WHO IS THE real star of Imitation
Of Life, the crowning glory of director
Douglas Sirk’s long-misunderstood
Hollywood career, Lana Turner’s biggest
pay day and for a long time Universal’s
highest-grossing film?
Turner, who shared top billing with
the now mostly forgotten John Gavin (the
poor woman’s Rock Hudson) seems the
obvious answer. By 1959, however, the
38-year-old Turner was ‘The Sweater
Girl’ no longer. At least a decade past her
1940s heyday, she’d been dropped by
MGM after a series of flops, and though
her career briefly revived with a 1958 Best
Actress Oscar nomination for Peyton
Place, her personal life was mired in
scandal. A matter of months before
production began, Turner’s Mafioso
boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, was
stabbed to death by her 14-year-old
daughter, and the ensuing media
attention revealed some uncomfortable
parallels with her latest picture.
Based on a 1933 novel of the same
name, Imitation Of Life tells of two single
mothers and their troubled teenage
daughters; four lives that become
intertwined when the middle-class, white
Lora (Turner) takes in the working-class,black Annie (Juanita Moore) as her
housekeeper. In both the original novel
and an earlier 1934 film version, the
‘Lora’ character gets rich by marketing
her black maid’s family waffle recipe.
Sirk and producer Ross Hunter may
have judged that such blatant economic
exploitation wouldn’t play well in the
Civil Rights era. Maybe Hunter needed
a narrative excuse to showcase Turner’s
$1 million designer wardrobe? Or perhaps
they simply hoped to further cash in on
Turner’s troubles? For whatever reason,
Lora — like Lana — is instead an actress,
able to pursue her ambitions “a little late”
thanks to the practical and emotional
support of the ever-loyal Annie.
This is the ‘woman’s picture’ par
excellence. Although that term, like
its younger sister ‘chick flick’, has often
been used dismissively — and although
it would take several decades, plus the
intervention of the auteur theorists,
for Sirk’s critical reputation to recover
from the association — Imitation
Of Life proves him to be an unabashed
proponent. In previous films for
Universal, such as Todd Haynes’ fave,
All That Heaven Allows (1955), Sirk
had explored his favourite theme of
passionate, middle-aged women
oppressed by the expectations of
conformist American society, But in
this, his final Hollywood flourish before
retiring to Europe, Sirk showed whatthe Woman’s Picture could really do.
Imitation Of Life tells truths about
women’s lives that are perceptive to
the point of prescient. Sexual harassment
is a near-constant reality of Lora’s
showbiz career, for instance, and her
proto #MeToo struggles include
a lecherous agent (Robert Alda) who
suggests she’ll have to prostitute herself
to get ahead — “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!”
More subtly, Lora resists marriage
with the nice, handsome Steve (Gavin)
because he can’t understand why she’d
rather go on an audition than a dinner
date, and then spends so much time
working that she doesn’t notice her
daughter developing an inappropriate
crush. Career women, eh?
Yet while Lora/Lana is a star of
stage, screen and her own household,
directorial choices combined with
Turner’s own somewhat icy demeanour,
suggest she is only the “Imitation”, while
the “Life” of the film is elsewhere. In
a parallel storyline, Annie’s light-skinned
daughter Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner)
is pursuing her own dreams. Only by
“passing” as white and rejecting the love
of her saintly mother can Sarah Jane
access the opportunities that Lora’s
daughter, Susie (a perfectly twee Sandra
Dee), takes for granted. For dark-skinnedIMITAT ION
OF LIFE
EMPIRE MASTERPIECE
Revisiting Douglas Sirk’s
subversive classicTop: Susan
Kohner (Sarah
Jane) and
Juanita Moore
(Annie). Above:
Lana Turner as
film star Lora
with John Gavin
as her boyfriend
Steve. Right:
Gavin and
Turner strike
a classic ’50s
Hollywood pose.ALAMY, RGA