censorship, (23)

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Blackout

couraging news to Wald and other producers who wanted to take morę risks. Murder could make money, murder spiked with love and lust could make twice as much. With such ingredients added to Mildred Pierce, Wald deduced that he would have a hot property on his hands sińce the film would appeal to morę than just the women’s audience.⁴²

Rewriting Mildred Pierce continued through the release of Double Indem-nity (from April to October 1944). By late October-early November 1944, after the successful Double Indemnity Cain adaptation framework on which to model Mildred Pierce and gain PCA approval, Wald began screening other influential dark films like Alfred Hitchcocka Rebecca and Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Window to study flashback technique. By November 1944, just before filming began on December 7, Wald called Mildred Pierce"basi-cally a murder mystery” (having altered the original female melodrama fo-cus 4 la Turney). On February 6,1945, Wald even specified shooting inserts of Crawford using “low-key lighting.”⁴³

The war certainly affected the project’s production. Filming was subject to location shooting restrictions, which still persisted by late 1944 and early 1945. As in so many of Mildred Pierce's rioir and proto-noir predecessors, wartime limitations on studio lighting, electricity, set and costume materi-als, and filming locations facilitated the dark visual design. Warner Bros. re-peatedly had to obtain permission from the U.S. Navy to film Coastal beach locations near Santa Monica, Malibu, Redondo, and Laguna beaches—and the military even reąuired viewing all shot footage.⁴⁴ The navy allowed nighttime shooting for Mildred Pierce but banned daytime filming of Coastal regions for national security reasons. The use of blacked-out evening shots enabled military approval—and created a definitive style from the very opening of the story. The film was shot chronologically (highly unortho-dox, starting without a finished screenplay), and the opening murder scene was filmed at director Michael Curtiz’s beach house at night—for which military permission was still reąuired. Warner Bros. delayed the 1945 release of this wartime production until after the war. As studios shifted to non-war-related story materiał to capitalize on a female and returning veteran audience while seeking long-term postwar marketability, Mildred Pierce avoids mentioning the war in its home-front story. In fact, a 1945 viewer wrote to Warner asking whether the film is set during wartime, a ąuestion based on inconsistent references to nylon rationing.

Like Lake’s androgynous male-garbed publicity in This Gun for Hire, Crawford’s independent female entrepreneurial protagonist in Mildred

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Pierce taps into blurring gender roles, with working women ably filling tra-ditionally małe jobs. The picture’s hard-hitting crime ethos, homicide, and investigative framework undermined the sentimentality of conventional weepies, broadening the appeal of Mildred Pierce by targeting Warners’ male-oriented crime (previously gangster) film audience with suspensę. Wald’s mystery saga included a cultural morał. Mildred is depicted as grossly negligent in her motherly duties. Her self-reliant career ambitions not only destroy her family, home, and love life but also encourage her spoiled, neglected, and undisciplined daughter, Veda—another transgres-sively independent woman turned domestic threat—to ruin Mildred’s chances at success in business, wealth, marriage, or a happy life until Mildred returns to her first husband. Ideologically, Mildred Pierce demonstrates Hollywood’s effort late in World War II to representationally rechannel working women back into the home to resume maternal duties and antic-ipate returning veterans. As demographics shifted from a wartime market to an increasing postwar focus in 1945, the film industry foresaw and began preparing for the end of war.    >

Warners’ effort to masculinize the female melodrama along the lines of the noir crime trend seemed to have paid off by September 29,1945, as Alton Cook of the New York World Telegram praised the film: “Warners Ban-ish Three-Year Jinx: ‘Mildred Pierce’ Rings Bell in Non-War Category.” Cook cited the film as a distinguished non-war-related complement to Warner Bros.’ war films, and a “worthy companion piece” to that “other remarkable picture from a James M. Cain novel, ‘Double Indemnity.”’⁴⁵ Budgeted at $1,342,000 Mildred Pierce cost $1,453,000 and earned $3,470,000 domesti-cally and another $2,141,000 once International markets opened after the war.⁴⁶ Nominated for Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, Mildred Pierce was hailed by critics, who called it “smashing” and a “triumph.” Craw-ford won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Pierce. Warners’ 1945 publicity featured a woman with a gun alongside the tagline: “The kind of Woman most men want—but shouldn’t have!” Ads read, “A mother’s love leads to murder,” and “She knew there was trouble coming—trouble she madę for herself—a love affair—and a loaded gun ... she had no right to play around with either!” The marketing strategy fueled the films popularity, luring first-time viewers with a gimmick: “What Did Mildred Pierce Do?” and “Please don’t tell anyone what Mildred Pierce did.” A year later the Detroit News reported,“More than a million customers stormed box offices to find out.”⁴⁷

Mildred Pierce shows Wald’s creative influence and authority as studio system producer, capitalizing on a shifting commercial market and super-