Gothic fiction whose best-known work was the 1960 Hollywood horror novel "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?" Farrell's novels spawned a subgenre of "Grande Dame Guignol" in the cinema, represented by such films as the 1962 film based on Farrell's novel, which starred Bette Davis versus Joan Crawford; this subgenre of films was dubbed the "psycho-biddy" genre. Many modern writers of horror (or indeed other types of fiction) exhibit considerable Gothic sensibilities—examples include the works of Anne Rice, Stella Coulson, Susan Hill, Poppy Z. Brite and Neil Gaiman as well as some of the sensationalist works of Stephen King Thomas M. Disch's
Baby Jane Hudson Baby Jane Hudson Baby Jane Hudson is a fictional character and the antagonist of Henry Farrell's 1960 novel "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" She was portrayed by Bette Davis in the 1962 film adaptation and by Lynn Redgrave in the 1991 made-for-TV remake. The 1962 production is the better-known, with Bette Davis earning an Academy Award nomination for her performance. The character is portrayed by Susan Sarandon, who plays Bette Davis, in the TV anthology "Feud: Bette and Joan" aired in 2017. At the start of the book, Baby Jane Hudson is a highly successful child star in vaudeville,