WHEN WRONG GOES RIGHT

Mildred Pierce is Joan Crawford’s most enjoyable star vehicle. We don’t believe a minute of it—James M. Cain’s nastiness has been so noirishly juiced up as to become a comic high—but there’s something smashingly right about how wrong Crawford is for the role. We know more about her private life than audiences did in the 40s, though a lot of Hollywood back then knew about her darker side as mother. Mildred Pierce becomes one of the rare reversals of fortune—the epitome of moviedom’s self-sacrificing parent who’d eventually be publicly crucified by her own daughter, but only after the star died. (Bette Davis’s daughter wrote her tell-all while its subject was living; either way both daughters were disinherited.) While Crawford’s cruelty started before Mildred was filmed, the publication of Mommie Dearest helped create the disturbing legacy now attached to Mildred—being conceivable catalyst altering Joan’s feelings toward her two oldest adopted kids, though primarily against daughter Christina. Pure conjecture, as Joan’s not able to defend herself, there is this strange transference thing hanging about: in doing the character Joan was provided by Cain and the miasmic atmosphere during filming a certifiable culprit in Veda (Ann Blyth) for Joan’s already established oppression, built on both real and imagined slights throughout her life. She might have coincidently given sway to rectify the error of Mildred’s coddling ways toward Veda by enacting preventive measures over what she regarded as the Hollywood spoilage of privileged children. Joan didn’t do Mildred Pierce for the excuse; instead, the part, as much needed career boost, became expedient ammunition. Likely much deeper, as Crawford was by then quite the tipsied sadomasochist, apparently eggoned by a challenging child whose own behaviors could be attributed to forces countering the star mother’s idiosyncrasies. In the annals of tightrope melodramatic camp, and with crackerjack support by Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Blyth, Eve Arden and Bruce Bennett, the movie remains a top rater, and bolstering its cult status is Carol Burnett’s classic takeoff entitled “Mildred Fierce.” Burnett’s “no ring, no ring a ding dingy” is topped only by her pumping a round or two into Vicki Lawrence as Veda. Joan didn’t go that far, but her will left no doubt it was her intent.

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