TV drama airs, how infatuated Joan Crawford tried to seduce rival Bette Davis

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, both Oscar-winning stars, hated each other with an all-consuming passion for 42 years, although both denied it publicly and in interviews.

Theirs was the longest, most ferocious, and most unrelenting feud in Hollywood history.

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, both Oscar-winning stars, hated each other with an all-consuming passion for 42 years, although both denied it publicly and in interviews.

For years it was assumed their bitter decades-long war arose from their utterly contrasting backgrounds and characters.

While Davis was a New England-born, classically-trained stage actress, Crawford was a social-climbing glamour-puss from the wrong side of the tracks whose success, in Davis’s estimation, depended entirely on looks and sex.

But as Davis revealed to me during her last visit to London, two years before her death in 1989, the real and festering cause of their mutual hatred was a man.

VIDEO ETC: Infatuated Joan Crawford tried to seduce rival Bette Davis | Daily Mail Online