Lana Turner: Dangerous Curves
By Neil Doyle
Lana Turner made a smashing entrance in her first Technicolored starring role in MGM's elaborate The Three Musketeers (1948), leaning forward from the darkness of a coach to appear in a fully lit close-up as the wickedly beautiful and dangerous Lady de Winter. From the coach window she gives orders to her henchmen with a subtle nod. It was a defining moment for movie-goers who had watched her develop from uncertain actress in need of coaching, to a star in firm command of her film presence. It is perhaps the most intriguing of all her film entrances, with the exception of an equally striking but less subtle moment from The Postman Always Rings Twice, wherein she caused a stir in her first scene wearing a two-piece white playsuit as she drops her lipstick and lets it roll toward John Garfield. As for The Three Musketeers, Cosmopolitan described her Lady De Winter role as "perhaps the only piece of inspired casting in the picture." And Turner herself would later reveal that she drew inspiration playing opposite Vincent Price as Cardinal Richelieu, giving a certain tilt to her head, using a wary expression or toying with a fan that revealed the character more than mere words. Initially, she had no interest in the film until convinced the role was ripe with possibilities.
And the truth is, she was a good actress when she understood a role, as she often remarked. One only has to see how she holds her own against veteran actor Spencer Tracy in Cass Timberlane or Clark Gable in Honky Tonk. Some critics have suggested that she was a manufactured star , a studio product right off the Metro assembly line, yet she clearly developed her skills over the years. Her acting matured as she experienced the ups and downs of a tumultuous personal life plagued by divorces, scandal, alcoholism and even violent death. Indeed, her private life gave so much grist to the tabloids, it is a wonder she found the time or inclination to act at all. By the time she did Peyton Place, off-screen events unfolded that were even more dramatic and colorful than anything dreamed up by a scriptwriter and even became the basis of a popular best-seller by Harold Robbins, Where Love Has Gone.
Surely, the reason for her longevity as a star had to be the raw talent that brought her to the attention of director Mervyn LeRoy in the first place. She had come a long way from the shy, soft-spoken girl he interviewed for a walk-on in They Won't Forget, to the star who held audiences spellbound in Johnny Eager, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cass Timberlane, Green Dolphin Street, The Bad and the Beautiful, Peyton Place and the underrated Madame X. Even before she made her first film, LeRoy's trained eye had detected the rare qualities in her that she would refine and develop as she rose to the status of a true screen icon.
She was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner on February 8, 1921 in Wallace, Idaho in a poor working class family. Times were hard and in the depths of the Great Depression, the family moved to San Francisco. When her father was thirty-six, after a big win at a card game, he was the victim of an unsolved street robbery and murder. Her mother worked at a beauty parlor to support her daughter and for awhile had to send her to live with relatives. Eventually they were reunited and were advised by a doctor to move to a warmer climate, away from the fog to Los Angeles.
Julia enrolled at Hollywood High where future actress Nanette Fabray was a classmate: "At fifteen she was the most incredibly beautiful girl we had ever seen. Even the teachers stared at her. We all knew she'd be a movie star." She was a flawless, physical specimen: five foot three, well built, with auburn hair, large gray-blue eyes, ivory skin and a dimpled smile.
Even so, Julia Jean sometimes called "Judy" did not suspect that one day while she was at a malt shop across from the school, cutting classes and sipping a cold five-cent drink through a straw, a man named Billy Wilkerson would hand her a card telling her he was the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter and asking if she'd like to be in pictures. At first she thought he was just a wolf with an old line, but when he told her he'd like to see her and her mother at his office, she thought differently. After an interview, he guided them to the Zeppo Marx Agency where vice president Henry Wilson decided to gamble on her. A couple of bit roles resulted before she was granted an interview with director Mervyn LeRoy, who needed a teenage girl to portray a murder victim in They Won't Forget (1937). The title proved prophetic. In a brief scene, a gay and self-assured Lana, in a form-fitting sweater, paraded gloriously down the street. In theatres across the country, a storm of wolf whistles arose in the wake of her bouncy walk.
After this small but pivotal role, director LeRoy took her under his wing: "The first thing I did was to suggest that she change her name. She was an untutored kid, but she had a wonderful personality. Lana always had a bubbling, irrepressible sense of humor. She wasn't conscious of the tremendous break that came her way. But I was taking her career seriously, even if she wasn't. I knew she had great possibilities."
On February 22, 1937, Judy Turner became Lana Turner with a contract salary of $50 a week, escalating to over $600 over a seven-year period. The part of Mary Clay in They Won't Forget was the first in a series of adolescents Lana would portray. The Hollywood Reporter took notice: "Short on playing time is the role of the murdered school girl. But as played by Lana Turner it is worthy of more than passing note. This young lady had vivid beauty, personality and charm." After the film's release, Lana was often referred to as "The Sweater Girl"
In 1938, when LeRoy moved from the Warner lot to MGM, he took his protégé with him, doubling her salary and there-after her contract enabled her salary to escalate with further screen exposure. By the time she was twenty, she was earning $1500 a week and had bought a house for her and her mother. The public was getting to know her in films like Dramatic School, Rich Man, Poor Girl and Love Finds Andy Hardy (All in 1938). She was used in a Dr. Kildare film, Calling Dr. Kildare (1939), but drew some rave notices for her costarring role with Lew Ayres in These Glamour Girls (1939), a look at social snobbism among wealthy collegiates at an exclusive college. Even hard-to-please Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was impressed . "Young blades especially may be expected to do nip ups over a ball of fire named Lana Turner, attractive, spirited and apparently going places."
It was while filming Dancing Co-Ed (another successful attempt by the studio to showcase Turner), that she met and married her first husband, bandleader Artie Shaw. They were married in February 1940 for a scant eight months before calling it quits. Lana was hurt by Shaw's overwhelming superiority complex.
After accounting herself well in a string of mediocre lightweight films, MGM decided she was ready for a meaty assignment in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), top billed with James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, Jackie Cooper, Tony Martin and Eve Arden. After this one, there would be no more college programmers-it was a star making role and she was ready for it. There were those who felt she was not fully up to the demands of a role that had her as the girl who, allowing the glamour of show business to go to her head, eventually succumbs to illness with a dramatic fall down a staircase when she leaves her sickbed to attend a Ziegfeld show. But they were in the minority. Most of the reviews were as enthusiastic as the New York Times: "It is the perilously lovely Miss Turner who gets this department's bouquet for a surprisingly solid performance as the little girl from Brooklyn." It is probably the film which, more than any other up until that time, made her name synonymous with sex appeal. Everyone was seen to advantage, including Judy Garland who does a moving rendition of I'm Always Chasing Rainbows- and Hedy Lamarr, looking every inch the glamour queen herself, gives one of her more convincing performances as a woman devoted to her musician husband, Philip Dorn.
She was miscast in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) as the well-bred fiancé of Spencer Tracy, a role that was supposed to go to Ingrid Bergman who asked that the parts be switched. Ingrid was afraid of playing too many wholesome roles and wanted a chance to play the barmaid victim. The studio agreed, but in any event the film itself was judged less noteworthy than the 1932 Fredric March version and received mixed reviews complaining of its length and the uneven quality of the script. Nor was Tracy's performance, more subtle in it's use of makeup, viewed as highly as March's interpretation, possibly due to his character's ill-defined motivations. Lana was beautiful but her role was colorless and Bergman got the most notice.
As if to make up for their mistake, the studio cast her opposite their biggest moneymaking male star, Clark Gable, for Honky Tonk (1941). Clark was a male star Lana was in awe of and admitted she was shaking like a leaf when informed that she would co-star with him. She knew that his reaction had been: "Are you kidding?". He remembered her as girl afraid of her own shadow and hadn't seen any of her recent films. By the time they did their first morning scenes together, he changed his mind.. He popped his head into her dressing room and gave her a sheepish grin. "Baby," he said, "you sure have learned a thing or two!" By the time the film was advertised for release, they were being touted as the hottest new starring team and would be teamed three more times in their careers. The story was a synthetic western comedy romance involving a con man (Gable) and his attempt to take over a town and marry the prim daughter (Turner) of the town's justice of the peace (Morgan), a former con man himself. Its entertainment value depended mainly on the chemistry between Gable and Turner and since there was plenty of that, movie-goers were happy and it did big box-office business.
She was ready for her first film noir when she was cast as Robert Taylor's society girlfriend in Johnny Eager (1942), with Taylor as a gangster and Van Heflin in an Oscar-winning supporting role as his only friend, a tarnished idealist turned alcoholic. With a cast including Edward Arnold, Robert Sterling, Glenda Farrell and Barry Nelson, it offered compelling performances by Taylor and Turner, effective in her role as woman who is attracted to the underworld's excitement but suffers a mental breakdown when made to believe she has committed a murder. It was another indication that when she understood a role, she could play it to the hilt.
In July of 1942 she married a business man Stephan Crane, a marriage that would end in divorce eight months later. A second marriage to Crane (when she discovered she was pregnant) would last even less time, from March 1943 to August 1944. On July 25, 1943 she gave birth to daughter Cheryl Crane. During these years, she was a regular staple of movie magazine covers (hundreds of them) and enjoying the bulk of her publicity at nightclubs and movie premieres. Less attention was paid to the fact that she the mother of a young child.
MGM wasted no time in finding a suitable script to re-team Gable and Turner in a wartime romance, Somewhere I'll Find You (1942), with the pair as squabbling war correspondents during World War II, ending with a final fully-staged action sequence on Bataan. Expertly tailored to suit both stars, the script was nothing special but the studio knew audiences would want to see the Honky Tonk stars reunited and surrounded by Robert Sterling, Patricia Dane, Reginald Owen, Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn. Work was halted in mid-January 1942 after three days of filming when Gable's wife, actress Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash while on a war bond tour. Shooting resumed four weeks later when Gable was able to recover from his grief, but it cast a pall over the entire shooting. Rumors spread that Carole was anxious to return because they had quarreled before her trip and she knew he was about to be playing opposite Metro's new blonde bombshell again. Lana always insisted Gable was never more that a man she had great affection for- "closeness without intimacy" is the way she described it. He finished his assignment and then left to join the Armed Forces.
Once again, both stars drew favorable reviews for their work. Variety said: "Miss Turner is the modern Jean Harlow of celluloid-a sexy, torchy, clinging blonde who shatters the inhibitions of the staidest male." Predictably, the public responded making it a box-office hit.
Slightly Dangerous (1943) was a more modest comedy-drama teaming Lana with Robert Young. Lana was a small town waitress posing as the long-lost daughter of a millionaire and audiences had a chance to see her first as a brunette than as a blonde. It was thin comedy material, noteworthy as being the first vehicle built entirely around her, and the supporting cast was good- Dame May Whitty, Eugene Pallette, Alan Mobray, Florence Bates and Ward Bond. She was a guest star in The Youngest Profession (1943), along with Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Taylor and William Powell, a comedy about star struck teen-age autograph hounds in which she made a brief appearance as herself surrounded by fan mail in her dressing room. Another bit that same year came in DuBarry was a Lady, glimpsed for a scant fifteen seconds in Technicolor (for the first time) on Red Skelton's arm at the end of one of his song routines as a surprise gag.
After the birth of daughter of Cheryl in July of 1943, Lana returned to the screen for Marriage is a Private Affair, given solo billing for the first time with two leading man-James Craig and John Hodiak. Natalie Schafer made her screen debut as Lana's mother- a role she would play twenty-five years later in the TV series The Survivors. It was typical fluff designed to make Lana look good to wartime GIs who now regarded her as one of their favorite pin-up girls. In an even more patriotic mode was Keep Your Powder Dry (1945) featuring Lana, Laraine Day and Susan Peters as three new WAC recruits, all of whom managed to look stunning even in military uniforms. Said the LA Times: "It may cause the more impulsive among you girls to rush out and join." The story was a trifle about three different young women from varied backgrounds learning to deal with each other. Laraine Day had the least sympathetic role as an army brat, flaunting her superiority over the others and finally getting her comeuppance. Lana made a number of personal appearances in connection with the film, though no one is sure any young women enlisted thinking they would look as good as her in khaki.
More romantic fluff followed in Week-end at the Waldorf (1945), MGM's update of their Grand Hotel type of story. Ginger Rogers was top-billed with Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson and a supporting cast that included Xavier Cougat and his Orchestra. Lavishly produced escapist fare, it enjoyed a record breaking nine-week run at Radio City Music Hall and became the sixth largest grossing film of 1945. Cue magazine described it as "first rate entertainment"...lively plot and counterplot...most interesting aspect of the picture is the astonishing realism of the Waldorf sets." Lana was a stenographer in love with a lonely war hero (Van Johnson), just one story in a film bogged down by too many sub-plots, but it gave war-time audiences the kind of escapist fare that they craved.
MGM's decision to film James M. Cain's steamy novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) marked a step up the ladder for Lana's reputation as more than just a glamour girl. The script went through a series of re-writes before the Hays Office would consider it acceptable. While the novel lost some of its punch in its transition to the screen , no one ever criticized Lana or John Garfield for their outstanding work at the young lovers corrupted by greed and lust to the point of committing murder. Considering the moral code of the 1940's, it was surprisingly honest in its treatment of sexual frustrations suffered by the couple as they begin to realize the results of their conspiracy. Alton Cook of the New York World Telegram said: "One of the screen's really great achievements in screenplay-writing . One of the astonishing excellences of this picture is the performance to which Lana Turner has been inspired." It was her understanding of Cora Smith that permitted author James M. Cain to give her the highest compliment. He presented Lana with a leather bound first edition of his novel bearing the note: "For my dear Lana, thank you for giving a performance that was finer than I expected." Lana herself was aware why she was good in the role . "I thought I understood the odd twisted reasoning that made her yearn for what she considered respectability and security." When the film opened at the Capitol in New York City in the steamy summer of 1946, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was quick to note: "It is pleasing to see a story that was held at arms length for ten years finally come in as a picture which is not only "moral" but brilliant to boot." Needless to say, it became one of Lana's favorite roles.
At around this time, Lana was enjoying her marital freedom between husbands, living it up in nightclubs and having her photos taken at all the popular night spots with eligible bachelors like Turhan Bey, Victor Mature, Robert Stack, Buddy Rich, Howard Hughes and Robert Hutton, never at a loss for romantic escapade to give columnists something to talk about. Not until she met Tyrone Power did she find someone she could be really serious about and soon their romance was the talk of the town. When the studio cast her in Green Dolphin Street (1947), she even left in the middle of shooting to join Tyrone Power in Mexico for a torrid few days where he was working on Captain from Castile. Tyrone Power never felt he could have a true commitment with her and shortly afterwards she was devastated when he married Linda Christian. Ironically, at the time of their tryst, Linda Christian was back in Hollywood playing Lana Turner's maid in Green Dolphin Street. Lana carried the bittersweet memory of her affair with the handsome matinee idol for the rest of her life.
Green Dolphin Street (1947) was a handsome adaptation of a prize-winning novel by Elizabeth Goudge, a richly detailed romantic costume saga about two sisters (Turner and Donna Reed) residing in the Channel Island seaport of St. Pierre in love with a seafaring adventurer (Richard Hart) who winds up in New Zealand and, in a drunken mishap over their names, mistakenly sends for the wrong sister to marry. He goes through with the marriage to Lana despite his error and the story unwinds to show how love and respect gradually grows between them as they face many hardships and dangers together, under the knowing eyes of his friend (Van Heflin).
The obstacles facing them provide the most spectacular moments of the film- a tidal wave and earthquake are so realistically depicted that it won an Oscar for Best Special Effects. It seemed to be the kind of of costume epic that called for Technicolor, but nevertheless it made a stunning impact in its technical wizardry and all of the performances were first rate. The New York Morning Telegraph proclaimed: "An eye popping picture. When you emerge from such an affair as this, the feeling you have is not so much the exaltation that comes from seeing a good picture, as it is a sort of stupefied wonder that so much has taken place on screen." Indeed, there is so much plot that it is impossible to give a brief summary without becoming tedious.
Standout performances from Frank Morgan and Gladys Copper as ex-lovers and Edmund Gwenn as her patient, long suffering husband must be mentioned- they are superb. Donna Reed is effective as the sister who turns to religion to soothe her soul. In PM, Cecilia Ager wrote: "In a movie dedicated to production values, Miss Turner right or wrong is most eminently right."
If Cass Timberlane (1947) did nothing else, it proved that Turner was now a strong enough performer to be matched with Spencer Tracy. From the novel by Sinclair Lewis, it told the story of a young woman from the wrong side of the tracks who marries an older, small-town judge despite the disapproval of his society friends. Zachary Scott was a playboy who provides some diversion for her when boredom sets in. Lana received glowing reviews for her work opposite Tracy. Kate Cameron in the New York Daily News wrote: "That she is able to hold the spotlight while Spencer Tracy in on the screen, is a test of her ability as an actress and as a charmer." Not considered one of the authors best works, the film nevertheless proved its worth at the box office thanks to excellent supporting work by Tom Drake, Mary Astor, Albert Dekker, Margaret Lindsay and Selena Royale.
1948's Homecoming was given an ad campaign that proclaimed: "The team that generates steam!", when Lana and Clark Gable were teamed for the third time in another wartime romance. This time the critics had their hatchets out and found the whole thing synthetic and false. The critic for PM was highly cynical: "Even the mud in Homecoming looks slick and unreal, like it passed an MGM screen test." With additional box-office support from Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, it managed to make a profit despite the critics. Some were genuinely impressed by Lana's moving deathbed scene, including director Mervyn LeRoy who thought it was performed with great restraint and sensitivity.
Since her last five films had proven big at the box office, MGM had no hesitation in choosing her to add some luster to The Three Musketeers (1948), designed to show off the non-singing non-dancing skills of acrobatic Gene Kelly as D'Artagnan and an impressive cast including June Allyson, Van Heflin and Angela Lansbury. At first reluctant to play a murderous who lies, steals, and cheats her way from England to France, and ends up killing the heroine, Lana was reluctant to star in a part which figured importantly only in the second half of the film. But wise heads prevailed and she made a great impact in this her first Technicolor film.
She especially enjoyed working with Vincent Price, as Cardinal Richelieu. "I studied him, and it challenged me. I began to try things I never knew I could do. I found my own little touches- a certain look, the flap of a glove, a tilt of the head." Exuberant, colorful and lively entertainment, with a number of excellent dueling scenes, it is Turner's performance as Lady de Winter that remains in the memory. The scene of her being led across a footbridge outside her country estate to the executioners block is highly effective, coming after the grim sequence in which she is seen, devoid of make-up, fooling her jailers and stabbing Constance to death. Noteworthy too was the exceptional color photography which caused Cahiers du Cinema to remark that Robert Planck's lensing of Lana Turner was "among the most beautiful sequences of the American cinema."
Lana hoped her next marriage to wealthy, much-married Henry J. ("Bob") Topping would be the one that worked, when she married for the fourth time on April 26, 1948. Again, however, it was a stormy marriage that could not be saved, and ended in divorce after five-years in December 1952. Yet again Lana had proved a bad judge of men. Her husband had been scathingly referred to by Life Magazine as "considered very talented by cafe society...because he inherited $7 million and plays a fine game of golf." The wedding itself had been covered in a story titled: "For the Fourth and Definitely the Last Time".
Her career entered shakier territory in the 1950's, beginning with a soap opera directed by George Cukor, A Life of Her Own (1950) costarring Ray Milland and Barry Sullivan. She was a model trying to make it in the big city and hoping not to repeat the same mistakes made by others in her situation struggling for success. Somewhat overlong and downbeat with a talky screenplay, it was her first box-office failure and, unfortunately, not her last.
For Mr. Imperium (1951) she was given Technicolor and Enzio Pinza, but little in the way of a screenplay, which clearly defeated both of them. It turned out to be a flop of the highest order, even with an occasional full-voiced song by Pinza and a nice supporting cast that included Barry Sullivan, Debbie Reynolds and Marjorie Main. This misguided effort was a big reason why Pinza's Hollywood career never got off the ground. As if to ensure fans wouldn't desert her, the studio quickly cast her opposite handsome Fernando Lamas in a competent but hardly inspired production of The Merry Widow, although neither of them could sing a note (lip-synching was "in" at the time for stars who needed their voices dubbed). It was a lush musical done with enough flair to please most of her fans. No expense was spared to film it with glamour and opulence and it proved a profitable hit. The chemistry between Turner and Lamas was not just on screen, since they were both involved in a well-publicized romantic fling that only helped at the box-office.
She returned to drama again and this time it was a good one The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), the story of a ruthless producer (Kirk Douglas) remembered by three people he made and then discarded, played by Lana, Dick Powell and Barry Sullivan. Gloria Grahame won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as Powell's wife and others in the large cast included Walter Pidgeon and Gilbert Roland. It was a searing portrait of the overly ambitious producer which some thought was a thinly disguised portrait of David O. Selznick. Turner had a Diana Barrymore type of role as a lush who is salvaged from her drunken obsession with her dead actor-father and transformed into a great star by the anti-hero who then discards her for another woman. Although all three main characters have been double-crossed by the producer, the film ends with each of them listening to his voice over the phone as he outlines a new project, implying that once again they are going to fall under his spell. It was a fascinating, realistic glimpse at behind-the-scenes work at a film factory under Vincent Minnelli's meticulous direction.
Director Minnelli was highly complimentary about Lana's contribution, especially in the car-hysteria scene. "I found she had great imagination. She could do things I had no idea she could. That famous hysterical scene in the car was shot in one take. I explained the whole routine to her and she went in and did it in one take. She was a marvelous person as well as an actress." Surprisingly, although the film was nominated for six Oscars (including Best Actor for Kirk Douglas), Lana received no nomination but much critical approval.
It was back to a strictly glamour girl role again for Latin Lovers (1953) opposite Ricardo Montalban and John Lund. It's strictly corn best described by critic Jeanine Basinger who wrote: "Latin Lovers is a a piffle in which the major action takes place in the wardrobe department. Turner changes clothes every five minutes. But not even the beautiful clothes or the Latin music-or the sight of Lana doing a fetching samba with Montalban-can turn this pumpkin into a golden coach." The weak yarn was a distinct letdown after the success of her previous film. Other such yarns followed and it would be four years before she had another decent role.
Romance was in the air again when Lana met the handsome movie Tarzan, Lex Barker. After a long companionship, on the rebound from an affair with Fernando Lamas, Lana decided to risk a fifth marriage and on September 8, 1953 they were wed for what would prove to be a five-year marriage. She realized her once flourishing career was beginning to slip and major changes were taking place in the Hollywood of the 1950's. Her career at Metro was winding down with a handful of weaker films before the studio released her. The Flame and the Flesh (1954) attempted to make her a dark-haired screen siren but was notable only for some fine location photography in Naples, Italy. Newsweek commented: "There are many fine views of Vesuvius, but the star herself does most of the smoking." Betrayed (1954) had her back in Gable's arms again in a contemporary spy drama that had her as a nightclub singer spying for the Dutch underground. Gable was noticeably aging and not quite suitable for cloak-and-dagger material but Victor Mature (as "The Scarf") was good in a colorful co-starring role as a dashing resistance leader. Complained a critic for The Commonweal, "During long parts of it, one is never quite sure for whom Clark Gable, Lana Turner and Victor Mature are spying and chasing." It was handsomely photographed on location in Holland but dismissed as just a so-so spy melodrama. Turner had kept her hair brunette again for this one, but discovered that fans preferred her as a blonde and returned to that shade for The Prodigal (1955), a biblical epic that bore little resemblance to any part of the Bible but gave Lana the chance to wear the briefest of all her beaded Metro costumes as she walked through her role as high priestess of Damascus in 700 B.C. Panned unmercifully upon release, it drew a witty comment from the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "I've never seen Lana Turner walk better." Lana herself would later kid the film's reputation as a pot boiler. "It should have played Disneyland," she said. Edmund Purdom and Louis Calhern were her unfortunate co-stars.
Her career continued in the mid 1950s with three indifferent films: The Sea Chase (1955) teamed her with John Wayne, improbably cast as a German sea captain with Turner as a lady spying for the German at the outbreak of World War II. Rambling and overlong, it further suffered because there was no chemistry between the two. On loan-out to Fox, she did The Rains of Ranchipur (1955), a pale remake of the Louis Bromfield story so successful when Fox first filmed it with Tyrone Power and Myrna Loy as The Rains Came. Shallow performances by Joan Caulfield and Fred McMurray didn't help. Again, neither she nor Richard Burton were convincing enough in unsuitable roles. It was a sluggish film that not even the special effects department could save, even though this time there was wide-screen photography and Technicolor. She returned to her home studio for Diane (1955), a respectable enough historical drama, with magnificent palace sets and sumptuous costumes, in which she gave an elegant performance as the infamous Diane de Poitiers against a background of court intrigue as she influences the King of France and has affairs at his court, including one with his son. Released in January, 1956 to lukewarm reviews, it marked the end of Miss Turner's career at Metro. One month later, her eighteen-year association with the studio was terminated as the studio began dismantling it's studio roster of contract players. She had no idea that she was about to star in the most important role of her career at Fox, as well as facing the most turbulent period of her private life.
A tremendously successful first novel by Grace Metalious that tore the lid off secret lives in a New England town, Peyton Place (1957) was offered to her by producer Jerry Wald. Friends advised her not to play the mother of a teen-age girl, but since she was such a mother in real life she had no qualms about accepting what proved to be a meaty role. Many aspects of the novel were toned down but the film was still strong stuff for 1957, a slightly steamier version of a previous study of small-town hypocrisy was depicted in Kings Row (1942). Bolstered by great pictorial beauty (with location filming in Camden, Maine), an impressive background score by Franz Waxman and a masterful screenplay by John Michael Hayes, it was judged better than the book by many reviewers. Lana was Constance MacKenzie, a mother who keeps her teen-age daughter insulated from the world and lies to her about her past. A highlight of the film was the dramatic trial of Selena Cross (Hope Lange) who has murdered her abusive father (Arthur Kennedy). Turner goes to pieces on the stand as she realizes her own relationship with her daughter has gone astray. It was just one of the finer moments from the film, giving her part a mature understanding and depth that went beyond her image as a glamour girl. Two other films that Turner made before Peyton Place were released around the same time to capitalize on the success of the Fox film. Neither one of them measured up to the extraordinary popularity bestowed on Peyton and were comparatively weak at the box-office: The Lady Takes A Flyer (1958) was a mild comedy with Jeff Chandler that wasted both of them, and Another Time, Another Place (1958) was a slow-moving romantic drama which introduced the relatively unknown Sean Connery who had not yet spoken his "Bond, James Bond" line. Both films needed all the help they could get from the notorious front page publicity that Lana's private life was undergoing, as well as the recognition Peyton Place was getting.
Shortly after separating from Lex Barker in the spring of 1957, Lana was approached by a young, darkly handsome, aggressive gift shop owner who had obtained her telephone number from an underworld character. At age 32 , he had already been married three times and was a veteran hoodlum who sought the attention of wealthy women. He gave his name as John Steele but his real name was Johnny Stompanato. On the night of April 4, 1958, Lana had a violent argument with him, having learned about his mobster ties. He was still angry with her for refusing to let him escort her to the Academy Awards ceremonies the previous month and must have realized he was losing his hold on her. He followed her to her bedroom where the argument intensified. Her teen-age daughter, Cheryl, feared for Lana's life when Stompanato threatened to disfigure her. Impulsively, the girl grabbed a kitchen knife, burst into the bedroom and stabbed him in the abdomen as he rushed at her. The ensuing scandal made newspaper headlines all over the world and there were fears that Lana's career would be destroyed by the tragedy. Her tearful testimony on the stand was received with cynicism by the press. Her explanation of the fateful event was called a "Hollywood scenario," her tears "a performance" as good as any of her work on film. The trial became a three-ring circus of journalism. Little if any of the coverage was sympathetic. The revelation of her love letters made her seem pitifully childish and almost naive. It would end in a finding of justifiable homicide.
Despite all this, her career was thriving and she had by now became a true superstar. Although the days of successful "women's films" were coming to an end, Lana had three entries in this genre that kept her a popular box-office commodity. Imitation of Life (1959) was the most successful, ably directed by Douglas Sirk and based on a Fannie Hurst novel first filmed with Claudette Colbert in 1934. Lana was an ambitious actress struggling to control a rebellious teen-age daughter in what was termed "a superior soap opera." The Commonweal said, Imitation of Life is a tear jerker; and when Mahalia Jackson sings "Trouble of the World" in the finale episode, a veritable flood sweeps through the theatre. Come prepared." Over-produced on a lavish budget, it was producer Ross Hunter's ultimate tribute to Lana's glamour-almost too much so. Lana looked overladen with jewels, and the fanciest wardrobe of her career, but the public and her notoriety made the film a hit.
On November 28, 1960 she married a wealthy Los Angeles Merchant, Fred May, placing her bet on number five, with a man who was said to worship her. The marriage would last a brief two years, ending in irreconcilable differences. She got a quick divorce in Juarez, Mexico.
Portrait in Black (1960) and By Love Possessed (1961) were synthetic soap operas with a common thread: she was beautifully gowned amid handsome settings and given emotionally overwrought moments to remind the audience that they were watching well crafted tear-jerkers that gave them all the glamour and tears the scripts could devise. In the case of Possessed, the script was a bit talky, with Turner more subdued than usual. Both films provided mildly satisfying entertainment that put no strain on anyone's genuine emotions. For a change of pace, she tried lighter fare again with Bachelor in Paradise (1961), a lesser Bob Hope comedy that strained for laughs, and Who's Got the Action? (1962), costarring with Dean Martin and Walter Matthau, a light-weight comedy about bookies that met with indifference at the box-office. She was a rich lady with a shady past in Love Has Many Faces (1965) and every inch the glamour queen but the film was as preposterous as the ending which had her gored by a bull. Cliff Robertson, Hugh O' Brian and Ruth Roman were wasted in this one.
Those who thought that the themes of mother love and self-sacrifice was passe by the 1960's, were forced to reconsider when Ross Hunter resurrected Madame X for Lana. The story already had been filmed four times since 1916-twice as a silent and twice again as a talkie. Lana was considering projects for her own production company and was invited to view the 1937 Gladys George version. She was impressed enough to give Hunter the go ahead to work on an updated script, aware that the pitfalls of too much "glamour and tears and sentimental hokum" could mean failure. While not a complete success, the film, when released in 1966, was not the disaster that some of the more cynical reviewers claimed it to be. Many critics applauded her performance and felt that it merited at least an Oscar nomination, had the film itself not been so poorly reviewed. The Los Angeles Times noted: "The unsparing, guileless honesty of her performance is very touching." She played a number of difficult scenes with considerable skill, including a no-holds barred display of emotion while on the skids in Mexico with Burgess Meredith, and a tense courtroom confrontation with her long lost son (Keir Dullea), not to mention some terse dialogue with her cruel, overbearing mother-in-law (Constance Bennett in her final role), and finally a moving deathbed scene with her son at her side.
Her portrayal actually won a few foreign acting awards. Personally, she considered it one of her best. She told reporters, "I'm not a method actress, but the only way I can reach that kind of emotion is to call upon situations and experiences in my own life. It's not easy to do because you lock them away. But it's the only way to get the same level of intensity." It was her last personal triumph as a film actress.
Meanwhile, her "marriage-go-round" continued. At the films completion she married number six, Robert Eaton, for a two-year run. Like Stephan Crane, Eaton had too failed to mention a previous marriage, although he was legally divorced.
Her subsequent films were a poor lot, not worthy of the star who had once been atop the MGM royal hierarchy. It was three years before she did The Big Cube (1969), a reference to LSD, filmed on the cheap in Mexico and so poorly distributed in the U.S. that it opened in only a few key cities before disappearing. Dan O' Herlihy, George Chakiris and Richard Egan did little to help this lurid melodrama about a young girl's plot to murder her step-mother.
A month after divorcing Robert Eaton, she married a night club hypnotist she had known only a few weeks, Ronald Dante. It turned out his real name was Ronald Peller. It seemed that with him she reached the bottom of the barrel. The newspapers printed sordid stories of his past, and after a short marriage of six months Lana was again a free woman. Later that year she brought suit against him, charging him of defrauding her of $34,000.
In the 1970's she had considerable success touring in Forty Carats and winning plaudits for her stage work from critics who had assumed she could only do film work. She was sadly aware that Hollywood was not making films for woman her age. There were two more films, but they were the worst of her career.
Persecution (1973) (aka The Graveyard) was a British-made quickie with Trevor Howard about a woman who torments her son with deadly results. It had few bookings nor did her next big screen movie Bittersweet Love (1976) with Robert Alda, Celeste Holm and Robert Lansing, a strange tale about a pair of young newlyweds who discover they have the same father. Her film career came to an ignominious end in 1980 with something called Witches' Brew, a remake of Burn, Witch, Burn, a film which only came to life with scenes of Turner playing a scheming broomster.
It was inevitable that she would find her last roles only on television. Small screen work came when she joined Jane Wyman for episodes of Falcon Crest, from 1982-1983, but there were reports that she and Wyman did not get on at all since Turner was used to the star treatment. Turner's glamorous features had taken on a more mature look around the time of Peyton Place and by the time she did Falcon Crest it was evident that she wasn't in the best of health. She published her autobiography in 1982, "Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth". There were reports of illness but nothing was confirmed until it became known that she was suffering through a long bout with throat cancer. The world was saddened to learn on June 29, 1995 that she had died, at 74, with her loyal housekeeper tending her in her final days.
During an interview in her sixties, she made no bones about enjoying her status as a top star at Metro. Of her lifestyle then, she told a reporter: "When I was a playgirl, honey, I played. I was here, there and everywhere, living it up. And what's more we had the vitality to see us through the day or night without the aid of either pot or pep pills. I think we were luckier than the kids today." She claimed to be satisfied with the quieter life when her film career ended, happy with few close personal friends she had. On the subject of the men in her life, she was candid: "I had seven husbands. And why? I wanted it, signed, sealed and delivered. Lots of women know lots of men. I married mine. If I met someone now, I don't think I'd do the paperwork again."
For many aspiring actors and actresses hoping to climb the ladder of success, her seemingly overnight stardom may seem to symbolize, "the stuff dreams are made of." But when success came to her, she was ready for it. She had all the prerequisites for the kind of stardom she achieved on film, a glamorous creature with a warm, bubbly personality fully earning the catch phrase "blonde, beautiful and dangerous" before developing into a skillful actress who learned most of her lessons the hard way-from life.
In a final, satisfying footnote to her life, Lana lived to see her daughter, Cheryl Crane grow up to become a responsible businesswoman. Following a verdict of justifiable homicide, and after release from juvenile custody, Cheryl matured as she underwent years of analysis. While her mother attempted to help her through her difficulties, Cheryl managed to build a life for herself. The ordeal had somehow strengthened the bonds between the two women.