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In Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks, film historian Donald Bogle suggests that the Hollywood African-American screen jokers of the 1920s became the movie servants of the 1930s. Black performers in that decade, he argues, approached their work with an enthusiasmand talent that empowered them to transform menial roles and stereotypes into original and individualized characterizations. In the process, Bogle asserts, African American performers challengedthe white notion that all blacks look and act alike. By bringing something distinctive to each role that they created, the thirties generation transformed the films in which they acted. More than mere 'actors', they developed into 'nondirectorial auteurs'.1
John Stahl's Imitation of Life (1934) represents a key, if uneasy, marker in this transformation. Universal's loose adaptation of a 1933 Fannie Hurst novel has been eclipsed by the better-known, more overtly ironic and widely available 1959 remake (featuring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore) directed by Douglas Sirk. But the 1934 film was a prestige production, a 'Stahl special' from the veteran director featuring white heartthrobs Claudette Colbert and Warren William, black actors Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington and a negative cost ($665,000) well above the studio average (and $100,000 over budget).2 As one writer in Atlanta's black newspaper the Daily World commented, 'It is elaborate'.3
Like this reporter, other reviewers and audiences recognized Imitation of Life as an extraordinary film. It was innovative in a number of ways. The script made it one of the first Hollywood studio films to portray black characters seriously, not as comic sidekicks or musical specialties or as slaves. It imagined a sisterly, if unequal, bond between black and white single mothers. More specifically, it portrayed a dignified if passive black mother in Delilah (Lousie Beavers) and seriously portrayed the plight of her light-skinned daughter Peola (Fredi Washington) who desires to pass in white society.4 It also featured extraordinary examples of Bogle's cardinal principle and a mainstay of criticism in studio era films about African-Americans: it boasts two black actors transcending their flatly scripted roles. Even the film industry trade press and major white northeastern newspapers expressed surprise at the power of Beavers' and Washington's performances.
At the same time, the film's popularity with black audiences is well-known: Imitation of Life was a cultural event, a...