Mildred Pierce is a 1941 hardboiled novel by James M. Cain. It was made into an Oscar-winning 1945 film starring Joan Crawford and a 2011 Emmy-winning miniseries starring Kate Winslet.

In 1945 film starred Crawford, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson, Bruce Bennett, Zachary Scott and Lee Patrick.

Mildred Pierce is a classic postwar film noir with elements of the melodrama or "weeper"; it was structured as a typical murder mystery told in flashbacks. The family melodrama was significantly modified from its original source because of pressures from the Motion Picture Production Code regarding its sordid nature, specifically the behavior of the dissolute playboy character, Monty, who initiates a quasi-incestuous romance with his stepdaughter, Veda. At the same time, however, the screenwriters made violence much more central to the plot than it was in Cain's novel.

The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Eve Arden and Ann Blyth, both with their only career nominations), Best Screenplay (Ranald MacDougall), and Best Black-and-white Cinematography (Ernest Haller, who shared the Color Cinematography Oscar for Gone with the Wind (1939). Crawford won the film's sole Academy Award as Best Actress. It was her sole win out of three career nominations.