Veda’s Villainy – Mildred’s Fault?
One of my many favorite podcasts is Front Row Classics – the host, Brandon Davis, covers a wide variety of classic films, with a spate of first-rate guests, and in such interesting ways. An episode I heard recently centered on villains in classic films, and one of the characters in the spotlight was Veda, brought to life by Ann Blyth in the 1945 classic Mildred Pierce. I’ve long seen Veda as a villain myself – she possessed a deceptively attractive exterior that masked a self-absorbed sociopath – but during the podcast discussion, the theory was posited that it was Veda’s hard-working mother, Mildred (played by Oscar-winner Joan Crawford), who made Veda the way she was.
And that gave me pause. A long pause.
You may already know that Mildred Pierce is one of my top 10 noirs, and that I’m quite fond of the film’s titular femme (and not just because she’s the divorced mother of two girls and loves to bake! Twinning!). She’s flawed, sure, but is she the root cause of her daughter’s villainous conduct? In this month’s Noir Nook, I’m taking a deep dive into this notion. (And watch your step going forward – spoilers abound!)
The film opens with the murder of the dapper Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), and while we don’t see the responsible party, we clearly hear Monte’s last word: “Mildred.” The story leading up to this deadly deed is told mostly in flashback, focusing squarely on Mildred – wife to recently unemployed Bert (Bruce Bennett), stay-at-home mother to Veda and her younger sister, Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), and pie-baker extraordinaire. When Bert spends a bit too much time with the attractive neighborhood divorcee, Mrs. Biederhof (Lee Patrick), Mildred gives him the boot, making ends meet by working as a waitress, and later parlaying her talents in the kitchen into a chain of popular restaurants. Others in Mildred’s sphere include her closest friend Ida Corwin (Eve Arden); Wally Fay (Jack Carson), Bert’s former business partner and an investor in Mildred’s restaurant business; and Mildred’s second husband, the ill-fated Monte. And speaking of ill fates, we learn in the film’s riveting climax that the purveyor of bullets in the first scene was none other than Veda – who, we also discover, had been carrying on an affair with her mom’s handsome hubby. (I told you there’d be spoilers!)
But other than being a homewrecking murderess, who is Veda, exactly? Let’s take a look.
When the movie first flashes back, we meet Veda on her way home from school, as she and Kay watch their father load a suitcase and an armful of clothes into his car and drive away. Veda and Kay, incidentally, couldn’t be more different – Kay is a tomboy who wears pigtails and plays football in the street with the neighborhood boys, while Veda wouldn’t be caught dead in pants and exudes an air of sophistication and superiority, even as a young teen. Within a matter of minutes, Veda gives us three salient and revelatory clues to her personality. First, Veda snootily informs her sister that she acts like a “peasant,” adding, “I think you ought to take a little more pride in the way you look.” Second, Veda tells Mildred that she’s learning a new piece from her piano teacher called “Valse Brilliante,” and offers an imperious translation: “That means “Brilliant Waltz.” And finally, after Mildred delivers a vague explanation for the split between her and her husband, Veda responds, “If you mean Mrs. Biederhof, Mother, I must say my sympathy is all with you. She’s distinctly middle class.”
These examples are just the tip of the Veda iceberg; throughout the film, we continue to see just what kind of person she is, even if her mother doesn’t. And we also see the lengths to which Mildred is willing to go in her futile attempt to secure Veda’s happiness. But the question lingers: could Mildred have chosen another way? For one, she certainly could have called Veda on her snarky comments and disrespectful asides, like in the scene where Mildred overhears Veda complaining about her new dress. (“I wouldn’t be seen dead in this rag. It’s horrible. How could she have bought me such a thing?”) Instead of getting all in her feelings, Mildred should’ve snatched that dress off of Veda and told her she could get a babysitting job and buy her own damn clothes. Or the scene where Veda makes it clear that she’d want her mother to marry a man she doesn’t love if it would result in material gain – although Mildred doesn’t let the comment completely slide, she certainly could have been more forceful in confronting Veda’s selfishness and illuminating the moral deficiency of her sentiments.
Instead, we seldom see Mildred chastising Veda, questioning her motives, or exacting punishments, except in the scene when Mildred learns that her daughter has engaged in an extortion scheme by falsely claiming to be pregnant. She memorably orders Veda to leave their home – “Get out before I kill you,” she tells her – and we practically cheer. As it turns out, though, Mildred later reverts to form and, ironically, marries a man she doesn’t love (Monte Beragon) in order to give Veda the type of upper-crusty lifestyle she craves.
But is this kind of behavior on Mildred’s part the cause of Veda’s villainy? In my opinion, absolutely not.
In my view, the relationship between Mildred and Veda is reminiscent of those cases where someone marries a partner who has exhibited clear red flags, hoping that love can “change” them. Mildred, I think, believes that Veda’s happiness can be secured through material means, and that this will translate into daughterly love and respect. But it’s not Mildred’s viewpoint and resulting actions that make Veda who she is – nor does Mildred degrade Veda’s character by buying her a car or installing her in a renovated mansion. Veda is simply Veda from the beginning.
An exchange between Mildred and Bert shines an illuminating light on this entire matter. When Bert picks up the girls for their trip to Lake Arrowhead, Mildred explains her plans to file for divorce – ostensibly for financial reasons and for the sake of the children, but especially for Veda, since Kay “doesn’t need so much thinking about.” Bert responds that Kay is “twice the girl Veda is and always will be. She thinks you’re wonderful.” And Mildred’s reply is telling: “Maybe that’s why I keep trying to please Veda.”
In this brief conversation, Mildred recognizes that she is more fully valued by her younger daughter, and that her persistent drive to win Veda’s approval shapes her actions. Bert, for his part, demonstrates a clear-eyed understanding not only of his daughters’ qualities but of the family dynamic as a whole, warning Mildred that she will “always get kicked around” in her efforts to win Veda over.
One might speculate that Veda could have wound up on a different course if Mildred had dispensed a few more slaps, as she did in the scene where she reveals her waitressing job. Or that Veda would have reformed if Mildred had directly challenged her daughter about her bad behavior instead of blaming Monte’s influence and showering Veda with more gifts. But I don’t think so. From Day One, Veda was exactly what Mildred called her after learning about her extortion scheme – cheap and horrible. I don’t know what took Mildred so long to acknowledge that, but I certainly don’t think she was the cause of this flaw in Veda’s makeup. Veda’s contempt and disrespect for her mother, and her sociopathic self-absorption, were qualities that were present long before Mildred dispensed her first present or overlooked her first nasty comment. (Don’t get me started on nurture vs. nature – Kay was an absolute doll.)
And just one more observation. Near the end of the film, where Veda is seen desperately begging her mother not to turn her in to the police, she finally stops Mildred in her tracks with the claim, “It’s your fault I’m the way I am.” I’m certain that this single line can be regarded by many as a transparent truism, but not for me. It was tossed out by Veda in a last-ditch effort to secure Mildred’s aid following Monte’s murder, but I don’t swallow it any more than Mildred should have. Instead, I look at another declaration offered by Veda – this one earlier in the picture, when Mildred encounters Veda at Wally’s riverfront dive and begs her to return home. Without missing a beat, Veda declines the offer, telling Mildred that the way her mother wants to live “isn’t good enough” for her, and, most significantly, affirming: “You know how I am.”
For my money, that says it in a nutshell. Along with the viewer, Veda knows exactly how she is. Bert does as well, and Ida. And Wally. And although it takes Mildred a long while, eventually she, too, has to admit what kind of person she’d brought into the world – and that there’s nothing she could do about it.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages.
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