Douglas Sirk (5)

Imitation of Life - directed by Douglas Sirk 1959 With Lana Turner, John Gavin, Susan Kohner, Sandra Dee - Susan Kohner was born on November 11, 1936 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother was actress Lupita Tovar, a successful performer from the 1930's and it was only natural that for Susan to gravitate toward acting. Her first role was in To Hell and Back (1955) in 1955. One more film in 1956 and one in 1957 brought her to the attention of producers in the movie industry. Susan made four in 1959. The best of the lot was Imitation of Life (1959), a film starring Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. It was a dual story of Lana portraying a struggling actress and Susan as Sara Jane, struggling with the fact that although she appeared white, her mother was black. Susan's role as a young woman trying to cope in the white world while hiding the fact she was black was enough to win her an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Unfortunately, Susan lost out to Shelley Winters in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). After appearing in Freud (1962) in 1962, Susan left films for good with the exception of appearing in the television program "Temple Houston" (1963) in 1963. She wed John Weitz in 1964 and retired to raise a family.

This glamorized remake of the 1934 film Imitation of Life bears only a passing resemblance to its source, the best-selling novel by Fannie Hurst. Originally, the heroine was a widowed mother who kept the wolf from the door by setting up a successful pancake business with her black housemaid. In the remake, Lana Turner stars as a would-be actress who is raising her daughter on her own. She chances to meet another single mother at the beach: African-American Juanita Moore. Moore goes to work as Turner's housekeeper, bringing her light-skinned daughter along. As Turner's stage career goes into high gear, Moore is saddled with the responsibility of raising both Turner's daughter and her own. Exposed to the advantages of the white world, Moore's grown-up daughter (Susan Kohner) passes for white, causing her mother a great deal of heartache. Meanwhile, Turner's grown daughter (Sandra Dee), neglected by her mother, seeks comfort in the arms of handsome photographer John Gavin. When Moore dies, her daughter realizes how selfish she's been; simultaneously, Turner awakens to the fact that she hasn't been much of a mother for her own daughter, whose romance has gone down the tubes.