Joan Crawford

The woman Joan Crawford played in Mildred Pierce has been a housewife since she was seventeen and so can find nothing but waitressing; she works hard and bakes pies for extra income. When her daughter Veda mocks her, knowing perfectly well that the expensive singing lessons are paid for by that waitressing, Mildred opens a restaurant of her own; it takes, and before long turns into a chain. By the AFI's note her playing in that part won Crawford her only Oscar, and there are those who write that the film redefined her image and that she was spoken of afterwards not only as a star but as an actor. In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? she brought to life Blanche Hudson, a former film star left crippled by an accident and looked after by her sister; in the finale she confesses that she arranged the accident herself and had meant to kill her sister. That pairing was something Crawford had proposed years before: she went to Robert Aldrich and told him to make a film with herself and Bette Davis in the leads, dismissing the talk of a feud between them by saying she had wanted to work with her since 1944.