The news is lousy, the weather is hot, the job is a drag, the new movies are junk, and I’ve got the blues.  Which means only one thing:  It’s time for another Lana Turner movie!  Something easy, glamorous, and fun—just what I need.  All of that speaks, nay, shouts:  Lana Turner!  In volumes.  The more Gloriously Lana, the better.

Long-time readers of my blog know I adore the utterly fabulous Lana.  I’ve written about several of her films here, here, here, and here (for starters). Who can get enough of her?  That silken, blonde beauty, that soft, beguiling voice, that sleek, cat-like cool…watching her is a dip in a perfumed bath, followed by a wrap in a snuggly towel.  Plus a cooling drink and chocolate on the side (never forget the chocolate).  Yessiree, it’s most certainly Lana Time.  They say when Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade.  I say—make time with Lana.

The current Lana Film of Choice is definitely Choice:  Her 1955 release The Prodigal.  One of those giddy, gaudy, glitzy Hollywood Biblical Epics (or HBEs) that popped up like greasy popcorn throughout 1950s Hollywood, their spendthrift sets and costumes backed by the finest studio talent (and money), their piety strained through marketing research and poured on like slop.  The Prodigal was based on the well-known New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son, in Luke 15:11-32.  The tale is told in a few paragraphs, with three characters—a father and his two sons, between whom he splits an inheritance.  The younger son blows all his dough on wild partying in the big city, and then, broke and penitent, returns to his rejoicing father.  That’s pretty much it—sweet and short, with a moral of acceptance of the repentant sinner.  Straight to the point, no detours.

And then Hollywood got ahold of it.  Did it ever.  Living up to its advertising (“A Fortune to Produce!”), with a nearly $3 million budget (over $30mil in 2023 dollars), a nearly two-hour running time, a big, splashy MGM production in Cinemascope and Eastman Color, a cast of gazillions, and a screenplay to which even Production Code Pooh-Bah’s son Joe Breen Jr. contributed—Prodigal was the word.

I’m not complaining.  I like my HBEs to be as profligate as possible.  Gimme the gargantuan sets, the glittery costumes, the thousand extras, the banquets, pageants, battles, orgies, cheesy dance routines…damn, I crave it.  More is definitely More, I say.  Pile it on; you can’t intimidate me.

And I can’t fault MGM for such piling.  From such skimpy material, studio worker bees had to flesh out not only a feature-length script, but character motivations, histories, backgrounds, objectives, and a plot to satisfy audiences demanding spectacle, sex, and violence.  On which was added a hook to hang it by—an enticing peg called Sin, garbed in beads, bangles, and a come-hither pose that’s as garish, flashy, and as over-the-top as can be imagined.

Pile it on, I say.  Oh, Sin, I hear ya calling!

The movie concerns prodigal-to-be country-boy Micah, who, shopping in the Big Bad City for a gift for his recently betrothed, is instead treated to a sight, in the local pagan temple, of the priestess of Astarte in all her near-naked, prodigal glory.  As the old song goes, how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?  You can’t (says the film); once Micah glimpses Astarte’s fleshly avatar, it’s to hell with home, hearth, and waiting fiancée.  Being the priestess is Lana, displaying as much flesh as Mr. Breen wouldn’t allow, who can blame him?  The film indulges in its own bit of prodigality when Lana, making her grand entrance, appears before the multitudes and then…Walks.  For almost two minutes.  And nothing else.  On she strolls, through a crowd of kneeling worshippers, the film stopping in its tracks as it, the crowd, Micah, and we viewers drink her in with our gob-smacked eyes.  While she walks off with the movie.

Was there ever an actress who could walk like Lana?  Sure, it’s kitsch, but it’s divine kitsch.  How to describe that assured, smooth, rhythmic strut—slow, steady, no break in rhythm or stride, her shoulders relaxed, her torso balanced, her legs lifted and light (in high heels, too), one foot placed precisely in front of the other (did she learn that from Ziegfeld Girl?), a sexy, swaying thrust in hips and pelvis (a strong core is needed for such control)—she grabs our eyes and won’t release them, she commands our senses and overwhelms them, she enthralls us with her poise, her sureness, her sheer star power.  For the duration of her walk, Lana becomes not just a performer in a role, but the embodiment of our desires—indeed, of Desire itself; the Eternal Feminine, the Transcendent Woman, the Goddess Unveiled—the ultimate Movie Star.

What a pity, I couldn’t help thinking, that such Fabulousness is wasted on Edmund Purdom.

Ah, yes, Edmund Purdom…remember him?  That Eternal Non-Star, that Great Onscreen Void?  Long-time blog readers might recall him from my earlier post about another overburdened Hollywood epic, The Egyptian.  I didn’t care for Purdom in that film, and his performance here as Micah doesn’t change my mind.  Purdom is one of those baffling Why-did-they-cast-this-guy cases; as an actor, his main asset is that of a slightly warm body filling space.  Drifting through The Prodigal’s humongous sets, and looking mildly bemused as to where and what he is, Purdom lacks that genuine, honest-to-God movie star quality, of not needing to justify why you spend two precious hours watching a celluloid image.  Instead, Purdom irritates, paradoxically because he’s not interesting to watch.  He’s a tabula rasa, a vacuum unfilled, an emptiness that abides.  When called to express a passion that drives him to forsake family, fortune, bride, and honor, Purdom approximates the fervor of lukewarm tea.  Chamomile, I would say; not even rising to the ardor of Cinnamon Spice.  Lana should surely inspire more.

So, when Lana is not onscreen and Purdom is—which is frequently—I amuse myself watching other actors steal the movie from under his small, squinty eyes.  It’s not a fair contest (like stealing candy from an unusually dim infant), and it may be a bit sadistic of me to indulge, but one must pass the time somehow between Lana.  And actors must take their opportunities.  So there’s Joseph Wiseman, mugging it up and chewing large shards of scenery as a wily beggar fleecing the gullible Micah; there’s Neville Brand as a nasty soldier with a shaved head and I think fake ears, which stick out like a Vulcan’s (he looks…pretty weird); and there’s Louis Calhern as an even nastier high priest—aren’t there ever any nice high priests?—which he plays as a political schemer finagling the loan of a million gold pieces to ensure his power.  You can picture him on the Senate floor, buying and bribing for votes to once more increase the defense budget.  Plus ça change, as the saying goes…

The film is deliciously prodigal in so many other ways.  Note the scene of Purdom’s hand-to-claw tussle with a prop buzzard, a high—or low—point of camp (either way, it’s just as good), which poor Purdom can’t carry off (only adding to the fun).  There are the stand-out lines:  “Did you not notice how superb were the haunches of the Grecian woman?” (of course, we can’t take our eyes off Lana’s own superb haunches); “You hunger for him as a pig for husks”; and Wiseman’s inquiry of Purdom, “Are you a man or a beard?”, a phrase with…undertones, as my mother would have said.  I like the film’s inventive brothel set, a colony of exquisitely small, sumptuous pavilions, each one housing a beautiful young Lady of The Evening; it must’ve wowed viewers curious for a look-see at sinful Paree.  And there’s that kinky bit with said Ladies in animal costumes and masks, ganging up on another lady to whip her with their costume tails…  Like a prodigal buffet, there’s something for all tastes, and curiosities, in this film.

Yet, though prodigal in production, The Prodigal was meager in returns.  The film’s producer, Dore Schary, recalled in his memoirs that “I thought [the film] would draw an audience”; but despite all the money on display, displaying all that money could buy—money being proof that Hollywood took Religion, at least in certain forms and denominations, Seriously, and wasn’t gonna stint to prove it—The Prodigal was a major flop.  Schary concluded “the script was lifeless,” and he’s right; you sense MGM made the film only because HBEs seemed sure box office, so how could it lose?  Except it did, its dismal results affecting Lana’s career (her contract would be dropped by MGM less than two years later), and pretty much destroying Purdom’s (“the nail in the coffin,” per his Guardian obituary).  Critics weren’t kinder, Bosley Crowther in The New York Times huffily puffing that The Prodigal “is not serious screen drama in the mature and modern sense of the phrase. This is romantic, pompous, ostentatious and often vulgar and ridiculous charade.”

Well, if that don’t just nail it…

What  can one say?  From a 21st-century perspective, I relish The Prodigal precisely because it’s not “serious screen drama”; on hot August nights, Mature and Modern ain’t what I’m seeking.  I adore the movie’s camp, its flashy sets, its cheesy acting, its just-can’t-get-enough-Sin attitude.  I love it that Calhern is, in Jeanine Basinger’s memorable phrase, “dressed like a Victorian lampshade,” and that Lana “suited up in her goddess beads…walk[s] through her role” superbly.  Even poor, pallid Purdom, who Lana complained ate garlic at lunch, provides pleasure, if only that of humor.  As Preston Sturges noted, there’s a lot to be said for making people laugh.

But to return to where I started:  What do I care about how silly the film is (and it most gloriously is), or how prodigally overblown, or how cheesy the script (as well as everything else), or how garlicly breathed is Purdom.  I watch it for Lana— magnificent Lana, wonderful Lana, beautiful, gleaming, gorgeous Lana, who turns this tinsel into gold, and watchable gold, at that.  It’s always time for a Lana Turner movie, and The Prodigal—tacky, outrageous, dumb, corny as it is—is way up there on my list of Must-See’s.  It’s got Lana looking, behaving, being—I’ll say it again—FABULOUS.  When life gives you lemons, forget the lemonade.  Get Lana instead.  Oh, Lana—I hear ya calling!

Bonus Clip 1:  Lana walks again—and how!—in this set piece from The Prodigal, with Lana at her most glamorous and glorious.  Also present are several hundred extras, also walking…just…walking.  Plus a double-sided staircase and a human sacrifice, with a kiss from Lana to boot; along with Louis Calhern as the Senate Majority Leader High Priest of Baal.  Glitzy and gaudy, MGM ladles on the production values.  Go on, try to tear your eyes away:

Bonus Clip 2:  Here’s the trailer for The Prodigal, featuring the “weird and amazing ceremonial rites of the strangest love cult known to civilization” (seemingly not a reference to the annual MGM Christmas party); “Wondrous to See…Amazing to Behold!…”:

You can watch The Prodigal on YouTube in several dubbed prints: here dubbed in Spanish; here dubbed in French; and here overdubbed in Russian, I think.  You can also buy/rent it in English on YouTube here.  Note that YouTube describes the film as a “comedy”…