Imitation of Life (1959 film)

Lana Turner as Lora Meredith.

In 1947, single mother Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) dreams of becoming a famous Broadway actress. Losing track of her young daughter Susie (portrayed as a child by Terry Burnham) at a crowded Coney Island beach, she asks a stranger, Steve Archer (John Gavin), to help her find the girl. Meanwhile, Susie has been found and looked after by Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), who is also a single mother with a daughter, Sarah Jane (portrayed as a child by Karin Dicker), who is about Susie's age. With the help of Steve and a police officer, Lora is reunited with Susie. The Merediths are white and the Johnsons are black, but Lora initially assumes Sarah Jane is white and not Annie's daughter. This signals a central conflict in the film as Sarah Jane's fair skin allows her to pass for white and she fervently rejects being identified as black.

In return for Annie's kindness, Lora temporarily takes in Annie and her daughter. Annie persuades Lora to let her stay and look after the household, so that she can pursue an acting career. With struggles along the way, Lora becomes a star of stage comedies, with Allen Loomis (Robert Alda) as her agent and David Edwards (Dan O'Herlihy) as her chief playwright. Although Lora had begun a relationship with Steve, their courtship falls apart because he does not want her to be a star. Lora's concentration on her career prevents her from spending time with Susie, who sees more of Annie. Annie and Sarah Jane have their own problems, as Sarah Jane is struggling with her identity and wants to pass for white because of its privileges in American society in the pre-Civil Rights Movement era.

Eleven years later, Lora is a highly regarded Broadway star living in a luxurious home near New York City. Annie continues to live with her, serving as nanny, housekeeper, confidante, and best friend. After rejecting David's latest script (and his marriage proposal), Lora takes a role in a dramatic play. At the show's after-party, she encounters Steve, whom she has not seen in a decade. The two slowly begin rekindling their relationship, and Steve is reintroduced to Annie and the now-teenaged Susie (Sandra Dee) and Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner). When Lora is signed to star in an Italian motion picture, she leaves Steve to watch after Susie. The teenager develops an unrequited crush on her mother's boyfriend.

Juanita Moore (right) as Annie Johnson.

Sarah Jane begins dating a white teenager (Troy Donahue), but he beats her in an alleyway after learning she is black. Some time later, she again passes for white to get a job performing at a seedy nightclub, but tells her mother she is working at the library. When Annie learns the truth, she goes to the club to claim her daughter; Sarah Jane is fired. Sarah Jane's rejection of her mother begins taking a physical and mental toll on Annie. When Lora returns from Italy, Sarah Jane has run away from home, leaving Annie a note that says if she truly does care about her, she will leave her alone and let her live her life.

Lora asks Steve to hire a private detective to find Sarah Jane. The detective locates her living in California as a white woman under an assumed name and working as a chorus girl. Annie, becoming weaker and more depressed by the day, flies out to see her daughter one last time and say goodbye. Upon meeting with Sarah Jane, Annie apologizes for being selfish by loving her too much and wishes her the best. Annie pleads to Sarah Jane that if she ever needs help, she will reach out to her, and the two share one last embrace. Sarah Jane's roommate interrupts them, presuming Annie is the maid, to which Annie says that she is a former nanny of "Miss Linda," Sarah Jane's new name.

Annie is bedridden upon her return to New York, and Lora and Susie look after her. The issue of Susie's crush on Steve becomes serious when Susie learns that Steve and Lora are to be married. Annie tells Lora of the girl's crush. After a confrontation with her mother, Susie decides to go away to school in Denver to forget about Steve. Soon after their argument, Annie dies with Lora crying hysterically by her side. As she wished, Annie is given a lavish funeral in a large church, complete with a gospel choir (featuring Mahalia Jackson singing "Trouble of the World"), followed by an elaborate traditional funeral procession with a band and horse-drawn hearse. Just before the procession sets off, a bereaved and guilt-ridden Sarah Jane pushes through the crowd of mourners to throw herself upon her mother's casket apologizing and begging for her mother's forgiveness, proclaiming "I killed my own mother!" Lora takes Sarah Jane to their limousine to join her, Susie, and Steve as the procession slowly travels through a city street.

The plot of the 1959 version of Imitation of Life has numerous major changes from those of the original book and the 1934 film version.[7] In the original story, the "Lora" character, Bea Pullman, became successful by commercial production of her maid Delilah's family waffle recipe (a pancake recipe in the 1934 film version). As a result, Bea, the white businesswoman, becomes rich. Delilah is offered 20% of the profits, but declines and chooses to remain Bea's dutiful assistant. Like the previous film, in this one the Peola (Sarah Jane) character returns, going to her mother's funeral and showing remorse, a scene described by Molly Hiro as "virtually identical" to the previous one, while in the novel she leaves the area for good.[7]

Director Douglas Sirk and screenwriters Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott felt that such a story would not be accepted during the Civil Rights Movement amid milestones, such as the Brown v. Board of Education case and the Montgomery bus boycott, but racial discrimination and inequities was still part of it. The story was altered so that Lora becomes a Broadway star with her own talents, with Annie assisting her by serving as a nanny for Lora's child. Producer Ross Hunter was cannily aware that these plot changes would enable Lana Turner to model an array of glamorous costumes and real jewels, something that would appeal to the female audience at that time. Lana Turner's wardrobe for Imitation of Life cost over $1.078 million, making it one of the most expensive in cinema history at that time.[8]

Although many actresses, most of them white,[9] were screen-tested for the Sarah Jane role in the 1959 remake, Susan Kohner, daughter of actress Lupita Tovar, born in Mexico, and Paul Kohner, a Czech Jewish immigrant, won the role.[9] Karin Dicker made her debut in this film as the young Sarah Jane. Noted gospel singer Mahalia Jackson received "presenting" billing for her one scene, performing a version of "Trouble of the World" at Annie's funeral service.

Sirk's Imitation of Life premiered in Chicago on March 17, 1959, followed by Los Angeles on March 20 and New York City on April 17.[2] Following its New York opening, it became number one in the US for two weeks[10] before Universal put the film into general release on April 30. Though it was not well-reviewed upon its original release and was viewed as inferior to the original 1934 film version – many critics derided the film as a "soap opera,"[11] – Imitation of Life was the sixth highest-grossing film of 1959, grossing $6.4 million,[12] and was Universal-International's top-grossing film that year. Hiro wrote that in contrast to the novel, this film and the previous film received "far more critical attention", with the second film being "more famous" compared to the first.[7]

Both Moore and Kohner were nominated for the 1959 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the 1959 Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress. While neither actress won the Oscar, Kohner won the Golden Globe for her performance. Moore won second place in the category of Top Female Supporting Performance at the 1959 Laurel Awards, and the film won Top Drama. Douglas Sirk was nominated for the 1959 Directors Guild of America Award.[13]

Since the late 20th century, Imitation of Life has been re-evaluated by critics. It has been considered a masterpiece of Sirk's American career. Emanuel Levy has written, "One of the four masterpieces directed in the 1950s, the visually lush, meticulously designed and powerfully acted Imitation of Life was the jewel in Sirk's crown, ending his Hollywood's career before he returned to his native Germany."[14] Sirk provided the Annie–Sarah Jane relationship in his version with more screen time and more intensity than the original versions of the story. Critics later commented that Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner stole the film from Turner.[8] Sirk later said that he had deliberately and subversively undercut Turner to draw focus toward the problems of the two black characters.

Sirk's treatment of racial and class issues is also admired for what he caught of the times. Writing in 1997, Rob Nelson said,

Basically, we're left to intuit that the black characters (and the movie) are themselves products of '50s-era racism – which explains the film's perspective, but hardly makes it less dizzying. Possibly thinking of W.E.B. Du Bois's notion of black American double-consciousness, critic Molly Haskell once described Imitation's double-vision: "The mixed-race girl's agonizing quest for her identity is not seen from her point of view as much as it is mockingly reflected in the fun house mirrors of the culture from which she is hopelessly alienated."[15]

Imitation of Life became a staple of both the American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies cable television networks. Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven (2002) is an homage to Sirk's work, in particular All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life. The 1969 Diana Ross & the Supremes song "I'm Livin' in Shame" and the 2001 R.E.M. song, "Imitation of Life," are based upon this film.

In 2015, BBC Online, the website of the British Broadcasting Corporation, named the film the 37th greatest American movie ever made based on a survey of film critics.[16]

Both the 1934 and 1959 films were issued in 2003 on a double-sided DVD from Universal Studios. A two-disc set of the films was issued by Universal in 2008. A Blu-ray with both films was released in April 2015;[17] this edition has been re-mastered, and is not identical with earlier DVD releases.[18]

Madman Entertainment in Australia released a three-disc DVD set, including the 1934 film version as well as a video essay on the 1959 film by Sam Staggs.[19]

• List of American films of 1959
• Whitewashing in film

• Fischer, Lucy, ed. (1991). Imitation of Life: Douglas Sirk, Director. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1645-5. OCLC 22279801. Collection of essays, reviews, interviews, and source materials related to Imitation of Life.
• Staggs, Sam (2009). Born To Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-37336-8. OCLC 234176069.

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• Imitation of Life essay by Matthew Kennedy on the National Film Registry website
• Imitation of Life at IMDb
• Imitation of Life at the TCM Movie Database
• Imitation of Life at AllMovie
• Imitation of Life at Rotten Tomatoes
• Imitation of Life at the American Film Institute Catalog