Joan Crawford (top left) and Bette Davis (right, with cigarette) at a reading rehearsal for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

“One day I was given 20 minues to shoot [the Baby Jane reading rehearsal] from the catwalk above. At the time, Crawford was married to the president of Pepsi-Cola. A Pepsi bottle was next to her at all times, and she occasionally sipped from it. Without even looking upward, she sensed my movements on the catwalk - and while reading her lines, she would deftly move the bottle & its logo so that none of the other actors would obscure it in my shots.

In this shot, Crawford and Davis seem quite affable. They each had a portable dressing room. Crawford wanted certain adjustments made. She wanted a ledge for her social secretary to put papers on, and an air-conditioner. She also wanted several other things. She had the men take care of it. As they left Crawford’s dressing room with their tools, Davis just stood a few feet away watching. One of the grips said, ‘Hey Bette, anything we can do for you?’ She said, ‘No, thank you. Dressing rooms don’t make pictures.’

After the wrap each evening, Crawford would leave the sound stage followed by her entourage: hairdresser, makeup man, costumer, social secretary. Davis just left with Davis.”

-photographer Phil Stern (via)

Bette Davis in publicity still for The Letter (1940, dir. William Wyler)

Publicity shot of Bette Davis registering to vote at 20th Century Fox studios (1964)

On contemporary politics:

“But my God, the witch hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn’t done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoked marijuana once? And [Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan Supreme Court nominee who withdrew from consideration when his use of marijuana while in his mid-30s came to light] found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women he knew!”

-Davis in 1987 San Francisco Chronicle interview

Bette Davis (with cigarette drooping from her mouth, naturally) with her maid Marie on the Warner Brothers lot (1943)

“It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies. No one has ever understood the sweetness of my joy at the end of a good day’s work. I guess I threw everything else down the drain. I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.”

“I have always been driven by some distant music—a battle hymn no doubt—for I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world.”

-Bette Davis, in her 1962 autobiography “The Lonely Life”

Bette Davis inFog Over Frisco (1934, dir. William Dieterle)

“Now darling, don’t start moralizing.”

“If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.”

-Bette Davis (1959, photo by Hank Walker for LIFE)

“I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.”

-Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) (via)

Sound advice for any Friday night.

“Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Joan Crawford always plays ladies.”

-Bette Davis