{"id":61657,"date":"2021-09-29T02:56:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T02:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61657"},"modified":"2022-02-19T18:31:05","modified_gmt":"2022-02-19T18:31:05","slug":"leave-them-wanting-more-douglas-sirk-and-imitation-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61657","title":{"rendered":"Leave Them Wanting More: Douglas Sirk and Imitation of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leave Them Wanting More: Douglas Sirk and Imitation of Life<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Steyn Online<\/a>
\n2021-09-18<\/p>\n

Rick McGinnis<\/strong>, Rick’s Flicks<\/em><\/p>\n

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When Douglas Sirk<\/a> left Hollywood<\/a> he was at the zenith of his career, twenty years after he’d arrived there as a refugee from Nazi Germany<\/a>, unsure if he’d ever make another movie. He had just made his most successful picture, based on what was probably the most controversial topic in America<\/a> at the time. Maybe he understood that it’s always best to leave when you’re at the top, or maybe he was just tired.<\/p>\n

Imitation of Life<\/em><\/a> was an update of a 1934 film<\/a> starring Claudette Colbert<\/a> and Louise Beavers<\/a> \u2013 a drama about miscegenation<\/a> and racism and the colour caste system that was no less controversial when producer Ross Hunter<\/a> decided to remake it \u2013 as a musical. Thankfully, by the time Sirk started filming, it was a melodrama again, and one starring Lana Turner<\/a>, just after her daughter Cheryl Crane<\/a> had been on trial for running a kitchen knife through Turner’s boyfriend, a mobbed-up gigolo thug named Johnny Stompanato<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Based on a novel<\/a> by Fanny Hurst<\/a>, the original film directed by John M. Stahl had Colbert’s Bea create a culinary empire based on a pancake recipe passed down through the family of Delilah (Beavers), her African-American maid. Both women prosper, but Bea’s happiness is threatened when her daughter falls in love with the man she wants to marry. James M. Cain’s<\/a> 1941 novel Mildred Pierce<\/em><\/a> \u2013 later made into a movie<\/a> with Joan Crawford<\/a> and a miniseries<\/a> starring Kate Winslet<\/a> \u2013 is basically a hardboiled rewrite of Hurst’s story, excising the crucial secondary plot involving Delilah and her daughter, a young woman striving to pass for white<\/a>…<\/p>\n