IMITATION OF LIFE (1934; 1959)

Made 25-years apart, you’d be hard pressed to find a more involving DOUBLE-BILL then this matched pair of Fannie Hurst adaptations; fascinating both for what has and for what hasn’t changed in society and in filmmaking.  On ‘50s melodrama, hard to fault Douglas Sirk, with his mastery of action, mise-en-scène, color & indicative acting style stronger than ever in what would prove to be his final picture.  No one could ‘orchestrate’ elements of story, style & structure better, but John M. Stahl’s more straightforward 1934 beauty has what proves to be unassailable advantages in his cast, in the Depression Era, and in a script that is, if anything, more direct in tackling a racial story far more unusual on screen before the Civil Rights movement brought up the topic, much helped by a storyline about business rather than show business, as in the remake.  Right from the opening, Sirk’s use of a Coney Island  meeting for two young, single mothers (one White/one Black) and their two little girls (one White/one Black, but White enough to ‘pass’) is composed & dramatically arranged to sell the unusual situation.  Stunningly so.  But Stahl, in 1934, is able to simply lean on Depression Era desperation to bring his foursome together in a homey kitchen, after an exceptional setup scene for Claudette Colbert’s overworked single mom bathing the remarkably natural ‘Baby Jane’ as her toddler.  And not needing to ‘sell’ the situation becomes a pattern that comes up all thru the films.  The difference only emphasized once Lana tries life upon the stage, risibly gaining success in ‘high comedy,’ as if she were Ina Claire or Gertrude Lawrence.  (A career move Claudette actually took after fazing out film work as she neared 60.*)  Meanwhile, back in 1934, Colbert expands from maple syrup saleslady into pancake baron, thanks to housekeeper Louise Beaver’s recipe.  So here too, on the racial side of the drama, Juanita Moore in the remake is only a domestic while in the earlier film, Beaver has something of value that she owns.  Not that she knows, wants or appreciates it.  She only wants to serve.  It’s this race drama, with the troubled light-skinned daughter, that really keeps both films shockingly alive, though the earlier film has two enormous advantages.  First, that the girl trying to ‘pass’ in 1934 is Fredi Washington, a light-skinned Black actor in a rare film appearance.  (In the remake, Susan Kohner is very good, and in one nightclub scene, looks remarkably like Natalie Wood in GYPSY/’62, even showing how that role should have been played!)   Second is that Louise Beaver, as the girl’s dark-skinned mother, after ‘Mammy’ types in many previous films, perhaps not as fine an actress as Juanita Moore in 1959, but because she’s more archetype, it’s as if a doll you’ve long outgrown (and now embarrassed about keeping) suddenly started to bleed.  (Before becoming a major literary voice in the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston worked as assistant to IMITATION author Fannie Hurst.  Did she influence the novel?)  And if the older film has ‘cringy’ moments that equal the later film’s ‘bad’ laughs, that ‘cringe’ is never less than honestly indigestible.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Colbert’s last B’way show, Frederick Lonsdale’s AREN’T WE ALL, had Rex Harrison, Lynn Redgrave, Jeremy Brett & George Rose in the cast.  Even at 82, odds are, she could have fit into the drop-dead outfits Paramount’s great designer Travis Banton came over to Universal to make for this film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The 1959 version is an Imitation of Life right from the opening credits with Nat King Cole ‘ringer’ Earl Grant doing the title track vocal.