In order to bring Mildred Pierce into compliance with the Production Code several details about the story will need to be changed. The character of Mildred has several affairs with men and, in a final twist, it is revealed that her daughter has been sleeping with her step-dad. The changes that Wald and his team of screenwriters initiate subtly preserve the sordid aspects of the story while introducing a criminal element entirely absent from the novel.
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    To satisfy the Breen office the characters’ transgressions in Mildred Pierce will have to be met with severe punishment. The addition of murder to the film’s plot will inadvertently help to create a unique hybrid of melodrama and film noir and the film will go on to be nominated for six Oscars. Joan Crawford, in the role of Mildred, won her first and only Best Actress Oscar. 
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    The following documents and film stills from the film’s production archive reveal the fascinating interplay between censor, producer, and studio during the heyday of the Production Code’s enforcement. The story that these artifacts tell is of the delicate balance of power negotiations necessary for a film such as Mildred Pierce to have gotten produced.