Marriage Is a Private Affair

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.

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.

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!

As the somewhat Margaret Dumont-ish title would indicate this is a classic chick flic with acting and dialogue pitched squarely at the lady's magazine crowd; you know, lots of gasps, raised eyebrows, meaningful gazes and lines like "If you lie to me about the maple leaf, Tom, then..." However, if you can get past the foregoing, as well as the Hays Office BS (Double beds on a friggin HONEYMOON?) and Robert Z Leonard's rather placid direction, then there are some pleasures to be had. Not the least among them (gee, I'm starting to write like this film!) is Lana Turner's better than expected performance in the lead, especially in the scenes with her wayward, matrimony loving mom, played to comedic perfection by Natalie Schaefer about twenty years before her three hour cruise (By the way, RIP Dawn Welles. That leaves only Tina Louise on the island) and one of the more well staged disastrous dinner parties you'll see on celluloid. Give it a C plus. PS...It took about three days to get Bronislau Kaper's voluble, intrusive score outa my head.

I liked it. I thought it portrayed the struggles which many of us have. Lana Turner's character is undecided in life about quite a few issues, particularly marriage, though she also seems to have certain ideal views of these subjects. The last half of the movie I thought had the plot thicken so that her ambivalence would indeed make her character get stretched to the testing point. Actually quite a few testing points occur: with longtime boyfriend, husband, girlfriend, etc. After seeing the wreckage in her life and those around her, she does reach some mature decisions.

While we each may not have the same marriage commitment problem this movie showed, we can nonetheless use it as metaphor for our other personal struggles.