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

SAM STAGGS is the author of four books, including three previous biographies of movies: All About All About Eve, Close-Up On Sunset Boulevard, and When Blanche Met Brando. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

The author of ALL ABOUT ALL ABOUT EVE tackles a classic Douglas Sirk movie, 1959's IMITATION OF LIFE, starring Lana Turner—a movie that is campy, thematically rich, and best of all, set against the backdrop of its glamorous star's tabloid-headline life.

The Barnes & Noble Review

"I hope I'll always retain a fan's enthusiasm," Sam Staggs declares at the beginning of Born to Be Hurt, his love letter to director Douglas Sirk's 1959 classic Imitation of Life. "Look what happens to those who don't: Their writings convince you that movies are punishment." Staggs, author of All About All About Eve, is nothing if not enthusiastic. Every page of his book is brimming with passionate devotion to the film that gave top billing to Lana Turner -- who serves up a campy performance as actress Lora Meredith -- but is remembered for the plot surrounding Lora's African-American nanny, Annie, and her light-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane, who rejects her mother and passes for white. Staggs' breathless interviews with Juanita Moore, who played Annie, and Susan Kohner, who played Sarah Jane, greatly enrich the book, but the author doesn't stop there, turning up information on seemingly every other member of cast and crew. He also recounts the turbulence behind the scenes: The film was Turner's first following the murder of her gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, at the hands of her teenage daughter (a shaken Turner apparently became so hysterical filming Annie's funeral that her on-set hairdresser slapped her and then hugged her, a scene that itself sounds straight out of a sudsy melodrama). In dissecting the cult favorite, which was reviled by reviewers upon its release but has since been reappraised, Staggs manages to bring in Thoreau, Nietzsche, and Shakespeare, making this infectious book as over-the-top as, well, a Douglas Sirk film. --Barbara Spindel

Introduction Recapturing the Past 1

1 A Small Giant 15

2 The Good and Faithful Servant 22

3 A Few Things in Movies 32

4 Susan Sightings 40

5 An Intimate Confession from Susan Kohner 49

6 Becoming Sarah Jane 55

7 If Love Could Kill 60

8 Will Lana Win the Oscar? 69

9 "Take Away the Sweater and What Have You Got?" 73

10 A Portrait of the Artist as Hero and Bully 80

11 Sirk du Soleil 92

12 Hitler's Madman 98

13 The Shaky Megastar and the Sepia Hollywood Hope 104

14 Locations, Locations 112

15 Two Little Girls 118

16 "Was Jesus White or Black?" 121

17 Sorrow Set to Music 126

18 The Rocking Chair Blues 130

19 The Lady and the Bullfighter 141

20 No Beefcake, Please, We're Republican 148

21 Pretty Baby 160

22 "If Troy Donahue Can Be a Movie Star, Then I Can Be a Movie Star" 171

23 Further Down the Credits 182

24 Jack Weston and the Citizen's Arrest in Beverly Hills 194

25 Joel Fluellen 200

26 The Kind of Playwright Who Flings His Manuscript in the Fire 209

27 "My Family at the Studio" 217

28 The Business of Glamoo 228

29 "Turn Again to Life, and Smile" 239

30 The Case of the Missing Screenwriter 244

31 Gowns by Jean-Louis 255

32 Underscore 263

33 The Unknown Mogul 270

34 "Goin' to Glory" 279

35 Hallelujah! 287

36 Nobody Liked It but the Public 292

37 The Compromised Oscar 303

38 Mr. and Mrs. Weitz 305

39 A Late Encounter with L. T. 310

40 Imitation of Half-Life 317

41 Gentlemen Prefer Lypsinka 326

42 There Once Was a Lady Named Fannie 333

43 John M. Stahl 338

44 No Falling Diamonds 343

45 The Bizarre, Conflicted Reality of the Era 353

46 Miss Bea, Aunt Delilah, the Tragic Mulatto, and the Movie Star Spy360

47 Reflection of Life 372

Acknowledgments 375

Selected Bibliography 379

Notes 385

Index 399