...one of whom dies early in the film, and then there is Mildred's right-hand woman, Ida Corwin (Eve Arden), who was at first Mildred's boss and then, does the same job for Mildred in Mildred's restaurant. She swings some great one liners, and seems to hold no resentment for that glass ceiling she is stuck underneath.
The film is about the trials and tribulations of the film's namesake, played by Crawford, a housewife to a jobless man, Bert, who has a caveman's attitude. However, with no business sense and no job, he is a caveman without a club. Furthermore he spends all of his free time with the widow/divorcée?? down the street, Mrs. Biederhopf (Lee Patrick) who doesn't mind Bert's jobless state because she probably has either alimony or life insurance from the former or dead husband.
The long and the short of it is that Bert and Mildred quarrel, he refuses to stop seeing Mrs. Biederhopf, and she refuses to stop spoiling their oldest daughter Veda (Ann Blyth) who is a complete snob. The two separate and eventually divorce. After Mildred's youngest daughter dies suddenly, Mildred holds tighter to Veda than ever, making sure her every wish is granted, not seeing the sociopath she is breeding right in front of her eyes. So Mildred's big weakness is naiveté and blindness where her daughter is concerned. By saving and hard work as a waitress and a made to order baker of pies and cakes, Mildred opens up first one restaurant, and from there becomes a chain. In opening her first restaurant she comes across the male equivalent of Veda - middle aged socialite bachelor Monte (Zachary Scott) who is all hat and no cattle, all snob and no work, all standard and no gold. The culmination of all of Mildred's mistakes is to let Veda spend so much time with him, and then getting Vida to come back home after the two have a big fight by marrying Monte, figuring that touch of old money class as a stepfather figure will make Veda want to stay. Monte's big mistake? He tells the female equivalent of himself the kinds of things that he figures would hurt the most -they do - at the worst possible time to a teenage girl who up to this point believes sex equals love and has no moral compunctions whatsoever but does have a big dose of pride. As Eastwood said, "a man has got to know his limitations".
I didn't realize how good the acting was in this one, because I saw it several times before I was ever into classic film and my mind just typecast Zachary Scott and Ann Blythe into complete scumbags. How surprised I was when Turner Classic Movies came on the air and I saw these two had done a wide variety of roles, just as convincing as the roles they played here. As for Joan Crawford's Oscar, it's not that she didn't deserve this one, but I can think of roles before and after this one where she was just as good such as 1947's Possessed (for which she was nominated), and 1934's "Forsaking All Others", for which she got no Academy nod whatsoever.
The murder mystery between which all of this is sandwiched is not from the original novel. It's a product of the production code to make sure wrongdoers are punished, and, in my opinion, to imply an ending I found a bit unbelievable but again, the production code was probably involved there too.
Let me give kudos to some other people. First director Michael Curtiz and the screenwriters who handled the meat of the story – Mildred's tormented relationship with Veda – with great skill and drama, all the while keeping the story moving at a brisk pace. Then finally, there is supporting player Jack Carson. He is greedy, a wolf, full of himself - in short he is a human version of Daffy Duck - but he is really a needed supporting ingredient in all of this. Highly recommended.
The film is about the trials and tribulations of the film's namesake, played by Crawford, a housewife to a jobless man, Bert, who has a caveman's attitude. However, with no business sense and no job, he is a caveman without a club. Furthermore he spends all of his free time with the widow/divorcée?? down the street, Mrs. Biederhopf (Lee Patrick) who doesn't mind Bert's jobless state because she probably has either alimony or life insurance from the former or dead husband.
The long and the short of it is that Bert and Mildred quarrel, he refuses to stop seeing Mrs. Biederhopf, and she refuses to stop spoiling their oldest daughter Veda (Ann Blyth) who is a complete snob. The two separate and eventually divorce. After Mildred's youngest daughter dies suddenly, Mildred holds tighter to Veda than ever, making sure her every wish is granted, not seeing the sociopath she is breeding right in front of her eyes. So Mildred's big weakness is naiveté and blindness where her daughter is concerned. By saving and hard work as a waitress and a made to order baker of pies and cakes, Mildred opens up first one restaurant, and from there becomes a chain. In opening her first restaurant she comes across the male equivalent of Veda - middle aged socialite bachelor Monte (Zachary Scott) who is all hat and no cattle, all snob and no work, all standard and no gold. The culmination of all of Mildred's mistakes is to let Veda spend so much time with him, and then getting Vida to come back home after the two have a big fight by marrying Monte, figuring that touch of old money class as a stepfather figure will make Veda want to stay. Monte's big mistake? He tells the female equivalent of himself the kinds of things that he figures would hurt the most -they do - at the worst possible time to a teenage girl who up to this point believes sex equals love and has no moral compunctions whatsoever but does have a big dose of pride. As Eastwood said, "a man has got to know his limitations".
I didn't realize how good the acting was in this one, because I saw it several times before I was ever into classic film and my mind just typecast Zachary Scott and Ann Blythe into complete scumbags. How surprised I was when Turner Classic Movies came on the air and I saw these two had done a wide variety of roles, just as convincing as the roles they played here. As for Joan Crawford's Oscar, it's not that she didn't deserve this one, but I can think of roles before and after this one where she was just as good such as 1947's Possessed (for which she was nominated), and 1934's "Forsaking All Others", for which she got no Academy nod whatsoever.
The murder mystery between which all of this is sandwiched is not from the original novel. It's a product of the production code to make sure wrongdoers are punished, and, in my opinion, to imply an ending I found a bit unbelievable but again, the production code was probably involved there too.
Let me give kudos to some other people. First director Michael Curtiz and the screenwriters who handled the meat of the story – Mildred's tormented relationship with Veda – with great skill and drama, all the while keeping the story moving at a brisk pace. Then finally, there is supporting player Jack Carson. He is greedy, a wolf, full of himself - in short he is a human version of Daffy Duck - but he is really a needed supporting ingredient in all of this. Highly recommended.