21 Feud T-Shirts – Are You Team Bette? Or Team Joan?

We all have our television guilty pleasures. And as of late, mine has been Feud: Bette and Joan. For those of you who don’t know, this is a mini-series from Marc Cherry (of Desperate Housewives fame, another guilty pleasure, at least the first few seasons) about the tumultuous careers of later in life Better Davis and Joan Crawford. There’s nothing like watching two queens battle it out.

What started as a guilty pleasure has turned into pure, unadulterated enjoyment. The show is so well done. It really captures the Hollywood of the 1960s, just falling out of its glamour days. Kind of like our two actresses themselves. And the casting could not be better. Jessica Lang (who has made a new name for herself with her brilliant performances in American Horror Story) is a spot on Joan Crawford. It took me a while to get used to Susan Sarandon as Better Davis, probably because she wasn’t doing a bad impersonation of Davis. She was becoming her!

Being a part-time Hollywood history buff, I appreciated the tidbits from the past. My only complaint is that I wanted more. It felt like the series spent only a little time of the actually filming of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. There wasn’t even a mention of actress Anna Lee, who was the one stuck acting with Bette’s untalented daughter (though having seen the final film plenty of times, I don’t think her daughter was bad at all). Perhaps too much history would have turned it from a drama to a documentary. And I certainly wouldn’t want to sacrifice any of the drama we got from those biddies.

The best part of Feud, is that it’s creating an new interest in these two Hollywood legends. Most of us are in disbelief that there was a time that neither of these women could get work because they were too old. And that they were forced into taking the nutty horror roles in their golden years. Or worse, stuck doing television. But from the outside, this is how we saw their entire career, and even in the crappiest of movies, these ladies were flawless.

Feud has to be playing up some of the drama for the sake of the story, but there was no doubt that Bette and Joan were rivals. Bette often complained about Joan’s falsies at the end of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. And there was no doubt that Joan lobbied AGAINST Bette’s third Oscar win. I’m not sure if the history behind Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte was as complicated as they say, but there is no doubt that Bette did not want to work with Joan again.

Yes, there is also some renewed interest on taking sides in the feud, I’d be on team Bette myself. But if that means new audiences are seeking out the movies above mentioned, as well as the likes of All About Eve and Mildred Pierce, then that’s wonderful. And I’m sure Joan and Better are smiling down or up at us, happy to be remembered for both their talents and their terrors to each other.

Which team are you on?