The movie’s story of a persevering, middle-age mom, decades before “The Partridge Family” and “One Day at a Time,” was way ahead of its time, so much so that “Mildred” sounds like not a cutting-edge ’70s TV show but something your grandmother would watch.

From 1904 (the year of birth of Joan Crawford, whose real name is Lucille Fay LeSueur) to 1945 (the year of release of “Mildred Pierce”), the name “Mildred” slid from 9th most popular baby name to 93rd. “Mildred Pierce” will forever be haunted by its title. It is hilariously over the top, taking divadom to levels it probably never had previously gone. “Mommie Dearest” depicts a self-made woman who can’t stop terrorizing her daughter, to the permanent detriment of both. It is beautifully over the top - a middle-age female restaurateur who suddenly acquires wealth faster than Jeff Bezos - and, almost shockingly nonchalantly, breezes over an enormous tragedy. “Pierce” depicts a strong, self-made woman who can’t stop spoiling her daughter, to the detriment of both of them. “Pierce,” a “runaway hit” with stellar reviews, according to the book Inside Oscar, almost certainly cemented her permanent fame, its success an indication that moviegoers would find this person fascinating as long as she could stand. Many probably assumed Crawford’s stardom was over by the 1940s. No human being in any profession really knows what his/her shelf life is until it happens (or doesn’t happen). (And maybe her eyebrows.) She would receive two more Academy Award nominations after “Pierce” and emerge, despite four marriages, as something of a gay icon.

Crawford was already enormously famous, as much for her rivalries and feuds (studios, directors, Pepsi Cola, Bette Davis) as her acting. At the time of the film’s 1945 release, she was 41, and beautiful, directed by a once-skeptical giant, Michael Curtiz. “Pierce” is probably her signature performance, if only because it produced her lone Oscar win (a story in itself). The curious thing about “Mildred Pierce,” one of the greatest films of the 1940s, is how much it dovetails with a much-later, widely panned film, “Mommie Dearest.”īoth have a lot to do with Joan Crawford.

Mummy dearest joan crawford