Plot Intro
At a California beach house, a man is murdered. This man is Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), second husband of restaurant owner Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford). When Mildred is informed of the murder, she is taken to the police station for questioning where she discovers that her first husband, Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett) has been accused. Doubting the veracity of this, Mildred tells the police her full life story to prove his innocence, dissecting her two marriages, her business, her financial troubles and her stormy relationship with her daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth), and who truly murdered Monte Beragon and why…
In 1962, Joan Crawford starred with her alleged nemesis, Bette Davis, in melodramatic thriller Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Bette was Oscar nominated for Best Actress while Joan was not. So Joan decided to contact all the other nominees and persuaded them to let her accept the Oscar on their behalf if they could not attend. When the absent Anne Bancroft won the award, it was Joan who took to the stage to give the speech, much to Bette’s absolute fury.
In 1968, Joan’s adoptive daughter Christina was in a play but had to pull out due to illness. The character was 28 years old while Joan was in her 60s but Joan managed to persuade the producers to let her fill in for her daughter despite the huge age gap.
These are just two stories that demonstrate the tenacity and drive that Joan had. Sadly this was her only Oscar so I’m going to have to pack her eventful life into one blog post. As such, I’m going to jump over her childhood and early career, and focus more on Mildred Pierce before getting to the good stuff.
Like Bette Davis in All About Eve, Mildred Pierce was Joan’s big comeback after about 7 years of box-office flops. She was supposed to be playing a dowdy, downtrodden housewife who becomes embroiled in the machinations of her daughter and second husband. But Joan, true to form, plays the role with a full face of expensive make-up and even had her outfits adapted to look more like a Vogue model which infuriated the director.
But weirdly, it all works, and Joan plays the role with a soft-spoken vulnerability that fits the character. This is melodrama at its finest. It has a genuinely intriguing mystery, a fast-paced story that surprises and grips, and despite its preposterousness, it’s totally convincing. It’s arguably one of Crawford’s best movies and performances, but any of her thriller-melodramas from the '40s and '50s are worth watching. Even some of the lesser-regarded ones are good fun.
Joan is also helped along by two fabulous performances from the other women in the cast. Eve Arden, known primarily as a comedy actress, delivers some superb one-liners as Mildred’s sassy colleague and Ann Blyth (who is truly outstanding) has a dead-pan menace as Mildred’s conniving daughter. Both were nominated for Best Supporting Actress but sadly lost out.
Joan didn’t attend the ceremony at which she won the Oscar because she was so afraid of losing, so she pretended to be ill. When her name was announced, she hurriedly threw on make-up and filmed an acceptance speech from her alleged sick-bed. Her career afterwards stayed steady for sometime, but insecurities over her age and her mental health spilled over into her family life…
You may have heard of the movie or the book Mommie Dearest, written by the most famous of Joan’s four children, Christina Crawford. The book, published just a couple of years after Crawford’s death, paints Crawford as a mentally unstable, abusive, and extremely mercurial individual. The movie version, with Faye Dunaway as Joan, exacerbates this prevailing image. You may have seen the famous scene in which Dunaway finds out that her children’s dresses are hanging on wire hangers, to which she reacts with sweeping cries of “NO WIRE HANGERS EVER”.
The exact veracity of the book is very much under debate. While some co-stars and associates have backed up Christina’s claims and have said to be victims of Joan’s alleged mania, others have disputed them, including Mildred Pierce co-star Ann Blyth who said that Crawford was a friend and mentor for her.
My personal theory is that Joan was a pretty damaged person. Probably suffering from bi-polar disorder which would have gone undiagnosed or at least untreated, traumatised by a series of failed marriages, a stressful career and even some alleged abuse in her childhood from her stepfather, which naturally spilled over into her status as mother. Mommie Dearest as a film is campy fun and Faye Dunaway does a great impersonation of Crawford (although she was apparently livid that she didn’t get an Oscar nomination for it and won’t discuss the role in interviews), Jessica Lange’s wonderful depiction in the Ryan Murphy series, Feud, dissects Joan’s career and mental health with more nuance and empathy. In fact, the final episode had me in tears.
In her final years, Joan became increasingly reclusive and in bad health, although she gave up drinking in 1974. She died in 1977 aged somewhere between 73 and 77 (conflicting sources obscure her birth year). In her will, she left nothing to Christina, explicitly disinheriting her and her brother Christopher although both challenged the will and received a settlement. While her personal life and rumours may have overshadowed her work and accolades, Joan Crawford remains one of the most well-known, most notorious and most important names from Old Hollywood.
Ann Blyth’s performance as Veda is spectacular stuff. Impassive, cruel, and with just a smidgeon of spoiled brattishness.
The climax feels a little rushed, but it’s succinct and comprehensible.
I first watched this in the cinema and was utterly bemused, but entertained. My first understanding of this film was that it was an iconic Joan Crawford film, but where was the shrieking, violent harridan of legend? After some more education, I’ve come to learn that this is actually - potentially - the result of a spectacularly meta moment. My opinion of Joan Crawford is simply that of Fay Dunaway playing her in Mommie Dearest, a performance that is camp as anything and lacks nuance, truth or detail. ‘No wire hangers, ever’ is a line you’ll heard screamed by drag queens more than anyone else and that alone should tell you how it’s seen.
I’m reliably informed that while this was Crawford’s big win, it’s not an essential film of hers. She often played bitchy, melodramatic women (see The Women where she is the main villain) who flirt with men and - in one famous moment - commit suicide by glamorously walking into the sea wearing a full face of make up.
Mildred Pierce therefore is actually somewhat of a remove for Crawford, and although she found ways to glamorise it a little through tailoring her own costume, she does understand that it is a role that requires a little drabness and day to day monotony. It’s beautifully performed, you notice that she is constantly doing something in the house: folding linen, making cakes, tidying, sweeping - she’s rarely still, and this energy then carries on through into the scenes at the restaurant where she skilfully learns the trade of a waitress (which I can tell you first hand is no mean feat) and goes from success to success.
And while Crawford is holding the centre, in her excessively shoulder-padded coats, Ann Blyth is doing sterling work as the evil Veda. She is a clear predecessor to Anne Bancroft’s dead eyed Eve in All About Eve, conveying cruelty and selfishness without even moving a muscle. Crawford and Blyth are backed up by the superb Eve Arden in a smaller role, cracking jokes with a timing and wit that transcends seventy five years and had both Paul and me outright laughing.
The plot is full on melodrama and grips just enough to stop it from seeming silly. I would recommend it to anyone but I would say to go in with an open mind as you could easily start to poke holes in it, but if you just go with the flow and enjoy the suitably gothic filming, the excellent performances and the satisfying denouement (which was still toned down from the much more sexual novel), you’ll see why Crawford finally nabbed the Oscar she so ardently craved for this movie.
I really do enjoy Crawford’s padded shoulders. In fact it’s the lasting memory I have - her looking like she’s accidentally left the coat hanger in as she descends the stairs.
It’s a bit silly really. But good fun.
Mark
8/10
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