Lana Turner's Untold Story
By Her "Stand-In" Alyce May
A Hollywood "stand-in" is the unsung hero or heroine who makes his living standing under the lights while the scene is being set- and stepping out when the cameras turn. They replace their star-studded lookalikes in practically every tough studio chore except acting- and of course, it's more rewarding consequences: fame and fortune.
One of the happiest of such
relationships ever to exist in the motion picture business was that of Lana
Turner and her stand-in Alyce May. Their professional association lasted for
over thirty
years.
Miss May, a charming, blue-eyed blonde was the daughter of Dr. W. May of Los Angeles. A dancer, she performed on the concert stage when she was a child. She also appeared in several silent films, the earliest of which were Twinkletoes with Colleen Moore and The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney. Other small roles in talking films followed.
The first time Alyce saw Lana, her future "boss", was in 1937 when Lana was making They Won't Forget at Warners. That was the legendary Sweater Girl's first major film role, made soon after director Mervyn LeRoy, signed her to a personal contract. Alyce worked in that picture too. Not as a stand-in but as an actress. Her part was small but her chances then, one might have thought, were as good as Lana's.
But fate had other things in store. One year later, Lana was signed by MGM, the most glamorous dream factory of them all. There, under the careful guidance of the powers-that-be, she would soon be transformed into a Hollywood sex goddess of the first magnitude and would enjoy one of the most durable film careers a movie star has ever known.
By mid-1938, MGM felt that starlet Lana Turner was important enough to warrant a "stand-in". The stand-in turned out to be none other than Alyce May. The Turner-May association began on July 8, 1938. "Rich Man, Poor Girl was the picture Lana was making when I was engaged as her stand-in," says Alyce. "We didn't get acquainted for, oh, four or five days. She shook hands with me when we were introduced (when she shakes hands with you, your hand is shook!) then we both took off our shoes and walked, side by side, and she said, "We're just about the same size, aren't we?". And that was all, but it was enough. I knew she liked me, and the job was mine. Lana says with her eyes the things she doesn't say with her lips."
Off the set, Miss May soon became companion, secretary and close friend to Lana. Alyce looked quite a bit like the star and she was not much older. According to Alyce, they even laughed and thought alike.
Says Alyce: The reason I was called by MGM to be Lana's stand-in was because, in addition to being the same height, I had the same color hair as hers, which was red-gold then. Since that time we've had countless different changes of hair. Lana would call me in the middle of the night to say, "Look, I've got a new hair color. Now don't worry, I've cut off a lock." The next morning I would pick up the lock, take it to the beauty parlor, and have my hair dyed to match."
In 1943, shortly after the completion of Slightly Dangerous, in which Lana co-starred with Robert Young, Alyce May was asked by a national magazine to tell its readers what it was like to be a stand-in and personal friend of a world famous glamour girl like Lana Turner. Here are some of Alyce's comments exactly as she wrote them at the time:
It may sound like fulsome praise, my story. And lush flattery. But that's what makes it significant. For mind you, I could resent Lana...I could be horribly jealous of her. I could envy her and pity myself!
"I get a tithe of her salary, none of her fame, publicity, adulation, glamour. I am the Martha to her Mary. I could hate her but I love her dearly. And-I didn't have to write this story. I am doing it of my own volition. So here goes with the raves: Lana is the most glamorous, most beautiful girl in the world-and she doesn't know it! She looks glamorous, let me tell you, and I'm the one that can tell you, when she wakes up in the morning. One time when we were in New York, the weather turned zero. I went out and bought two pairs of those funny looking green pajamas, tan for Lana, green for me. We woke up next morning in our gorgeous suite and to see us running around in those zippered sleeping bags, looking something like overstuffed Gremlins, was something for the books. Lana looked me over. "Gee", she said. "Do you look awful!" I wished with all my heart that I could have returned the compliment in like vein. But even in those silly looking things, she was gorgeous.
"In regards to her work, Lana doesn't make a production of her job. She doesn't have to. She has a wonderful memory. She can look at a script and know it. She gets her own interpretation of the character she is supposed to play. She is what I'd term a "natural." She proved that when she worked with Robert Taylor and with Clark Gable. She didn't get nervous and jittery, she went right along with them, troupers that they are.
"Two or three times since I've been working with her, I've come on the set feeling badly. She notices instantly. "I'll stand in for you," she'll say- and does. She makes me go into her dressing room and lie down, tucks me all up, orders hot soup for me, then goes out and does the job I am supposed to do for her.
"I've traveled with her a great deal, back and forth to New York, to Palm Springs for vacations. I'm with her all day, every day when she works. I spent a lot of time at her house. I would say she is unusually controlled, has a firm grip on the reigns of herself.
"When she does an emotional scene in a picture, I don't go near her then. She holds the mood. But that is control too. She isn't temperamental, is what I mean. She doesn't like to have anyone stand directly in her line of vision while she is working but she seldom asks to have her her sets closed. She doesn't even like to have me sit where she can see me when she's working. But she does like to know that I'm watching . "I know that everything is alright when you're around," she told me once. I don't want to know where you are, just that you are there."
"If I don't like a scene she does, I tell her. Lana says of me, "Here is the gal that can really tell me off. Only one in the world who can, and I take it."
"I've bawled her out many a time and she has taken it. I often think, "Who am I? How do I dare?" But she never gets mad. Know why? Because she likes the truth. She once said "Alyce, it's like surgery. It cuts, but it cures." I believe that the one thing in the world that would really nauseate her would be a "yes" man or woman. I honestly believe that Lana can forgive anything in this world but a lie.
"She isn't perfect. I hope! There would be something cold in human perfection. And Lana is made of warmth. She's moody. One of the reasons we get along so well together is that sometimes, except for "Hello" and "Goodbye" we don't speak for four or five days. And she knows I won't be hurt. Something is wrong with the script perhaps. Or something that has gone too deep to talk about is on her mind. But that's one of the things about Lana: you always know where you are with her. She isn't, of all things, "whimsy". She is a very loyal person to people who are her real friends. And her friends never doubt it.
"She has been so generous to me. I'd be rigid with embarrassment if it were anyone but Lana, and Lana's way of being generous. She gives me gorgeous clothes-suits-dresses-things she has worn only once.
"I know what she is going to do to me when she reads this but I'd rather take my punishment than not tell it. One day, quite a while ago, she took me into a very expensive fur shop. I often try on hats for her so she can see how they look, so when she asked me to try on a mink coat, I thought she wanted to see how it would look on her. I put it on. She had me walk around, turn around, turn around again. "Well, now, tell me, Alyce," she said, "how do you like it?" I said "I think it's perfectly beautiful." That's fine, she said, "it's yours."
"I couldn't even talk, I didn't dare to cry. I just had to sit down. "I can't accept it, I can't accept it," I kept saying.
"Lana didn't even answer me. She ignored me. She was busy discussing the shoulders with the saleswoman, a little build-up here, she thought, a bit more there, and the length.
"I have always been so grateful to Lana. She has made me happier than she will ever know. And I have never been able to say as much as "Thank you." I tried it once. "Please don't say it," she broke in on me quickly. I know how you feel. Let it go at that."
"I tried one other time. I was spending the night at her house. She was making me try on suits, hats, gloves, dresses, all the accessories, everything. "Now how about a black dress?" she said, after she had given me a wardrobe that would make me one of the Ten Best Dressed for two years. "This one, I think," she said, "yes, that looks swell. Now the shoes, the hat, the bag..." That was the other time I tried. "Will you be quiet?" She nipped my gratitude in the bud, "I'm having fun." She was, too.
"It's because she is more interested in other people than she is in herself, I think, that keeps her so natural. She is, perfectly. She doesn't change her manner in talking to anybody.
"I sometimes worry a little about Lana's urge to crowd everything in, as if there were not time enough, as if she must hurry, rush to meet life, arms, heart, mind wide open....
"She is a fatalist, I'd say. One time we were coming back from New York in a plane. There were three forced landings. The last one has given me a recurrent nightmare for life. We were in an electric storm. You could see the blue flames zinging on the wings. The plane banked, righted itself, banked again. Everyone was tense, waiting. Everyone but Lana. She and I had been reading Esquire cartoons together. "Well what are you waiting for?" she said when I sat there, arrested motion. "Turn the next page!" I looked at her. There were tears in my eyes. She knew what I was thinking. "Don't worry about me," she said. "If anything's going to happen, it's going to happen. And if it does, I have no squawk. Life hasn't skimped me. I've had a full course already."
"Perhaps. But so much more will happen to Lana. Things will always happen to Lana. She is a magnet to attract them. She makes me think of a receiving instrument for love and laughter and tears and happiness and heartbreak and pain and all the pleasures. And people will always exaggerate all the things that happen to Lana. They always have. If Lana went to one nightclub, she had been to twenty. If she had two romances, she had fourteen. It's because Nature exaggerated her when she was made. Her beauty, her spirit, her warmth, her eagerness, her talent, her capacity for pain and pleasure-the things in her heart are keyed, all of them, beyond the norm. She is dyed in richer colors then-than the rest of us."
After fifty years in show business, Alyce May retired in the early 1970's. Oddly enough, her last professional assignments gave her a chance to test her acting ability once more. In addition to Lana's regular role as Lana's stand-in, she was given a featured part in Miss Turner's 1969 television series The Survivors. Another series titled Paris 7000 gave her a straight acting assignment and so did a third series called The Bold Ones.
Today, Alyce resides in Rosarito, Mexico. She is a vibrant woman, living a busy life and she has nothing but fond memories of her days as Lana Turner's stand-in. In a recent letter, she says "I have lived a most wonderful and exciting and younger life. Now I am content here in Mexico. I adore not getting up at 4:30 a.m. and returning home at 7:30 pm. (that was the "series" routine). I must add, I am still active-I swim many laps each day in the pool."
One final note: Alyce is still good friends with Lana and, according to a reliable source, she has remained just as attractive as her famous ex-boss!