Watch Joan Crawford’s Crazy Eyes as She Accepts Best Actress for Anne Bancroft at the 1963 Oscars
By Erin Qualey
Joan Crawford went savage at the 1963 Academy Awards and, thanks to YouTube, we can watch all of her crazy over and over again.
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Tonight on Feud: Bette and Joan, we saw Jessica Lange embody all of the crazy of Joan Crawford in the days leading up to the 1963 Academy Awards. After she was shut out of the nominations for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, a film she put together, while her co-star Bette Davis was considered the favorite to win, Joan went on a whirlwind tour of spite.
We watched, agape, as Joan traveled to several young actresses and asked them if she could accept the award in their stead. In fact, Joan actively convinced some of these women to skip the ceremony altogether so that she could increase her chances at stealing the spotlight; a spotlight that, by all accounts, she did not deserve.
While Jessica Lange did a bang up job of embodying all of Joan Crawford’s sad pettiness on the FX series, we can actually watch the moment unfold in real time.
It’s somewhat ironic that the following YouTube video is titled ‘Anne Bancroft winning Best Actress’ because the proper title should be something along the lines of ‘cuckoo Joan Crawford pulls some total nonsense.’
Those eyes. They shine with the sparkle of malice, pride, and a smidge of crazy.
Related Story: Here's How 'Feud' Recreated Joan Crawford's All Silver Look From the 1963 Oscars
To be sure, Joan Crawford’s night at the 1963 Academy Awards was not her finest hour, but it was a frozen moment in time in which the public got to see exactly who she was, a woman consumed by popularity and artifice who couldn’t get out of her own way.
‘Feud: Bette and Joan’ airs Sundays at 10/9c on FX.