Bette or Joan?

[Heartboy]

Who's the coolest bad~ass b*tch of them both?

[Macfanforever]

I like Betta Midler,she's great.My moms favorite.ok Joan who.

[markolas]

He's talking about Bette Davis & Joan Crawford.

I just read a book about them. It seems like Crawford just rubbed Davis the wrong way. It's easy to see why - Crawford was about 98% artifice. They could both be extreme b!tches, they both had egos, but I think Crawford had some real problems. Davis was the better actress of the two, although there are a few Crawford films that are very good.

[mylittledemon]

Joan Jett.

[Dodfather]

Originally Posted by mylittledemon

Joan Jett.

Nice!!

I have to go for Bette Davis on this one. Although Joan's Mildred Pierce is a brilliant film, Bette Davis was in many more quality films and was a far better actress. All About Eve is of course excellent and has one of the best scrips ever and then there's Jezebel, Dark Victory, Now, Voyager, Of Human Bondage etc. When I did a case study of her as an example of classic Hollywood stardom it wasn't exactly a chore to watch her films for "research"!

Bette was also ahead of her time in terms of acting style on the big screen and wanting to break free from studio control. Her first big film was Of Human Bondage and she (or the studio's publicity machine maintained the choice was hers) insisted that she look suitably awful, pale and ill in the final scenes when her character is dying of consumption. Whereas other actresses had been afraid to look anything other than perfect on camera she said that she wanted to look terrible so that it was believable, a choice that worried studio bosses. The performance was later called one of the best ever by a film actress by Life magazine. How much of that story is true and exaggerated by studios is the question...

Also, she was the first high profile actress to rail against the studio system and take Darryl Zanuck to court over the unfairness of the iron clad studio contracts. Although she lost, she weakened the system so much that by the time Olivia DeHavilland did the same a few years later she won.

Between all of this and her work establishing the Hollywood Canteen during World War II, Bette rules!*



* but let's not forget Katharine Hepburn but I think I may have prattled on enough for now!

[TrueFaith77]

Bette Davis. All About Eve. 'nuff said.

...and I happen to like Joan Crawford.



BUT the Five Greatest Movie Actresses of ALL TIME are:

*Lillian Gish
*Katherine Hepburn
*Anna Magnani
*Greta Garbo
*Ingrid Bergman

[HejiraNYC]

Faye Dunaway as Joan.

[markolas]

Bette was the better actress, but Joan got eaten out by Marilyn Monroe.

[Heartboy]

Originally Posted by HejiraNYC

Faye Dunaway as Joan.

Meow!

[Macfanforever]

Originally Posted by markolas

He's talking about Bette Davis & Joan Crawford.

I just read a book about them. It seems like Crawford just rubbed Davis the wrong way. It's easy to see why - Crawford was about 98% artifice. They could both be extreme b!tches, they both had egos, but I think Crawford had some real problems. Davis was the better actress of the two, although there are a few Crawford films that are very good.

Oh ok.I like both.

[Silver Springs]

I've always been rather partial to Bette Davis. She had an incredibly strong allure and personage and I've always found her endearing. She's always been one of my favourite "old school" actors, in fact. Though nobody could ever take the title of favourite away from Vincent Price. He's in another world entirely in terms of class and talent.

[darklinensuit]

I really don't care for either one of them & have no desire to see more of their films than I already have. In my defense, they (especially Joan) were usually slotted into the so-called "women's films," which hold little appeal to me.

Bette, in particular, makes me cringe. The face, the voice, etc. This is a backhanded compliment, but I guess I respect her for accomplishing so much with so little sex appeal at a time when other women performers were forced to go the other way.

When I first saw All About Eve I did not get the fuss. Her performance seemed hammy & mannered. Much later I found out she was basing the character on TB, and in that context, of course she did well. Even so, it's hard to sit through that one - a bit soapy for my taste (and as a fan of Stevie Nicks's music, I assume my threshold for that is high).

I do think that Joan's acting chops are underrated whenever she's compared to Bette. There is that one account of a director telling Joan to cry, and her asking which eye he wanted her to cry out of. Joan is usually first & foremost examined in the context of stardom. I took a grad class on celebrity & there were more readings on her than on any other female figure. One documentary - I'm sure some of you know it, is it called Stars? - argues that her real genius was in changing her face so many times over the decades. That was interesting, but it still does not make me want to sit through her films.

- Jake

[BombaySapphire3]

If I was to go by whom I prefer to watch in a film I'd have to say Joan.One significant difference between the two is that Bette was formerly trained woith plaenty of stage eexperience before she made her first film which initially made her the more mannered of the two.Joan would nearly catch up later on.If you watch a film like Grand Hotel Joan's performace seems fresh today 79 years later while much of the cast's performances have dated badly .Compare Joan with Greta in that film.Joan should have won the Oscar for that one moreso even than Mildred Pierce but MGM never considered Joan a pretsige actress the way that Warner's did Bette .It was only when Joan went to Warner's that the studio even supported her for awards during which time she managed to eclipse Bette in the last half the 1940s while they were both at Warners.So I think the answer to which one is the better actress is far more complicated than most people think.

[markolas]

Joan did some really good movies in addition to Mildred Pierce: Rain, Strange Cargo, Flamingo Road, Humoresque, Possessed, Sudden Fear. She was a better actress than lots of people give her credit for, but in the end I still like Davis a bit better. Katharine Hepburn is probably my fave, tho.

Greta Garbo is mesmerizing.

[BombaySapphire3]

Bette appeared in more high quality films than Joan did no question .If Joan had a good script and a good director like George Cukor for A Woman's Face she was the equal of Bette IMO.A Woman's Face interestingly is the one film of Joan's that Bette said she envied not doing herself.