censorship, (22)

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approve anything. Warner Brothers, having bought Mildred Pierce, even be-gan negotiating to buy Serenade. And about the same time, MGM dusted off Postman and writer-producer Carey Wilson ąuietly went to work on a script that would satisfy the new, morę liberał Hays Office.”³⁶ Given the mo-mentum of this red-meat crime trend, its industry context and bandwagon production climate noted in the New York Times from Ńoyember 1944 to August 1945 (two and a half months prior to the October 1945 release of Mildred Pierce), Wald and Warner no doubt saw the good fortunę of adapting another “sordid” Cain novel at such an opportune time.³⁷ Cain biographer Roy Hoopes calls Wald an opportunistic “live-wire hustler” known for male-orientea productions, particularly war productions, yet “aware that the war would not last forever and that postwar America would probably go back to its old ways, with theater audiences dominated by women. So he wanted a ‘womens picture.’ When Jack Warner, caught up in the Double Indemnity excitement, gave him Mildred Pierce to read, he thought, this was it.”³⁸ Gen-der demographics were actually reversed, or at least morę complicated. Do-mestic wartime audiences were predominantly female, with a parallel com-bat małe audience overseas—thus the market stratification. In anticipating postwar demographics, with men returning from military duty and reinte-grating a masculine market into the domestic home-front audience, it madę sense for studios to target both małe and female sexes simultaneously, as in noir crime films with strong independent glamorous women and masculine crime, violence, and erotic appeal. Like other noir films, Mildred Pierce capitalized on drawing both men and women into theaters.

Although Wald may have been interested in the Mildred Pierce project sińce the book’s 1941 publication, Warner Bros. production records indicate that Wald’s initial treatment by Thames Williamson was sent to Joseph Breen for PCA consideration in January 1944, the month after Double Indemnity completed shooting at Paramount. Although Mildred Pierce was published during the war, Cain’s story was set in 1931 during the Depression years. Williamson’s January 12,1944, treatment for Warners’ film changed the books setting to wartime Los Angeles. On January 14,1944, Williamson sent Vyald a memo: “In contrast with some of Cain’s other novels, the elim-ination o{ sexual rough stuff from Mildred Pierce does not materially affect the rich meaty story... Mildred is naturally and normally inclined toward sexual satisfaction with both Wally and Monty, but she never steps over the linę."³⁹ Williamson madę an effort to sanitize the raw sex from Cain’s story to gain PCA approval in January and February 1944. Breen nixed Warners’ Mildred Pierce project on February 2,1944, as containing “so many sordid and repellent elements” that he suggested the studio “dismiss this story from

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any further consideration.” Breen, however, had already given the go-ahead to the eąually “sordid” Double lndemnity, signing off on the Paramount project that had already completed production and was nearing release. Stu-dios were well aware of this after ten years of PCA bans on Cain’s novels across' the industry. In this production context, although Breen was adamant against adapting Mildred Pierce in early February, he capitulated by the end of the month. After a lapse in correspondence Breen suddenly wrote to Jack Warner of the “pleasure” he had discussing the project with Jerry Geller and Wald on February 22. In a morę obliging tonę Breen was ready to accommodate “some of the details” that “may creep in” that “would not be acceptable in the finished picture. We feel, however, that these can be handled as, and when, the screen play comes along.”⁴⁰ Giving approval to Warners’ project before a screenplay was written, Breen had no consis-tent way to enforce the Codę with the precedent of Cain’s Double Indem-nityat Paramount.

It was not until mid-March and into April 1944, as Double lndemnity proceeded into previews, that Wald assigned Catherine Turney to script a straight adaptation of Mildred Pierce, true to Cain’s novel (there was no flashback at this point) to see how much racy content could be submitted to the PCA. Following Turney’s work on the script in aiming female melo-drama past the censors, and after the Double lndemnity preview, Jack Warner sent a wire from Warners’ New York office to the Hollywood studio on May 15,1944. Warner informed Wald and executive assistant Steve Trilling that Shumlin thought “too much of [the] sex angle” was “removed” from Mildred Pierce to appease the Hays Office. (If Paramount could get away with it in Double lndemnity, he reasoned, Warner Bros. should be able to exploit the same meaty potential.) Warner instructed Wald and Trilling to put morę sex into the story and beef up its raw appeal. “Maybe some of this could be put back and still not have Breen on our necks. Told Shumlin sex angle would be put in, in playing.”⁴¹ As in Wilder’s adaptation of Cain, Warner favored metaphor and suggestion to get around the Codę. As in Double lndemnity, the model of applying a flashback framework to Cains novel (with proper narrative retribution for committed crimes) would fa-cilitate PCA approval.

As Lizzie Francke has noted, Wald keenly considered commercial aims in producing Mildred Pierce:

Double lndemnity s dark story of homicide and adultery marked not

only a stylistic breakthrough for film-makers but also signaled some

relaxation in the Hays Office’s morał patrol of the screens. It was en-