What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 film) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 film) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a 1962 American psychological thriller–horror film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, about an aging former actress who holds her paraplegic ex-movie star sister captive in an old Hollywood mansion. The screenplay by Lukas Heller is based on the novel "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" 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
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 film) from Blanche's bedroom, cutting her off from the outside world. Jane begins denying her food, until she serves Blanche's dead pet parakeet—and, at a later meal, a dead rat—to her on a dinner platter. Although Jane is well into middle age, she dresses like "Baby Jane" and wears caked-on layers of makeup and childlike curls and ribbons in her hair. Jane becomes obsessed with recapturing her childhood stardom and posts a newspaper advertisement for a pianist to accompany her vocal act. When Jane leaves the house, Blanche tries to get the attention of her neighbor, Mrs. Bates (Anna Lee), by