Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life

by Sam Staggs

In a passionate and witty behind-the-scenes expose, the author of All About "All About Eve" takes on the classic 1959 Douglas Sirk film starring Lana Turner

Few films inspire the devotion of Imitation of Life, one of the most popular films of the '50s--a split personality drama that's both an irresistible women's picture and a dark commentary on ambition, motherhood, racial identity, and hope lost and found.

Born to be Hurt is the first in-depth account of director Sirk's masterpiece. Lana Turner, on the brink of personal and professional ruin starred as Lora Meredith. African-American actress Juanita Moore played her servant and dearest friend, and Sandra Dee and Susan Kohner their respective daughters, caught up in the heartbreak of the black-passing-for-white daughter in the 1950s. Both Moore and Kohner were Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actress.

Sam Staggs combines vast research, extensive interviews with surviving cast members, and superb storytelling into a masterpiece of film writing. Entertaining, saucy, and incisive, this is irresistible reading for every film fan.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, History

432 pages, Hardcover

First published February 17, 2009

About the author

Sam Staggs is the author of several books, including biographies of movies: All About All About Eve, Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard, When Blanche Met Brando, and Born to be Hurt. He has written for publications including Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Reviews

[Michael Thomas Angelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam Staggs is a wordsmith. I consider myself to have an above average grasp on vocabulary but found myself running to dictionary.com every time I turned a page. I felt like an idiot but learned new words along with facets of that film that otherwise would have been deemed too obscure to recall. He has anecdotes about every character and the politics of nearly every scene. I had forgotten that Troy Donahue played the blond boyfriend that beats up Sarah Jane when he fiunds out she's black. There'a a whole section about Troy based on that scene. I learned that Sarah Kohler who played Sarah Jane was noteworthy beyond that role. Lana's daughter Cheryl Crane said she felt inferior to Sandra Dee who played the daughter in Imitation of Life because her "pert, pretty and blond" looks resembled Lana more than she thought she did. There are scenes in the film that Cheryl says could have been lifted directly out of their own true life interactions. Cheryl says that she was seldom sure if Lana was being true or simply running through a scene she had rehearsed on set somewhere. As if art imitates life, Sandra Dee has a scene where she exasperatedly admonishes Lora, "Oh, Mother stop acting! Stop moving people around as if they were pawns on a stage." Cheryl reports having said the very same thign to Lana herself. Even the color of her bedroom and the location of the private school attended by the daughter were the same. The fact that the film's title reflects the uncanny similarities between the lives of onscreen and real life mother and daughter simply happened by chance. They couldn't have known just how much the film truly imitated the life of its star.
I read Sam Staggs book on All ABout Eve called All About All About Eve. It was full of factoids, none of which I remember at present. He did make a point to say how unorthodox it was that the film's cast flew to San Francisco instead of take the train as Bette did. In 1950, trains were the preferred route of travel over airplanes. How times have changed. Incidentally, I live very close to to the Curran Theater where Eve was filmed. I love to walk by the stage door where Anne Bancroft meets Celeste Holm. I get deja-vu every time.
I have been a fan of Douglas Sirk's Technicolor melodrama since I was 14. I can't wait to read Stagg's take on the rich, camp classic. I want to hear about Mahalia Jackson and if he has any insight about the crow feather hat that Lana wore to Annie's funeral. It was over the top as much as Sarah Jane wanted to be as white as the horses that drew her mother's hearse. The ones that nearly trampled her when she threw herself in front of the line of traffic in a last ditch effort to connect with the mother she relegated to "Negranny" status her whole life. Poor Sarah Jane. Lana was a bitch for making SJ serve those crawdads on her head the night that the Italian director stayed to supper.
I love the title of this book. When people see it on my coffee table, it arouses comments. What can a book called Born to be Hurt possibly be about? Child Abuse? Suicide? They never believe me when I introduce Imitation of Life.

[Graceann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sam Staggs would like you to know that Imitation of Life (1959) is a masterpiece. That's a fact. Period. If you need reminding, he'll take 372 pages and do just that. If you prefer the 1934 version (as I do), you're wrong. If you consider the 1959 version to be somewhat camp, or soapy (as I do), you're wrong. Got it? You think you do, but perhaps being beaten against the eyeballs for 300+ pages will ensure these facts stay with you forever.

Once you get past this confusion of opinion with fact, this is a fascinating look at what went on behind the scenes of the filming of the second iteration of Imitation of Life. Juanita Moore was still around when the book was being written and shared her reminiscences, and Susan Kohner (and her mother, Lupita Tovar Kohner - who was already in her 90s and is still with us in 2015) clearly spent a lot of time talking with Staggs, not only about making this film, but about her career in general.

The film was was the first professional gig Lana Turner had after the Johnny Stompanato scandal, and it was a much-needed boost for her. Not only did it go over well with audiences (critics, not so much), but the filming atmosphere was supportive and protective. Susan Kohner had help from her parents (her father was uber-agent Paul Kohner, who represented just about everyone on the set) and her movie-mother, Juanita Moore.

Lots of the proverbial unsung heroes get their mentions here - this really was a collaboration that worked. From Ross Hunter and Douglas Sirk, to Troy Donahue and Robert Alda, everyone gets a bit of page-time. Even the young woman who only had one scene with Kohner (though it is a pivotal one) gets a mention.

The original film, and its director, John Stahl, get chapters, as well. As you might imagine, the author's opinion of them is not favorable. Claudette Colbert, especially, comes in for some rather pointed commentary. Yes, we get it; you're not a fan.

Born to Be Hurt was worth reading for me because of the backstage stories and the real life situations the cast and crew were dealing with during filming. I was also interested in audience and critical reaction to the film upon its release, and all this is there. I would have preferred to be presented with the information and left to formulate my own opinion, however, rather than be told (over and over again) what that opinion must be.

[Hester · Rating 1 out of 5]

Imitation Of Life is one of my guilty pleasures, so when I heard about this book I just had to read it. Sadly the writing is poor and Staggs has a tendency to jump around which made it difficult to follow and I lost interest quickly. I never did finish reading it nor do I have any desire too. A great subject deserves a better writer.

[Tristan Robin Blakeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I've finally worked by way through the four book Sam Staggs series of behind the scenes movie books. I started out with 'All About All About Eve' which was great fun and got me started on my journey through them all. 'When Blanche met Brando' wasn't as much fun ... perhaps because I did my graduate work in Tennessee Williams, but there was little new to discover in that book - just a rehash of lots of oft-told tales - entertaining, but nothing very revealing to a true fan. The third book, 'Close-up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream' was by far the least interesting. Lots of contract information and scheduling issues which I realize go into making a movie, but don't really go into making a very enthralling book. Because the previous two books weren't very good, and "Imitation of Life" (the Lana Turner version) has never been my favorite film, I was just going to skip this one. Then, I decided what the heck - might as well finish the series and put a big closed sign on the franchise.
I'm so glad I chose to read it! This book was very very interesting. Not only full of background information, interviews with surviving stars, and problems with getting a film about race made in Hollywood in the 1950's, it is a marvelous primer on style, design, camera work, and the choices that made a Douglas Sirk/Ross Hunter film so distinctive.
To my mind, there was a bit too much made of the importance of the film. Though it was extremely popular (it was said to have saved Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy); and saved Lana Turner's career, fresh from the career-killer of her daughter being on trial for murdering Lana's gangster boyfriend. It was also one of the first films made about the 'race issue' in America which attracted both black and white audiences. So it certainly deserves its place in cinema history (and fully intend to watch it again the next time it's on TCM with 'new eyes'), but I feel the author seems to give it a rare place of importance in film history between "All's Quiet on the Western Front," "Citizen Kane," "The Color Purple," and "Mildred Pierce" ... and, well, it just ain't so. But, the book is an easy, quick read and should be interesting to anybody interested in behind-the-scenes look at movie making, getting a block-buster movie to the screen, or creating a glossy, smart, chic soap opera with serious social commentary at its core.

[Marc Bentley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Staggs is far from the best writer, and this book is oddly structured, discussing first the 1959 version, then the earlier 1934 version. However, nobody writes about film like Staggs does - he's a fan, first and foremost, so he's extremely passionate about the films he writes about. He's disdainful of the prose of film scholars, thus leading to his own style which can be a bit over-the-top at times. However, Staggs does an excellent job at talking to the main players (those alive) and researching to fill in the pieces as best as humanly possible; he's got the connections that make the book worthwhile to read. The best thing about Staggs is the attention he plays to multiple facets of the film's production; this is not an auteur heavy piece about Sirk; instead, it looks at the actors, screenwriters, producer,technical crew, and, yes, the director. Beyond that, though, Staggs is willing to give space to minor character actors who appear in the film, some of whom are long forgotten to cinema fans. Without Staggs' record, however small it may be, many of these character actors would be forgotten in the glitter of Hollywood's yesterdays. If you read this, read it for fun, read it for enjoyment. It is now, and it does not attempt to be, film scholarship.

[Oolookitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty good read... but it might have been even better if it were a straight-ahead look at the making of this movie, without Stagg's increasingly annoying opinionated asides about the merits of today's Hollywood stars, the deficits of Claudette Colbert in the original version, and so on and so on. It gets even more irritating when he repeats himself... okay, we get it, you're not a big fan of Nicole Kidman. I don't see what that has to do with "Imitation of Life"... and with Stagg's over-the-top hero worship of Lana Turner, who really is just okay in the film. He's also really kind of rabid about how much better the second film is than the first film (which gives him a chance to attack Colbert and Warren William), an opinion with which I disagree. The second film is odd in that the African-American character has no real relevance to the rise of the white character; in the original movie, which was closer to the novel's story, the white woman's rise to fame and money is because of the black woman's secret waffle recipe. In the newer version, she's strictly a maid/housekeeper. Not so interesting.

Anyway, an intriguing look at the making of the movie, but Stagg gets in his own way by interjecting himself too much into the history.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an exhaustingly dense and in depth expose of the making of Imitation of Life.

Staggs documents the on and off stage lives of not only the major stars and director (Turner, Dee, Sirk) but every bit player, every extra, every lighting man, every wardrobe designer, every scriptwriter, every set designer etc. etc. Then as if that's not enough he starts in on the 1934 version as well.

Staggs is also overly opinionated about other present day directors in comparison to Sirk. I mean how can you not like, or at least appreciate, the talents of Fassbinder or Ozon? And comparing them to Sirk is like apples and oranges.

It's an interesting read and there's some juicy tibits of gossip but it's so incredibly dense that a quarter of the way through I started to lose interest. It took me 5 months to complete this for that simple fact alone.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The enjoyment of reading about movies for me has always been the minutia. Who sang for Rita Hayworth in Gilda? Where did the dining room set come from and what the hell happened to the deleted scenes? Sam Staggs provides ample dirt on Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and more, including brief biographies of nearly everyone who worked on the film, uncredited screenwriters included -- Bless you, Staggs! We even get background on the 1934 Claudette Colbert version. The result is less a "making of" book than a picture of a transient yet vibrant community. If I've one minor issue, it's his lack of restraint when expressing personal distaste. Although most of the time, I agreed with him. John Gavin sounds wetter than the blankets he used to daintily cover up the beefcake.

[Ron Popp · Rating 1 out of 5]

Literally the most pretentious book I've ever read.

I've read The authors books on All About Eve and Sunset Blvd and found them entertaining (if sometimes meandering)

This one is ridiculous. Regardless of your opinion on the film, novel or original film very few people would rank any of them up with the greatest films ever made. The author talks down to readers who feel differently than he does.

Seriously, skip this one

[Marc Andrew Downing · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well researched book

[Russell Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Staggs writes an exhaustive look at the 1959 film Imitation of Life, one of my favorites, in his book Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life. This was my second reading the book, and I found it just as fascinating, enlightening, and entertaining as the first reading. For me, Staggs is at his best when he sticks to the facts. His telling of the mechanics of the film is wonderful. From the broad strokes about Universal Pictures, the film review board’s reaction to the script, the fashions created for star Lana Turner, and so much more, to the minutiae of the shooting schedule, the salaries, etc. I was also totally enthralled by his thorough mini-biographies of everyone—from actors to producer to scriptwriters to director to technical designers. I was less happy when Staggs ventured into criticism…not the published reports of the film but Staggs’s own opinions. Coupled with his opinions about actors and directors not even connected to Imitation of Life, I was less inclined to believe in or care about his assessments of the subject of his book. As for his writing, the book reads like it was intended for a popular, regular movie-going audience, and yet several times Staggs uses vocabulary that tripped me up. I’m well-read, an English teacher, and a writer myself, and yet oftentimes I read one of Staggs’s words and didn’t know the meaning nor could even figure out the meaning through comparing parts of the words to others I know. The pluses of the book, however, outweigh the minuses. And I’m glad I’ve read it—twice.

[Malia · Rating 5 out of 5]

You might want to start off by watching the movie first because a lot of people have a hard time reading the book. A Lot of people love the movie more than the book because they feel like it’s just to complicated to read, and that it’s also boring. I loved reading this book, it was very heartwarming and sad at the same time. Almost every character is going through a hard stage of their life, even though every situation is different, no matter how difficult or very little their problem is, they all seem to be dealing with it in their own way. I also watched the movie, I cried at the end. I just love this movie so much, that I own it. There are different versions but the best one is, the 1959, starring Luna Turner. Trust me.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about the 1959 version of the movie inspired by the book. I personally like the 1934 version with Claudette Colbert better but what can you say? Everyone is different.

[David Klingenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

The deep and wide dive into all things concerning this film is a treasure; the catty prose—“The song belongs to that genre of Mama songs calculated to jerk a tear from the Sahara”—not so much.

[Zandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because I loved the moving "Iminatin of Life." However, I wasn't compelled to read this cover to cover because I just couldn't get with the style of writing. Instead I flipped through and read the parts that caught my eye. I'm happy that I was able to learn some things I didn't know before. If anything, this serves as good reference for the movie.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Douglas Sirk and was recommended this book by my librarian. First I watched Imitation of Life again and then read this book. It was very informative and contained a lot of background info on the stars and crew of the movie. If you haven't seen this film, see it now.

[Rhonda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A classic movie and while I tend to be analytical to a fault, I found this hard to read. Lots of opinionated sidebars.