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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 25 |
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Ron compares James M. Cain's 1941 best-seller with the 1945 movie version by Michael Curtiz... MILDRED PIERCE |
 Cover of the DVD version of the movie |
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The following column gives away vital plot details from both the book and movie versions of "Mildred Pierce," so if you don't want your enjoyment of them spoiled, please read this after you've read the book and seen the movie. |
radically altered storyline
of TheColumnists.com
There are a few classic examples of famous movies based on famous books that filmmakers trashed on the way to the screen. My favorite example always is Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers On A Train," which director Alfred Hitchcock gutted, yet still came up with a great, great movie.
Add another one to that small collection: James M. Cain's 1941 best-seller "Mildred Pierce," which was brought to the screen in 1945 by director Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca") with so many story changes that fans of the book must have come out of the theater dizzy from trying to figure them out.
Still, "Mildred Pierce" is a wonderful movie, a classic film noir that revived the sagging career of its leading lady, Joan Crawford, and won her the Oscar as Best Actress of 1945. Meanwhile, the book lives on, secure in its place as one of Cain's three immortal novels, sure to be read for decades to come.
In the literary career of Cain, "Mildred Pierce" falls between his first great classic, "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934) and "Double Indemnity" (1944). Great films were made from all three, but "Mildred Pierce" was the one most abused by its filmmaker.
Consider this most flagrant of the changes: The movie begins with Mildred's husband (Zachary Scott) being shot to death--his final mumbled word is "Mildred"--and Mildred (Joan Crawford) leaving their beach house in a shaken, terribly distraught condition. A few minutes later, the story really begins with a flashback as she gives her account of what happened to a police detective.
Well, how about this: There is no shooting in the book. No detectives, no investigation and no flashback.
Cain's book is about an uneducated, but ambitious woman in Depression era Los Angeles who throws her shiftless husband out of their house and goes to work as the family's chief breadwinner, taking a job as a cafe waitress. They have two daughters, but Mildred's primary concern is the oldest girl, Veda, who's her pride and joy. She wants Veda to have all the breaks Mildred didn't have when she married at 17, then ended up the penniless wife of an irresponsible man whose business had collapsed.
The trouble is Veda is the classic spoiled brat--an arrogant and cold-blooded girl who can't tolerate the fact that her mom is working as a common waitress and can't provide her with all the nice things she deserves.
Cain was the poet of the disenfranchised 1930s Americans. In Mildred Pierce, he created a woman who uses her native intelligence, her resourcefulness and her devotion to her daughter as the fuel for the tremendous ambition that inspires her to open her own restaurant and build it into a chain of highly successful eateries that dot the Los Angeles landscape.
Along the way, she compromises herself mightily. She becomes the lover of her ex-husband's former partner, a lawyer named Wally; then leaves him for Monty, the dissolute heir to a once-great Pasadena family, who still has strong social position in the Los Angeles area. Ultimately, though, she winds up supporting Monty, too, unknowingly heading herself toward bankruptcy.
The drama comes to its climax after Veda--now a beautiful, but spiteful teenager-- leaves home after her mother has sacrificed much to develop her as a concert pianist with costly lessons from various "maestro" types. Incredibly, Veda discovers she has a rare gift as a singer and becomes a sensation as a coloratura, building a great following on the radio and finally drawing a showcase booking at the legendary Hollywood Bowl.
The closest thing to a murder in Cain's book comes when Mildred learns Veda has faked a pregnancy in order to bilk her boy friend's rich Los Angeles family out of a fortune in blackmail, then finds Veda in bed with Mildred's own husband, Monty. Mildred strangles Veda enough to wreck her voice, but not kill her.
In the movie, Veda (Ann Blyth) is every bit as nasty a piece of work, but she never becomes a famous singer. Instead, she gets a crummy singing job in a Los Angeles dive (which, by the way, wasted Blyth's very good operatic-style voice on some dippy Hawaiian-style numbers) and is going nowhere fast when she's rejected by mom's husband and decides to kill him.
As the movie progresses, it's a classic dark suspense film with a genuine mystery--who really shot Monty?--that isn't resolved until the last reel when Mildred finally admits it was her precious Veda who done it.
In the book, Wally the helpful lawyer turns on Mildred and ends up being one of the principal agents pushing her toward financial ruin. In the movie, he turns on her much earlier, which is why she trys to set him up to take the rap for shooting her husband. In the movie, Wally is played by Jack Carson, a past master of those big, clunky good guy characters who turn out to be heels.
Cain's book is a serious character study, but melodramatic enough to become a popular "women's book" that stayed up on the best-seller list for a good many months. The movie adds the murder element to make it into a very dark and sinister "woman's picture" that's loaded with great roles for women.
Joan Crawford had been dropped by MGM, the studio that developed her into a star. Warner Bros., then anxious to find a backup to its reigning female star, Bette Davis, snapped up Crawford's contract and quickly put her into this sizzling role, which Crawford played to the hilt, deservedly winning her Oscar and going on to rival Davis at her own studio.
The film also gave a big boost to Ann Blyth, who was still in her teens. She was Oscar-nominated in the supporting actress category. She never again had a role to equal the vile, malicious Veda, who remains one of the screen's all-time most pernicious characters.
Curtiz also packed "Mildred Pierce" with superb female character players, including Eve Arden as Ida, the restaurant lady who helps Mildred build her business, and Butterfly McQueen as Mildred's black housekeeper, Lottie, who's white and named Letty in the book. Some of the other good supporting characters of the book never appear in the film.
Cain's book is still quite readable today, but it works best if you try to absorb it as a post-depression melodrama that attempts to reflect the mores and attitudes of common citizens of that period.
And the film is still a very involving dark melodrama with a tour-de-force performances by Crawford and Blyth, great camerawork, music and editing by the superb Warners crew put together by staff director Curtiz. The changes may jar you if you're fresh from the book, but they work for the movie and shouldn't totally spoil your enjoyment of a truly classic film.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
This column first posted May 30, 2005.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes the television column for MYSTERY SCENE magazine and teaches
classes in mystery for the Academy for Lifelong Living at Western
Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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