posted on August 9, 2001 09:32:24 PM new
I was trying to tell a friend of mine about a movie, but I couldn't think of the name of it. I remember the story line, but not the title. Can anyone help?
The movie is a drama from about the 1957-1963 time frame. It was about a black woman who had darker skin. She had a daughter who had very light skin. The daughter's skin was so light she passed for a white person.
The mother worker as a house cleaner/maid type position for a upper income white family. This family had a daughter the same age as the black girl and they were friends both in school and at home. The black girl was very embarrassed about her mother due to her skin color. Whenever she was with her friends and the mother approached, she acted like her mother "was only the maid".
In one scene, the black mother went to the school to get her daughter and the teacher said they didn't have any "colored" children in this school. The mother, who was standing in the doorway of the classroom pointed at her daughter and said, " that's my daughter right there". The black girl was so angry at her mother for exposing her as being black.
As the movie progressed, the daughter became increasingly angry at her mother. At one point she wouldn't speak to her mother and disowned the mother-daughter relationship. In the final scenes of the movie, the mother becomes deathly ill asks for her daughter. The daughter saw her mother and feels horrible guilt.
I hope this provided enough information. Any ideas on the title?
[ edited by yeager on Aug 9, 2001 09:36 PM ]
posted on August 9, 2001 09:38:02 PM new
The ending was soooo sad. I can't remember the title, but I will dig for it. It is one of my all time favorite oldies.
posted on August 9, 2001 09:40:42 PM new
It's a Lana Turner movie. "Imitation of Life". Sandra Dee was in it too. It was just on TV here a couple weeks ago.
posted on August 9, 2001 10:16:28 PM new
Thanks Katy! That was such a great movie! And I hear that Turner is going to broadcast 38 of her movies, as mentioned by her daughter last night on Larry King.
posted on August 9, 2001 10:37:44 PM new
I've seen this movie lots of times over the years (and saw the original 1930's version too.) It gets harder and harder to watch every time. I love it for the awful over-the-top glamourous '50's-movie-star-life," maribou-trimmed fireplace type surroundings, Lana Turner's sunglasses, etc. But at the same time, it makes me cringe and feel very sick. I've seen "Birth of a Nation," and it wasn't as bad as this movie, this movie is extremely nasty.
posted on August 9, 2001 10:38:31 PM new
Thanks Katy D
That's It! I knew it had the word life in it. I thought it was The Color of Life. I looked on Yahoo Movies and couldn't find it. As always, AW and it's members came through. Thanks again!
posted on August 10, 2001 02:05:02 PM new
"donny: it what way do you feel it is "extremely nasty"?"
Well, if you saw the movie, you probably remember how it started out. The black mother and daughter had no place to live. The white mother and daughter had an apt., but they were barely hanging on. The milkman wouldn't leave the white mother and daughter any milk, because they were behind in their bill, and they were behind in their rent too (I think.) The white mother was working at home, addressing envelopes, so she could try to make some money and look after her young daughter at the same time, but she really wasn't keeping it all together. You could see that in a little while, the white mother and daughter would probably end up homeless also, at the point the black mother and daughter had reached, they weren't very far apart.
The black mother and daughter move in. This frees Lana Turner so she can devote herself to putting time into looking for an acting job. The black mother not only looks after the white mother's daughter, but also takes over the job Lana Turner had been doing (addressing the envelopes), washes Lana Turner's clothes, does all the cooking, squares things with the milkman and the landlord, and, on top of that, Lana Turner uses the presence of the black mother in the apartment to enhance her own social prestige (I was talking on the phone to my maid! This at a point where Lana Turner wasn't even paying her anything, apparently).
In the blink of an eye, Lana Turner can now shoot to the top, sashaying around in minks, going to "21" or the Waldorf Astoria or wherever, becoming the toast of Broadway, men falling at her feet, a glamourous motion picture star! She buys a fabulous house. She traipses off to Europe! She buys Sandra Dee a diamond-studded horse! And the black woman? A maid. But, a maid with a uniform!
And what's in store for Sandra Dee? I can't really remember if any mention was made of her future. If I filled in the blanks, I'd probably guess something like a swanky Swiss boarding school. We know what the envisioned future is for the black woman's daughter of the same age - a no-name "Teacher's College," for Blacks.
The only one who seems to find anything wrong with this picture, in the movie, is the black woman's daughter. But we know her dissatisfaction with the situation doesn't merely stem from the difference in the successes achieved by the black woman and white woman, who, basically, started at the same point in the beginning. Her dissatisfaction was already present at the beginning of the movie when she realized, even with her tender years, that, in the eyes of the world she'd have to make her way in, being black wasn't as valuable as being white.
Instead of validating her viewpoint (and her view seems entirely reasonable to me), she's cast more in the role of an ungrateful girl, ungrateful to Lana Turner, ungrateful to her mother, her mother being a nearly saintly woman who loves her dearly. She breaks her poor mother's heart. She runs off, again and again, to be a "bad" girl, in tawdry night club shows. At the end, in high histrionics, she repents.
But the black woman was happy. Well, maybe so, but she probably could have been just as happy with a couple of diamond-studded horses for her own daughter too, like Sandra Dee got. Maybe she could have been just as happy with a mink-covered toilet seat, like Lana Turner probably had, instead of the fox stole, or whatever it was, that she, on her deathbed, told her preacher she wanted his wife to have. Where were her diamonds? When did she jet off to Europe? Even when she wanted to go see her daughter, the immediate assumption was she'd go by train (I'll book you a seat on the first train.) "No sir, Mr. Steve, I'm flying!"
Now, you might say that Lana Turner was the one with the million-dollar talent here, but wasn't the black woman's contribution just as valuable? Would Lana Turner have made it without her? Well, maybe, but it sure didn't look, at the beginning of the movie, like Lana Turner was going to make it.
In the original movie, in the 30's, the black woman's contribution to the success was much more easily visible. In that version, the white woman used the black woman's pancake or biscuit recipe or something (and her name and "Aunt Jemima-ish" likeness as well?) to build some baking empire. In the Lana Turner remake, the role of the black woman is a bit less obvious (and turned into a domestic, as well), but it's still much more significant than the disparity between the rewards each mother receives indicates.
posted on August 10, 2001 02:54:23 PM new
The social commentary is mine. What makes the movie nasty is that that social commentary isn't in the movie. Or, if it is, it's so smothered by Lana Turner's breasts and the rhinestone trimmings that it's pretty hard to find.
posted on August 10, 2001 03:05:17 PM new
However the movie is viewed, the redeeming factor is the funeral scene where Mahalia Jackson sings. Listening to her is worth watching the movie no matter what it is about.
edited to inquire- does anyone know the name of the song Mahalia sings at the funeral ? I have some of her music, but I could never find that song.
[ edited by REAMOND on Aug 10, 2001 03:08 PM ]
posted on August 10, 2001 03:12:06 PM new
Internet Movie Database identifies it as "Trouble of the World," words and music unknown. I agree, that was fabulous.
posted on August 11, 2001 10:54:32 AM new
You're welcome, Reamond.
And here's another thought - Why isn't looking white being white? In neither the original 1930's version (where the daughter was played by an actress recognized as "black," ), nor in the Lana Turner version (where the daughter was played by an actress recognized as "white," ) were the daughter characters presented as albinos; their lightness was no genetic fluke.
In an old Slate article, the author says that, when Americans were stationed overseas in WWII:
"Neither Britain nor France had laws that forbade interracial marriage, and people in those countries had no clue what the Yanks were going on about when they argued over who was really white or really black. To the French and the British, race was defined by what you looked like: If you looked white, well then, you were."
Anyway, I have a real movie question of my own, and I'd appreciate anyone giving me the answer.
Years ago, I saw a movie that was a "Western," but it was set in the Transvaal. It had a theme song that went something like - "... live by the gun, die by the gun you must, down in the Transvaal dust." I think the plot involved a town terrorized by a father and his four sons, who were named after the books of the Gospel, although I could be wrong about that.
[ edited by donny on Aug 11, 2001 10:55 AM ]
