Mr. Imperium (1951) featured an unlikely pairing of Ezio Pinza and Lana Turner. Turner had been an MGM star for more than a decade, and Pinza was making his film debut. He had been a star for 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House, and made a splash on Broadway in South Pacific. Soon after, MGM signed Pinza to a multi-film contract and gave him a big build-up. Despite being 58 years old and gray-haired, Pinza was called "a dreamboat" who "radiates virility" by top columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper.

In Mr. Imperium, Pinza plays a prince who wants to be a singer but is duty-bound to his family and his country. He falls in love with an American showgirl (Turner) while cruising the Italian Riviera, but they know their love is impossible. Twelve years later, the prince has become a king in exile who ends up in Palm Springs and finds his lost love, now a movie star. Also in the cast were a young Debbie Reynolds, Marjorie Main, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Barry Sullivan.

Mr. Imperium did not come at a good time in Lana Turner's life. She had been married to millionaire Bob Topping, whose finances were in trouble. To add to this, she had been pregnant, but gave birth to a stillborn boy. She returned to work on A Life of Her Own (1950) thirty pounds overweight, and was still taking off her baby weight during Mr. Imperium. Then as now, an actress' weight was an obsession of the gossip columnists. Mike Connolly in particular was taking potshots, writing "Lana is certainly a zaftig-looking matron these days, so the cameraman on Mr. Imperium has really got his job cut out for him." Other columnists, like Alice Hughes, wondered what MGM was thinking when they paired Turner and Pinza, "I'm told Pinza is none too happy over the Hollywood movie, Mr. Imperium, he has recently finished making with Lana Turner as his leading lady. What, these two! They may not belong in the same world, let alone the same picture!" Whether Hughes' sources were correct or not, Pinza's unhappiness over the film did not extend to Turner, who he called, "very beautiful," and was seen greeting her affectionately when the two ran into each other at the Hollywood Bowl after filming was complete.

Marjorie Main had become a star in the Ma and Pa Kettle films, and in Mr. Imperium she plays a more sophisticated character. Her co-star Debbie Reynolds later remembered that Main had physical and emotional issues that made themselves apparent during shooting. Main's bladder problems caused her to walk offstage in the middle of a scene and use a toilet that the studio had installed in her dressing room. "You'd hear the toilet seat go up, the toilet seat go down, the flushing, and Marjorie was still saying her lines. Then she'd come right back on the set, as if we hadn't cut, and finish the scene." While Main's husband, Dr. Krebs, had passed away years before, she would speak to him as though he were in the room with her. "I was sitting in a chair next to Marjorie one day when I heard her say, 'Horace [Dr. Krebs] this is a very warm day and I'm tired. Why don't you get me a glass of water.'" She would also set a chair for her late husband at her table in the studio commissary and order meals for him.

Despite Pinza's singing, Turner's beauty, and the talents of a top supporting cast, Mr. Imperium turned out to be so bad a film that it was pulled from distribution after a few poor showings on its first release in March 1951. MGM waited until Pinza's second film, Strictly Dishonorable (1951) was released in July before Mr. Imperium was re-released in October. It didn't help. Strictly Dishonorable was called "second-rate" by the New York Times' Bosley Crowther, and Mr. Imperium was panned by an anonymous reviewer, who wrote that the film was, "to be perfectly candid, third-rate." The fault, wrote the critic, was not with Pinza, Turner, the other cast members, or even the cameramen or the Technicolor crew. The blame lay squarely on the shoulders of producer Edwin H. Knopf (who wrote the play on which the film was based) and director Don Hartman "who collaborated on the script, have supplied their stars with a story that is as pat, obvious, and dated as Prince Charming and Cinderella."

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

Crowther, Bosley "Strictly Dishonorable, Starring Ezio Pinza and Janet Leigh, New Feature at Capitol" The New York Times 12 Jul 51
Greenspan, Charlotte Pick Yourself Up: Dorothy Fields and the American Musical
Holly, Val Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip
Hughes, Alice "A Woman's New York" Reading Eagle 1 Jun 51
Nissen, Axel Actresses of a Certain Character; Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties
"Pinza Co-Stars with Lana Turner" The New York Times 15 Oct 51
"Pinza in Hollywood" Life 18 Sep 50
Tyler, Don Hit Songs, 1900-1955: American Popular Music of The Pre-Rock Era
Vogel, Michelle Marjorie Main: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Ma Kettle
Wayne, Jane Ellen The Golden Girls of MGM: Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Others