Tonite on TCM: Sirk du Soleil w/ "Imitation of Life"

Classic Datalounge thread:

[bold]What Was Lora Meredith's Greatest Triumph as an Actress?[/bold]

Why, give the lines to Amy!

She’s a STAH!

I am the one who visits the Imitation threads to remind other ancient Dataloungers that John M. Stahl's 1934 film has almost as many wonders as Sirk's.

Steve! Amerigo Felluci! The Italian movie director.

Yes.

Oh, he wants me for the part of Rena in No More Laughter. His agent is in New York now to talk to me about it.

I see. That means you'd have to go to Italy.

Mmm. Of course. Oh.

Well, I'll have to give a two-week notice to the play.

Yes.

Well, don't be so calm. They want me for Rena!

Well, who is she?

Only the best part since Scarlett O'Hara.

Fuck Steve. Fuck my daughter. To hell with my dreary maid and her ungrateful brat slut daughter. It's Amerigo Felluci! The Italian movie director!

Well! Get you. So, honey child, you had a mammy.

Expect Meghan Markle to recreate the funeral scene when it comes to her father's passing.

Subtle?

Good call, R7!

The beating the Sarah Jane character receives is shocking. I hope it resonated with its audience in the 1950s.

Starring megan markle as Sarah Jane.

Funny how both Claudette and Lana were so short necked.

Didn't Noel Coward once tell Claudette Colbert he'd wring her neck if she had one?

At least I could act.

The only thing Noel Coward would wring was every drop of cum out of a rentboy's cock.

You were a Broadway star, Claudette. The closest Lana got was doing Bell, Book and Candle in stock in the '70s.

Ah don' fixed y'all a mess o' crawdaddies, Miz Lora, fo' you an' yo' friends!

I don't despise Sirk's movies, but I don't like them. Way overrated.

I adore the bizarre nightclub dance number where the girls are pulled around the stage on train cars or boats or something while they kick their legs in the air and raise Champagne glasses.

Juanita Moore reacts to it like her daughter came out nude and started shooting ping-pong balls out of her pussy.

The very last scene of this movie destroyed everything that went before.

They made Sara Jane SIT WITH THE DRIVER.

Wasn't this movie in color?

Douglas Sirk was a genius.

"Sarah Jane Johnson, you put your clothes on!"

"I used to take care of her when she was little"

They were reclining chairs, r18. And she was wearing fishnets. Only whores wear fishnets.

That pancake thing, r3...

I'm bummed that TCM has severely limited their showings of, "Who Gives A Flying Fuck." It's rarely ever shown anymore and when it does air, it's certainly quite the event.

[quote]r26 …now receives praise for director Douglas Sirk's subtle take on racial tensions

The first time I’ve seen “subtle” applied to a Ross Hunter melodrama.

*

Could this be remade today?

Why would it be, r29?

Why not r30? I’m sure a good screenwriter would be able to adapt the story and make it more contemporary.

I don't think a good screenwriter would be interested in a Sirk retread. It's been done.

That’s your opinion r32.

Yes, r33, yes it is.

Movies about passing are still made. There was one 2 or 3 years ago.

I remember one calling “Passing”, based on a novel written by a black woman author in the twenties…

And it could be remade and should go back to the depression years. Louise Beavers had more agency in her version of the story.

A remake could explore even more about the 4 women and less about the one character becoming a star. The 1936 movie is pretty good - Delilah makes MONEY - a lot - but the portrayal of the two black women could be more nuanced.

Or a less tragic ending for Annie.

Amazing movie, despite the strong satirical element, it's quite emotionally affecting. The ending makes me cry like a baby - Mahalia Jackson! Sirk was a master.

[quote]Or a less tragic ending for Annie.

So, r38, you want to make a classic tear jerker less tear jerking.

Annie was simply a background character in the movie. She was never developed, and ever shown having enough of a relationship with her daughter for me to care about it. I didn't care when Annie died, or about Sarah Jane's reaction to it. I thought the funeral was absolutely ridiculous and seemed really out of character for someone portrayed as modestly as Annie had been to want. Sarah Jane was a more interesting character but she was still made to know her place at the end of the movie, as r19 pointed out.

[quote]Annie was simply a background character in the movie.

Bless your heart, r41.

But the 1959 film has the classic line when Lana sitting in her fabulous Jean Louis gown, wave her fur trimmed sleeves and utters to the delight of gay boys everywhere “Why Annie. It never occurred to me that you had friends!”

I saw Kohner speak once after a showing during which at some points idiots laughed. The kind that should be taken out to the lobby and shot.

She said nobody laughed when the movie opened but today we are all so much more sophisticated.

Kohner also said that the scene where Troy screams at her and beats her had to be reshot because the original was much more violent. The Las Vegas revue she appears in was an actual Las Vegas show. It was not designed for the film.

Dee is excellent she really shows her acting chops. And in the second half of the film the story of Annie and her daughter takes over so I don't know why anybody would prefer the first half of the film when it's preparing you for the emotional rollercoaster of the second.

Juanita Moore has an interview on youtube. She speaks of Lana in the highest terms. Lana despite her gowns and jewels ultimately gives the movie to her. Or lets her steal it whatever you prefer.

This is another Oscar loss that needs an Academy investigation. But then Kohner(who is quite wonderful) was nominated in the same category so they might have canceled each other out.

Another great Sirk film that is pretty subversive concerning American life in the 50s is There's Always Tomorrow with Stanwyck and MacMurray again surprising you with his dramatic power. The final image is chilling. And the genius of Sirk is that he could have it both ways. Give a sop to the audience who wanted a happy ending and make it a tragedy at the same time. And it's not in the screenplay. It's in the direction and filming.

R44, since DLers are laughing at it, should we all be shot? There are definitely scenes that are worthy of laughs. It's a Ross Hunter melodrama, for crying out loud

Almost every scene with Lana should be laughed at

There isn't anything in Imitation that's that funny that calls for guffaws in a theater. Stay home and laugh at it if you must. These people were just idiots. Also people were laughing through Liebelei at FF which is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. I don't get it at all.

Richard Pryor and some of his Army buddies beat up a white guy who laughed at one of the scenes in IOL. And this was when the film came out in 1959.

I’m sorry, not beaten, but Pryor STABBED this dude. From a New Yorker article:

[quote] Pryor was expelled from school at the age of fifteen. (He had taken a swing at the science teacher.) As soon as he could, he enlisted in the Army and was sent to a base in Germany, but he got kicked out of there, too. At a screening of Douglas Sirk’s movie “Imitation of Life,” about an African-American girl who, to her grief, passed for white, a white soldier in the audience laughed. On his way out of the show, Pryor stabbed the offender with a switchblade. He got a month in the brig.

*Nobody* disrespects Miss Lana Turner.

R3 Almost all of Stahl's scenes have two actors in profile facing each other. The entire film! It drives me crazy!

[quote]This is another Oscar loss that needs an Academy investigation. But then Kohner (who is quite wonderful) was nominated in the same category so they might have canceled each other out.

I think Juanita Moore is fine but it's easy to see why Shelley Winters won. First of all, she was excellent, and second, she was usually a sexy blonde in films, and was playing an actual woman who was later exterminated in the Holocaust, who was 20 years older than her. Nobody expected this performance from her. And it was a topical film, WWII was only 15 -20 years earlier. Juanita Moore was great as Annie but it was a women's picture, not an up to date drama about race relations. Annie died of a broken heart because her daughter rejected her in order to pass for white - based on an old weepie novel and movie from the 30s. I'm sure she got a lot of votes, though.

Augusta Van Pels was in her mid forties when she went into hiding; Shelley was 37 when she portrayed her on film. Not that big of a difference.

As much as I laugh and roll my eyes and enjoy the sheer “over the top” Lana - ness of this movie - almost every single time the funeral comes at the end I end up strangled with “the ugly cry.” ….. I hate watched Love Story for the first time a few years ago and I got caught off guard - I sobbed at the end.

R54 Okay, 10 (or fewer) years. The role was considered a stretch, and she played one of the most memorable characters in the film.

The thing I didn't like about the 1959 Imitation Of Life vs the earlier version was that Annie was Lora's friend but also a psuedo-servant, not her business partner (who came up with the best-selling pancake batter) as in 1934. The movie takes place from the late 40s to the late 50s. It just seems very old fashioned. Granted there were many restrictions in society, then - but if Lora was a famous actress surely she could have had acquaintances in the business who were black - who she would have met socially, etc. Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, whoever. Annie and Sarah Jane could have come to her parties and mingled as friends. The whole thing is weird, not existing in the real world of the time.

(continued) ...And if Sarah Jane wanted to go into show business, did she really need to pass for white, in the late 50s?? There were many black performers, and while they put up with racism, they also didn't have to do things like try to pass.

You make good points r56, but then most white moviegoers still had a surfeit of anti black prejudices and could not imagine anyone having black friends. It would have made many of them uncomfortable, especially if they were Southerners.

[quote] They made Sara Jane SIT WITH THE DRIVER.

What? Sara Jane sits with the family at the end!

Paul Verhoeven was clearly influenced by this movie.

Head of the Cheetah: "You're a stripper, don't you get it!?"

Nomi: "I'm a dancer!"

Head of The Cheetah: "If you're a dancer, then I'm the fucking Virgin Mary!!!"

Speaking of Sirk, did anyone else not like Far From Heaven?

I like Far From Heaven. It reached its goal successfully in all departments.

Julianne Moore was pregnant while filming FFH and her costumes looked soooo awkward.

[quote]Almost every scene with Lana should be laughed at

Douglas Sirk directed Lana to be oblivious and self-centered without her catching on.

R58 Just a reminder, not all moviegoers were/are white. Also, just for the record, Hollywood films were/are shown all over the world. Perhaps they were made with a white audience in mind, but anyway, this takes place in New York starting in 1947, and not the segregated world of the earlier novel or film. Sarah Jane could have gone to a city or state college, for ex. NYC (Harlem) even had a black congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, since about 1947. I just think a lot of the concepts of the earlier book were carried over and it was all basically Ross Hunter make-believe rather than a study of the complex ways things were at the time, almost 1960.

Beatrix McCleary Hamburg, black, graduated from Vassar in 1944. Officially applied and admitted as black. There had been a black graduate decades before, who was passing.

But most of them ARE r65, and therefore that’s who Hollywood panders to before anyone else.

For my money, I'll take Delilah and Peola any day. (who was played by an actual black woman.)

Sirk is camp, John Waters with more money. He had no idea how real humans behave.

R69 You're entitled to you opinion. Sirk was a great director, though. I could take or leave some of his films, but All That Heaven Allows, All I Desire, Written On The Wind, There's Always Tomorrow, and The Tarnished Angels are fantastic films. Magnificent Obsession is a little far-fetched, for me, but done brilliantly, Thunder On The Hill and Has Anybody Seen My Gal? were other good Sirk movies.

By the way if you want to see just how good Sirk was, watch some of the pseudo-Sirk films Universal and/or Ross Hunter tried to do during and after he retired (Imitation Of Life was his last). Things like This Earth Is Mine, Back Street.

Indeed R71... Sirk brought the edge to the Ross Hunter soaps. Otherwise, aside from those you mentioned, Portrait in Black and Madame X. Soap without hte Sirk social commentary underneath...

ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS is one of his most beautiful and subdued films. Whenever I see Jane Wyman’s profile, it makes me think about the comment that someone made about Aussie actor Luke Pegler’s nose being retrousse’. Jane has the same nose.

I just watched another one of her fifties Technicolor films called LUCY GALLANT, opposite Charlton Heston. Once again, her lack of sex appeal makes it unbelievable that Heston the Hunk would obsess over her for an entire decade.

Frocks!

I LOVE Lucy Gallant! Jane gets jilted and ends up stranded in Texas with an enormous trouseau, which she sells almost immediately and decides to set up business there. All that and Thelma Ritter too!

Her lax sex appeal and an indifferent screenplay and direction hobbled the film for me, r75. But I loved the fashion show. I chuckled at how far the camera was from Edith Head.

Reminds me of that line from TOOTSIE “I’d like to make her look more attractive; how far can you pull back the camera?”.

“How about Cleveland?”.

Is lax latin for 'lack of'?

I guess you meant weak. I would say non-existent.

Jane was a pretty "plain Jane". Gives you nice contrast to a Dietrich.

Wyman was struggling to become a star for years, when she was in her 20's she was a sexy little cutie.

It could be remade today, but only if presented as a tragedy of racism, Annie and her daughter are made the main characters, and it's set before the Civil Rights movement got big in the 1960s. Especially if they use the original plotline, where the white woman makes a fortune off of the black woman's pancake recipe, and the black woman agrees to let the white woman keep all the money, doesn't even ask for her due, just settles for a maid's job for life. Which is incredibly hard to believe in this money-oriented day and age, but as systematic oppression can destroy the self-esteem and self-confidence of individuals, not completely implausible.

So yes, someone could make a story about a white woman taking financial advantage of a black woman, and the black woman accepting it without complaint, and the black woman's light-skinned daughter deciding to pass. Not that I'd be interested in seeing that movie, I'm only interested in the 1950s version for the camp value, but a new version could fit today's zeitgeist.

R48 if you don't laugh at "I'm going UP, UP, UP!!!" then I feel sorry for you because you obviously don't have a sense of humor

Yes but why make Delilah such a wimp in a remake of the 30s story. She can have friends who wise her up. And Peola can be a handful but more charming, not quite such a desperate victim but nevertheless having lots of issues with passing.

R83, the original story was written in the 1933 by a white woman, and during that time it was considered admirable for women and POC to be modest, self-effacing, financially naive, and trusting, It was considered okay, or even admirable for a woman to turn down money and to trust others to take care of her, a least by many, although I doubt author Edna Ferber conducted her own business affairs that way!

I haven't read the movie, and haven't seen the 1930s movies in ages, so I honestly don't know if the original story's perspective is that it's virtuous for a woman to trust others to take care of her financially, or if the reader is expected to decry the foolishness of someone letting others capitalize on their work without a struggle. I think Ferber was basically progressive, at least by the standards of her time, and a lot of her stories decry the old-fashioned attitudes towards women and POC that she'd had to live with.

I would love to see the Sirk remake of "There's Always Tomorrow" but it doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere.

"a story about a white woman taking financial advantage of a black woman..."

I'm available after "Revenge Of The Woman King".

R84 I think it’s Fannie Hurst, isn’t it? Not Edna Ferber.

Somewhere someplace there must have been a drag queen called Porcelana Turnher

[quote]I doubt author Edna Ferber conducted her own business affairs that way!

R84 As someone already said, the author was Fannie Hurst, not Edna Ferber, though they shared certain similarities. Hurst was definitely interested in social justice and racial equality.

I usually think when I read or see something, a character is just one person, and there are all kinds of people. Delilah might seem like a wimp, maybe another black woman of the time, in the same situation, wouldn't be a wimp. People today seem to see characters more as archetypes than mere individuals. Maybe it's the influence of all the comic book movies.

Hurst stated that her novel was written because of a "consciousness" that came from how African-American soldiers had fought for their country in World War I even though they were discriminated against at home.[2]

[quote]Hurst was a Jewish woman and supporter of feminist causes. She also supported African Americans in their struggle for greater equality. She was deeply involved in the Harlem Renaissance, especially with Zora Neale Hurston. Hurst helped sponsor Hurston in her first year at Barnard College and employed Hurston briefly as an executive secretary. The two traveled together on road trips that may have contributed to Hurst's understanding of racial discrimination. Both Hurston and Langston Hughes claimed to like Imitation of Life, though both reversed their opinion after Sterling Allen Brown lambasted both the book and the 1934 film adaptation in a review entitled "Imitation of Life: Once a Pancake", a reference to a line in the first film.

(Wikipedia)

Didn't Ferber bring up the issues of racial discrimination in Showboat and Giant?

First time I saw this film was in college with a couple of friends. It produced some of the most uproarious laughing of my life. Maybe we smoked some pot too. I just recall we thought it was hysterical.

I wonder what IOL would have been like if Doris Day was cast as Lora Meredith…

Joan Crawford should have been Lora Meredith! She would have smacked the living hell out of Susie and Sarah Jane

Another key difference between the two versions is how the Colbert and Turner characters handle their daughters’ infatuation with their boyfriends. Beatrice (Colbert) sympathetically breaks it off with her boyfriend while Lora (Turner) couldn’t care less about how Susie (Dee) feels.

Would YOU give up John Gavin?!?!?! Suck it Susie!

Both John Gavin and Susan Kohner were half Mexican, incidentally.

Susan Kohler was the sleeper standout in this film, she did an excellent job with the material and was gorgeous. And to me this film is the quintessential Lana The Star, where she brought all her accumulated previous Hollywood luminosity and MGM acting glamour to full-throttle display. A film that really makes you feel Annie’s motherly heartbreak for her estranging daughter and Sarah Jane’s frustration and anger about who she is versus who she wants to be. Turner’s and Dee’s characters in this remake just make the viewer feel reinforced how lucky those two are with their superficial heartaches and worries, as a backdrop to the realer life hurdles that Annie and Sarah Jane saw and felt around them, IMO.

Juanita Moore's performance was so breathless and fawning.

Louise Beavers' portrayal was more sly like, "Dis white bitch cray-cray, but I gonna play along".

Ferber/Wyman

Ferber/Stanwyck

R97 But nobody's lifelong heartaches and worries are actually superficial. In a movie, maybe.

I prefer the 1959 version. Maybe I should watch the 1934 version again.

Fun fact: In the Hitchcock movie "Saboteur," there's a scene in a warehouse that houses boxes of Aunt Delilah's Pancake Flour.

Sad last days.

'Imitation of Life' (1959) is on TCM again this Thursday, March 30 at 10:00PM Eastern. Terry Burnham, who played 6-year-old Susie (she was actually 9 during production) also came to a sad end: When she died at age 64, no one claimed her body, the contents of her storage locker were auctioned off and her ashes were about to be buried in a common grave when some fans collected enough money to eventually have her buried next to her mother in Long Beach, CA.

"Oh, Mother...stop ACTING!!"

Terry Burnham was in a TWILIGHT ZONE episode, "Nightmare as a Child" opposite Janice Rule, playing a spooky little kid.

It never occured to me that you had any friends?

You've never asked.

Yeah like Annie life it pretty much being your slave. Miss Lora 'Cunthair" Meridith.

R106, I love that scene between Lana and Sandra and Sandra's right... she never had an honest relationship with her mother.

Lora was always about "Lora".

What did the future hold for the character's after Annie's funeral?

Once they arrived home from the funeral, Sarah Jane disappeared into her mother's room, pulled an apron from the closet and slipped it on over her black outfit, and returned to the others in the living room, where she announced, "My days of trying to pass are done. I've learned my lesson and I know my place. So I will honor my mother's memory by becoming your new subservient housekeeper, if I may."

Lora, Steve, and Susie exchanged glances with each other. Then Lora smiled graciously and nodded her head. "You may, Sarah Jane."

"Ooooh, Sarah Jane!" Susie squealed. "You're just the coolest."

Weird how in 1934 Claudette treated 'Delilah' like more of an equal and business partner, but by 1959 the character was a sort of fawning lady-in-waiting. Progress?

that's pretty good R110. Anyone else want to give us an epilogue post-funeral or a full-blown sequel?

Paging the [italic]Now, Voyager[/italic] Fake Dialogue Troll

People who dismiss Douglas Sirk films don't understand his art of irony. You must search for it. His characters lived "ideal" lives, with wealth and social status, and beauty. Contrast this with their inner suffering, longing, regrets, and utter discontent.

Douglas Sirk was a genius.

It's tragic that he retired in 1959, after "Imitation of Life." He could've directed many other classic films in the 60s, 70s and even the early 80s. The art of irony is timeless.

Yeah, I guess, but he didn't write the screenplay. Fannie Hurst, Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott get the credit. Hurst is also credited for the original.

SUZY!!!.... SUZY!!!...

I just don't find Sirk movies compelling. Maybe they're ironic, maybe they're campy, maybe they're artistry of genius, but that doesn't make them worth more than a single viewing, for me. Frankly, I'd rather watch Valley of the Dolls or Mommie Dearest for the 1000th time, than those dreary Sirk things from the 50s.