Thursday, March 4, 2010

What If...

...Hollywood's most fabled feud was nothing more than a PR stunt? I've never seen these two broads look more relaxed and at ease than here. And isn't it kind of fun thinking that maybe all those years they actually got together once in a while for a couple of vodka-Pepsis and a whole lot of laughing at their enemies?

7 comments:

  1. I think this photo is the publicity stunt!

    I bet that Joan was really jealous of Bette Davis and vice/versa as well as the other Joan and her sister Olivia.

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  2. The opposite of love isn't hate, its apathy. If these two really disliked one and other so much it would have been like Fontaine and D'Haviland.

    Having met Davis (she was a friend of my aunt and uncle) when I was a child, she really was very kind - and she spoke to you as if you were one of the adults because she understood that child want to be recognized.

    Crawford was a different type - she was a child in many ways who was terrified of not being recognized. Whereas Bette got out and played hardball with Jack Warner as his equal, Crawford was an outsider and she knew that studio bosses knew she was an actress with a "name". But Crawford also knew enough about the Hollywood system that if she didn't stay relative she'd end up with supporting parts. She took everything that she could get top billing in that wasn't a "B" film. This is how we end up with her in films like "Female on the Beach" Davis would never be caught dead in that dog! And would Bette Davis do Johnny Guitar? Hah!

    I think left to their own devices they would knock back a scotch and laugh at the fools around them!

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  3. I've always loved this photo. They were both pros and feud or not, sometimes a film set can be a very relaxed and funny place to be.

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  4. it was a rainy day of march in the roaring nineties, when greatgrandpa fellini bought a copy of "la vie contemporaine" while strolling down rue boissy-d'anglas.

    that event by itself would have been rather insignificant if it was not for the presence in the review of a short story by Marcel Proust entitled, l'indifférent.

    our cool cookie is quite right in saying that the opposite of love is not hate.

    madeleine, the heroine of this short story, knows it oh far too well how hurtful it is to receive indifference from the object of her love, the dashing lepré.

    i was telling this story one day over coffee to my friend sophia, an italian ballet dancer with looks not dissimilar from a young audrey helpburn. 'haven't we all felt one day or another like the poor madeleine?,' i was asking sophia while dunking a lemon cream biscuit in my capuccino.

    sophia smiled and look into the distance. she did not reply. perhaps i was wrong and she was too kind to break my illusion. or perhaps sophia herself experienced the whole thing from the other side in the role of odette, indifferent to the love of swann. but that is another story.

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  5. Perfect snap with which to end my week (at least the Really Safe Insurance Company part of it).

    I still have a Saturday playing shopgirl. If anyone give me crap, I'll remember to get all Joan and Bette on their asses.

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  6. I still have a Saturday playing shopgirl.

    I think shopgirl qualifies you as the Joan Crawford character.

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