Strong and Moving!

People are voting emotionally.

Boring

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

"Lovey Howell" (Natalie Schafer) tries to steal the opening scenes, but no-one could steal the show away from the beautiful Lana Turner. Turner is "Theo", the bride, who tries to keep her mother from butting in. James Craig is "Miles", the close friend, but she will marry "Tom West", a good soldier from Boston (John Hodiak). This was a WW II film, so of course, the issues of war, and getting married before one goes off to war were in everyone's mind. This was an earlier credited role for most of the cast, but it all comes off quite well. Not much of a deep story, but it's well done. Turner really lit up any scene, once they put a light on her. ( If you haven't seen Postman Always Rings Twice, it's her shining role!) The ups and downs of married life. It's a bit of war time propaganda... Lana always seems to be thinking out loud, voicing all her thoughts all the time, whether she's with her friends or her husband, almost in a child-like fashion. At one point, Theo looks at a sign that says "DO NOT ENTER".. and enters anyway, destroying army equipment. Seems pretty unrealistic. How entitled of her! About half way through, the plot goes off in other directions, and it gets more serious. It's almost two hours, but they could have done all this in shorter time. It's pretty good. I'm sure it carried more weight with folks who really were going through all these same issues during wartime. Directed by Robert Leonard, who had started EARLY in the silents.

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, 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.

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.