Imitation Of Life (1934) - The lives of a widow and her housekeeper are united first in mutual need, then success and ultimately, in heartache in this Academy Award-nominated Best Picture. Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers are superb as Bea and Delilah, two women with young daughters who build a life and a fortune together selling Delilah’s pancake recipe. But success doesn’t save them from sorrow with the passing years. Delilah’s light-skinned teenager rejects her mother and her race, while Bea must choose between the man she loves and the daughter who loves him, too. Now all of them will pay the price of love in this spellbinding classic, revered as one of the all-time Hollywood tear-jerkers, from collaborators William Hurlbut and Preston Sturges.



Imitation Of Life (1959) - Living a lie is a poor substitute for living the truth – sometimes it takes the harsh realties of life to help us discover who we truly are. The legendary Lana Turner stars in this 1959 version of Fannie Hurst’s emotionally charged drama, which chronicles two widows and their troubled daughters as they struggle to find true happiness amidst racial prejudice. Lana Turner plays Lora, a single white mother whose Hollywood starlet ambitions come at the expense of any meaningful relationship with her daughter, Susie (Sandra Dee). Lora’s black housekeeper, Annie (Juanita Moore), has troubles of her own as she faces the rejection of her own fair-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), who abandons her heritage for a chance to be accepted as white. As years of selfishness and denial pass, tragedy strikes and forces the women to come to terms with their own identities.