OVP: Imitation of Life (1959)

Film: Imitation of Life (1959)
Stars: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner, Dan O'Herlihy, Troy Donahue, Mahalia Jackson
Director: Douglas Sirk
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Juanita Moore, Supporting Actress-Susan Kohner)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

This series is focused on not just sex symbols, but also on films that I haven't seen made by said sex symbols.  As a result, we're going to be skipping over a major part of Lana Turner's career post-Green Dolphin Street.  After the film, she enjoyed a couple of years of success, but bad decisions by the studio (Lana Turner was not meant for musicals) and the constant headache of her personal life got in the way, despite occasional successes like The Bad and the Beautiful (which I've seen before, otherwise I'd have included it as it's the only noteworthy Turner film in the early-1950's).  MGM eventually dropped her, and while many actors in that position would have been on the downhill slide of their career, Turner managed to get two major roles immediately after.  The first (another film I've seen, hence it's lack of a profile), was Peyton Place, a massive hit for Fox, which won Turner the only Oscar nomination of her career.  However, Turner's life would be turned upside down afterward when her daughter would be charged (and then acquitted) of the murder of her mobster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato (you can read more about this here).  This was a huge scandal in an era where Turner wasn't signed to a studio that might have helped her with the press in the wake of a hit like Peyton Place, and she was badly in need of a follow-up hit considering the legal bills she'd incurred on behalf of her daughter, and was potentially unemployable due to the scandal.  Thankfully for Turner, producer Ross Hunter had a role that would be perfect for her in Imitation of Life.

(Spoilers Ahead) A loose remake of the 1934 Best Picture of the same name starring Claudette Colbert & Louise Beavers, Imitation of Life is about two women who are afforded very different paths, and the complicated relationships that they have with their daughters.  One of them is Lora Meredith (Turner), a beautiful woman who has a daughter she has to raise, but dreams of stardom on the stage.  She gets just that through a chance encounter with a photographer (Gavin) who becomes her off-and-on lover, and then a producer, and stands out in a small part on stage which graduates to a decade of stardom on Broadway.  This leaves her daughter Susie (as a teenager, played by Dee), without an obvious mother-figure.  This is solved in the opening scene when Susie, having ran off from her mother, is found by a destitute woman named Annie (Moore), who is there with her daughter Sarah Jane (played by Kohner as an adult).  Susie & Sarah Jane are quick friends, but Sarah Jane struggles deeply in life because she's biracial-her mother, Annie, is black, but her father was very light-skinned and she passes as white unless she's forced to acknowledge her mother.  The film watches as these two women must acknowledge the realities they bring as mothers to these growing girls, and the film unfolds with these two lifelong partners struggling to find a place in their daughter's lives when they become adults.

Imitation of Life is one of several major melodramas of the 1950's that had Douglas Sirk's signature branding, alongside other pictures like Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession.  This one might be the best of the bunch, for my money, mostly because it leans in the heaviest into the melodrama.  The tearjerker scenes between the four principle actresses are splendid, even if they are occasionally uneven.  Susan Kohner alternates between eyebrow-raising histrionics to just brilliant screen work-it's uneven, but when she's on, she's sensational.  There's that scene where she dances on tables and clearly enjoys being desired, discarding her racial identity-it's tough to watch, the inner-hatred she brings, but she manages to find it as a learned hatred in a way other actors might have tried to simplify the performance.  Kohner in real-life was not black, but she was biracial (her mother was Mexican actress Lupita Tovar, known for her work in the Spanish-language Dracula) which may lend more credibility here.

Moore is also splendid (both actresses won Oscar nominations for their work here, and kind of steal the picture).  She grounds her character in kindness, but also pragmatism.  Yes, she's playing a maid, but she's playing a maid who knows she's a better mother to Susie than her one-time friend, but more often employer, is.  There's a great moment late in the film where Annie is discussing her funeral with Lora, and Lora wonders how Annie has so many friends she'd want to invite, and why she never mentions them.  "You never asked," Annie says knowingly, and it's as much an indictment of the audience as it is of Lora; we assume that Annie's whole world are the two white women who get top billing in the film, but she's got her own life & it actually takes over the ending of the film as the final scenes are her funeral.  The film's best, and most devastating moment comes before that, though, when Annie & Sarah Jane say goodbye, and Sarah Jane pretends that Annie is her childhood nanny rather than her mother so as to continue to pretend to be white in her new job.  It's heartbreaking, and the sort of thing that results in easy tears, but man is it effective.

As for Turner, she's not given as interesting of a part as the other two women, but it probably doesn't matter as written.  Her Lora has heavy-lifting in the first half of the film (making us believe that a nearly 40-year-old woman would be given the time of the day by an agent without experience), but the rest of the movie she's meant to mostly just be an ice queen that occasionally thaws.  Turner's most noted aspect in this film is the wardrobe & jewelry that she wears.  The Bill Thomas gowns are hyper-glamorous, and the jewelry in the film was valued at some $1 million, as the producers assumed that if no one wanted to see a film about the Civil Rights Era in 1959, they'd at least want to gawk at Turner wearing gorgeous gems.

But the thing is, people did want to see Imitation of Life.  The film would be Universal's biggest hit ever, and hold that title until 1970's Airport.  Turner turned down her regular salary for the film (likely because the producers were worried about risking their necks on a celebrity who'd just got through a murder trial), and took a cut of the profits instead, making by some estimates to be $2 million (adjusted for inflation, that's nearly $18 million today) for the film as a result, a sum that set her up for life and briefly made her the highest-paid actress in film history.  Most looks into Turner's career end with Peyton Place/Imitation of Life, but as we have five Saturday's this month, we're going to go a few years further into her career next week, in one of her last starring roles, and discuss the end of Turner's very long time in the spotlight.