Director, George Cukor knew great talent and put together a great cast of stars in this 1950's film. Lana Turner (Lily Brannel Jones),"Portrait in Black",'60, was still beautiful and put on a few pounds after a two year so called honeymoon in real life. Ray Milland,(Steve Harleigh),"The Lost Weekend",'45, always had a painful expression on his face and seemed very uncomfortable cheating on his wife who was a cripple. Louis Calhern,(Lawyer for Steve),"The Asphalt Jungle",'50, gave a great supporting role keeping peace between the husband and wife. There were constant scenes in a piano bar where the piano player kept playing the same music over and over again, which was also the theme music during the entire picture, which was rather depressing, but great in the 50's. I never could understand why they had to use a puppet like "Charlie McCarthy" to entertain the customers in the bar, is was very out of place. Enjoyed seeing Tom Ewell(Tom Caraway),"The Seven Year Itch",'55 give a great supporting role to Lily. If you love to see Lana Turner and Ray Milland in the PRIME of their lives, catch this film!

Lana Turner heads an excellent cast in "A Life of Her Own," a 1950 film directed by George Cukor. Its other stars are Ray Milland, Louis Calhern, Margaret Phillips, Barry Sullivan, Tom Ewell, Ann Dvorak, and Jean Hagen.

Both the beginning of the film and the end are the best parts; the in between is incredibly slow. Turner plays a young woman from Kansas who comes to New York to break into the modeling business. She meets what could be her future if she's not careful: a washed up, alcoholic, desperate has-been, beautifully portrayed by Ann Dvorak. No need to tell you what happens there - you've seen it a million times.

As her career progresses, Turner meets a married millionaire, Steve, played by Ray Milland. She knows he's married and it starts off platonically enough. But, as we learn what seems like hours later, he's a lot more than married.

This is a great cast, right down to the smaller roles, which includes Phyllis Kirk, one of my favorites, and Hermes Pan, who so often worked with Fred Astaire on choreography.

Turner is excellent and has some fine dramatic scenes; Milland is handsome and sympathetic as her boyfriend. Margaret Phillips, as his wife, does a marvelous job, and Tom Ewell is a joy. Actually, everyone is very good.

Alas, there's not much of a script here and you know what's going to happen along the way. The very end shows Cukor's directing mastery. Given what he had to work with by way of a script, it's a very well done movie. I shudder to think what it would have been like in someone else's hands.

A Life Of Her Own casts Lana Turner as a small town girl who with her beauty goes to New York for a career as a model. She's got the looks, but has she the character for the profession?

She reports some six months after the agency that Tom Ewell runs called for her. It was a simple matter of economics, Lana just didn't have the train fare from Kansas. But very much like Lana Turner in real life, discovered in Schwab's Drugstore in Hollywood because of her beauty and made a film star, Turner becomes a success in the modeling profession.

Anything's better than life in Kansas and Turner's after more than a career. She meets Ray Milland who is a mine owner from Montana back east to raise some money with the help of lawyer Louis Calhern. Of course the inevitable happens as it usually does in these films, but the problem is Milland is slightly married to Margaret Phillips.

Here's where the film gets real sudsy. Phillips is a paraplegic as a result of an automobile accident. The subject is rather delicately handled with the Code still in place, but the clear inference is that Milland is not enjoying any kind of sex life any more. So he's more than willing to get involved with Turner.

The Code parameters both limit how the subject is handled and the inevitable outcome of the film which I won't reveal. George Cukor directed A Life Of Her Own and the film is definitely missing his usual flair for 'women's' pictures. And the film is clearly Lana's with the rest of the cast in support.

Some younger players at MGM like Jean Hagen and Phyllis Kirk play other models, but Ann Dvorak in one of her last films has a couple of scenes as an older woman trying to make a comeback in a profession that lives and dies on youth. She only has a couple of scenes, but they've got some real bite to them. I wish we had a lot more of her in the film.

A Life Of Her Own is not one of the better films for Cukor, Turner, or Milland, but it's entertaining enough given the Code parameters it was made under.