Bette Davis film, "Lady for a Day"), based on a story by Damon Runyon. She accepted her next role, in the Grand Guignol horror film "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962), after reading the script and believing it could appeal to the same audience that had recently made Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) a success. She negotiated a deal that would pay her 10% of the worldwide gross profits in addition to her salary. The film became one of the year's biggest successes. Davis and Joan Crawford played two aging sisters, former actresses forced by circumstance to share a decaying Hollywood mansion.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 film) White. The intensely bitter Hollywood rivalry between the film's two stars, Davis and Crawford, was heavily important to the film's initial success. This in part led to the revitalization of the then-waning careers of the two stars. In the years after release, critics continued to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy, camp, and creation of the psycho-biddy subgenre. The film's then-unheard of and controversial plot meant that it originally received an X rating in the UK. Because of the appeal of the film's stars, Dave Itzkoff in "The New York Times" has identified it as being a