The Real Story Behind Feud Bette Vs. Joan

Screen legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford clashed over movies, men and Oscars. Now the FX series Feud brings their battle back to life.

- Patrick Gomez

Feud is a Hollywood word, a wildly overused Hollywood word,” movie legend Bette Davis wrote in her 1987 autobiography This ’n That. But it’s hard to imagine a more fitting term to describe her tumultuous rivalry with fellow Golden Age star Joan Crawford. Their decades-long tension is now explored in the new FX series Feud, which stars Susan Sarandon as Davis and Jessica Lange as Crawford. “There’s this unspoken rule in Hollywood that there’s only room for one woman on top at a time,” says executive producer Ryan Murphy. “The tragedy of it all is, if only Bette and Joan had been able to sit down and have a cup of coffee—or a drink—early on, when the feud started in the ’30s, they may have realized they had so much in common. They could have been allies—maybe even liked each other.”

They fought over parts—and men.