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Lana Turner

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

Lana Turner (February 8, 1921 – June 29, 1995) was an American actress famed early in her career for her appearances in tight sweaters, and her smoldering sensuality, and later in her career for sudsy romance films with maximal glamorous evening gowns and tragedy.

Contents

Biography

The name on her birth certificate, as she stated in her autobiography, was Julia Jean Turner, not Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner as many sources claim. In any case, she was called "Judy" as a child and became Lana Turner when she became an actress. She was born in Wallace, Idaho. Her father was John Virgil Turner, who was born and raised in Hohenwald, Tennessee. John Virgil Turner was a clerk and a gambler who was murdered when she was a child. Her mother was Mildred Frances Cowan, who was about 15 when she married John Virgil Turner.

Turner's legendary discovery was at the age of 15 in 1936 at the Top Hat Café, which was across the street from Hollywood High School, where she was a student. Her boyfriend when she attended Hollywood High was Joseph Wapner, who would go on much later in life to be the judge of the People's Court [link] William R. Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, noticed her there and introduced her to actor/comedian/talent agent Zeppo Marx. It was Marx who took her to MGM, where she was soon put under contract.

Turner in They Won't Forget.
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Turner in They Won't Forget.
Turner earned the nickname the "Sweater Girl" due to a scene in her debut movie They Won't Forget (1937), in which her bosom bounced in a tight sweater. 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 two films with MGM's king of the lot: Clark Gable (the films' successes were 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's films started to flop at the box-office, until she starred in Vincente Minnelli's masterpiece The Bad and the Beautiful and later the big screen adaptation of Grace Metalious's best-selling novel Peyton Place in which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life also proved a big commercial success. 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.

Personal Life

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 (who is reported to have given her syphilis), and a minor gangster named Johnny Stompanato who was fatally stabbed by Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane. (The killing was deemed a justifiable homicide by coroner's inquest.)

Her husbands were:

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, California.

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.

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).

Filmography

External links

 

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