Career Highlights: Imitation of Life, The Gene Krupa Story, All the Fine Young Cannibals
First Major Screen Credit: To Hell and Back (1955)
Biography
In the light of today's tinderbox racial tensions, it is hardly likely that a white actress would be cast as a light-skinned black girl. But that's just what happened in 1959, when actress Susan Kohner played the troubled Sara Jane in the Ross Hunter-produced remake of Imitation of Life -- and nobody thought ill of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they nominated Kohner for an Oscar. The daughter of American producer Paul Kohner and Mexican actress Lupita Tovar, Susan began her seven-year film career when she was signed by Universal in 1955. She retired from acting in 1962, after playing Martha Freud opposite Montgomery Clift in John Huston's Freud; two years later, she married fashion designer John Weitz. Susan Kohner's activities in the 1990s include serving on the board of directors of the Juilliard School of Music, and hosting a weekly radio program for the blind. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Most of Kohner's film roles came during the late 1950s and early 1960s, including co-starring with Sal Mineo in The Gene Krupa Story
(1959) and with Montgomery Clift in Freud
(1962).
She is most notable for portraying Sarah Jane, the light-skinned African American teenage daughter who passes for white in the 1959color remake of Imitation of Life.
According to the character, Ms. Annie Johnson (when Ms. Johnson first meets the Lora Meredith character), Sarah Jane's father was
not white but a light-skinned black man. The role garnered her a nomination for the 1960Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the 1960
Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress
- Motion Picture. Juanita Moore, who plays Kohner's heart-broken mother in the
film, also won a nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
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