Imitation of Life

Douglas Sirk fashioned a memorably lavish 1959 remake (with Lana Turner), but director John Stahl’s Oscar-nominated 1934 weepie was the original screen version of Fannie Hurst’s popular novel, a tear-jerking tale of racial barriers, troubled mother-and-daughter relationships, and rags-to-riches female empowerment. (No fewer than three of Stahl’s 1930s films were remade in the ’50s by melodrama master Sirk: Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, and When Tomorrow Comes, which became Sirk’s Interlude). Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers play, respectively, Bea, a penniless young widow, and Delilah, her African-American housemaid. Bea parlays Delilah’s special pancake recipe into a formidable business empire, but neither women can lessen the tragic self-torment of Delilah’s light-skinned daughter Peola (Fredi Washington), who attempts to pass for white. If Imitation of Life seems, to contemporary eyes, suffused with stereotypes, it was also something of a Hollywood landmark: its portrait of black-white friendship was highly unusual, as was its hint of real racial problems in America. The film struck a chord with black audiences, which contributed to its enormous box-office success. Actress Washington, later a civil rights activist, impresses as Peola (a white actress, Susan Kohner, played the equivalent role in Sirk’s remake). “Classic and compulsively watchable” (Pauline Kael). B&W, 35mm. 116 mins.