Happy Mother’s Day, Joan Crawford!

My inter­est in Joan Crawford began with Mommie Dearest, a film often quoted (“No wire hang­ers ever!”), but one that until recently I’d never seen. In that film, Joan Crawford is depicted as an obsessive-compulsive child abuser. Of course it’s unclear how much of the movie was Christina Crawford’s exag­ger­a­tion and how much was an hon­est pic­ture of Joan’s need to be “on” at all times.

After see­ing Mildred Pierce, Crawford’s come­back role about a woman whose unyield­ing ded­i­ca­tion to pro­vid­ing for her daughter’s every whim leads to mur­der, I can’t help but won­der what effect play­ing Mildred had on Crawford.

The movie opens with the mur­der of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), who utters “Mildred” as his dying word. We then cut to Mildred, in a huge glam­orous fur, stand­ing on a bridge, seem­ingly con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide. A police offi­cer con­vinces her to move along, and she runs into Wally Fay (Jack Carson), who we later learn was her busi­ness part­ner. She then attempts to frame Wally for Monte’s murder.

Eventually, Mildred ends up at a smoke filled police sta­tion, where she tells the story of sep­a­rat­ing from her hus­band, work­ing her way from wait­ress­ing to own­ing a chain of restau­rants, and her love affair with Monte, not to men­tion how she cul­ti­vated her daugh­ter Veda’s (Ann Blyth) snob­bery, while ignor­ing the signs that Veda was turn­ing into a money-hungry manip­u­la­tive robot.

Mildred’s con­duct towards her chil­dren is the key fea­ture of the film. When her hus­band Bert (Bruce Bennett) leaves, he tells Mildred that she can’t do her children’s cry­ing for them. She responds that she’ll do their cry­ing so that they’ll never have to. But this ded­i­ca­tion goes too far. Mildred doesn’t real­ize what a prob­lem Veda’s become until Veda fakes a preg­nancy to get $10,000.

She kicks Veda out but can only stay away from her daugh­ter for so long. Soon Veda is back, and the cycle re-emerges. Veda’s actions become dan­ger­ously ego­cen­tric, while Mildred con­tin­ues to make con­ces­sions towards her.

Perhaps Mildred Pierce gave Crawford the idea that a spoiled child turns into a hor­ri­ble adult. Or per­haps it was just proof of some­thing she already believed in. Today’s Joan Crawford fans can spec­u­late just how much “Joan” Joan put into her char­ac­ters and how much her char­ac­ters became part of “Joan” — an option that the Hollywood machine, and of course Joan her­self, lim­ited dur­ing her life.