“I don’t rightly know who is to blame,” says Delilah Johnson, speaking straight into the camera with simple and profound earnestness. “It can’t be our Lord.”
She’s right about that, she is. We don’t muddle about with a lot of political matters here at Word and Song, and we’re not going to do that now, with our Film of the Week, Imitation of Life. Yes, there are all kinds of obvious political implications in play, but that’s not what makes this film great. It is the human story, as old as man — a story of friendship, a mother’s love, rejection, ingratitude, human blindness and hardness of heart, and unconquerable devotion and faith. The situation is made for drama, so long as the writers, the director, and the actors keep at front and center what really does move the heart of man. We have two widows, one white, Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert), and one black, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers). Each of them has a little girl, and both of them are down and out. One day, Delilah shows up at Bea’s house looking for a job as a maid, but it’s the wrong house — two streets in town with the same name, but one’s a street and one’s an avenue. It’s just when Bea has burnt the breakfast, and has left her daughter upstairs near the bathtub while she answered the door. The toddler, going for her “quack-quack,” the rubber duck, falls in and cries, and as Mama’s running up to see to her, Delilah makes herself useful downstairs by setting out some milk and a few things to eat. She offers then to stay with Bea, just for room and board for her and her daughter Peola, who is as fair-skinned as Bea’s own daughter. A warm and vital friendship is in the making.
Not only that, but a living too, because it turns out that Delilah is a whiz at making pancakes, and so she and Bea go into business, and one success leads to another, with a lot of hard work and taking of chances and catering to customers and persuading of businessmen. Meanwhile, the girls are going to school, and that’s when it happens that Peola shows how ashamed of her mother she is. Delilah shows up at the school one day to give Peola something she forgot, and the teacher, who is quite nice, says there must be some mistake, because there aren’t any colored children in her class. But Delilah sees Peola, who has been trying to hide her face behind her book. Back at home, Peola cries out, “You made me black! I won’t be black, I won’t, I won’t!” Bea demands that Peola apologize for being so cruel to her mother, but Delilah says she needn’t, because the little girl isn’t to blame. And that’s when she says what she says. It isn’t the Lord who is to blame. Who is?
Debra and I think very highly of the two actresses at the heart of our film, Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers. You may remember Beavers also as the cheerful maid who ends up solving Cary Grant’s possibly career-ending mental block in the comedy, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. And of course Colbert was one of the most brilliant actresses Hollywood ever knew, with a womanly grace and good humor and warmth of feeling that could steal scene after scene: Clark Gable had to keep up with her in It Happened One Night. But the moral center, the shining light of Imitation of Life is Beaver’s character Delilah, because of her humility and her boundless capacity to forgive. For that daughter Peola grows up, and goes north to college, and because she is fair — she is played in fact by the very fair African-American actress Fredi Washington — she can leave the world she grew up in down south and enter a world where no one will look upon her with scorn or patronizing affection or pity. But she can do so only if she breaks ties with her mother forever.
That’s not the whole of the plot, because Bea has troubles with her daughter Jessie, too, troubles not of the same sort. They fall for the same man, the suave and handsome and slightly seedy Stephen Archer (Warren William). Each woman then has much to bear, and much to forgive, and through it all their friendship for one another never wavers, even though they are not on the same “level,” socially; Delilah has no desire to pretend to be anything she is not. Watch this film, then, not for any social talking points to make, but for its portrayal of that friendship and of the sorely-tried love between mother and child, and — though this is handled with a light touch — a faith in God that can move any mountain that man can heap up against it.
Today’s film is available online free. Click the button below to watch. Once you reach the website with the film running, you may click the enlarge button on the lower right hand side of the film box.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
Humanity reveals its loving kindness.
Thank you for making it possible to see this. Bruce and I really had a good evening watching it and discussing it. Appreciate seeing these oldies but goodies!!