bette-davis

This Day In Hollywood Catfight History Presents: When Bette Bludgeoned Joan

Seth Abramovitch · 05/15/08 07:35PM

We take a moment now to honor the memory of the two biggest bitches in Hollywood history—that would be Bette Davis and Joan Crawford—whose man-swiping, lesbian-overture-rebuffing, Oscar-campaign-sabotaging exploits provided the behavioral template for generations of shock starlets to come. Today's Daily Mail provides a highly engrossing and detailed account of their lifelong rivalry, its poisonous roots stemming of course over ownership of a man—in this case, actor Franchot Tone. (He might not look like much, but trust us—this guy was totally the Joel Madden of his day.) It all came to a head on the set of the 1962 sleeper thriller that would offer both women not only an unlikely comeback, but all the near-fatal accident-rigging they could handle: