Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce or How to Turn Your Child into a Spoiled Rotten Ingrate

6/22/13, Mildred Pierce, Best Actress, 1945


Some of you may have seen the recent mini-series of Mildred Pierce (2011) with Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood; I saw that first and really liked it, so I was interested to see how the movie compared. Joan Crawford plays Mildred Pierce, a housewife who must fend for herself after her husband leaves (or is kicked out). Mildred has a side business baking pies, and then finds a job as a waitress. She is driven to work so hard because she wants to provide the best things for her two daughters, Veda and Kay. Kay is a happy-go-lucky kid, who is easily appeased. Veda, the older child, might be equated with a leech, an ungrateful leech at that; actually Veda (Ann Blyth, nominated as Best Supporting Actress) may have been the role model for all those Erika Kane-type characters in soap operas. Mildred is hard-working, seems to have a very good business sense, but when it comes to Veda, and eventually Guy Bergaron (Zachary Scott), she has no sense at all. Guy Bergaron is from a wealthy (or formerly wealthy) family, and has few scruples when it comes to accepting gifts of money from Mildred. Mildred's closest friend is the restaurant manager she met at her first waitressing job, Ida Corwin (Eve Arden, perhaps best known as the principal from Ridgemont High in Grease and Grease 2), who is wise-cracking, but protective of Mildred. The movie was directed by Michael Curtiz, who also directed Yankee Doodle Dandy and Casablanca among many other classics. It seemed very much like it could have been directed by Hitchcock, it has that moody, noir atmosphere, but the acting is not as stiff as in Spellbound, which was released in the same year. Butterfly McQueen (who played the young maid, Prissy, in Gone with the Wind) plays Lottie, Mildred's housekeeper/baking assistant (I didn't think it was very clear, she is shown baking pies, but Veda treats her as a housekeeper/maid). Lottie provided some of the lighter moments in the movie, with her high voice and comedic delivery. It's probably the worst statement of the obvious, but because of the limitation of roles for black Americans in the early days of film (pretty much maids, butlers or slaves), a lot of talent was lost to stereotyping, and I think that's the case here for sure. I think overall the movie is worth watching if just to draw your own comparisons to the mini-series, but also to see Joan Crawford in a great role; I was annoyed by the way Veda seemed to get away with everything, but I guess that is part of the movie, and you have to give credit to Ann Blyth who was only 17 at the time of the film.