5/5 FILM STILL A TEAR-JERKING FIVE, NEW MAKING-OF BOOK IS NOT
  by Alan W. Petrucelli (THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT (ALAN W. PETRUCELLI))
Sam Staggs is the perfect image of a modern major film fan.
Apparently, the good Staggs eats, sleeps, drinks and excessively obsesses about movies.
And not modern nor classic films, but movies from a very peculiar time and place---mid-century America.
His three previous books---All About All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made!, Close-up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream and When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of "A Streetcar Named Desire" ---are exhaustive studies of those films yet still breezy, gossipy, informative and fun.
Norma Desmond, Eve Harrington and Blanche DuBois, cult heroines all, are strangely legitimized and elevated from campiness to a weird nobility in these books . . . but elevated in such a way as to treat, say, the McDonald's arches as if they were as representative of our culture as the Sistine Chapel was of the Renaissance. Let's not call these films trashy---although that's part of their fun---but these movies are hardly prime examples of film art.
Sam Staggs, perhaps, has just too much time on his hands.
If there is any doubt that Staggs might put his industry to more constructive use, his exhausting new book, Born to be Hurt: The Untold Story of "Imitation of Life," proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he fears that idle hands may be the devil's playground.
And Staggs' busy little fingers have drudged up every single item and atom of trivia concerning the film, beaten it, slogged it and whipped it until all of the campy fun and sleaziness of the 1959 Lana Turner weepie lies dead on the page. (Yes, the first version, released in 1934 and starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers, is also good. Universal Home Video has released both versions on one nifty DVD.)
Imitation of Life is a fun film, well worth watching and enormously helped by a drink or three, but Staggs attacks it with the seriousness and pomposity of a grad student attacking Marcel Proust. The Fan is very nearly becoming the Academic.
And this really is too bad as Staggs himself has an interesting way of reporting the idiosyncratic ways and means of picture making. His pronounced writing style, rare in these days of blogging and texting, is as fancy and florid as the most orchidaceous Victorian writer, yet poses both charm and originality. But, like a friend or a stranger with a seemingly charming obsession about, say, stamp collecting or baseball, eventually the reader is so oppressed by the obsession that eyes, glazed, seek an exit, any exit . . . please. Quick. Now. In the course of the 400+-page book, with notes and an index natch, the fun of the film nearly flickers and dies.
For the record, Imitation of Life, based on a Fannie Hurst potboiler, concerns two mothers, each with a daughter. One mother is white, played by Lana Turner, arguably the whitest actress in the world, and one is black, played by Juanita Moore. Ms. Moore's daughter is light-skinned and able to "pass," and played brilliantly by Susan Kohner. Ms. Turner's daughter is played by Sandra Dee, arguably the second whitest actress in the world. Both Kohner and Moore received Oscar nominations for their work; Turner and Dee did not, their rewards mostly consisted of howls from the audience. Directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Ross Hunter, the film is an over decorated, overwrought altar to high melodrama, wretched excess, over-the-top emotions, operatic performances and good, clean fun.
Now, research is research, but do we really have to concern ourselves with the stars' parents or grandparents? Grips, designers, authors, minor players, production aids and seemingly anyone even a vague connection with the film is given time in the limelight, until ultimately, the reader is reduced to a boredom-induced coma.
This book proves without a doubt that, after all, there is such a thing as too much information.



4/5 Two soap classics!
  by Nicholas A. Ziinojr (ridge, new york United States)
These are classic soap operas are typical women's pictures of their times.
John M.Stahl's 1934 original is the better film,one of Universal's best pictures of the 1930s.It benefits from a beautiful William Hurlbut-Preston Sturges script,lovely sets,costumes, and photography,Stahl's powerful direction,and most of all,a marvelous cast.Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers are magificent!But Douglas Sirk's 1959 Technicolor remake is good in its own way.The lavish sets and costumes look great in gorgeous photography,there is a lovely Frank Skinner score,and the cast is very good.Lana Turner and Juanita Moore are excellent.These films are both good fun.

5/5 Graet
  by Grammee (NYC, USA)
This is one of my favorite movies so I was glad to get it in both versions

5/5 Colbert vs Turner Five Stars for Each
  by Rebecca Howard (Boston, MA USA)
Imitation of Life (the Lana Turner) version is one of my favorite movies. I always watch it on television when it is on and like my mother did to me I got my daughter hooked on it also. I never knew there was an original version, so when I saw this special edition, I had to have it. I am happy to say, I found the original Colbert version just as entertaining and enjoyed the black and white movie along with the black screen pauses in between. I also loved that the "claim to fame" was a different theme than the Lana Turner version which made the movie that much more enjoyable. The original version is as much a "tear jerker" as the Turner version. I give this special edition five stars.

5/5 imatation of life
  by Annie Perez (lancaster,ca)
thank you this is a great movie well actually i got 2 movies with the same name and both are very good