Claudette Colbert plays a widowed mother trying to run her husbands business after his death. She takes in a black woman (Louise Beavers) and her fair-skinned daughter to help. She loves Beavers' pancakes and gets her to start a successful business with her. The movie skips ahead years later when Beavers' daughter (Fredi Washington) is trying to pass herself off as white...and things go out of control.<br /><br />This is important as one of the first movies to deal honestly with racism and the self-hatred of fair-skinned black people. It is well done and Colbert and Beavers are excellent...BUT this is very dated. Colbert convinces Beavers to sell over her pancake recipe and has her doing all the cooking for the shop! Later, when Beavers is getting rich, she refuses to get her own house and insists on staying with Colbert--living in the basement no less! And Beavers is ridiculously nice, sweet and kind ALWAYS (credit Beavers to pulling it off). Also it hits you over the head with sentimentality. Nothing wrong with sentimental movies but really--this one over does it! Some scenes with Washington were so overdone I thought they were kidding.<br /><br />So this is historically important but just too dated and slow to really be enjoyable. The Lana Turner remake is much better.