It's Lana Turner, Queen Zircon herself, as Samara, the Pagan goddess of the flesh. (Or something like that.) Oh, how we love that 1955 epic of silliness, The Prodigal! Expensive, yet strangely cheesy-looking sets and costumes; cornball dialogue; miscast Anglo-Saxon actors; it's all here!
THE PERKS OF STARDOM: LANA TURNER AT HER PERSONALIZED MIRROR
La Lana's handsome cardboard lover is Edmund Purdom, a weirdly prissy pretty boy with the pretentious, precise enunciation and intensely furrowed brow of an Actor Creating Art. Honey, wise up: you're making a rhinestone epic with a bad perm, opposite an aging Sweater Girl modeling the latest in Biblical carny dancer gear.
Did we mention that Lana/Samara gets stoned to death at the end? It's that kind of flick.
PUBLICITY ILLUSTRATION FOR THE PRODIGAL (1955); NEITHER THE ACTION NOR LANA'S COSTUME EVER GOT QUITE THAT STEAMY IN THE ACTUAL FILM.
Incidentally, Purdom was sort of the Josh Hartnett of his day, an unknown suddenly cast in huge, would-be blockbusters which ultimately fizzled; besides The Prodigal, which was touted as MGM's most lavish epic of 1955, he had previously starred in 20th Century Fox's biggest production of 1954, The Egyptian, which was also a huge bomb. It did, however, prove that Purdom could pose as vacuously and prettily as any starlet, as evidenced by the promotional poster, wherein his stoic visage is stroked and fondled by an animated Bella Darvi, Gene Tierney and Anitra Stevens:
I've seen this movie maybe 20 times. It used to rerun seemingly every month on the afternoon movies when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see it again actually. It's actually baded on a real ancient Egyptian folk tale which I've read.
And needless to say, Gene Tierney is absolutely fascinating in it.
Glad to have you back! Did the Egyptian folk tale include writhing 50's starlets? Those are MY favorite folk tales.
ReplyDeleteIt did indeed. The moralistic tale of Queen Jayne-ankh-titen is especially interesting.
ReplyDeleteOh, didn't she film that as "The Loves of Hercules" with Mickey?
ReplyDeleteWait...Egyptian...Italian...Egyptian...Italian...oh, it's just so darn confusing!