Joan proceeded to get herself booked, solo, on a local TV show. The afternoon it was scheduled to be shown, she asked Bob Aldrich if she could watch it at work. “Bob Aldrich had a portable TV brought to the soundstage,” said Bob Gary. [script supervisor] “We all sat around this big oval table to watch the show. There was a chair for Joan, and one for Bette, and in between them Bette placed a chair for her Baby Jane doll. When the show began, Bette got up and went to a corner of the room where a phonograph was set up. As soon as Joan appeared on the TV, Bette turned on the phonograph and began to play her Baby Jane song (“I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy”). While Joan was trying to watch herself on TV, Bette was dancing and singing in the corner, as loud as she could.
Jeff Chandler and Joan Crawford in ‘Female on the Beach’, 1955.
