Among the sisterhood of the crazy old biddy horror genre, "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" is both gorier and grander than it's predecessor, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", even managing to pull the reins in on Bette Davis' performance in the title role to somewhere just south of over-the-top.
Similar to 'Jane', this film opens with an extended prologue set some 40 years earlier. Plantation owner Sam Hollis is raging at John Mayhew, the married lover of his Sam's beloved daughter Charlotte. Mayhew is given an ultimatum, but nonetheless, soon ends up rather gruesomely dismembered in the gazebo during a swinging cotillion style dance (where the costumes and hairstyles are hilariously inappropriate for the 1920's setting). Young Charlotte appears suddenly; her party dress stained across the front of the skirt with blood (the location of the blood stains indicates a loss of Charlotte's innocence in more ways than one). The mystery jumps forward a few decades, where neighborhood kids dare each other to enter the spooky old Hollis mansion. Charlotte appears again, this time in the form of grizzled, half-mad Bette Davis, clutching the music box that plays the tune John Mayhew wrote for her back in the day, (a tune that runs through the entire picture, even a swooning baritone vocal version plays over the end credits), still in an inappropriate party dress.
Discovering that the county has condemned her property in order to complete a new construction project, Charlotte goes on a shooting spree against the crew, and then is thrilled to discover that her dear cousin Miriam will be returning to the bayou to help her save the family grounds (and keep the secret of John's murder, which threatens to be revealed). Miriam (Olivia de Havilland, a trace of her Melanie Wilkes but played for irony, and with a much firmer spine) arrives with a cool smile, designer wardrobe, and a huge chip on her shoulder from always being considered Charlotte's poor relation when the two were girls. Her return starts old-flame Dr. Drew Bayliss (Joseph Cotten, barely a shadow of the actor he was for Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock in the 1940's) sniffing around once again, as well as another new arrival in town, Harry Mort (Cecil Kellaway, twinkling merrily like the overstuffed Irish cliche he is), an insurance investigator looking into the unclaimed policy on John Mayhew.
There are shocks and slashed dresses, screams and resurrected corpses, staircase tumbles and gunshots in the night, all of which lead to a satisying comeuppance for the villains of the piece, while Miss Charlotte is (at long last) allowed some peace, and a moment of quiet grace.
And now we come to the pearl in the oyster. When this film premiered in late 1964, Agnes Moorehead had made her film debut as Kane's mother in "Citizen Kane", earned a trio of Oscar nominations, toured the country numerous times over in an acclaimed stage reading of "Don Juan in Hell", and was acknowledged as one of the foremost dramatic radio actresses of the time. In addition, she had spent the past few months being seen by millions of television viewers as the ultimate witch of a mother-in-law on the smash sitcom "Bewitched". The exposure from the sitcom was more than she had recieved in her 20-plus year career. Moorehead was nominated again, for this role, and it is definitely played for laughs and to the hilt. But she seems to be having the time of her life as Velma, the loyal old family servant. Velma skulks and sneaks around the decaying mansion in an ill-fitting old dress and uncombed hair. Like Charlotte, she too seems half-mad, sometimes squawking loudly and sometimes merely mumbling and muttering to herself. She is devoted to Charlotte, suspicious of Miriam and Drew, and cautiously reaches out to Harry for assistance, but ultimately takes it upon herself to try and save Charlotte.
Considering performances in the picture, the most interesting things to notice are the vocal performances of the main actresses. This type of film by its very nature encourages overacting, which Bette Davis, and, to a lesser degree Moorehead happily oblige. Yet it is the differing vocal styles of the actresses that stay in my memory. Of the four primary female characters in the film, Davis, De Havilland, Moorehead, And Mary Astor (whom I include in this list for her masterful cameo as John Mayhew's elderly widow), each of the women hails from the same geographic region, and are roughly the same age, and, yet each exercies a different tone and tempo of speaking that reveals much about their characters.
As Charlotte, Davis takes the ladle from the gravy bowl and lavishly covers every line of dialogue with a thick drawl, but she never really sounds like someone who'd been raised with an aristocratic background (which her character is) or like a complete nutcase either (which her character isn't, quite). It's a performance that vocally Davis takes just north of the line of good taste, and it isn't really a great performance overall, but it IS, after all, Bette Davis, doing a rather good 'talk-show' imitation odenf Bette Davis, which is usually enough for most of the audience.
Playing dear, sweet cousin Miriam, who has lived abroad for a number of years, De Havilland has a more ladylike accent, which accents her silvery voice- but that voice begins to change as the picture goes on. As more of Miriam's character is revealed, De Havilland's voice becomes both deeper and darker, recalling a similar change in vocal style she employed when she played Catherine Sloper in "The Heiress" in 1949. The voice is still velvet smooth, but there is cruelty in it now, an undercurrent of ugliness; a snake slithering through a rose garden.
In addition to her skills as a radio actress, Moorehead had been a speech and elocution teacher early in her career, and gives the most vocally versatile performance of the actresses. Her drawling Velma sounds unlike any of the other women in the picture, appropriate since she is of the servant class and not of the same social upbringing as Charlotte, Miriam, and Jewel. There also seems to be some ethnicity to Velma's sound, perhaps some Cajun inflection, which is also appropirate considering the film's bayou setting. Moorehead sasses and backtalks De Havilland and Cotten in a defiant squawk, coos at and consoles Davis with warmth, pleads desperately to Kellaway with fear and uncertainty in her cries, and mumbles just under her breath to no one in particular at several points in the picture. These vocal gymnastics completely fit the messy hairdo and weatherbeaten dresses she wears, and makes Velma a character that is sorely missed after her departure from the story.
In what is basically a two-scene cameo, Mary Astor is the sickly widow, Jewel Mayhew. She has the most authentic accent of all the actresses, as well as the perfect rich tone, a lovely, unhurried tempo, and a grand choice of words (courtesy of the film's writer, of course). Astor has a very brief scene early on with De Havilland, in which she sounds like what she is: an annoyed, suffering old lady. A later, longer scene with Kellaway shows Jewel more relaxed and at ease, although there is an urgency to her voice when she makes a final request of sorts. It is during this scene with Kellaway that Astor has a line about how all she has left is "ruined finery". That phrase is a beautiful, sublime moment in a picture that celebrates the grotesque and outrageous; and, not to put too fine a point to it, but I believe it to be not only the best written line of the film, but the best spoken as well.
"Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" has some gore, some laughs, and some meaty roles for veteran actors who gave performances that indicated that both they and the audience knew they were really better than the roles they were being given to play, but they played them to the hilt anyway.
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