Marriage Is a Private Affair

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.