Lana Turner

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Lana Turner

Lana Turner in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Birth name Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner
Born February 8, 1921
Wallace, Idaho
Died June 29, 1995, age 74<noinclude>

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Century City, Los Angeles, California

Lana Turner (February 8, 1921 – June 29, 1995) was an Academy award nominee American film actress and sex symbol. On-screen, Turner was well-known for the glamor and sensuality she brought to almost all her movies. Off-screen, she led a stormy and colorful private life which included seven husbands, numerous lovers, and a famous murder scandal.

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[edit] Biography

Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner in Wallace, Idaho, the daughter of John Virgil Turner, a miner from Hohenwald, Tennessee, and Mildred Frances Cowan, a 16-year-old Alabama girl.

Until her film career took off, she was known to family and friends as Judy. Hard times eventually forced the family to re-locate to San Francisco, where John and Mildred soon separated.

On December 14, 1930, John Turner won a bit of money at a traveling craps game, stuffed his winnings in his left sock, and headed for home. He was later found dead on a street corner, his left sock missing. The robbery and murder was never solved. Soon after, Mildred Turner developed health problems and was advised by her doctor to move to a dryer climate. She and her 10-year-old daughter moved to Los Angeles in 1931.

Turner's discovery at Schwab's Drug Store has become one of Hollywood's most enduring show-business legends. The true story differs only slightly from that legend. As a 16-year-old student at Hollywood High, Turner decided to skip a typing class and buy a Coke at the Top Hat Cafe. There, she was spotted by William R. Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter. Wilkerson was struck by her beauty and physique, and referred her to the actor/comedian/talent agent Zeppo Marx. Marx's agency immediately signed her on and introduced her to film director Mervyn LeRoy, who cast her in her first film They Won't Forget (1937).

Turner in They Won't Forget.
Enlarge
Turner in They Won't Forget.

Turner earned the nickname "The Sweater Girl" from her form-fitting attire in a scene in They Won't Forget. She reached the height of her fame in the 1940s and 1950s. During World War II, Turner became a popular pin-up girl due to her popularity in such films such as Ziegfeld Girl, Johnny Eager, and four films with MGM's king of the lot: Clark Gable (the films' success was only heightened by gossip column rumors about a relationship between the two).

After the war, Turner's career hit a new high with the classic 1946 film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice, co-starring John Garfield. During the 1950s, Turner starred in a series of films that failed to succeed at the box office, a situation which MGM attempted to remedy by casting her in musicals. The first, 1951's Mr. Imperium, was a flop, while 1952's The Merry Widow was more successful. She gave a widely-praised performance in Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful, and later starred with John Wayne in the adventure film The Sea Chase. She was then cast in the epic The Prodigal, but the film and her performance in general was not well received. After 1956's Diane, MGM opted not to renew her contract.

Despite this, Turner's career recovered after her appearance in the hugely-successful big screen adaptation of Grace Metalious's best-selling novel Peyton Place, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life also proved to be a big commercial success, and since Turner had accepted a percentage of the box office receipts in lieu of salary, she was paid handsomely for the role. Critics and audiences couldn't help noticing that both Peyton and Imitation borrowed from Turner's private life -- a single mother coping with a troubled teenage daughter. In 1961, she made her last film appearance under her old contract with MGM, starring with Bob Hope in Bachelor in Paradise. Her last major starring role in a film was Madame X made by Universal Artists in 1966.

[edit] Personal life

Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Enlarge
Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Off-screen, Turner was married eight times to seven different husbands, and had many lovers, including Tyrone Power (whom she calls the love of her life in her autobiography), Howard Hughes, and a minor gangster and abusive boyfriend named Johnny Stompanato. Turner reportedly said of her many love affairs, "I liked the boys, and the boys liked me."

The Turner/Stompanato affair was marked by passion and violence. Turner was at first susceptible to Stompanato's good looks and prowess as a lover, but after she discovered his ties to the LA underworld (in particular, his association with gangster Mickey Cohen), Turner tried to break off the affair out of fear of bad publicity. Stompanato was not easily deterred however and over the course of the following year, he and Turner carried on a relationship filled with violent arguments, physical abuse, and repeated reconciliations. One time, Stompanato stormed onto a movie set while Turner was filming Another Time, Another Place, with costar Sean Connery, later of James Bond fame. Stompanato accused Connery of having an affair with Turner, and pointed a gun at him. Connery took the gun away from Stompanato, beat him, and threw him off the movie set (see [1], [2], [3]).

On the evening of April 4th, 1958, Turner and Stompanato began a violent argument at Turner's home in Beverly Hills. Fearing her mother's life was in danger, Turner's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane grabbed a kitchen knife and ran to Turner's defense. Many theories abound as to what happened afterward, but in the end, Crane ended up stabbing Stompanato and killing him. The case quickly became a media sensation, but was later deemed a justifiable homicide at a coroner's inquest, at which Turner provided dramatic testimony. Some observers have said her testimony that day was the acting performance of her life.

Her husbands were:

  • Bandleader Artie Shaw (1940) Married only four months, Turner and Shaw eloped on their first date. She later referred to their stormy and verbally abusive relationship as "my college education."
  • Actor-restaurateur Josef Stephen Crane (1942-43, 1943-44);
    • She married Crane a second time, after their first marriage was annulled because a previous divorce of his had not yet been finalized.
  • Millionaire socialite Henry J. Topping, Jr. (1948-52);
  • Actor Lex Barker (1953-57), whom she divorced after her daughter Cheryl claimed that he molested her;
  • Rancher Fred May (1960-62);
  • Businessman Robert Eaton (1965-69);
  • Nightclub hypnotist Ronald Peller (a.k.a. Ronald Dante) (1969-72).

[edit] Later Life

In the 1970s and 1980s, Turner appeared in several television roles, most notably one season (1982-83) on the series Falcon Crest, but the majority of her final decade was spent out of the public eye.

She died rather suddenly at the age of 74 in 1995 of complications from the throat cancer which was diagnosed in 1992, and which she had been battling ever since, at her home in Century City, Los Angeles, California. She was, until her death, a very heavy smoker.

She was survived by her only child, her daughter, Cheryl Crane, and Cheryl's female life partner, whom she said she accepted "as a second daughter". They inherited some of Lana's sizeable estate, built through shrewd real estate holdings and investments. However, the majority of her estate was left to her maid.

[edit] Influence

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lana Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6241 Hollywood Blvd.

The eminent American poet Frank O'Hara wrote a poem titled "Lana Turner Has Collapsed" inspired by Turner after seeing a headline about her soon after her lover Stompanato's murder. The Stompanato incident is also alluded to in a short scene in the film L.A. Confidential (1997).

The American singer Tom Russell mentions Turner in his song "Tijuana Bible," which chronicles the death and (fictionalized?) secrets of Johnny Stompanato. Specifically, the song opens with the lyric "Lana Turner's daughter killed Johnny Stompanato, because Johnny beat up Lana down on Fifth and Alvarado."

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Trivia

[edit] External links

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