Marriage Is a Private Affair

Marriage Is A Private Affair was the first film that Lana Turner did post the birth of her daughter Cheryl Crane. I guess that's what gives the scenes of Turner with her infant son in this film some special poignancy.

Turner is an irrepressible flirt, the kind who has to be the center of attention at all times. She gets that from her mother Natalie Schaefer who is on her latest husband Paul Cavanaugh. Schaefer has a Zsa Zsa Gabor like attitude toward marriage which she has passed on to her daughter.

But Lana does fall for and marry John Hodiak who is something of an inventor and considered necessary to the war effort so he can't activate his commission and get where the fighting is. They have a kid and it works for a while. But she gets bored and wants to see if she still is attractive even after marriage and childbirth. She tries flirting with flier James Craig to see if she still has it.

Marriage Is A Private Affair was also the first film Lana Turner did with billing alone above the title. She does a fine job as a girl who turns into a woman and finally decides to grow up. Her two leads Craig and Hodiak are also well cast in their parts.

Also in the cast are Herbert Rudley and Frances Gifford a seemingly happily married couple with some secrets and issues. Gifford is a lot like Turner. Hugh Marlowe is in this as well as a scientist friend of Hodiak's also anxious to get to war.

Probably had this film been done in about 10 years at least after the second World War we might have seen Turner more loose and slatternly, but during wartime there was no way Hollywood would show a star like Turner being less than true, flirting yes, but cheating a definite no-no.

True blue women is part of what we were fighting for.

Lana Turner was a true movie star, and she again proves it in this vehicle, "Marriage is a Private Affair," from 1944, which stars Lana with John Hodiak and James Craig. The Taylors, the Gables et al. were off fighting the war.

Turner plays a young woman, Theo, extremely popular with the men, who marries a soldier (Hodiak) whom she barely knows, Lieutenant Tom West. Nevertheless, they are happy at first, and have a son. But Tom's work keeps him busy for hours on end, and Theo starts to miss all the attention she once had. She also misses being perceived as a young beauty; now she's a married woman with a child. Because Theo comes from a family where her mother (Natalie Schaefer) was much married and divorced, Theo begins to worry that she's not cut out for marriage, especially when an old beau (Braig) puts the moves on her, and she's tempted.

"Marriage is a Private Affair" is overly long, and the script isn't much, but it was no doubt relevant in wartime when women married men in haste who then went overseas.

This film is really all Lana, absolutely gorgeous, with her beautiful face, figure, and soft speaking voice, a vivacious, flirtatious, and sexy woman who still had elements of a young girl. She really had something special. Later in her life, the energy drained from her, and the scandals, the smoking, drinking, and sun damage all took effect, even if she remained beautiful. But the effervescence was gone.

Back in the late '30s and into the '40s, Lana's star presence could - and did - elevate the most tedious of films. Later on, with the big sunglasses, fur coat and head covered with a scarf, she did, too, but for different reasons. This film is pleasant enough - without her, it wouldn't be worth watching. I highly recommend it if you're not familiar with the young Lana.

Lana Turner, in one of her earliest movies where she takes center stage and top billing, stars in this comedy-drama about marriage being nobody's business but the couple's. James Craig loves her, even though she marries John Hodiak. This does start off talking silly, as John proposes to her and on their honeymoon, but it's to the movie's credit and intelligence that it plays out very well in its treatment of its characters and make them very relate-able to the audience, the other characters being John's friends Sissy and Ted, a married couple, and Joe, played by Hugh Marlowe. Lana's mother (played by Natalie Shafer, who was Mrs. Howell from Gilligan's Island) was in and out of marriages all the time and did not provide Lana with a good role model. But, the viewer is left with the message that you should work in your own garden, before tending to someone else's, that you should go into it, knowing who you are and that all decisions have consequences. "Marriage is a Private Affair" is one of Lana's best unknown movies and needs to be discovered by more people today.

... in that it is not that much about how the war impacts the homefront but just shows domestic situations as they exist during the war.

Theo (Lana Turner) is a popular girl who hangs out at an officer's club in New York. She meets Lieutenant Tom West (John Hodiak), and picks him from the pack of suitors that she has to marry. The sweetest part of the film is when they are on their honeymoon, getting to know each other since they hastily married. They have very different backgrounds - He's Boston born and bred, with parents who have been married 30 years. Her parents were divorced when she was an infant and mom (Natalie Schafer) has been a serial monogamist ever since.

There are a couple of unexpected turns from the beginning. Ted's father dies suddenly, and the War Dept. Cancels Ted's commission because he is an expert in lens design and his business partner, Joe (Hugh Marlowe), is an unreliable drunk - He's needed at home to work on lens designs for army equipment. The end result is the post-war post-Honeymoon part of their marriage starts sooner than originally planned.

Ted spends long hours at work, and it seems that you can take the girl out of the party but you can't take the party out of the girl. Now that's not such an unusual thing, not even in films going back to the silent era. What's different is that Turner and the script make this more of a three-dimensional situation than it usually is in movies of this era. It's part a product of the couple's hasty marriage, part Theo's upbringing where she witnessed marriage to be a transient thing that makes it hard for her to commit or be sure of anything, and partly her unrealistic expectations of just how long the honeymoon will last. Throw in a couple of iconoclastic situations involving people she looked up to and Theo is one confused girl.

This is a wartime film where the conflicts are completely emotional and not grounded in action at all. If you can deal with that you will probably enjoy it.

Just a note - Even though Natalie Schafer looks very young here, she actually was old enough to be Lana Turner's mother.

The makers of this film had a premise: a woman whose childhood makes her a rather flakey person, a bit unsure of herself, picks one of her many suitors just to see if she can. But from there, the movie forgets drama. Why should she come to embrace marriage? It's not the birth of her son. It's not any one thing that happens to her. There's no plot catalyst in this movie, no psychological edge. It's more like a soap opera, where the characters change for no particular reason.