Marriage Is a Private Affair

... 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 product of a broken home who has been raised by her cynical, much-married mother, Lana Turner enters into the kind of hasty wartime marriage everyone in 1944 was being warned against. And the man she chooses is stable, romantic and old-fashioned. Uh-oh. This picture shows how 'women's films' and 'soap operas' could sometimes tackle modern life's most important moral and ethical situations. Turner's character wants to commit herself to her marriage but realizes she hasn't the experience or the emotional tools to be a good wife, nor does she have the example of her parents' happy marriage to follow. MARRIAGE IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR explores that dilemma and does it very entertainingly. Too bad Lana didn't take the film's theme to heart!

As the newlyweds, Turner and John Hodiak have a wonderful sensuality and seeming spontaneity together during the scenes that take place on their honeymoon as they are first getting to know each other. And the movie presents a very interesting moral complication when it introduces the threesome that are Hodiak's closest friends from childhood. Consisting of a married couple and their male pal, Hodiak idealizes them but Turner recognizes the sexual tensions that will eventually threaten that marriage. For those who assume that '40s films never dealt with sexual issues, this picture might be a refreshing surprise, especially since it came from MGM, Hollywood's most conservative studio.

And for those who generally think of Lana Turner's late films when you think of her at all, her work in this and other early '40s pictures might surprise you too. Looking ravishingly pretty with a lush but trim body, in these years Turner actually seems to look at and listen to her fellow actors, and speaks her lines with expression and emotion, a real contrast to her sluggish, lazy late work.

this is truly a collectors item. turner is at her most beautiful, all baby doll pout and velvet sincerity. production values are high. its a cult film that merits rediscovery. a big hit in 1944, it grossed 2 million at the box office, in the days when a hit was really a hit. audiences loved lana in her dimpled heyday and this film screens like a valentine to her sensuality. don't miss it. they don't make stars like lana anymore. gore vidal is on record as saying that he saw this film while young and that it had an impact on him. he mentioned it years later in myra breckinridge. tennesse williams worked on an early draft of the screenplay, and privately referred to it as a celluloid brassiere for miss turner!

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.

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.