Actually, it did comparable box office.

With all the production woes, the publicity it garnered, personal appearances by Bette/Olivia, a hit song and Oscar nominations I'm surprised the film didn't make more of a profit. Mind you it was still successful but fell short of Baby Jane.

It was also nominated for B&W costume design and score/song. The music was very effective and deserved the nomination(s). I'm not sure that the wardrobe warranted a nomination (which is the one BABY JANE won) but the clothes suit the piece, I suppose.

Seven Oscar nomintions for this seems way too much. Four, maybe. The two actresses, cinematography and I suppose art-direction but that's it.

1964 wasn't so much a weak year for Hollywood as a dark one. It was largely, however by no means exclusively, an American thing: the dark clouds hanging over our country were visible on television and in the movies. It was apocalyptic vibe, and it didn't so much vanish as get transferred, to the war in Vietnam and prime time TV, where it was often channeled into just plain comedy (
Bewitched, The Addams Family, The Munsters
); and then the post-JFK assassination conspiracy business; then the creeping feeling so many people had about what really happened in that dark day in Dallas.
This has all been written about so much I don't care to expand much more on it. Yet there's too much easy glibness when talking and writing about this troubled period of the early to middle Sixties. We blasted out of it, the massive despair, with the space program, prime time television turning all-color; and for me, the nonsectarian creep of a kind of libertarian liberalism, and anyone, anyone could play that game, from teenaged boys to middle aged Republicans.
We've been talkin' about horror movies on this thread, with much backward looking. Horror is still with us, and shamefully dumbed down. There were some grand one. Two of my favorites being
Psycho
and
Silence Of The Lambs
. From the late Sixties came
Night Of The Living Dead
, and then, thirty years later,
The Blair Witch Project
. Lots of good stuff in-between, too much of it of journeyman quality. Horror has become gory and ghastly, with CGI bringing it, depending on the point of view, down to a new level, or up to a higher one. My tastes tend toward the more black and white than in color decades of the Thirties and Forties, and the films from that era.
Okay, more OT, and then I'll quit: The spirit of classic horror is there even in many so-called
Noir
films, most of which are really crime pictures, dealing with kidnapping, prison breaks, blackmail and other sordid matters. I caught a good one earlier this week on-line:
Crashout
, with William Bendix in the lead, from 1955, and featuring a second feature dream cast, including William Talman, Gene Evans, Arthur Kennedy and Beverly Michaels. The ambiance of this one is near to Gothic; its outdoors settings,–freight trains and rainstorms, are highly effective. It's not a great film, but it's highly watchable, featuring coarse, down to earth, thick-ear dialogue galore, and unrelentingly.

Nyahhh. That sounds like Crawford's queens.
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m127/tubesteak69/Divas_Who_Drink-1.jpg

Are you kidding? The only living Bette Davis fans are all cross-dressing queens.

Were you referring to me?
Sweet merciful crap!
It's just tea! sips Needs more gin.

Are your comments stupid?
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m127/tubesteak69/Divas_Who_Drink-1.jpg

What a stupid comment.

As much as I like Baby Jane I can only watch that every now and then where I can watch Hush Hush over and over again, I just find so much going on in Hush Hush and all the 4 women are superb
My feelings as well.
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m127/tubesteak69/Divas_Who_Drink-1.jpg

As much as I like Baby Jane I can only watch that every now and then where I can watch Hush Hush over and over again, I just find so much going on in Hush Hush and all the 4 women are superb, the only thing that I find drags the movie down a bit is the dream sequence in the hall with the mirrors when Charlotte is drugged.

'I agree about the irritant part about Edwin and his mom; but I find his mother is the annoying one; but she amuses me at the same time.'
she was funny, I thought.
"She ran OFF!..and disappeared for the whole days. Oh, they found her, they found her alright. The find her in some motel room with a man she had never seen beforeeee"!

It was only about 2 years ago, when I watched HUSH; but I have never felt compelled to want to sit through it again. Perhaps I should give it another viewing.
I agree about the irritant part about Edwin and his mom; but I find his mother is the annoying one; but she amuses me at the same time. Most of BABY JANE amuses me and Victor Buono's, character and performance, was a welcome relief to balance out the strong female presence in the film.

To me, it's the reverse: BABY JANE, though good, gets tired and shrill like a repetitive madhouse, so I can only rewatch it every so often. And the scenes with Edwin (and his mom) are more an irritant, especially on review.
CHARLOTTE is more haunted.
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m127/tubesteak69/Divas_Who_Drink-1.jpg

Too long at 134 min.

BABY JANE, was the around the same length; but you wouldn't really know it, as all the sequences worked in well with the narrative. Even the scenes with Edwin and his mother, were an interesting diversion and still relevant.

Too long at 134 min. The whole Bruce Dern thing didn't intrigue me with the dream/real imagery

I can rewatch BABY Jane repeatedly, but not HUSH.

I have only seen HUSH once and while good, I have never felt inclined or desired to readily watch it again. Found it to be a bit of a sludge to sit through, compared than BABY JANE and it was like it is was trying too hard, to be some atmospheric mood piece. I didn't feel so concerned for Charlotte, as I did for Blanche and she was played by the indomitable Crawford. The characters in HUSH, while excellently acted, didn't appear as compelling or interesting. In JANE, you had this brazen and out of balance character right from the start and she was fun to watch. Maybe that's it.HUSH wasn't as much fun.

I agree; I can rewatch BABY Jane repeatedly, but not HUSH. The scene I do enjoy watching more than once is Agnes Moorehead with ailing Bette
"that's some kinda drug"
"Now, I'm gonna go and tell the authorities what you been up to"

Also, in 1964 Bette was great playing identical twins in Dead Ringer. For that matter, although, as a person, I dislike Joan Crawford (and not just based on Christina Crawfords book, but also on her artificiality in interviews), in the same year, her performance in Strait-Jacket was superb. (I have both on DVD.)
P.S. One my favourite Davis films is The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, with Errol Flynn (1939). Bette displays a magnificent range: imperious, arrogant, jealous, bitter, tender, and conflicted and heartbroken at the end an absolutely fantastic performance. She was so dedicated to her role that she had her hairline shaved. I honestly think that, instead of Bettes performance in Dark Victory (though that was excellent), she should have been nominated for Elizabeth and Essex.

Charlotte was more than just a horror movie for Fox. Baby Jane had won five Oscar nominations and because of the positive reviews, Fox released Charlotte in a limited number of theaters in December '64 to qualify for the Oscars and pushed it as the studio's major contender for the year. The previous year, Fox snagged several nominations for the disastrous Cleopatra, including Best Picture. The studio would later perform a similar miracle for its other bomb, Dr. Dolittle, which also won a nomination for Best Picture.
Charlotte went on wide release in the spring of '65, roughly the same time it premiered The Sound of Music. (It's probably why Bette Davis was a prominent guest at the World Premiere of The Sound of Music.) It's interesting to note that at Oscar time, Andrews won Best Actress for Mary Poppins in a race that omitted Davis, Olivia de Havilland and Audrey Hepburn (for My Fair Lady). Hepburn's omission was controversial and both My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins hogged the limelight. The two musicals eventually won most of the awards. So contrary to what a previous poster implied, the 1965 Oscars was a very exciting race.

?
Not sure what that's supposed to mean
Sweet merciful crap!
It's just tea! sips Needs more gin.

Nice try, rahrah.
The most profound of sin is tragedy unremembered.

The queen thing doesn't apply in my case (at least I don't think so). I actually like Olivia deHavilland much better than Joan Crawford (Olivia is one of my favorite actresses) but that's the only part of Charlotte I prefer over Baby Jane. The last time I watched it I skipped to her scenes and Mary Astor's great scenethose are my favorite parts of the film anyway.
But, again, that's just my opinion. Still surprising it got so much Oscar attentionit would be interesting to read some contemporary reviews of the film.
Sweet merciful crap!
It's just tea! sips Needs more gin.