Imitation of Life (1934)

This one's a great melodrama that’s better than its remake (a film I saw a few times growing up since it happened to be one of my mother's favorite movies).  Colbert plays a young widow with a toddler who has a chance meeting with Delilah, a black woman with a young daughter of her own, looking for work. Turns out her new maid can cook a mean pancake and they’re soon in the restaurant business.

All that’s fine and good, but the real meat of the story is how mothers give up happiness for their children. The black daughter passes easily for white and doesn’t like it when her mom ruins the charade.  The white daughter falls in love with her mother's fiancee, so mom gives him up so as not to rub salt in her girl's wound.

I’d like it a lot better if Delilah weren’t such a doormat martyr, but the power of both mother-love stories is undeniable.

B+