Ma vie à moi

Lana Turner plays a woman who leaves her small town to go to New York to get into the modeling business.

It's a magazine-fiction type of story that is given some depth, intelligence, and color by George Cukor's direction.

Cukor does all sorts of nice things with the milieu, the supporting cast, the situations, and the performances of the leads, perhaps to obscure the fact that this isn't a very compelling story.

Predictably, Lana's character gets involved with a married man (Ray Milland). Her lover's long- suffering wife (Margaret Phillips) is bedridden. The man cares about his wife, but also about his girlfriend. He nearly goes off the deep end worrying about it all.

Ann Dvorak in a supporting role as an aging, bitter model steals the show, more or less, though a little of her (and her role) goes a long way. We also get to see Barry Sullivan, Tom Ewell, Jean Hagen, Betsy Blair, Richard Hart, Louis Calhern, and many others. The supporting cast is really great.

By the way, Ray Milland was a replacement for Wendell Corey, who reportedly was fired after making a snide remark when Lana was late to the set (for an apparently legitimate reason having to do with her wardrobe). Supposedly, Corey told Turner that Barbara Stanwyck (with whom he had recently starred) never kept a cast and crew waiting. Since there were rumors Lana had had an affair with Stanwyck's husband, Robert Taylor, the crack seemed especially pointed. At any rate, Lana refused to work with him after that.

A Life Of Her Own was one of two pictures produced by MGM's influential Voldemar Vetluguin, a former editor of Redbook magazine. The other was East Side, West Side (1949).

I'm not sure at what point Lana Turner went from being "The Sweater Girl" to super-sonic Drama Queen, but it certainly could have been around the time George Cukor's "A Life of Her Own" was released in 1950. Lily James (Turner) is a young woman from a small town who comes to New York based on a letter she received from a modeling agency owned by Tom Caraway (Ewell). Upon their first meeting, Caraway hires her, and she quickly gets schooled in the highs and lows of modeling, thanks to a fading fashionista with whom she becomes friends. Unfortunately, the friendship is short-lived when Lily's friend hurls herself out of her apartment window in a drunken fit of loneliness. Lily becomes a top model herself, and along the way becomes acquainted with a businessman from out of town, Steve Harleigh (Milland) that she meets through a mutual friend. Although Harleigh is married, the two cannot deny their connection and end up having a very intense affair. Unfortunately, Harleigh is caught in a rough position since his doting wife back in Montana is handicapped and in a wheelchair. The two must decide whether their love is worth pursuing until the bitter end, or if they should deny their feelings and let each other go.

In "A Life of Her Own", George Cukor, one of film history's most prolific and successful directors (The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, My Fair Lady – just to name three) provides great melodrama without losing the integrity of the story. Unlike a lot of films from this genre, most of which I'd admit to really liking, I didn't find myself rolling my eyes and grinning during some of the most dramatic scenes; rather, I found myself completely drawn in to the plot, due partly to the character development and their portrayers. I really enjoy both Turner and Milland, and have seen where they can both just go out of control with the drama, but I didn't feel that way during this film one bit. To be sure, there are times that you have to suspend your disbelief. Turner was 30 when she made this film, and while she was incredibly beautiful, she was not a "fresh faced" kid who is going to take the modeling world by storm from the second she sets foot in New York. The reasons behind the attraction between Milland and Turner are a bit nebulous as well, but I felt they pulled off their chemistry convincingly.

Personally, I love the lush Technicolor melodramas of the 1950's, and short of the great Douglas Sirk, this is almost as good as it gets. 7/10 --Shelly

This is a fairly gripping drama with good performances all around. It's always fun to see the veteran Louis Calhern who's good in just about anything. Lana Turner was the real surprise here although it seemed that at 29 she was a bit too old for that part. Her performance drew me into this sordid little tale of an ambitious small town girl who becomes a top New York model and takes up with a married man. I knew it couldn't end well but I kept watching and waiting. Ann Dvorak was another standout. She made me feel the pain and anguish of the forgotten model who's descended into a life of misery and booze. Ray Milland was the sore spot. He's a fine actor and performed well here as well but I just couldn't see him as the rough and tough Montana copper mine operator, at least not with an English accent. The fact that Welsh actor Margaret Phillips played his wife perhaps was meant to imply they were transplants from England but it was never made clear. In any case it's a good way to spend an hour and forty-eight minutes. Despite occasionally yielding to the temptation of melodrama it's not dull and definitely worth watching.

One more thing: the trivia section lists an alternate ending where the Lana Turner character ends up committing suicide like the Ann Dvorak character. It was changed when the test audience hated it. The current ending is not the greatest but I'm not sure it I would have liked the original ending any better. It just didn't seem likely that someone that had worked so hard and diligently to become a top model would have committed suicide for any reason. I think the current ending better reflects such a personality.

Never a good idea when making a movie to kill off your best character twenty some odd minutes in. Referring, of course, to the unhappy, aging, neurotic, dipso model played to self destructive, sardonic perfection by Ann Dvorak. When she throws herself out of a top story apartment window a lot of the quality and all the energy of this film goes with her. Did you notice, for example, how Isobel Lennart's dialogue, so sharp and insightful when Dvorak is around, turns mushy and labored? And how George Cukor's directorial pacing seems to be off a tic or two once Ray Milland (rhymes with bland) and his dull love interest character enters the picture? Gone is the breezy tone of the first fifteen minutes when Lana Turner's character gets a crash course from Tom Ewell in Modeling 101 and the tension inherent in the nightclub scene with sleazy Barry Sullivan, Dvorak, Turner and nice but not too nice Louis Calhern.

Bottom line: It's not the worst Cukor film ever made (that dubious distinction goes to "Chapman Report") but we're a long way from "Adam's Rib" or even "The Actress", for that matter. Give it a C.

PS...Milland as a copper baron from Montana is about as convincing as John Wayne playing a librarian.

Lana Turner goes into the modeling world hoping to get discovered. Along the way, she meets Ray Milland, who's a married man, and of course they start having feelings for each other. Ann Dvorak (from Paul Muni's "Scarface") is great in a supporting role. In fact, some would say she steals the show, because the viewer thinks of her even when she's not on the screen, due to circumstances I'm not going into. Barry Sullivan, who was frequent costar of Lana's, is on hand with his shoulder for Lana to cry on.

For such an unknown movie of Lana's, one would think is just a hum-drum black-and-white movie. But, "A Life of Her Own" is a very well-written and insightful film which provides a mature approach to a woman's life at an older age, who is trying to find herself and what she really wants out of life, and what she doesn't want.

An added plus which most reviewers have already alluded to, is the great music score to this film. It makes Ray and Lana's scenes feel very intimate. But when reality hits and she meets the wheelchair-bound wife. it does get rather depressing and downbeat. But the ending is very soothing, as she "is herself" with Barry and visits the view one more time of Ann Dvorak's old apartment building and where she doesn't want to wind up. It's a shame to think only Lana fans would be attracted to this film. It's one for all those who want something intelligent and for people, who though older and not quite settled, are still yearning for "a life of their own."