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Louise Beavers - Once a pancake, always a pancake!

posted 11 years ago by msladysoul
5 replies | jump to latest

I found Delilah to be hopelessly dumb throughout the film.

She gives her recipe to Bea, and Bea gets rich off of it, Bea offers Delilah money and a chance to have her own place but Delilah rather stay and take care of Bea. Bea was just itching to get rid of Delilah but felt sorry for the pitiful Delilah so Bea let her stay downstairs in her mansion.

Delilah could have been more sympathetic towards Peola. She shouldn't have embarrassed Peola in public when she was passing because that just created more trauma.

Delilah contributes to Peola's downfall. No wonder Peola is self-hating, the mother doesn't teach her daughter any dignity or race pride, because Delilah has none. Then Peola is raised around all white people, never around blacks, how do you expect her to turn out. Then when Jessie calls Peola "black" Delilah tells Bea not to make her daughter apologize because Peola has to "learn" to take it. What kind of teaching is that? Teach your daughter how to put up with hate and racial slurs?

The so-called friendship between Delilah and Bea is not a true friendship because Delilah continuously calls Bea "ma'am" and Bea never tells Delilah not to call her that either. Don't let me forget the feet rubbing, if it was just Delilah being nice to Bea, well how come Bea didn't rub Delilah's feet? Yeah right!

I already know Bea would never have let her daughter Jessie play with Peola if Peola didn't look white. You see as Jessie and Peola get older, their not even close anymore. Jessie doesn't want to be good friends with a black person and mess up her social status.

There's offensive and racist parts throughout the film. I hate how this film portrays being black and mulatto as something to be ashamed of and tragic. When the film should have shown the truth of why Peola wanted to pass, it wasn't because of self-hatred, it was because she wanted freedom and equality like whites. Again white America wasn't ready to accept the truth of their part of creating racism and prejudice in society, so blame the race problem on black people. Throughout the film everyone stares at poor Peola in disbelief, because they can't believe she looks so white, was white America blind at the time? There were thousands upon thousands of mulattoes, check the census, and they've been around a long time, ever since white men started raping black women and having black women as mistresses during slavery time, producing white-looking black children, but we won't get into that. Fredi Washington, the actress who played Peola talked with the writers and directors about making the film more accurate and show Peola wanting to pass because of the hatred of inequality, not because of self-hatred, as a light-skinned black woman who shared some of the same experiences as Peola, I would think Fredi would know what she was talking about. Bea goes on throughout the movie acting like she doesn't understand Peola when she practices racism in her own house. She never invites Peola or Delilah to her glamourous parties, of course not, because it wasn't accepted back then, but its acceptable to get rich off a black person's receipe. Peola and Delilah stay downstairs while Bea and her daughter stay upstairs, another inequality.

It's interesting how whites and blacks see this film differently. Whites see it as non-offensive but blacks see it as offensive, well it just goes to show how not much as changed when it comes to how we see different races. I feel whites don't have the right to say if something is offensive or not regarding black people because their not black. If a black person says its offensive than be empathetic.

I know the first thing that will come out of white people's mouth is "that's the way it was back then," I'm aware of all that, but still we have the freedom to complain now, when we couldn't back almost 80 years ago. We can now critique films and voice or like and dislikes. Just because something was the norm back then, doesn't make it right, back then or now.

I feel sorry for Fredi Washington, she was a beautiful, talented actress, but because she wouldn't pass for white, she didn't have a chance to be a big movie star like Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford. If she had been white, after this film she would have been an overnight sensation and would have went on to be a movie star in Hollywood. Her portrayal of Peola was so moving because she had some of the same experiences as Peola. Interesting, how Hollywood made this movie on race relations when their practicing racism themselves. Fredi Washington was the first and only black in early Hollywood to actually portray a mulatto. In other films about mulattoes, Hollywood always got whites to play mulattoes like in Showboat, Lost Boundaries, Pinky, and the later version of Imitation of Life, another racist move of Hollywood's, it seems they were afraid of casting real biracial actors and actresses, so they would get ethnic looking whites to play the mulatto roles.

All in all this movie is really good, in spite of some racism, I prefer this version to the later version of Imitation of Life, but I think Juanita Moore played a stronger woman with dignity in the later version, more so than Louise Beavers. I believe Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington makes this film, without them the film would be boring. If the supporting actress category was around in 1934, I believe one of them could have been the first black to win an Oscar before Hattie McDaniels.

Imitation of Life is just a movie but it shows the ugly truth of how things were back then!

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] kueskues 11 years ago

I think that she was a vehicle to help bring to light racial issues to mainstream audiences. If she wasn't "dumb" then the racial issues would not be in the story. Which for me is the very core of the movie. Take all that out imo what's to watch?

[–] bradford-1 8 years ago

I'm a middle-aged black male. My mother actually saw this in a theater with a mostly black audience when it was reissued. She thinks it may have '39 or '40. The projectionist had to stop the movie because people were throwing various objects at the screen. What particularly incensed the audince was Delilah's dog-like devotion to Bea and her refusal to get her own crib. Ma says many folks were screaming things like "You KNOW white folks wrote this *&##@!" and "Bi-itch, quit rubbing that &#$**'s feet!"

May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?

[–] digitaldiva 8 years ago

Hi Bradford-1,

Yes, I've read the same comments. A number of people hated the film. In fact, when the movie was realized a number of black intellectuals hated it. I think Langston Hughes, a friend of Fanny Hurst's even wrote a satirical version with a white actress playing the Delilah part.

[–] kmc-4 8 years ago

All in all this movie is really good, in spite of some racism, I prefer this version to the later version of Imitation of Life, but I think Juanita Moore played a stronger woman with dignity in the later version, more so than Louise Beavers.

I think both factors (the racism in the '30s version and the way that Juanita Moore played in the '50s version) were products of the times when the films were made. In the '30s, this movie would have been extremely progressive in terms of race relations.

By the '50s, the country had been through World War II, the military had been integrated, Brown Vs. Topeka was happening, etc. If the filmmakers were in tune with civil rights at all, then they may have realized just how often black female actresses were cast in stereotypical roles as maids and prostitutes. They would may have been less likely to make a black female character into a stereotypical mamie like they may have in the past.