Golden oldie!!

This is the type of movie we should all be watching.. good story and has a lesson to it. A real "tear-jerker."

Imitation of Laff

A lot of people love this movie and so do I--but probably not for the same reason. Not for nothing was this the last gasp of the Ross Hunter tearjerkers in the "Imitation of Life"/"Back Street" mode. By the mid-Sixties, this type of hokum was far more comic than melodramatic--just look at the ridiculous casting, which includes a 40-something Lana Turner (who'd just played Sandra Dee's mother/stepmother in her last few pictures) as a young bride. . . having her first child! Surrounding her with inappropriate actors like bland John Forsythe (as her middle-aged ambitious "young" husband) and veteran Constance Bennett (who somehow looks more like Lana's younger sister than her mother-in-law) didn't help realism. Cheesy production values and anacronisms (all the women are dressed in the height of Sixties middlebrow fashions--in scenes taking place thirty years earlier!) just add to the fun. A real howl, especially when an Oscar-hungry Turner goes to pot in the final reels. You'll cry alright--with laughter.

One of the Greats!

If you're looking for a rainy afternoon or late night tearjerker, bursting at the seams with impeccable style, glamour and delicious disaster, this is your film. Only Lana Turner can deliver such wistful heartbreak in the finest gowns and jewels one instant, and next be the tragic victim of misfortune, suffering as only those who fall from on high can know. To call it melodrama would be an insult, this is classic cinema, with Hollywood royalty.