the real reason bette hated joan: joan was 2" taller..

Liz Taylor was 5' 3"

liz was also a lot more beautiful and poised of stature so she photographed much taller than she was.. meanwhile, lacking in all the graceful poise or regal bearing, davis merely looked short and frumpy as there was nothing to disguise or distract from her small stature..

it wasn't the fall from her 16th-floor penthouse that killed her, it was the landing

Thank you for this interesting theory on the 'feud'. There may be some truth in what you say, but I don't think that it can necessarily be reduced to the single issue of height difference. The 'rivalry' between them was a good publicity tool and although they were far from friends, much of what has been documented, the quotes and stories should be taken with a large dose of salt. I do believe that their was envy on both sides, Bette may have been jealous of Joan's glamour and success with men (Franchot Tone!), whilst Joan envied Bette's acclaim as a film actress as opposed to being a movie star. The pattern of their careers may have been different, Joan was a star at MGM before Bette's rise at Warner Brothers. Bette's success by the end of the thirties coincided with Joan's decline, (box office poison), before her return to success at, of all places, Warner Brothers! I believe that they had more in common than they'd care to admit. Although, I believe that Bette was the better actress and has a wider range of quality films as her legacy, Joan is underrated by comparison and was capable of equalling Bette, particularly in her Warner Brothers films. Following WHTBJ, they both took roles in 'horror' type films which capitalised on the audience's appetite for the grotesque. Add the nasty books written about them by their own children. As Bette said: Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you're not a star. Bette may have envied other actress's attributes, but, to quote Jane Fonda, she didn't give a fuzzy rat's ass what she looked like!