A few years before this film came out Bette Davis penned her first set of memoirs, The Lonely Life. She might well have been setting the stage for this film, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.
Bette is a lonely old spinster woman who back in the day was set to run off with married lover Bruce Dern. Bette's father wouldn't hear of it and paid Dern off. But he wanted Dern to keep a scheduled rendezvous with Davis's character. In keeping that rendezvous Dern was done in with a well wielded meat cleaver.
She's lived in that old mansion, quite a showplace during her youth, for 40 years with only Agnes Moorehead her maid for company. Of course she was suspected in Dern's murder and a whole lot of legends have grown up about her as she's grown older.
People are terrified of who they believe is their own southern fried incarnation of Lizzie Borden. But during the film Bette is more put upon than anything else by some rather unscrupulous people.
Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte is Davis's obligato to her well received Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. She's joined in this film by former work colleagues, Olivia DeHavilland, Joseph Cotten, and Victor Buono.
Olivia's quite a wonder in this. She substituted for Joan Crawford who after the well publicized battles during Whatever Happened to Baby Jane decided she wasn't up to rematch. DeHavilland and Davis were old friends from Warner Brothers. And those of us who remember Olivia from her salad days at Warner Brothers will not be used to seeing her in the kind of role she has her.
Both Charlotte and Baby Jane were well done horror flicks. Unfortunately for Bette some of the later ones she chose weren't quite so good and didn't add anything to her reputation.
