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Home , Alexander Kolowrat, Angels with Dirty Faces, Ann Blyth, Ann Sheridan, A Breath of Scandal, Catherine Turney

February 13, 2018 (XXXVI:3) (1945), 111 min.

DIRECTED BY Michael Curtiz WRITTEN BY James M. Cain (based on the novel by), Ranald MacDougall, William Faulkner, () PRODUCED BY MUSIC CINEMATOGRAPHY by Ernest Haller

CAST ...Mildred Pierce Beragon ...Wally Fay ...Monte Beragon ...Ida Corwin ...Veda Pierce Forrester ...Albert ('Bert') Pierce ...Mrs. Maggie Biederhof ...Inspector Peterson Veda Ann Borg...Miriam Ellis Jo Ann Marlowe...Kay Pierce

frequently over Crawford’s insistence that Mildred Pierce would Selected for National Registry by the National Film always be dressed glamorously. Curtiz felt this was inappropriate Preservation Board, 1996 for a working mother while Crawford said it was because

Mildred was proud and wanted to project an upwardly mobile , USA 1946 appearance. Jerry Wald acted as peacemaker during arguments Oscar for Best Actress (Crawford), nominations for Best between Crawford and Curtiz. He recalled, “I had to be the Supporting Actress (Arden, Blyth), Cinematography-B&W referee. We had several meetings filled with blood, sweat, and (Haller), Picture (Wald), Screenplay (MacDougall) tears. Then everything started to settle down. Mike restricted

himself to swearing only in Hungarian, and Joan stopped MICHAEL CURTIZ (b. Mihály Kertész on December 24, streamlining the apron strings around her figure and let them 1886, , -—d. April 10, 1962 in hang.” When filming began, Curtiz mocked Crawford's famous , CA) was almost not chosen as the director for shoulder pads, and accused her of having her assistant alter the Mildred Pierce. Jack L. Warner originally wanted Vincent store-bought clothes used for her costumes. By the time filming Sherman to direct the film but producer Jerry Wald held out for ended, however, she and Curtiz had become closer, and Curtiz. Curtiz also did not want Crawford for the title role. He’d Crawford presented him with a pair of oversized shoulder pads as offered the role to and —both a gift. Michael Curtiz would go on to direct her once again in actresses turned it down. Even Crawford’s arch-nemesis Bette Flamingo Road (1949). Curtiz directed 172 , the last of Davis turned down the role. Curtiz and Crawford would clash which was The Comancheros (1961). Some of the others were Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—2

King Creole (1958), White Christmas (1954), Humoresque (1946), Trunk (1945), Rhapsody in Blue (1952), (1951), Young Man with a Horn (1950), (1945), Mr. Skeffington (1944), The (1939), Flamingo Road (1949), Night and Day (1946), (1939), Jezebel (1938), Captain Blood (1935), The (1942), (1942), Santa Fe Trail (1940), Emperor Jones (1933), Parisian Nights (1925), and The Virginia City (1940), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex Discarded Woman (1920). (1939), Dodge City (1939), (1937), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Captain Blood (1935), Mammy (1930), The Third Degree (1926), Der Goldene Schmetterling (1926), Boccaccio (1920), and Az Utolsó bohém (1912). He won a best director Oscar for Casablanca (1942).

JAMES M. CAIN (b. July 1, 1892 in Annapolis, Maryland—d. October 27, 1977, age 85, in University Park, Maryland) is best known for three books have been made into now-classic films: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce and . Born and raised on the East Coast and trained as a journalist, Cain moved to in the , around the time his first book was published. He returned to the East Coast about 15 years later, but it was in Los Angeles, a place he had conflicting feelings about, that Cain had his greatest success. Cain's first novel The Postman Always Rings Twice was rejected by publishers—twice. Once he found success, the writer was in high demand in Hollywood, but the relationship was fraught. He JOAN CRAWFORD (b. March 23,1904, San Antonio, TX—d. managed a complete rewrite of the screenplay Out of the Past, May 10, 1977 in NY, NY) was a well-established star at the time only to have it rewritten again after he was done. While he wrote she accepted the lead in Mildred Pierce. However, by 1945 the novel for tonight’s film, other writers, including William Crawford was being whispered about town as “washed-up” (or Faulkner, were used to flesh out the screenplay. Among the many shouted if you were ). Initially, Curtiz was less-than- versions of the screenplay, Faulkner’s rewrite differed the most keen at working with “has-been” star Joan Crawford as she had a significantly. He wrote an elaborate voice-over narration and reputation for being difficult. Most of the leading actresses of the concentrated on Mildred’s restaurant business, describing sleazy, day shied away from the role of Mildred Pierce as they didn't underhanded business dealings. Veda is even more calculating want to play the mother of a teenage daughter. Crawford had no and cold than she appears in the final film. Faulkner’s additions such reservations, knowing that it would be the part of a lifetime, ultimately were not used. Eight different screenplays from a so she campaigned vigorously to land it. She so badly wanted the succession of writers were written before Ranald MacDougall's rol e that she offered to do a screen test, something an established version was accepted. star was never expected to do. Curtiz directed the screen test and after watching it, astonished, agreed that Crawford was perfect ERNEST HALLER (b. May 31, 1896, Los Angeles, CA—d. for the part. Yet, the relationship between director and lead October 21,1970, age 74, in Marina del Rey, CA) began his actress was not always smooth sailing. Shooting the early scenes, career as a bank clerk before moving on to acting. Within one Curtiz accused Crawford of needlessly glamorizing her working year he discovered his true calling: being on the other side of the mother role. She insisted she was buying her character’s clothes camera. By 1920 he had become a full director of photography off the rack but didn’t mention that her own dressmaker was and would go on to handle prestige pictures such as Stella Dallas fitting the waists and padding out the shoulders. Even though she (1925). Despite prolific output, it took him several years to create may have been a touch vain, Crawford was a workhorse. a reputation. His breakthrough eventually came with the lavishly According to follow actress Ann Blyth, during the staircase scene produced period drama Jezebel (1938), starring Bette Davis. For Crawford insisted that Blyth slap her. Soon Curtiz was won over this, he received the first of five Academy Award nominations. It by Crawford’s dedication. He was not the only one: Writer James was his work on Jezebel which ultimately prompted David O. M. Cain sent Crawford a signed first edition of the original Selznick to replace (with whom he had creative novel. The inscription read: “To Joan Crawford, who brought disagreements) with Haller as principal cinematographer for his Mildred Pierce to life just as I had always hoped she would be, masterpiece, Gone with the Wind (1939). Haller also and who has my lifelong gratitude.” After the film’s success, WB shot ’s famous first screen test for the role of went into overdrive campaigning for a Best Actor award their Scarlett O’Hara. Though his previous work had been almost star. Crawford, however, was much more skeptical about her exclusively in black-and-white, the gamble paid off handsomely, chances. “People in Hollywood don't like me, and they've never with Haller winning an Academy Award (alongside Ray regarded me as a good actress. But go ahead. We'll see what Rennahan) for Best Color Cinematography. In addition to happens.” Crawford was so sure she wouldn't win—and so tonight’s film, Haller photographed Crawford twice more in her nervous about delivering a speech if she did—she didn’t attend career looking her best in Humoresque (1946) and her worst in the ceremony on March 7, 1946. She put out the word she was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Some of his other very ill and took to her bed. But when she heard films were Dead Ringer (1964), Lilies of the Field (1963), Rebel announce her as the winner, she let out a shriek and, according to Without a Cause (1955), —All-American (1951), her daughter Christina, recovered her health very quickly. Soon Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—3 her house was filled with hair and make-up people, Guild. It was in New York where he caught the eye of Jack photographers (in that order), actor (one of her Warner who signed him to a film contract. Scott’s first feature biggest fans), and Curtiz who, with a small contingent from the was the title role in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944). He was well production, delivered her Oscar. She was photographed in her received in the part of the mysterious and debonair scoundrel and nightgown in bed, proudly displaying the statuette, an image that seemed destined for a top-level career in movies. A subsequent dominated all the paper. Before leaving, the photographers had role as the cad in tonight’s film seemed likely to cement him as her fake one last picture, lying as if asleep, clutching her award both a star and as a typecast portrayer of amoral characters. Jean next to her. Crawford acted in 106 films and (mostly in the Renoir, however, cast the Texan in a touching and sensitive role 1960s) TV series. Some of her notable films were What Ever in his classic The Southerner (1945). Though he received great Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), The Story of Esther Costello acclaim for his performance, Scott was not particularly well (1957), Queen Bee (1955), Johnny Guitar (1954), promoted by WB, and his subsequent films declined in prestige. (1950), The Damned Don't Cry (1950), Flamingo Road (1949), In 1950, he nearly drowned while on a rubber raft excursion with Possessed (1947), (1947), Humoresque (1946), actor John Emery. A riptide upset their boat, and Scott was The Women (1939), Dancing Lady (1933), (1932), knocked unconscious after hitting his head on a rock. Emery Our Dancing Daughters (1928), The Unknown (1927), The Boob managed to rescue him and carry him to shore. The accident sent (1926), and (a bit part, her first film appearance so far as anyone the actor into a deep depression. Although he continued to work knows) Lady of the Night (1925). in films, including one for director Luis Buñuel, Scott never quite reclaimed the level of stardom that he’d achieved in the mid- JACK CARSON (b. October 27, 1910, Carman, Manitoba, . In 1965, he was stricken with a brain tumor. Despite Canada—d. January 2,1963, Encino, CA) was a jack-of-all- surgery, he succumbed in October of that year, at 51. trades in the industry. Known for his performances in Mildred Pierce (1945) and A Star Is Born (1954), he was equally as EVE ARDEN (b. Eunice Quedens, April 30, 1909, Mill Valley, popular a star of , and radio. Carson’s genial demeanor CA—d. November 12, 1990, Los Angeles, CA) often played the and work ethic made him one of Warner’s top stars of the witty, wisecracking sophisticate--the heroine`s best friend who got Postwar period. He was teamed in popular comedies with both all the laughs but never the man. A go-getter from a young age, her and his pal, , but it was his pairing mother dropped her off one night in at Henry Duffy`s theater in San with that most remember. In fact, Day always Francisco after dinner one night, saying, “Go in and get yourself a considered Carson her first mentor in Hollywood and they job.” A nervous Arden met the gruff director and, a few weeks later, remained good friends until the end of Carson’s life. Carson she was an actress with a job paying $35 a week. Arden moved to continued to have a successful film career in the in movies New York and changed her name from Eunice Quedens to Eve Arden, taking the first name from a character in a novel she was like (1958) and A Star Is Born (1954), but reading and the second from the cosmetics in her handbag. There it was television where he found his greatest success. Carson was was no other Arden in show business, she thought. Only later did she one of 4 rotating hosts on All Star Revue (1950-1951). He then see the name emblazoned in lights on a burlesque house outside hosted and performed on The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950) from Boston, where another Eve Arden appeared nightly in a single white 1952-55. He would also help host The U.S. Royal Showcase fox fur. She had a reputation for ingenuity in building a second lead (1952). He also appeared as a guest star on and The or bit part into something memorable. In her autobiography, Three Twilight Zone. Sadly, Carson was working on a pilot for a drama Phases of Eve, Eve Arden, who played Mildred’s wisecracking pal series when he passed away on Jan. 2, 1963 from stomach cancer (a role typical of her work in other WB films), said she thought the (ironically, he died the same day as another old Hollywood script for Mildred Pierce was “fairly interesting” but she would have favorite, ). He was only 52 years old. never expected it to bring Crawford her only Oscar and Arden her only nomination (for Best Supporting Actress). The two actresses ZACHARY SCOTT (b. February 21, 1914, Austin, TX—d. worked together two other times, in Dancing Lady (1933) October 3, 1965, age 51, in Austin, TX) often vacillates between and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951). She acted in 90 films and tv series, suave and sinister roles. The son of a wealthy surgeon, Scott among them “Falcon Crest,” “Amazing Stories,” Grease intended on 2 (1982), Under the Rainbow (1981), “Hart to Hart,” “Vega$,” “The following his father Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” Butterfield 8 (1960), Anatomy of a into medicine. Scott Murder (1959), Our Miss Brooks, Goodbye, My studied at the Fancy (1951), Whiplash (1948), One Touch of Venus (1948), The University of Voice of the Turtle (1947), Night and Day (1946), The Kid from (1946), Cover Girl (1944), Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and Oh Texas, but found he Doctor (1937). preferred the theater. He dropped ANN BLYTH (b. August 16, 1928 in Mount Kisco, New York) out of college and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap signed on as a cabin dramas, in elementary school. A member of New York's boy on a freighter Children’s Opera Company, the young Blyth made an important bound for England. Broadway debut as the daughter in WWII drama There he found work in provincial repertory, gaining confidence (1941). The show was such a hit, she stayed and skill. Returning to Texas, he became active in local theater in for two years (after which it was hard to convince the audience Austin. He was spotted in a play there by , who that she was still a ‘child’). Blyth next played a few juvenile recommended him to the producers of New York's Theatre roles in innocuous fare like Babes on Swing Street (1944) before Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—4 she got to sink her teeth into the plum role in Mildred Pierce. Bohemian, 1912), and he made at least two more pictures before Yet, the role of Veda, almost went to Shirley Temple (hard to setting out for the Nordisk Studios in Copenhagen, at that time imagine the “Good Ship Lollipop” girl making as convincing a the preeminent center of film production in Europe. Curtiz spent villain.) In fact, WB initially didn’t want to cast Blyth, as she six months at Nordisk, learning all he could about was not under contract to them. It was Crawford who coached and working with leading Scandanavian directors like Mauritz the young actress for her screen test, which led to the studio Stiller and Victor Sjostrom. He assisted in the “borrowing” her from Universal. She is so convincingly evil, direction of a big-budget mean-spirited, and obnoxious that was nominated for a Best epic, Atlantis (1913) and is Supporting Actress Oscar. Although Blyth lost to another Anne supposed to have directed (Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film a film of his own for Danger Signal (1945). During filming, Blyth suffered a broken Nordisk, although no back in a sledding accident and had to be replaced in the role. record of it has survived. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Back in Hungary, Force (1947). Her first starring role was an inauspicious one adorned with the prestige opposite in Swell Guy (1946), and she finally began of his Danish experience, gaining some momentum again. She continued her serious streak Curtiz found himself much with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in in demand. From 1914 to Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes 1919 he directed at least (1941) in which Blyth played a younger Bette Davis. Her thirty-seven films, many of attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching which—following the creature of the sea opposite in Mr. Peabody and contemporary the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with much-older movie Scandanavian example— star Robert Montgomery in Once More, My Darling (1949). showed a preference for After this, she left film, preferring to raise a family. She would outdoor locations. Bánk occasionally pop up on television programs, making guest bán (1914), based on a appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) and on her friend Angela popular Hungarian folk story, was the first of several major Landsbury’s show Murder, She Wrote (1984). successes. On the outbreak of war, Curtiz was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian artillery, but through shrewd use of personal From World Film Directors, V. I. Ed John Wakeman. H.W. connections got himself first transferred to the Army film unit Wilson Co. NY 1987. “Curtiz, Michael” by Philip Kemp and then in 1915 discharged. American director and producer, [Curtiz/Kertesz] was born in Budapest, Hungary, of Jewish parentage, the eldest of Early in 1917, Curtiz was appointed director of production at three sons. Later in life, Curtiz enjoyed creating mystery about Phoenix Films, the leading studio in Budapest. He worked his origins and upbringing and sometimes maintained that his exclusively for them until he left Hungary. None of his father was “a poor carpenter.” The generally accepted account, Hungarian films has survived intact, and most are completely though, is that his family was comfortably off, his father being an lost; but the fragments that remain suggest that Curtiz’s talent for architect and his mother an opera singer. Curtiz himself is said to fluid narrative and vivid composition was already well- have made his stage debut, aged eleven, in an opera in which his developed. So, too, was his notoriously autocratic attitude to mother was starring. At seventeen, he ran away to join a filmmaking: in a 1917 article for the periodical Mozhihét he traveling circus, performing with them as strongman, acrobat, stated “An actor’s success is no more than the success of the juggler, and mime. He is also reported to have been a member of director whose concept of the whole brings into harmony the the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. performance of each character on the screen.”

It seems certain, at any rate, that Curtiz studied at Markoszy In April 1919, Bela Kun’s short-lived socialist Republic University in Budapest and then at the Royal Academy of of Councils announced the nationalization of the . Theatre and Art. Having completed his studies, he joined the This was little to Curtiz’s taste. Abandoning his current project, a National Hungarian Theatre, whose repertoire consisted mostly version of Molnár’s , he left Hungary for good. According of “boulevard comedies” like those of Molnar, several of which to some sources, he visited Sweden, where a persistent but Curtiz would later film. He began his theatrical career in improbable legend has him directing a film featuring the traditional style, taking on all the dogsbody jobs from candyseller fourteen-year-old Greta Gustafsson (Garbo) as Marie Antoinette. to cashier. Curtiz soon graduated to acting roles and before long No trace of any such work has survived, nor of an early episode was established as one of the company’s most promising young of Fritz Lang’s serial Die Spinnen (The Spiders, 1919), which directors. Curtiz is said to have directed in Germany. With or without detours, he ended up in , where he and Lucy Doraine [his Mas holnap (Today and Tomorrow, 1912) was proudly actress wife] were signed up by Count , announced as “The First Hungarian Dramatic Art Film.” Curtiz owner of Sascha Films. took one of the leading roles and is generally believed to have While working for Sascha, Curtiz later wrote, he directed as well, although no director was credited. He was “learned the basic laws of film art, which, in those days, had certainly named as the director of Az utolsó bohém (The Last progressed further in Vienna than anywhere else” (thus Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—5 apparently dismissing as negligible the experience gained on his of ; in a wildly romantic gesture of self-sacrifice, forty or so Hungarian films). The pictures that he directed for Tracy goes to the chair for a murder she has committed. Curtiz’s Sascha—twenty-one at least—fall mainly into two categories: realistic portrayal of the dreariness and squalor of prison life may sophisticated light comedies and historical (in the loosest sense) now seem commonplace, but was found fresh and revelatory at spectaculars.... the time. All through the 1930s, Curtiz tirelessly hammered out His own reputation...was established by his DeMille-style four or five movies a year, seemingly as ready to take on low- biblical spectaculars, notably Sodom und Gomorrha (1922) and budget programmers as more prestigious assignments. By the Die Sklavenkönigin (Moon of Israel, 1924), with their cannily middle of the decade, though, he was established as Warners’ top commercial mixture of sexual display and moral deprecation. director, increasingly assigned to the studio’s major stars (Davis, Sodom und Gomorrha, though at the time the most expensive Cagney, Muni, William Powell) and more expensive film ever made in Austria, more than productions—at least by Warners’ recouped its cost; thanks largely to notoriously parsimonious standards. The Curtiz, Sascha was fast becoming the studio’s financial stability was now leading Austrian studio and assured, but old habits died hard— establishing lucrative connections with especially those of Hal Wallis, Warners’ the mighty UFA company of Berlin. formidable and tight-fisted production Moon of Israel, produced by a chief. Curtiz, versatile, industrious, and fellow Hungarian exile, Sandor (later supremely adept at creating lavish results Sir Alexander) Korda, achieved wide on minimal budgets, fitted the studio international distribution. Jack Warner, philosophy perfectly. “Curtiz never gave scouting for talent in Europe with his second-hand treatment to as assignment brother Harry, saw it in Paris and was once it was accepted,” commented “laid in the aisles by Curtiz’s camera William Meyer; “he went ahead and work. . .[by] shots and angles that were graced plot and character with fluid pure genius.” Warners, lean and camera movement, exquisite lighting, ambitious, had already snapped up Lubitsch, and now decided to and a lightening-fast pace. Even if a script was truly poor and the sign Curtiz for their planned superproduction, Noah’s Ark—a leading players were real amateurs, Curtiz glossed over film intended to beat De Mille at his own game.... inadequacies so well that an audience often failed to recognise a In 1926, when Curtiz arrived in Hollywood, Warner shallow substance until it was hungry for another film a half-hour Brothers was still a small and financially shaky studio; the later.” jackpot of and The Jazz Singer was a year in the Equally well established by this time was Curtiz’s future. Kertész now became Curtiz; but before letting their reputations as one of the most detested directors in Hollywood, newly-christened director loose on Noah’s Ark, the studio second only perhaps to . Jack Edmund Nolan cautiously assigned him to a batch of programmers, beginning (Films in Review, November 1970) described him as “a manic- with a melodrama, The Third Degree (1926). Curtiz, with some depressive sort of a man, up one day and down the next. In the sixty films already to his credit and obsessively dedicated to his euphoric phase he would appear on the set splendidly accoutred, work, slid effortlessly into the Hollywood system, rapidly even flamboyantly (scarf, costume jewelry), and be full of proving himself capable of making a smooth, professional job extroverted, self-confident assertiveness. In the depressed phase out of even the least promising material. He was to stay with he would be unkempt and would refuse to talk even about things Warners for the next twenty-eight years and directed eighty-six that were of concern to him. In both states he was mindful of the films for them, including all his best work. feelings of others only occasionally.” Autocratic and overbearing on the set, Curtiz clashed ...His first commercial failure, (1931), constantly with his actors; thriving under pressure, he expected starred as a meglomaniac dance impressario; the them to do the same. Many actors, including , film, which marks an early appearance of Curtiz’s recurrent eventually refused to work with Curtiz. Bette Davis, never one to theme of cynicism versus idealism, was probably too similar to be dominated, fought with him ceaselessly. (Curtiz is said to the recent Svengal (also with Barrymore) to impress the public. have referred to her, in her presence, as a “goddamned nothing The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932), a social drama, rates nogood sexless son of a bitch.”) described him as in John Baxter’s opinion as “among the earliest of his “a cruel man, with animals and actors, and he swung that whip masterpieces....The milieu of the slum streets and hotel rooms is around pretty good. He overworked everyone. But he was also recreated with chilling detail, the story told with a pitiless amusing, and he turned out some good pictures.” intensity.” All his life Curtiz retained a strong Hungarian accent, Warners were now the fastest-growing studio in and his creative mishandlings of the English language deserve to Hollywood, and Curtiz’s stock rose with them. Cabin in the be as famous as those of Sam Goldwyn. He once stormed at a Cotton (1932) was an early example of a Warners specialty— confused propman: “Next time I send a damn fool, I go myself!” hard-hitting social (near-) realism. Is this case enlivened by the He expressed dissatisfaction with a child actor by remarking first of Bette Davis’s rich gallery of malicious Southern belles. scathingly: “By the time I was your age, I was fifteen.” A scene She appeared in a more sympathetic light in another “message in one of his films, he predicted, would “make your blood curl.” picture,” 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1933), playing the girlfriend Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—6

For all his unsympathetic treatment of actors, Curtiz “with Triumph of the Will and Ten Days That Shook the World, showed a knack for detecting and fostering unknown talent. as one of the great pieces of the screen.” Among the actors who achieved stardom under his direction Also in 1943, Curtiz was assigned to what had were , , and—rather unexpectedly— originally been planned as a low-budget melodramatic Doris Day. His most famous discovery, though, was undoubtedly programmer, to star and . For some Errol Flynn, who in Curtiz’s hands rose from minor bit parts to reason, the project was upgraded to major-budget status, Bogart become one of the great romantic heroes of the cinema, the first and Bergman were brought in to play the leads, a new (and perhaps only) true successor to . The first scriptwriter was drafted (Howard Koch, who also scripted of their dozen collaborations, Captain Blood (1935), defined the ) and one of the great cult movies was born. most enduring aspect of Flynn’s screen performance: the Casablanca (1943) is undoubtedly Curtiz’s best-known film, dashing, devil-may-care , sword in hand and heart more written about than any of his others (quite possible more on sleeve.... than all his others put together); it won him his only Best Director Oscar; and it established, more decisively even than The Curtiz, William Meyer maintained, “is to the Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep, the iconographic Bogart swashbuckler what is persona. Its low-key, nostalgically to the .” Robin Hood romantic appeal has not diminished; in alone might well serve to August 1983 a British Film Institute substantiate such a claim.... Members’ poll voted it, by a wide margin, top of a list of all-time favorite films. Curtiz won the first of As Rick, jaded and world-weary his two Oscars for a patriotic proprietor of a night spot in Vichy short, Sons of Liberty (1939) . It Casablanca, Bogart embodies perfectly the starred , moral choice that lies at the heart of so exceptional among actors in that many Curtiz films: public versus private he generally got on well with morality, cynical detachment versus Curtiz and enjoyed working for commitment. In the easy-going 1930s, the him. choice had been largely a formality; Errol Flynn’s reluctance to become a sheriff and With the start of the clean up Dodge City had been little more 1940s and the ending of the ebullient Flynn cycle, a darker, more than a momentary hesitation. In Casablanca, though we sense pessimistic tone gradually seemed to suffuse Curtiz’s output— that ultimately Bogart will do the right thing, the choice is more although many critics would argue that in this, as throughout his drawn-out, more agonized: not until the very last moments of the career, Curtiz the archetypal studio workhorse was merely film does he relinquish Bergman to resistance leader Victor reflecting an overall shift in Hollywood’s—and America’s— Laszlo () and ally himself irreversibly to the cause mood. of freedom and democracy. This ambiguity no doubt stems partly from the uncertainty of the actors (and even of the director) as to Moral despair...was conspicuously absent from the first how the film would end; most of the script was apparently of Curtiz’s wartime hits, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Davis written as shooting progressed. “That picture was made good on and Flinn considered it “the finest musical biography ever set,” Curtiz remarked later. “I have three writers working on set filmed”; it was without any doubt the most energetic. As George every day as we shoot.” M. Cohan, composer, showman, and superpatriot, Besides the principal actors, Warners assembled an strutted superlatively, earning himself an Oscar; his performance, exceptionally fine supporting cast: , Peter and that of as his father, did much to ensure the Lorre, , Dooley Wilson (as Sam, playing it again), film’s lasting appeal, despite the deafening blare of nationalistic and “the ambiguous emotional center of the film, the human bombast. embodiment of Casablanca’s mystery and corruption,” as A year later, Curtiz directed a further exercise in put it—Claude Rains as the Vichy police chief, national propaganda, of a rather different kind: Mission to Louis Renault.Together with MaxSteiner’s score, (incorporating, Moscow (1943), an amazingly overt Stalinist apologia, based on of course, “As Time Goes By”), Wehl’s sets, and Arthur the memoirs of Joseph E. Davies, ex-US Ambassador to the Edeson’s evocative camerawork, they enabled Curtiz to create, USSR. In it, Russia was depicted, as James Agee put it, as “a Kingsley Canham suggested, “one of the most distinguished great glad two-million-dollar bowl of canned borscht, eminently works ever to emerge from a Hollywood studio,” a distillation of approvable by the Institute of Good Housekeeping.” The film, the style and aspirations of wartime America. which went so far as to endorse the 1937 show trials, caused Bogart’s Rick, wrote Sidney Rosenzweig, “is an much embarrassment a few years later when the wind changed: a irresistible identification figure for that urge in all of us for a twitchy Jack Warner informed HUAC that it had been made at splendid and noble martyrdom.” “Isolationism is no longer a the express request of President Roosevelt. Mission to Moscow practical policy, my dear Rick,” remarks Sidney Greenstreet was suppressed for some years, becoming available again during blandly. Underlining the political parallel between the man and the 1960s. Higham and Greenberg, commending “its epic sweep, his country (the film is set in 1941); a hero for his time, Rick its magnificently lavish studio pastiche recreation of Russia, its somberly but inexorably heads towards the foggy nocturnal brilliant, well-nigh irresistible propagandist verve,” classed it airfield where he shoots the Nazi Colonel Strasser, hands over Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—7

Bergman to Henreid, and strolls off arm-in-arm with Rains to last breath; a car revs off into the night. “The film,” wrote join the Free French over the next hill. The film was Higham and Greenberg, “conveys Curtiz’s love of the American enthusiastically acclaimed, barring a grumpy dissenting note night world, of piers shining under rain, of dark beaches, the from James Agee (“The camera should move for purposes other Pacific moonlight seen through a bar’s windows; and the tough than those of a nautch dancer”), and showered with Oscars; over direction of the players at all times pays dividends.” the years its stature as a cinematic classic has become By way of total contrast, Curtiz’s next two films offered unassailable. optimistic, upbeat Americana. Night and Day (1946) purported, Yet, as Richard Schickel admitted, “objectively without much justification, to be a biography of , speaking, the film...remains what it always was—a somewhat represented by at his most debonair, casually better-than-average example of what the American scribbling snatches of the title song in the trenches. could do when it was at its most stable and powerful.” The plot is (1947) was a sunlit period piece, set in 1880s often shaky and implausible. Though much of the dialogue is New York, with William Powell perfectly cast as the irascible witty and memorable (Rains, inviting an increased kickback: but finally soft-hearted paterfamilias; the film made up in charm “I’m only a poor corrupt official...”), much more is unadulterated for what it lacked in pace.... schmaltz. Bergman to Bogart, in mid-tryst as the Germans invade Paris: “Was that cannon fire or was it my heart pounding?” John Baxter [said] that he brought to all his films “a sly Bogart to Bergman, recalling the same events: “I remember and highly sexual Viennese humour,” and elsewhere remarked every detail—the Germans wore gray, that he “lays a substantial claim to you wore blue.” Several film actors, being the best director of the notably Lorre and Greenstreet, are Thirties....Curtiz seems the largely wasted. Casablanca, by any embodiment of a European tradition standards, is not great art. But it is, totally opposed to the elegance and beyond all doubt, superb cinema…. sly wit of a Lubitsch....His films are among the most pitiless grotesque By this stage in his career, and erotic in the history of the Curtiz had to some extent modified his cinema.” cinematic style and toned down the vividly dramatic of his ...Paul Henreid, whom earlier years. His camera remained Curtiz directed in Casablanca, also fluid, but the angles were becoming noted his “instinctive visual less startling, the compositions less sense....Every now and again he crowded and complex, though he would stop the camera and say, retained his taste for stark contrasts in lighting. “I have ‘There’s something wrong here, I don’t know what it is.’ By and progressed too,” he remarked around this time. “I was too by he’d realize what it was and we’d begin the scene again.” European, too stagey, too sentimental. Now at fifty-six I do Sidney Rosenzsweig identified Curtiz’s visual style as the key better work.” Most critics would say that, on the contrary, at aspect of his directorial signature, with its “unusual camera fifty-six Curtiz had almost all his best work behind him and was angles and carefully detailed, crowded, complex compositions, about to direct his last major film. full of mirrors and reflections, smoke and fog, and physical Mildred Pierce (1945), adapted from a novel by James objects, furniture, foliage, bars, and windows, that stand between M. Cain, was intended as a vehicle for Joan Crawford, recently the camera and the human characters and seem to surround and ousted from MGM and badly in need of a boost for her flagging entrap them.” career. She got it; the film won her an Academy Award (her first Rosenzweig further suggested that Curtiz’s personal and only) for her performance as the drivingly ambitious attitude to his material can be deduced from this visual approach: housewife who works her way up from waitress to owner of a “Curtiz seems to define his characters by their environment. In chain of restaurants, and in doing so destroys her life and her fact, environment becomes a form of fate, and Curtiz’s characters family. But Mildred Pierce transcends its origins as a Crawford often struggle against fate, trying to mold their own lives, shape vehicle; a model , resents an icily graphic picture of the their own destinies. The typical Curtiz hero is a morally divided souring of the American dream of success. “The family and figure, forced...to make a serious moral decision.”... mother love are both undermined,” observed David Thomson. “Suburbia inextricably confuses happiness and the dollar.” Curtiz himself tended to deflect with irony any attempt Michael Wood cited Mildred Pierce as one of the few to delve beneath the polished surface of his films. “I put all the films noirs in which the action of the movie lives up (or perhaps art into my pictures I think the audience can stand,” he once down) to the lowering menace of the atmosphere: “The remarked; and, again, “I don’t see black-and-white words in a unrequited love of Joan Crawford for her stuck-up daughter script when I read it. I see action.” If he hardly qualifies, as John dominates even the film’s murky, compelling mood, converting Baxter conceded, as “an artist of ideas,” the bittersweet that mood into a metaphor for the stormy, tortured confusion of romanticism that suffuses all his best films would still make him her feelings.” something more than the impersonally efficient studio filmsmith The opening has become deservedly famous: in a remote night- he has sometimes been taken for. “One must allow Curtiz the bound beach house shots are fired, shattering a mirror; a man credit,” wrote David Thomson, “for making melodrama and slumps to the lamplit floor, gasping a woman’s name with his sentimentality so searingly effective and such glowing causes for Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—8 nostalgia...Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, and Mildred Warners to buy the book. Tough, resilient, lower-class and Pierce are an unrivalled trinity of inventiveness transforming lower-middle-class women who made their way up in life had soppiness to such an extent that reason and taste begin to waver been portrayed at Warners by Bette Davis, , Joan at the conviction of genre in full flow.” Blondell, , Ann Sheridan, and . The noble self-sacrificial side of Mildred also easily allied itself with Michael Curtiz never retired. Indefatigable to the last, the later 1930s and early 1940s women’s movies, such Bette he continued to direct a regular two films a year well into his Davis vehicles as Dark Victory (1939), The Old Maid (1939), seventies. Almost his last movie, bringing him full circle to his and Now, Voyager (1942). starting point, was an adaptation of a play by Molnar, There was also a long-standing tradition of tough crime (filmed as , 1960). Curtiz died of cancer in a dramas at Warners, much of it concerned with gangsters, Hollywood hospital a few months after completing The racketeers, and tough young men raised in street settings (Little Comancheros (1961), a Western. Caesar, 1930; The Public Enemy, 1931; They Made Me a Criminal, 1939; , 1938; and the Wald co- scripted , 1940, and , 1939). By the 1940s this tradition had taken a turn toward a more romantic less sociological noir film, often with Bogart as the charismatic hero, doomed in High Sierra (1941) and The Big Shot (1942) but positive and victorious in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1943), and The Big Sleep (1946). [The Big Sleep was released in 1946 but actually shot before MP.] To some extent the film MP adhered to these traditions. The great success of Double Indemnity (Paramount, 1944), adapted from Cain’s 1937 novella, practically ensured that a crime would be added (although he had taken pains to avoid violence in MP). Laura (20th Century-Fox, 1944) was a striking example of how the women’s movie could be combined with the whodunit. Cain’s name on the book and Veda’s presence as a catalyst for Mildred’s neurotic drives also pushed the film away from Mildred Pierce. Edited, with introduction by Albert J. from the Warners social dramas and women’s movies of the La Valley. /Warner Bros Screenplay Series. U thirties and toward the dark, brooding film noir of the forties with Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1980. its tress on melodrama, the unconscious, and unsettling emotions. MP is at once in touch with the oldest and strongest The film Mildred Pierce has its origins in James M. Cain’s novel Warners traditions of the 1930s and early 1940s as it also heralds of the same name. Published in 1941, it followed Cain’s the more sour, disenchanted, and disturbing world of Warners successful series of tough guy novels: The Postman Always postwar America. This division is evident both thematically and Rings Twice, Career in C Major, Double Indemnity, and stylistically within the film itself. Its flashbacks are shot in a Serenade. Departing from their narrow framework, taut higher key, a brighter light than its murky film noir present-tense narratives, and first-person male protagonists, Cain offered a framework. Mildred as the noble sufferer aligns herself with the female protagonist, both strong and weak, as his central heroines of women’s movies: Barbara Stanwyck’s Stella Dallas character.... (Goldwyn-UA, 1937) sacrificing herself for her daughter, Bette The book and the film are similar in broad outline Davis’s Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager as she rises out of except that the film adds a murder and omits Veda’s success in a obscurity and oppression, and Rosalind Russell’s Louise Randell musical career. The film differs strikingly from its source, in Roughly Speaking (Warners, 1945) as she suffers the trials of however, by tying into different cinematic traditions: the domestic life while shaping up her shiftless husband’s business. women’s movie, film noir, and murder mysteries. With the Yet these themes are much altered. Unlike Stella’s addition of glamorous sets, star treatment, and a contemporary daughter, Mildred’s Veda is ungrateful and vicious. As a catalyst setting, all made lavish by a big budget and producer Jerry for Mildred’s drive to power, Veda taints the film’s central Wald’s desire for the grand treatment, Mildred Pierce (Hereafter action. The aims of power become questionable. The American referred to as MP) struck a tone and style far removed from dream of greater success for one’s children acquires a sour edge. Cain’s novel. Its highly glossy look and it somewhat lurid subject In its path lie sexual excess, business corruption, and matter were to become a hallmark of Warners films of the late depersonalization. Even Mildred’s nobility has overtones of 1940s, particularly those produced by Wald after his great masochism. While Mildred attempts to salvage basic familial success with MP. values outside her oppressed housewife role, she jeopardizes Ironically, before Wald decided to make MP, it was those same values by her grim drive for power and her iron most likely the milieu of the novel and its struggling working- determination. Domestic relations in the film are fragmented and class heroine that made it an appropriate vehicle for Warner riddled with a mixture of sexuality, business calculation, and Brothers with its strong tradition of proletarian heros and deceit.... heroines and concern for social causes dating from the early The tangle of passions and duplicitous motives and the 1930s. The positive aspect of Mildred probably prompted bitter views of marriage, family, and business distinguish MP Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—9 from such noir films as the classic Warners detective stories, The penultimate chapter nearly strangles Veda when she discovers Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, in which the detective her in bed with Monte; (2) the narration is told without provides a moral norm that counters the often cynical world flashbacks in standard fashion, chronologically; (3) the period of view. MP is also distinguished from such romantic noir films as time covered is longer, from the early Depression to 1941 rather Spellbound (1945)m Laura, and The Dark Mirror (1946), in than from 1941 to 1945; (4) the narration is third person not first, which the narratives end with an affirmation of the couple. The though there is much close attention to Mildred’s thoughts and strong disenchantment in MP and the somewhat despicable feelings; (5) Veda achieves a successful career as a coloratura quality of all the characters point the way to what Paul Schrader soprano with a climactic performance in the ; calls the “second phase of film noir. It is a phase marked by (6) the setting is much more tawdry and lower class—Mildred, bitterness, disenchantment, turbulent emotions, and the failure of though she has shapely legs and some sexual attractiveness, is no love. Though MP shares some aspects of the first phase of noir— Joan Crawford and by the end of the book is fat on booze; and studio filming and a stress on talk over action—it nowhere (7) the narrative is very episodic in structure with events linked conveys a mood of romantic optimism covered by a layer of loosely, much less dramatically. [Charles Higham reports that cynicism that characterizes Cain wrote Wald a series of such Warners films as stinging letters objecting to these Casablanca, Passage to changes, particularly Wald’s Marseille (1944), and To Have dramatic idea of making Veda a and Have Not (1944). MP washout musically and putting points to (1946) and her in a tawdry nightclub. Fallen Angel (1946) and at Interestingly, Cain himself was Warners to The Strange Love of the son of an opera singer, Martha Ivers (1946), The aspired to an operatic career, and Unsuspected (1947), Dark made his last and most successful Passage (1947), Flamingo marriage with a coloratura Road (1949), Possessed (1947), soprano. Music plays a large and and The Breaking Point (1950), often learned role in many of his most of these involving the novels. As Oates has observed, major talents of MP. music for Cain was a reservoir of the unconscious.] Cain’s novels of the late 1930s and the early 1940s constitute one of the fundamental influences on film noir. Three ...Cain seems uncomfortable in this third-person voice, of them—The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Double which he here used extensively for the first time. Oates finds this Indemnity (1936), and MP (1941)—made excellent noir films in the chief flaw of the novel: “Mildred Pierce,...over-long and 1945, 1943, and 1945 respectively. Other minor novels and shapeless, must surely owe its flaws to the third-person stories came to the screen earlier; Warners had produced and omniscient narration, which takes us too far from the victim and adapted The Embezzler in 1940 under its original title, Money allows us more freedom than we want. To be successful, such and the Woman. But in an even stronger and more basic sense, narrowly- conceived art must blot out what landscape it cannot Cain’s novels acted as a shaping influence on the whole noir cover; hence the blurred surrealistic backgrounds of the tradition. His books mirror the bleak world of shifting values and successful Cain novels, Postman...and Serenade.” isolated individualism that was the Southern of the The novel has a problem holding Mildred in clear 1930s and that became the movies’ picture of it in the 1940s.In perspective. Its detailed accounting of her world and close their urban setting, their tough guy knowingness, their mixture of attention to her thoughts create a Mildred of determination and strong realism and surrealistic detail and mood, their sense of resilience. But when Cain takes a larger view or stresses the universal treachery and futility, their reliance for narrative confused working of her unconscious wishes, Mildred becomes a progression on the complications of passion, dream, and victim. Often she is the stereotype of the lower-class Southern unconscious wishes, they antedate much of film noir’s themes California housewife with aspirations beyond her status. Cain and methods. Like film noir, Cain’s major books chronicle the mocks her Spanish-style bungalow and the astrologically lure of the American dream and brand it a falsity.... acquired names of her children, Veda and Moire (Ray), which she mispronounces, These moments resemble the satiric Like many young journalists and writers during the technique of Nathanael West. beginning of the period of sound films, Cain turned to At other times she is mercilessly victimized by a Hollywood for its lucrative possibilities. Like many of these sexuality that she cannot control, despite all her noble ambitions other New York writers, Cain held the movies in low esteem and and plans. Ultimately all she does must be judged in light of her saw himself as squandering his talents on them.... wish to gain Veda’s affection—in a sense, to be the Veda that Since most people think of MP the film when the title is she cannot be because of her background, class, appearance, and mentioned, it may be useful to point out the most significant work. ways in which the novel differs from the film, before discussing From the perspectives of the unconscious, Veda the difficulties with the novel itself—difficulties that were to represents all that Mildred most desires: art, music, elegance, and translate into problems with the scripting of MP. Briefly put, in sexual beauty. Veda is an intensification of Mildred’s yearnings the novel (1) there is no murder, though Mildred in the and ideals, and also of her darker unconscious impulses and Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—10 energies. Mildred’s money-making schemes, noble in purpose the successful film. ...The difficulties behind scripting MP and but corrupt in their original design to win Veda’s love, are the dizzying succession of scriptwriters point to Wald’s mirrored in Veda in a more distorted form: the ruthlessness of determination to shape it his way, to go beyond domestic drama blackmail, marriage as a way to class and money. Further, and the women’s movie to a more lurid melodrama of murder Mildred’s commitment to realize her wish exacts a repression of and infidelity.... sexuality that takes revenge upon her. Despite her resistances, Wald loved risk and ambitious projects. While he Mildred regularly falls victim to Wally’s and Monte’s sexual regularly praised the movie code of censorship, he clearly designs upon her. She prefers snuggling or cuddling with Veda to enjoyed pushing it to its limits and making movies of subjects sleeping with Bert or Monte. When Veda announces her that were supposedly unfilmable. MP was the first in a long line pregnancy, she is stricken with sexual jealousy. Given the of projects that moved between the lurid and the artsy, often projection of her sexuality onto Veda, it is not unreasonable that combining both: Flamingo Road, Johnny Belinda (with its it is Veda who finally goes to bed with Monte. Sexual repression important rape scene), Sons and Lovers from the D.H. Lawrence and the need to work, the demand to subordinate all concerns to novel, Peyton Place and its sequel from the scandalous best winning Veda back, produce a Mildred who becomes tough on seller, steamy versions of Faulkner, The Long Hot Summer, and booze. At the end of the . When he book Mildred is described as died unexpectedly at age fifty a plump, savage animal who Wald was busy on a never- flings herself at Veda in fury. produced version of James Joyce’s Cain gives Mildred noble , a perfect blend of high art plans and ambitions but and highly censorable material. cynically subverts them by Just as MP was emerging her constant failure to see the from property to project in 1944, larger, overarching forces of Paramount released Double society and sexuality that Indemnity to great critical acclaim. really direct her. With a screenplay by its director What Cain was and the noted mystery attempting in MP is not writer Raymond Chandler, Double always clear. He is on record Indemnity went further than as having said he tried to previous noir films in depicting the write a novel about a woman meanness, venality, lust, and who uses men to gain her sordidness of its central characters. end, not the traditional Its dark location photography, femme fatale but a “victim of the Depression, a venal American which departed from studio practice, won high acclaim for housewife who didn’t know she was using men, but imagined enhancing that realism. Its retrospective narration and bitter herself quite noble.” He stresses Mildred’s neurotic, compulsive voice-over added to the mood of futility, disenchantment, and behavior as she tries to gain Veda’s love and respect. In the failure—especially since it was being told by a dying man. preface to The Butterfly (1946), he said, “I write of the wish that ...Wald nowhere pressed to break the carefully comes true...for some reason a terrifying concept, at least to my controlled pattern of studio filming and to follow Double imagination. Of course, the wish must have terror in it. I think Indemnity into its pioneering on-location realistic camera work. my stories have some quality of the opening of a forbidden box, Instead, studio lighting and camera work on MP were reinforced and that it is this, rather than violence, sex, or any of the things to highlight glamour, luxury, and Crawford’s star status. Yet, usually cited by way of explanation, that gives them the drive so with its sense of bitterness and duplicity in family life, love, and often noted.” business, MP introduced an important note of disenchantment Still, this broader perspective on Mildred is not entirely into the world of Warners films and heralded the new trend of successful in undermining her. Cain refuses to believe that she is blending crime and the women’s movie. simply typical; she has a “squint” in her eye that argues for shrewdness of character and a tough stance against adversity. ...Mildred walks a fine line between the sexual Today, with the women’s movement asking readers to reconsider deficiency of Ida and the sexual excess of Veda; she may protect and reevaluate women’s characters in fiction, Mildred’s her power thereby, but it is short-lived. She projects a sense of resistance and determination may seem more striking and control, a kind of mask abetted by Crawford’s performance. It positive than Cain intended them to be. His own interpretation of begins to crumble when the worlds of business and sexuality take her seems misogynistic; he sees her as the realistic version of the their revenge upon her. If Mildred partly represents a new ideal more romantic crime novel’s femme fatale. for woman, a movement away from the home and into a career, much like what the war had spawned, she also represents the As the producer of MP, Jerry Wald was its most vulnerability of that role, its demands of control upon the sexual important shaping force. Not only did he make all the major self and its subservience to the world of masculinity in business. preproduction decisions—most importantly offering the role to Ultimately Mildred must be avenged and restored to her Joan Crawford for her “comeback”—but he also oversaw the woman’s role in the home. entire production. As the eight treatments and screenplays testify, Wald valued the screenplay as the most important component of Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—11

By 1944 Michael Curtiz was Warners’s top director, Crawford wrote about how she came to choose the having been responsible not only for several of the studio’s Mildred Pierce role in The Saturday Evening Post of November biggest hits of the thirties but also for its two biggest successes of 2, 1946. Her statement is interesting, but, like everything else the forties, Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy....Casablanca about her art and life, it seems to be part of a carefully showed him especially able to work with an unfinished script. orchestrated and controlled image. In “The Role I Liked Best” Once again with MP his smooth and gliding camera she wrote: movement covers the sharper junctures of a script still being reworked. With its dark overtones MP allowed Curtiz to use his The role of Mildred in Mildred Pierce was a delight to expressionist techniques more fully than he usually did. Curtiz me because it rescued me from what was known at gave the present-tense framework of MP a noir style with several Metro as the Joan Crawford formula; I had become so angled and startling expressionist shots. By contrast the hidden in clothes and sets that nobody could tell flashbacks are highlighted and told in a more traditional narrative whether I had talent or not. After I left Metro, Warners manner. Within the present, noir lighting is employed. Mildred offered me three scripts, each of which I turned down. appears regularly with the upper right portion of her face Producer Jerry Wald loyally agreed that it would be darkened. She seems to carry her mark of guilt with her; Bert, wrong for me to take another formula picture, and when under suspicion, has the same lighting. By contrast Mildred finally he suggested James Cain’s novel, which I had in her home setting or in the business world is always fully read years before without realizing it was just what I lighted. needed, On rereading it, I was eager to accept this The opening sequences are particularly marked by chance to portray a mother who has to fight against the startling shots. Monte is shown in a reaction shot receiving the temptation to spoil her child. As I have two adopted bullets and falling on the floor, but Curtiz withholds the standard children, I felt I could understand Mildred and do the “action” shot that would tell us who is firing the gun; the gap role justice. creates a disruptive mood for the whole movie...... The lines about “spoiling her It is with Crawford, of children” have an eerie ring course, that Curtiz has singular now that we know from Bob success. At first refusing to work Thomas and Christina Crawford with her, he envisioned a washed how well she resisted the up grande dame with “high-hat temptation to spoil them and airs and her goddam shoulder how she mistreated them when pads.” Whatever their differences, they refused to conform to her they were soon patched up. Curtiz highly ordered plans. The and cameraman Ernest Heller were following lines are even more especially sensitive to Crawford; disturbing: she is given a great number of Ann, as the daughter, was close-ups, far more than the script perfect. I loved every scene calls for, and so always looks with her except where I had to elegant, so much so that the theme slap her and she had to slap me. of her rise from lower-class origins I have a phobia about slapping, is underplayed. She appears in a dating back to my childhood, housedress only in the opening flashback sequence, and then it when my father once slapped me for telling a lie at the seems spotless. As Molly Haskell notes, she seems peculiarly dinner table. After I slapped Ann I burst into tears and unruffled either psychologically or physically by her background found myself apologizing frantically. Later, it wasn’t or ordeal.... quite so hard to have Ann slap me, but my head was Critics had almost universal praise for most of the cast shaking as the scene faded out, and then it was Ann who and Curtiz’s sensitive handling of them. Ann Blyth and Eve was remorsefully apologizing. Arden were nominated for Oscars and Crawford won her only ...In her life off screen Crawford sought to project the Oscar. For most people Crawford is Mildred Pierce. And Mildred image she manufactured on screen, In a male-dominated industry Pierce she would remain: the strong, powerful, stoic, determined she had carefully forged the image of a strong career woman woman working for the noblest ends. No matter that this mutes with lower-middle-class roots, one who is resourceful and strong, the picture of a lower-class Mildred or that it underplays the but still sexually appealing, and who could hold her own in a more disturbing aspects of her conduct. These are there, but they man’s world. The cost of this was the same on screen and off. are not foregrounded by Crawford’s performance. What we see is The mark of control and determination shutting off the surfacing the new image of Joan Crawford both on screen and off, a of other emotions; her controlled performance in MP is less a woman who could run not only restaurants but also, later in real brake applied to melodrama than the careful construction of a life, the Pepsi-Cola company. deliberate new image....In the last analysis, despite the According to Crawford, she carefully chose this role for diametrically opposed treatment of Veda and her own children, herself, her first major one in two years and her first role at MP is an icon of Joan Crawford’s life. Warners where she had previously done only a guest appearance as herself in (1944).... Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—12

Only the great critic James Agee, in The Nation offered comfort food Mildred serves in her neon-lit upscale diners: the a contemporary review that got at the thematic problems and the dialogue crisp and salted with wit, the decadently rich emotion tone of the film: “Nasty, gratifying version of the Cain novel cut by just enough acerbic tartness. about suburban grass-widowhood and the power of the native We first hear Mildred’s name on the lips of a dying passion for money and all that money can buy. Attempt made to man, and first see her walking alone on a deserted pier that sell Mildred as noble when she is merely idiotic or at best extends into the enormous blackness of the ocean. Her pathetic; but constant, virulent, lambent attention to money and silhouette—the huge, boxy shoulders of a fur coat and the steep its effects, and more authentic suggestions of sex than one hopes ankle-strap heels lengthening slim legs—announces Joan to see in American films.” (October 13, 1945) Crawford even before the first tearstained close-up. The role of What made MP so successful was not the reviews but Mildred won Crawford her only Oscar and distilled her essence the drawing power of Crawford in her comeback role, coupled as a star: a fiercely hardworking perfectionist driven by a with a memorable promotional campaign to sell her in the role. dogged, unappeasable longing for approval. She could play Early trade paper ads were a good deal racier than the film. tough, she could play capable and hardheaded, but in her eyes Crawford was pictured with a bare midriff…leering down in burned a volatile blend of fiendish energy and quivering need. typical femme fatale style at the small upturned faces of Jack In Mildred Pierce, this molten core is tamped down by steely Carson and Zachary Scott. The copy read: “Kinda Hard...Kinda restraint; she was never better, and—at something like forty, Soft...Mildred Pierce...The kind of depending on which birthdate you woman most men want...but believe—never more beautiful. shouldn’t have.” Once the picture Director Michael Curtiz often was launched, however, a tease line clashed with Crawford during was coined that was, according to shooting, complaining that she insisted Paul Lazarus, former vice-president on glamorizing the woman whose of Columbia and executive vice- daughter calls her a “common frump.” president of National Screen Service, But the veneer of gentility and the advertising arm of the industry, obsessive care for her looks that clung one of the most successful phrases to the actress—born into miserable ever coined to sell a picture. The poverty as Lucille LeSueur—perfectly new line was “Mildred Pierce— suits Mildred Pierce, who sells cakes don’t ever tell anyone what she did.” and pies out of her kitchen to pay for This tantalizing line proved so original and intriguing that, her daughters’ piano and ballet lessons, even when her husband according to Lazarus, it was picked up by radio comedians, is out of work. True, Crawford is never quite convincing as an entertainers, and a variety of other people in the media and, quite ordinary, downtrodden housewife, but could a woman who naturally, made the movie even more famous and successful.... builds a chain restaurant empire, makes a fortune, and marries The recent spate of criticism on MP shows, however, the scion of a fallen old-money clan, all out of desperation to that the film is one of those with a submerged life and that its please a snobbish daughter, ever be described as ordinary? This themes still speak to us in ways mysterious ways. What Agee is a woman who, forced to take a job waiting tables to support spotted in it now looms forth with clarity, and these themes blend her children, throws herself into the work like an Olympian in with complicated sexual, social, and semiological questions that training, becoming an almost frighteningly competent waitress. lead us back to the powerful and troubling image of Mildred Mildred recounts her history in a police station, where once more. she is being questioned after the murder of her husband, and the accompanying flashbacks begin with her staking a claim to Imogen Sara Smith: “Mildred Pierce: A Woman’s Work” averageness, recalling her street in the stereotypical Southern (Criterion Notes): California suburb of Glendale, “where all the houses looked Dark surf and full-throated music wash over the credits alike,” her feeling of having been born in the kitchen and lived of Mildred Pierce, building to a knockout opening with a volley her whole life there. The trappings of motherhood and pie baking of gunshots in a beach house and a man in black tie keeling over may not seem like the stuff of film noir, but Mildred’s obsession in flickering firelight. Almost two hours later, however, the with her older daughter is as perverse and destructive as any movie closes not with the swell and crash of waves but with the man’s enslavement to a femme fatale. Veda (Ann Blyth, only toiling sponges of scrubwomen on their knees, cleaning the around sixteen when the film was made) is a femme fatale in floors of the Hall of Justice at daybreak. These mute women have bobby socks: manipulative, deceitful, selfish, and cold-blooded. the last word, bringing to the surface the film’s undercurrent of Blyth’s primly immaculate, doll-like prettiness, with a head too tough-minded sympathy for unseen, undignified, and unrewarded big for her tiny body, perfectly suits this bad seed who is wily as female labor, and pointing to its unusual blend of realism and a grown-up and amoral as a baby. high style. Beneath the sheen of glamour and the throb of In this fatally unhealthy relationship, it is the mother melodrama, Mildred Pierce (1945) is an acute, unsparing study who fears the daughter’s judgment: the scene where Veda of relationships poisoned by class and money. The plot reveals a accuses Mildred of “degrading” the family by waitressing is so cruel sting in the tail of the most essential American promise— painful it’s hard to watch. Later, in a fit of ecstatic contempt, the that hard work, sacrifice, and self-improvement will find their girl insults her mother’s family and breeding—as though they ultimate reward in the next generation’s success. But these weren’t also her own—and triumphantly tells the self-made caustic insights are embedded in a movie as satisfying as the success that money and a new hairdo will never give her class. Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—13

But Veda also knows when to drop this crushing disdain and play with carhops serving drive-in patrons, swing music on the what can be described only as love scenes—flinging herself into jukebox, fried chicken and dry martinis, and the sweet music of Mildred’s arms with kisses and tears and promises to change. greenbacks riffling in the cashier’s hand.) Similarly, in its The only change comes when her smug entitlement curdles into treatment of men, the movie follows the pattern of classic 1930s sociopathy; she detests the “smell of grease” on the money from women’s pictures, in which males remain marginal plot devices, her mother’s restaurants but is delighted with the $10,000 she and at the same time previews film noir’s gallery of suckers, extorts from a wealthy family with a fake pregnancy. In the end, heels, and pawns of fate. she blames her mother for all her crimes—“It’s your fault I’m the It is often said that men’s discomfort with women’s way I am”—and for once, perhaps she’s right. Veda is a monster, entry into the workforce during World War II conjured the figure but she’s the monster Mildred created with her insistence on of the femme fatale, which demonized strong, ambitious women. putting the children first and giving them advantages. This theory makes no sense, since the femme fatale is never a “Why don’t you just forget about her?” Mildred’s friend woman who works or is independent; she is always a woman and coworker Ida (Eve Arden) asks, as they drink straight who uses men to get what she wants, relying on the most bourbon in the afternoon. Even knowing the bitter truth about traditional feminine wiles. Women who do work, like Mildred Veda, Mildred realizes she can’t live without her and will do and Ida (or like the secretaries played by Ella Raines in Phantom anything to get her back. Ida can’t shake her from this abject Lady and in , or the nightclub trance—not even with the benefit of Arden’s wry, drawling performers portrayed by Ida Lupino in The Man I Love and Ann contralto, the Campari in the cocktail of American cinema. But Sheridan in ) are invariably good eggs, while she gives the movie a solid base of female sanity and solidarity to femmes fatales are like Veda, avaricious gals who would rather balance the neurotic central relationship, as well as an invaluable cheat and exploit their desirability than work for what they want. dash of astringent humor—from her praise of alligators that “eat The male version of this type is Monte Beragon their young” to her toast: “To the (Zachary Scott), the penniless heir to a men we have loved—the stinkers.” once-wealthy Pasadena family, who There are three men in proudly admits that all he does is loaf Mildred’s life, and each has his “in a highly decorative and charming flaws, though only one is really a manner.” At first, his seduction of stinker. Her first husband, Bert Mildred seems to be motivated by (Bruce Bennett), is a gloomy sincere if superficial attraction, and it’s defeatist who resents her greater easy to see why the grass widow who spine and energy, though he correctly spends her life sweating in kitchens diagnoses her toxic obsession with succumbs to a man who makes her feel their children. Having lost his job, he desirable again. Soon she is bankrolling consoles himself with a mistress, and the lifestyle he can no longer afford, sees his wife’s own earning capacity eventually buying him outright when as a deliberate rebuke. When she they marry—not because she’s in love throws him out, he sneers, “Let’s see with him but as a means of holding on to you get along without me,” which her daughter, who worships the she proceeds to do quite well, as he aristocratic, polo-playing gigolo. Monte later admits. Women’s willingness to and Veda are two of a kind, equally do whatever it takes to survive and devious and narcissistic, and between support their children is a truism of them they strip poor Mildred of Depression-era women’s sagas everything she has or cherishes. like Blonde Venus, Call Her In this respect, the movie is Savage (both 1932), and Baby Face (1933). These films argue faithful to the 1941 James M. Cain novel from which it was that the fluidity of women’s identities and their ability to accept adapted, but there are subtle differences in tone, as well as a degrading compromises make them tougher than men, whose glaring departure: the murder that frames the film and has no pride and cherished dignity are handicaps. So is their cockiness. equivalent in the book. This is a case where infidelity to the “I’m so smart it’s like a disease,” crows Wally Fay (Jack source is mostly well judged, particularly in the abandonment of Carson), an affable blowhard who makes a pass at Mildred at Veda’s sudden transformation into a celebrated opera singer, a least once a week. She bats back the passes but uses him twist in the novel that not only is unconvincing but seems to mercilessly, first turning to him for help in building her business, validate the girl’s haughty conviction that life with her then turning him into a fall guy when she has need of one. “common” mother can never be good enough for her. The Mildred Pierce was made during the Second World War murder serves both to sharpen the dramatic thrust of the story but not released until about a month after V-J Day. There are and to satisfy the Breen Office censors who enforced the only a few glancing references to the war—for instance, a line Production Code, by pushing amorality into outright villainy and about the shortage of nylon stockings—but the film captures its ensuring punishment. It also seals the movie’s status as a film pivotal moment by looking back at the struggles of the noir, though the body count matters less than the emotional Depression and ahead to postwar prosperity. (The latter is violence that hits as hard and cuts as deep as bullets. gloriously envisioned in the gala opening of Mildred’s first This was Curtiz’s first noir, and he pulls out all the stops restaurant, trumpeted by searchlights like a Hollywood premiere, in the opening sequence, aided and abetted by veteran Curtiz—MILRED PIERCE—14 cinematographer Ernest Haller. The beach house is a modernist and Autumn Leaves (1956). In many of these films, she plays labyrinth of split levels, spiral stairs, dark rectangular spaces gritty, determined women who work—as a carnival dancer, a sliced by diagonal low-angle shafts of light. Huge shadows loom model, a magazine illustrator, a playwright, a typist—and for on the walls, watery ribbons of light play on the ceiling, and whom love and marriage, far from representing security, are firelight twitches spasmodically in the room where a man lies violently destabilizing, leading to suicide, beatings, murder, dead. All of the film’s —from the California Spanish madness. Challenging the false assumption that noir always takes bungalow where Mildred starts out to the oppressively grandiose the male point of view, these films find in women’s dilemmas the mansion where she winds up—are exceptionally detailed and essence of noir’s you-can’t-win pessimism. Mildred gets expressive. Curtiz matches each scene’s style to its mood, from everything a woman can have—marriage, children, a high- the flamboyant prologue to the plain lighting and framing of powered career, a passionate love affair, a fur coat—yet none of Mildred’s everyday life in the suburbs. The director’s films of it brings her happiness. She wants only the one thing she lacks, the forties are all lustrously handsome, often suffused with a her daughter’s love. faintly visible atmosphere—like humidity, or breath—that gives This is where film noir and melodrama converge: both volume to the light and shade. But Curtiz is never distracted by are fueled by people wanting what they can’t have, and going too style; his power as a storyteller comes from the simplicity and far trying to get it. With her talent for going too far, and for stinging clarity he can give the most dramatic moments. Mildred glamorously suffering the consequences, Joan Crawford was Pierce has its flourishes of operatic excess—Veda slapping her made for the noir melodrama. In a career marked by endless mother is perhaps the most stunning—but its most painful scenes transformations and hard-fought comebacks, she also embodied are quiet and pitilessly straightforward, like the one where the glamour of work: that hard work of being a woman that is Mildred watches her younger daughter, Kay, struggle for life in never done. an oxygen tent. Mildred Pierce was Crawford’s great comeback after a The screenplay of Mildred Pierce: string of flops and a humiliating departure from MGM in 1943, https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/content_link/tvkRVujzU2CU1 and it led to a late-career peak at Warner Bros. Having struck UTiPZAd4dnt5Ex1HjOm4cMLB8bOtLPDd8s8U2eERYKk6e3b black gold, she continued to mine it in a series of terrific noir LAN5/file melodramas, like Humoresque (1946), Possessed, Daisy Kenyon (both 1947), Flamingo Road (1949, again with Curtiz), The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), Sudden Fear (1952),

COMING UP IN IN THE SPRING 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXVI February 20 Yasujiro Ozu, Tokyo Story 1953 February 27 , High Noon 1952 March 6 Stanley Donen and , Singin’ in the Rain 1952 March 13 Satyajit Ray, The Big City 1963 March 27 , Persona 1966 April 3 Ousman Sembène, Black Girl 1966 April 10 Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon 1975 April 17 Robert Bresson, L’Argent 1983 April 24 David Lynch, Mulholland Drive 2001 May 1 Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 2017 May 8 Jacques Demy, The Young Girls of Rochefort 1967

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