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:33PM 
The United States of America is a beautifully blended mess of disparate politics, culture, ethos and geography. We are the proverbial dysfunctional family.
The Northeast- the older, verbally abusive, obdurate father who always claims to know what’s best.
The Midwest- the ignored mother and wife who provides comfort and sustenance, but is constantly belittled for being boring and unsophisticated.
The West- the wild, untamable daughter. Young, seductive, dangerous and confused. Prone to bad decisions and wantonness.
And, of course:
The South- the idiot man-child brother kept chained in the basement and fed buckets of fish heads. Fascinating in his deformity. Visitors can often hear his screams from below.
It is little wonder that our country’s best and most sordid stories arise from our southernmost climes. From its disturbing history to the ghosts of Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner, Dixie has always been rife with tales of abnormality, scandal and treachery.
Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte is such a yarn.
The story began as a companion piece to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), done two years earlier at Warner Brothers. That piece of “Grand Dame Guignol” cinema did much in resurrecting the flagging careers of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Their “feuds” became that of Hollywood legend and the film’s promoters did their best at exploiting the somewhat imaginary rift between the two competing stars. It was a startling success.
Baby Jane author Henry Farrell followed it up with a new novel, What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? and was selected by 20th Century Fox to adapt the screenplay as well. Back from the Baby Jane cast and crew was director Robert Aldrich, composer Frank DeVol, cinematographer Ernest Haller, editor Michael Luciano, art director William Glasgow and stars Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono and Wesley Addy.
It was not to be as simple as planned. While the off-screen rivalry and antics of Davis and Crawford had been sensationalized for (and manufactured by) the press, the two “Grand Dames” of Hollywood did have a career-long competition for roles and awards bordering on animosity. Davis received an Oscar nod for Best Actress in Baby Jane and Crawford had not. Rumor has it that Crawford contacted the other four nominees and said she would gladly accept their statue for them if they could not show. When Anne Bancroft won for The Miracle Worker and was unable to attend, Crawford gleefully passed by Davis backstage and walked out to accept the award.
More notorious was the Pepsi/Coke feud between the actresses. Crawford had been married to Pepsi executive Alfred Steele. Even after his death in 1959, she continued to hold a chair on the Board of Directors and was an avid spokesperson for the company. She always had Pepsi products on hand for cast and crew during production of her films.
It is claimed that Davis deliberately had a Coca-Cola machine installed on the sets of Baby Jane and Hush… Hush to agitate Crawford.
Despite these shenanigans, both actresses were eager to build on their reinvigorated popularity with the new project. They would switch roles this time for Hush… Hush with Davis playing the put upon victim and Crawford, the conniving caretaker.
But Crawford backed out. During the early stages of filming, she began missing chunks of shooting days due to illness (many believed feigned). The film lagged far behind schedule and was in danger of cancellation (location shooting was abandoned). Aldrich frantically searched for a replacement. He needed an older, big name with a Hollywood presence equal to Crawford’s. Katharine Hepburn, Vivian Leigh and Loretta Young were contacted but refused. Aldrich, in desperation, flew to France and somehow convinced a reluctant Olivia de Havilland to take the role of Cousin Miriam.
Charlotte (Davis) is the lone survivor of the once powerful Hollis family (the town bears the family name). She lives with her housekeeper/caretaker Velma (Agnes Moorehead) in a crumbling antebellum mansion in Louisiana. Thirty seven years earlier, she was romantically involved with a married man (Bruce Dern) who, on the night of a large party at the Hollis’, was brutally axe murdered. Charlotte (jilted by her lover minutes before his demise) and her autocratic, protecting father (Victor Buono in full camp mode) are both prime suspects. They leave for England to avoid the controversy and let the family’s powerful political ties clean up the mess. The father dies soon after their return, leaving Charlotte alone to deal with the family fortune, the knowing, accusatory stares of the townsfolk and her increasing lapses into madness.
Wracked with guilt and sadness, Charlotte’s elder years now consist of volatile outbursts of raving, persecution and the occasional tantrum. To add to her woes, the highway department has claimed eminent domain over her mansion and she must evacuate in ten days. She seeks the assistance of her cousin Miriam (de Havilland) and longtime family doctor Drew Bayliss (Joseph Cotton) whom she believes can help her in retaining her property. They offer little solace and are curiously determined to get her out of there. Allegiances are questionable. Charlotte’s mental health is failing and her slide into insanity may be from coercion. Everyone’s motives seem masked in the mystery of that fateful night so many years ago.
Davis gives a powerhouse performance. Her transformations from lucidity to psychosis are abrupt and innerving. Her mean spirited rants, spitefulness and cynicism hide a broken hearted, shattered soul. It is in her character’s more tender moments we realize that the screaming harpy we have just seen is still a young girl inside, stunted by forces beyond her control and simply looking for acceptance and love. Davis uses her physicality (those big, sad, wet eyes) well here. She is haggard and haggish but continues to wear the dainty dresses and hairstyle of a young southern belle. Her mannerisms are appropriately affected (her paranoia is well founded, everyone is watching her!) and she gives Charlotte’s intended graceful gestures an awkward and ill devised feel. Like the old house in which she is trapped, she represents a bygone era. One of galas and affluence now reduced to solitude and impending doom.
Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Haller keep a deliberately slow pace; punching shocks in intermittently for maximum effect. The house and its inhabitants are constantly obscured by shadows, some jagged, some shifting, some enveloping. Aldrich and art director William Glasgow turn the mansion into a character as well by utilizing many haunted house designs and themes. There is a sense of loss in the home’s once opulent décor (now dusty and decaying) and its ghosts have not yet found rest.
Hush… Hush Sweet Charlotte selectively borrows from many pictures of its era. There is a thematic and visual link with such diverse films as Sunset Boulevard (1950), God’s Little Acre (1958), Les Diaboliques (1955), Baby Doll (1958), The Night of the Hunter (1955), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and, to a certain extent, Gone with the Wind (1939) if Rhett had been beheaded and Scarlett went slightly more crazy.
Steeped in Southern Gothicism- the fantastic, the sordid, the macabre, and the madness all permeate Hush… Hush Sweet Charlotte. It is Grand Guignol cinema with a decidedly Dixie flair. The film is much like its deep south setting of Louisiana; unique, disturbing, recalcitrant and teeming with the secrets of ghosts who refuse to be buried.
Reader Comments (1)
Bette Davis, Joan Crawford - "Hush Hush... and ...Sweet Baby Jane - wonderful films that never get old enough to watch time and again!
"The Bad Seed" should be included with these two films.
JM