Imitation of Life (1934)

1934 • 111 minutes

About this movie

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.