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| Lana Turner and Juanita Moore as two mothers who team up in "Imitation of Life." |
To
my movie fan mind, Imitation of Life is
really Imitation of Lana.
The
1959 remake is a soap opera as grand opera: every emotion is emblazoned, every
scene is elegant pageantry, and the leading lady is an eyeful. Lana Turner’s glamorous
face and figure mightily sold Imitation
of Life, but ultimately, Juanita Moore was the movie’s heart.
FYI: I put all the movie overflow on my public FB movie page.
Imitation of Life,
once considered merely a slick soap opera, has been massively written about
since its release. The movie has more facets than those diamonds in the opening
credits: stylish soap opera; camp classic; early depiction of racism; tabloid
take-off on Lana Turner; or director Douglas Sirk’s signature film.
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| Juanita Moore as Annie Johnson, the heart of 'Imitation of Life.' |
The
major focus on Life has been its look
at racism, with reactions that range from praise for its subversiveness to
scorn for its saccharine sentimentality. My take is that Imitation of Life is a product of its time. For 1959, a film about
a young woman trying to pass as white was daring, especially in the guise of a
soap opera. The dual storylines of Imitation
of Life reminds me of that song from Mary
Poppins: “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down!” Producer
Ross Hunter cannily knew that audiences would flock to see scandalous Lana as
superstar eye candy, which would make the tragic tale of a black maid and her
daughter easier to swallow.
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| Lora's the star, Annie is still taking care of her! |
Annie
Johnson to Lora Meredith: “I like taking care of pretty things.”
For
me, the first half of Imitation of Life is
best. When the two women bond as they struggle to keep body and soul together,
these are the film’s warmest moments. When Lora gamely does the flea powder commercial
with the slobbering dog, it shows Lana at her most playful. The scenes with their
young girls give Lana a chance to be vulnerable, and Juanita to be warmly
appealing. Some have said that changing the dynamic between the two women’s
characters, with the pancake business cut from the original, leaves their
relationship lopsided. Why would Annie stay with Lora for so long? Why would
Lora treat her any different than a maid? My thought is that Lora took them off
the street when she saw Annie’s dire situation, and was grateful by how giving
Annie was. The two bonded and created a home for their girls. Yes, it’s corny
and dated, by today’s standards. Their relationship is like a ‘50s marriage:
Lora brings home the bacon, and Annie’s keeps the home fires burning.
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| Lana is material girl Lora Meredith! |
Lora
Meredith: "I'm going up and up and up, and nobody's going to pull me
down!"
Lana’s
film career in the 1950s was basically a series of bombs, punctuated by crucial
comebacks. Her last big hit was 1948’s The
Three Musketeers. Turner then stayed off-screen for several years while
married to tippler millionaire Bob Topping. When Lana left him, she came back
to MGM, only to be stuck in a series of lackluster musicals and melodramas. Turner
made her first comeback in 1952, in Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful. Just as MGM rewarded their stars Liz,
Ava, and Grace for movie hits by sticking them into formula flops, Metro did
the same with Turner, casting her in more costume potboilers. MGM and Lana Turner
parted ways in ’56. This led to comeback #2 in Peyton Place, based on a bestseller as scandalous as Lana’s own
life. With her biggest hit ever, Turner turned her career around, and scored
Lana her only Oscar nomination.
Lana’s
biggest scandal occurred on Good Friday, 1958. The Reader’s Digest version: Turner had taken up with gangster
Johnny Stompanato, and was now trying to cut him loose. Their violent quarrels
climaxed one evening in the star’s pink bedroom. Lana’s 14-year-old daughter
Cheryl tried to intervene. When that didn’t work, the girl returned with a
butcher knife and fatally stabbed the hoodlum. What ensued was one of Hollywood’
greatest scandals and Lana feared that she’d never work again.
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| Steve comes back into the picture, adored by Annie, Susie, and Miss Lora! |
Shutterbug
Steve Archer to Lora: "My camera could easily have a love affair with
you."
Enter
Ross Hunter, offering comeback #3. Hunter, a producer who adored golden era glamour
girls, took a chance on Turner. For a reduced fee and a large cut of potential
profits instead, Lana agreed to star in a remake of Imitation of Life. The ’34 original had Claudette Colbert and
Louise Beavers pairing up, to parlay the black woman’s secret pancake recipe
into riches. As the ‘50s civil rights movement was under way, Hunter realized
that a grinning black woman flipping pancakes would not go over big in ‘59. Audiences
would also not find Lana peddling pancake syrup riveting, either. So, Lana’s Life re-cast her as an aspiring actress
and Juanita Moore as the black woman who now heads up the home front with their
daughters.
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The opening scenes of 'Imitation of Life,' when adversity brings the mothers
and their girls together. |
While
the soap is super slick, the most substantial story is the struggle of the
black mother and daughter. Imagine Imitation
of Life without Annie and Sarah Jane. Life
would be just another light weight Lana Turner soap opera. By the same token, 1950s
Hollywood would hardly make a movie just about a long-suffering black maid
whose daughter tries to pass for white.
Some
critics crow that Douglas Sirk tricked Lana, using Turner’s star power while undercutting
her storyline, to emphasize the supporting characters’ more compelling story. I
think Sirk was far classier than that. Douglas Sirk’s work always depicted the
comparison of what should bring his film characters happiness, but never does.
In Imitation of Life, Lana’s Lora
becomes a huge star, but that doesn’t help with troubles at home. With Annie
and Sarah Jane, homeless in the movie’s start, now living large with Lora, but
they are as miserable as ever. Sirk’s ‘50s films always questioned the post-war
American dream and conformity that was part of the package.
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Lana as Lora, telling a predatory agent off. In real life, it wasn't so easy to say no
in Hollywood's 'golden era.' Or now! |
Agent
Allen Loomis to actress Lora: “I’m in a position to do something for you.”
Lana
agreed to play the errant actress in Imitation
of Life, but she thought it hit a bit close to home. Indeed, stories
circulated that Cheryl had a crush on Turner’s lover, Stompanato. Life’s original storyline had a triangle
between the mother, her lover, and daughter. So, Hunter softened this by
casting squeaky clean Sandra Dee as Susie and good guy John Gavin as photographer
Steve Archer.
More
damning was the lack of Lora’s parental skills. In the film, Annie essentially
raises Susie, while Lora’s conquering Broadway and cozies up with the prolific
playwright. In real life, Lana turned daughter Cheryl over to her mother’s
care. This and a platoon of servants ran Turner’s home, while Lana reigned in Hollywood
and reveled in her love life. But after the Stompanato scandal, harsh scrutiny was
cast on Lana’s fitness as a parent. Yet, she faced all this down on film, along
with other comparisons to her personal life.
Lana’s
Lora Meredith is a post-war widow at the film’s opening, getting a late start
as an actress. This is a nod to the fact that Lana was pushing 40 here. When
Robert Alda—Hawkeye’s dad!—as slimy agent Allen Loomis, takes Turner on as a
client, he expects more than 10 percent from Lana.
Here’s
Life’s hootiest line, agent Loomis to
struggling actress Lora: "If the dramatist's club wants to eat and sleep
with you, you'll eat and sleep with them. If some producer with a hand as cold
as a toad wants to do a painting of you in the nude—you'll accommodate him—for
a very small part."
Lana
as Lora tells him off and throws back his mink from whence it came. I think
Joan, Lana, and Ava could attest, with a couple of drinks under their belts,
that it wasn’t always so easy fighting off the wolves at MGM!
When
Lora comes home from the “business date” with the slime ball agent, she tries
to put on a brave face, but collapses in tears, at Annie’s knee. Annie offers
to make her a glass of hot milk! Somehow, I think Lana would have requested
something stronger.
Later,
Lora catches a break as a model for a flea powder ad. Amazingly, this leads to
an audition for a pivotal part in a Broadway play. Sounds absurd? Maybe, but Lauren
Bacall was spotted in a magazine ad for the Red Cross, by director Howard Hawks’
wife. From that came To Have and to Have
Not, and Humphrey Bogart, too.
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Lana Turner and Sandra Dee in a rare happy moment as 'Imitation of Life's'
mother and daughter Lora and Susie. |
You
can tell David Edwards is a playwright because he wears a cable knit turtleneck
sweater. Lora’s audition is awful, made worse by her sparring over the
playwright’s lines. But guess what? He likes her spunk, unlike Mary Tyler Moore’s Lou Grant! Lora not
only gets the part, but wows audiences and critics alike. From there, a dozen
years fly by, in one minute of montages, as Lora accepts bouquets and ovations.
Thankfully, we are spared Lana Turner’s “acting” in plays that all seem to have
the word “happy” in the titles. Lora becomes the playwright’s “protégé” in
exchange for an empire, New York City. Still, like every movie character who’s
ever desired fame and fortune, but once they climb Mount Everest… Hum a few
bars of Dionne Warwick’s Dolls’ tune. That was never a problem for Lana
Turner, who enjoyed every minute of being a superstar—minus the scandals, of
course. Fortunately, Annie reminds Lora that she needs show business as much as
it needs her.
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Trouble in paradise. Sandra Dee's Susie is not the enthusiastic bartender
that Christina Crawford was for her Mommie! |
Like
the real life Lana, Lora is a spend thrift who wants to give her daughter “everything
I missed.” Lora doesn’t exactly miss much in the luxury department, either.
Once Lora is a star, Lana is gorgeous in her Jean Louis outfits, while draped
in one million dollars worth of jewels, on loan for Life. And Lora’s country home is gaw-geous, too, even with that
mural passing as the picture window’s scenic view.
Lora’s
latest dilemma is that she now wants to be taken seriously as a dramatic
actress. In real life, Turner had to be talked into the few game changer
performances she gave. You think Lana asked
to play a hard drinking, floozy actress in The
Bad and the Beautiful? Producer Jerry Wald wooed Turner into playing the
mother of a teenager in Peyton Place,
reminding Lana what it did for Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce. And Hunter the diva whisperer soothed Turner’s Life jitters. In Imitation, Lora decides it’s time to do a serious play. Her
playwright lover scoffs, "It's drama. No clothes, no sex. No fun." That
would have stopped Lana right in her tracks! Naturally, Lora’s a hit, and takes
her bows with hair pulled back, sporting a black turtle neck, with a grey
skirt—you know, the typical social worker uniform.
Lora
wants to finally relax, but then that hot new Italian director, whose name
sounds suspiciously like Fellini, wants her in his next film. Off to Italy, the
heck with a hiatus.
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| "Don't you act for me!" Whoops, wrong movie! |
"You've given me everything a
mother could but the thing I wanted most...your love!"
Meanwhile,
Annie’s raised the girls, who are now teenagers. Photographer Steve’s back in
the picture, with a touch of gray in his temples. Lana as Lora looks
glamorously laminated, with shellacked hair, heavy makeup in every situation, with soft lighting and
artful shadows. Lana was only 38 at the time, but two decades of drinking,
smoking, and tanning took their toll. Though Turner had cosmetic touch ups
later, it’s a jolt seeing 40ish actresses from the golden era looking much older
than the plumped up pusses of today’s actors of the same age.
Lana’s
got her game face on here, all posturing star insincerity some scenes,
surprisingly authentic in others. Lora offer to give up Steve for her
daughter’s sake reminds me of Faye Dunaway’s cry of “I’m not acting!” when
Uncle Greg leaves Mommie Dearest.
Here, Dee’s Susie cries, "Oh, Mama, stop acting!"
Annie
Johnson: “It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are.”
I’ve
never seen Shelley Winters in her best supporting actress turn in The Diary of Anne Frank. But I think
Juanita Moore should have won the Oscar that year in Imitation of Life.
Near
the end of the film, Annie Johnson talks about her tight-knit community, and
Lora replies she never knew that she had outside friends. Annie softly, but
evenly replies, “Why, Miss Lora, you never asked.” The camera goes back to
Lora, a bit taken aback. Touché!
The
scenes where Annie and Sara Jane are in constant conflict over the daughter’s
struggle about her origins are the film’s dramatic high points. How can a
viewer ever forget the scene when Annie brings her daughter’s red boots to
school in a snowstorm, and the classroom is shocked to find out that she’s Sarah
Jane’s mother? Or their final scene, where Annie flies across the country just
to see her “baby” one more time? That scene, where Annie promises never to
bother Sarah Jane again, is beautifully performed by Moore and Susan Kohner. Annie’s
deathbed scene, with both Moore and Turner matching each other in emotion, is
heartfelt. Juanita Moore’s character is the voice of reason and reality, as all
the other characters are assuming roles or personas in their pursuit of
happiness. Juanita Moore rises to the occasion to bring Annie to life.
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| 'Imitation of Life's' infamous funeral finale...better have a box of tissues handy! |
Young
Sarah Jane Johnson: "Why do we always have to sleep in the back?"
Susan
Kohner gives an intense portrayal as the adult Sarah Jane. She can pass for
white, but if she stays home, she’s on the sidelines of mainstream white society.
Kohner’s mother was Mexican actress Lupita Tovar and father was white, agent
Paul Kohner. Kohner’s sultry appeal is knowing, especially when she escapes
from home to find work in night clubs, as opposed to living under Turner’s
antiseptic abode.
The
film’s most startling scene is when Sarah Jane runs off to see her white
boyfriend. Sirk stages it brilliantly: The two meet on a dark, rainy street
corner. When Frankie, played by Troy Donahue, confronts her, Sarah Jane is seen
in reflection on a store front window. When he asks about her mother, towering
over her, Sarah Jane shrinks back. The two then share the screen. Frankie’s
voice rises when he says, “Just tell me one thing. Is it true? Is your mother a
_____? Tell me. Tell me!” As she
screams in denial, he gives a beat down that is shocking for a ‘50s movie,
especially this genre. The soundtrack goes wild, as Sarah Jane crumples onto
the street, against a wall.
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Susan Kohner, as Sarah Jane. Both Susan and Juanita Moore won Oscar nominations
for their performances. |
Sarah
Jane Johnson: "I'm white. White! WHITE!"
Turner
and Moore are backed by a strong supporting cast, but the two liabilities are
John Gavin and Sandra Dee as Steve and Susie. For critics who think Rock Hudson
was a wooden actor, try watching Gavin, a genuine block of wood. Hudson became
a big star five years earlier in another Sirk film, Magnificent Obsession, with mature leading lady Jane Wyman. Universal was obviously hoping the same would
happen with Gavin in Lana’s Life.
Rock, though not versatile, was a warm screen presence, and a huge fan of
Lana’s. They would have had great screen chemistry, but Rock was now too big to
appear alongside Lana. Another plus: Hudson was only four years younger than
Turner, compared to Gavin’s 1l year difference.
Imitation
of Life was huge in Sandra Dee’s rise to stardom. I think Dee could be
quite good. However, Dee’s persona, as dictated by Hollywood, was so dated and
absurd that it makes Sandra very hard to take. Hyper, shrill, and at times,
downright dippy—Sandra Dee was a cartoon of the American teenager. Sadly, she
had a horrible personal life, suffered from drinking and eating disorders, and
was cast aside by Hollywood when her brand of cute was out of date by the
mid-60s.
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| A star's dilemma. Maybe a director's, too? |
Lora:
“Maybe I should see things as they really are… and not as I want them to be.”
I
recently watched Torch Song and The Opposite Sex, two ‘50s MGM films
with mature actresses. Re-watching Imitation
of Life after these two was like a thunderbolt. Anyone who thinks that
Douglas Sirk is overrated, watch some of these other stodgy films from the same
era. The difference is obvious. Sirk had an artist’s eye, was a natural
storyteller, and skilled at subtly weaving in his point of view, under the
guise of a soap opera. Sirk is also sly at conveying what’s unsaid: Lora still
does business with the agent who put the blatant make on her; or how Lora rationalizes
her going relationship with playwright David; or Sara Jane’s forays into the
“nightclub” world.
Sirk,
a German who fled Nazi Europe with his Jewish wife and came to Hollywood,
looked at American life with mixed feelings. He never fit in the Hollywood
scene and his work was looked down upon at the time. Amazingly, after Imitation of Life, his biggest hit, Sirk
left Hollywood and filmmaking, retiring to Switzerland. Douglas Sirk died in
1987, but lived long enough to enjoy a renaissance in his work, beginning in
the late 1960s. Unlike most of its residents, Douglas Sirk left Hollywood on a
high, and left behind a lovely legacy.
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Juanita Moore, unlike Annie Johnson, lived a long happy life.
Moore died in 2014 on New Year's Day, at age 99. |