Reportedly, Bette Davis disliked the working title feeling it falsely indicated a sequel to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
[1] In the storyline of the film, the song is written for Davis' character: the aging Southern belle Charlotte Hollis, by her would-be lover John Mayhew whose murder thirty-seven years ago is generally ascribed to Charlotte.
The "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" song is heard in full as an instrumental - by the Frank DeVol Orchestra - under the film's opening credits, just prior to which a group of juvenile tormentors sing a debased version of the chorus, referencing Charlotte's supposed murder of John Mayhew.
Despite the song's being bested for the Academy Award by "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins, a recording of Page's rendition of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" was rush-released to become the singer's first Top 40 hit on Columbia Records as of the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated May 22, 1965; rising as high as #8 on the Hot 100 dated June 26, 1965, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" ranked as Page's first Top Twenty hit since 1958 and earned her a fifteenth and final Gold record for sales of one million units.
[3] Page's producer Bob Johnston so impressed Columbia Records by facilitating Page's scoring a major hit that Johnston was given the plum assignment of producing the Highway 61 Revisited album by Bob Dylan.