The black single mother agrees to do the housework and take care of the children so the white single mother can be free to pursue business ventures. Both films utilize two dominant black characters of old Hollywood: the Mammy and the tragic Mulatto. .
The Mammy is a character trope in the same vein as the coon and the Uncle Tom. She, like many other tropes, is mostly used for lighthearted comic relief. However, she separates herself from the others with her fierce independence and intensely maternal nature. She is usually an overweight, darker woman who is transcendently maternal and completely desexualized, so as not to be a threat to any white characters. This caricature is used to posit proof that blacks were contented, even happy, with their societal position. Contrast to the Mammy is the tragic Mulatto. The Mulatto is a mixed race person, usually a beautiful girl, who is assumed to be in constant anguish because they fail to identify with black culture or white culture. As such, the tragedy is drawn from the Mulatto being a victim of a society divided by race, where there is no exact place for one who is neither completely black nor white. While a dramatic archetype, the tragic mulatto serves as the closest character trope a black female audience member can relate to, not because she wishes to be seen as white but rather she looks into a white world and does not see herself there. .
In Sirk's version of Imitation of Life (1959), the Mammy character is a woman named Annie. At first glance Annie doesn't seem to quite fit the role of Mammy. Physically compared to Stahl's version, a woman named Delilah; she is thinner and lighter as well as more composed. Her dress is more modern, sans a handkerchief, she has no trace of an accent, and she lives with Lora out of necessity, not obligation. Still, Annie's character is coded as a Mammy. The first time we are introduced to Annie, she is looking after Susie.
