Do any of the JOAN CRAWFORD scenes exist for this film today? - Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) Discussion

[–] aussiebears 17 years ago

It would be interesting if any footage still existed.The only thing i have ever seen was a still shot which had Bette and Joan in the graveyard.

reply

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] big_bellied_geezer 17 years ago

Hello Scorpio1964, I really appreciate that posting as I have never seen these fascinating snaps before! Those are some very nice images of Joan as well. All I have seen is the Life magazine cemetery snap that was referred to by aussiebear.

I have never seen the AMC Back-story. I had no idea such a documentary existed. When was this made, and I wonder if this was put together in advance of the film's release to DVD last year for publicity reasons?

Also I wonder like you if there was any Crawford footage included in the AMC doc?

If I could have a say in any future editions of this film's packaging in a DVD release, one of my biggest priorities would be to do a special features chapter that includes the AMC documentary as well as any existing footage and stills of Joan Crawford in this production. I would gladly pay extra as a DVD customer for this.

I strongly feel that there are a lot of us fans who enjoy the film AND would really appreciate such extras to give a visual perspective to the fascinating back-story of this production!

Filling up your tank is filling up the pockets of the enemy

reply

[–] aussiebears 17 years ago

Especially love the pic of Joan with Cecil Kellaway thanks Scorpio.

I have the backstory on tape but haven't watched it for a while but there is definately no footage of Joan Crawford's filmed scenes on it.I don't know why FOX did not put it on the DVD release especially when they put the back stories of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno on their DVD releases.
Will have to find the tape and watch the Hush Hush back story again.

reply

[–] big_bellied_geezer 17 years ago

Thanks aussiebear for reflecting about HHSS. Would you know of any links or possibly post on youtube or a similar service that AMC backstory about HHSS?

That would be great!

Filling up your tank is filling up the pockets of the enemy

reply

[–] poettesse 17 years ago

Thanks for sharing! What a wonderful treat!

reply

[–] HillieBoliday 17 years ago

WOW!! These are amazing! I remember when this film was first released, and
only found out about Joan Crawford in this role many, many years later.

For myself also, I had only seen the pictute of BD & JC in the cemetery
together.

Thanks for sharing these photographs. Although OD was very good as Miriam;
I can only imagine what JC would have brought to the role!!

"OOO...I'M GON' TELL MAMA!"

reply

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] boxerrebellion 9 years ago

Especially the scene of her arriving at the house - apparently Bette Davis couldn't figure out how Crawford did the long take.

reply

[–] FlyingNone 17 years ago

Great pics, she's so menacing!

"If they take away my Miss Charlotte I'm never gonna sees her again. I knows it, I knows it!"

reply

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Harold_Robbins 17 years ago

Indeed, this is another great example of black-and-white photography that the "Color ONLY" generation is missing out on. Their loss.

"I don't use a pen: I write with a goose quill dipped in venom!"---W. Lydecker

reply

[–] poettesse 17 years ago

I agree. The photography/lighting was superb.
I shudder to think of TCM colorizing it. It can't be beat in black and white. The starkness of it only enhanced the film.

Love me, love my

reply

[–] jackcarson 16 years ago

There's also some funny wardrobe test shots in the book Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud.

Joan looks absolutely beguiling in these outtakes, she really knew how to work it. I loved the way Olivia came across, but I would have loved Joan to have done it.

And let's not feel too bad about Joan's latter day sixties work, B. Davis herself (or Olivia, for that matter) didn't do much better.

reply

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] billslark 16 years ago

I think the scenes will be interesting, but I'm glad that Olivia deHavilland did the role of Miriam. I think she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for this role.

I'm looking forward to the new DVD...much better packaging than the last one, and the extras look interesting to me. I sure wish they could have snagged Olivia for comments on the movie, in this DVD...I know, I'm dreamin'!

I saw Joan in "Strait Jacket" for the first time around Christmastime. I admit I thought it was a guilty pleasure, although it made "Charlotte" look like Shakespeare! Has anybody seen it? The extras tacked onto it are pretty good, actually...Joan's wardrobe tests and a current interview with the woman who played Joan's daughter in the movie.

Bill

reply

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Harold_Robbins 16 years ago

Word is out that no actual footage of Crawford-as-Miriam appears on the new, upgraded DVD of HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE.

It may well be that any footage Crawford actually filmed may have had to be destroyed by contractual agreement when she departed from the film, though one would think a copy might have been turned over to the lady herself for her personal archives, or perhaps to the Associates and Aldrich Company, or to Fox, who financed the film - there are probably all kinds of legal ins-and-outs to situations like this concerning who'd actually have the rights to the footage if it still exists.

"Stone-cold sober I find myself absolutely fascinating!"---Katharine Hepburn

reply

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ritamilo 16 years ago

I love the extras with this DVD; they're almost as good as the extras on the Baby Jane DVD. One featurette is about the director and how Hush was a family affair; 2 of his children are in the party scene; 1 is in the gang of boys in the beginning and his daughter was in production. His wife did not participate in the production however, his daughter had a family heirloom - a beautiful pin that was handed down in the family and had been given to her by her mother. Davis wore this pin throughout the film (it's the bejeweled bar pin) as a tribute to the family and as a way of including the director's wife.

"...truth against the world..." - attributed to Boudicca of the Iceni

reply

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ritamilo 15 years ago

What terrific pix! As much as I would have loved to see La Crawford's performance, I have to say that Olivia DeHaviland's performance is excellent!

"...truth against the world..." - attributed to Boudicca of the Iceni

reply

[–] aussiebears 15 years ago

Yes great pics,there was a fair bit of footage shot with Joan in it,interesting though there are no still shots of scenes with Bette and Joan together[apart from the graveyard publicity shot],it doesn't look like they actually filmed any scenes together.
I would love the Crawford footage to turn up somewhere but unfortunately it was more than likely either destroyed not long after release of the film or has perished.

reply

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] starline 15 years ago

Thanx for sharing all the pix! I never even knew that Joan was suppose to be in the movie. Too bad she wasn't in it! It would have been even MORE creepy! She's much scarier than Olivia!

reply

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Doylenf 15 years ago

I think the picture did need contrast and Olivia gave it that.

We already saw Davis and Crawford together in a much different B&W chiller, but let's give credit where it's due--Olivia was excellent as the poised and charming woman who turns out to be a blackmailer and later on, a murderess. Crawford would have given half the plot away if the role was written as originally intended before she went into seclusion to get away from Davis.

De Havilland insisted on changes in the way Miriam was written which made the whole project more fascinating and more bearable--and Miriam Deering became a much more interesting character IMO.

"Somewhere along the line, the world has lost all of its standards and all of its taste."

reply

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Doylenf 14 years ago

Director Robert Aldrich himself said: "We were better off with Olivia."

I'll take his word for it. Personally, I thought she was excellent in the part.

"Somewhere along the line, the world has lost all of its standards and all of its taste."

reply

[–] ManWithoutFriends 14 years ago

i hadnt realised that crawford indeed shot so many scenes! id always thought they were just a couple of days into shooting when she pulled out.

"they should give nicole kidman an oscar for being able to show any emotion after THAT much botox".

reply

[–] Regina_Giddens 14 years ago

Aw, I love Olivia, but those photos kind of make me wish Joan Crawford had finished the movie. Something tells me Joan's Miriam would have been much more baleful and bitchy, and that's always fun to watch. Especially in a movie like this. Not that Olivia wasn't great, she made the character menacing in a different way.

Apparently one of the only scenes they shot together was the scene where Miriam repeatedly hits Charlotte in the car. This scene, apparently, used to appear in old documentaries on the movie but is no longer available.

I read this when someone replied to my comment on youtube asking if any of Crawford's footage still existed, so I don't know how reliable it is. If it's true, it's a shame we can't see it anymore because...can you imagine Joan Crawford in that scene?

But you are, Blanche. You are in that chair!

reply

[–] cmichaud 9 years ago

I have read it in several places that Crawford actually appears in the final film: as Miriam first arrives and we see Olivia in close up in the cab, the camera switches to a long shot of the car pulling to the end of the drive, and it's Crawford in the back seat, wearing sunglasses. It lasts for about 2 seconds, and probably hard to discern on anything but a large screen. But supposedly, that's J.C., in the final cut.

reply

[–] PrometheusTree64 9 years ago

Everybody wants to see the footage of Joan...

Even though HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE did, in my opinion, fare quite well with Olivia DeHavilland, one does wonder how much darker, creepier, it would have been had Joan not allowed herself to be driven off the set by Bette.

Olivia worked well because she created a breezy contrast to Bette Davis. But would Joan's greater similarity to Bette be a strength or a weakness had Joan completed CHARLOTTE?

Unlike BABY JANE, in which Crawford is wheelchair bound and whose malevolence is not clear until the final denouement, the idea of Joan, in giant beehive and gargantuan neckwear, prowling silently around the antebellum manor at midnight (as Olivia did in the final version of CHARLOTTE) is just too intriguing.

I mean, Joan might have made CHARLOTTEs a little too dark in a back-of-the-closet kind of way, and I'd love to see it.

And we get a whiff of what that might have been like in William Castle's I SAW WHAT YOU DID in which Joan is costumed accordingly, and photographed by shadowmaster Joseph Biroc (who also filmed CHARLOTTE):

http://goregirl.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/screenshot-from-2013-07-21-2226022.png

http://joancrawfordbest.com/65isaw13oct7.jpg

--

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m127/tubesteak69/Divas_Who_Drink-1.jpg

reply

[–] heyteegs 9 years ago

I have read that the scenes in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte in which Miriam is in a cab is interspersed with Joan footage. The cab scenes begin with Miriam in the back seat, talking with the cab driver (actor played Baby Jane's father too). Then there's a cut to Drew and Charlotte talking and Charlotte hears Miriam's cab. Cut to cab again with Miriam seeing the house and talking about childhood memories. Cut to Velma seeing the cab from the front door. There are two long shots of the cab: driving down the Hollis House driveway and then around the driveway circle. (Another shot of Velma at the door separates these two long shots.) The woman in the back seat of the cab in these shots is supposedly Joan. You can not see the actress's face but the clothes on the woman in the cab in these shots are dark and Olivia as Miriam is wearing a lighter grey suit in her scenes in the cab. It's hard to tell if it's true when you watch the scenes but it's certainly something that's been done before ... and since.

http://crewdtees.com/

reply

[–] shopguyperry 8 years ago

According to a post made on facebook by author Mark A. Vieira (who appeared in the 2008 documentary Hush...Sweet Joan), 20th Century Fox does not have the footage leaving the only other possibility to be the Aldrich estate.

reply

[–] lavenderspirit2005 8 years ago

OP, I would LOVE to see this footage if it exists! I've only seen pictures online of Joan in costume.
https://www.google.com/search?q=joan+crawford+hush+hush+sweet+charlotte&rlz=1C1AVNG_enUS632US632&espv=2&biw=819&bih=514&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjThJb17svNAhVIbiYKHWsOB34Q_AUIBigB

Actually looked amazing!

A little while back, I rewatched the film closely and wrote a review for it on my classic film blog, and I noticed how quintessentially 'Joan' Miriam's role really was, LOL. I could easily picture her as the character, but giving an entirely different, more 'diva' spin to it. It would've been different but just as great as Olivia's performance. I found a doc on youtube called "Hush Hush Sweet Joan" that looks pretty interesting.

reply