Three times rivals worked together

They say that a little bit of healthy competition never hurt anyone, but sometimes it can grow into something more.

Throughout history there have been people, groups, teams and countries who have developed legendary rivalries for a variety of reasons.

We’ve grown accustomed to rivals facing off against one another, but what happens on the rare occasion that they put their feelings to one side and decide to work together?

BBC Bitesize explores the work that made three pairs of rivals put their differences aside - even if only temporarily.

Liverpool and Everton football clubs

Liverpool and Everton are known as one of the closest rivalries in English football, with the teams only a stone's throw away from one another across Stanley Park, Liverpool, UK.

The teams played their first official match against one another on 13 October 1894, making it one of the longest running top-flight derbies in England.

But in 2015 the teams put their animosity aside to created a joint initiative called Fans Supporting Foodbanks (FSF), which aims to tackle food poverty across the Liverpool area. The partnership was set up by Liverpool FC fan Ian Byrne and Everton FC fans Dave Kelly and Robbie Daniels.

Volunteers began collecting food in wheelie bins outside Goodison Park and Anfield where the teams play on match days. In 2020, Liverpool FC donated £40,000 to support the charity, ensuring it could still function during lockdown.

Today FSF supply 25% of all donations to north Liverpool food banks and have expanded their operations to reach many locations, including Dublin, Glasgow and London.

Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn

During the 1990s, Manchester’s Oasis and London-founded Blur were two of the biggest bands in Britpop and found themselves in a battle for chart dominance. The rivalry between the two focused on the different personalities within both groups.

At the height of Britpop mania, the bands locked horns going as far as releasing songs on the same day to see which single would top the charts. This culminated with Blur’s Country House outselling Oasis’s Roll With It by roughly 58,000 copies in 1995.

But fast-forward to 2013 and Oasis’s Noel Gallagher and Blur frontman Damon Albarn decided to put their differences aside to become unlikely musical collaborators, with a performance of Blur’s song Tender at a concert for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

On top of that, Noel’s backing vocals featured on the 2017 track We Got The Power by Albarn’s band Gorillaz, when he released the album Humanz.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were both Oscar-winning actresses and icons of the silver screen during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Their rivalry lasted for decades and there are many theories on how the feud between the pair began.

Some believe it started in 1933, when Crawford announced a divorce from her first husband on the same day as Davis’s first big movie premiere. The news is said to have overshadowed the release of Davis’s comedy film Ex-Lady, resulting in reduced publicity and poor ticket sales at the box office.

The rivalry continued over the years, but some producers were keen on getting the pair on screen together and in 1962, Crawford and Davis were cast in the horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? While some press, such as Variety, reported a friendly atmosphere on set, it is rumoured that a number of on-set incidents took place during filming - further stirring their hostile relationship. These events were later fictionalised by Ryan Murphy in his 2017 television series Feud, a drama about the details of Davis and Crawford’s history.

Regardless, the film was a both a critical and commercial success upon its release. The pair were set to be reunited two years later for a gothic film Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte by the same director, Robert Aldrich. But after less than a week of filming, Crawford pulled out and was replaced by British-American actress Olivia de Havilland.

This article was published in November 2024