Oscar Profile #197: Lana Turner

Born February 8, 1921 in Wallace, Idaho, Julia Jean “Lana” Turner was the daughter of teenage parents John (1903-1930) and Mildred (1904-1982) Turner. Her father, originally a coal miner from Montgomery, Alabama had by the time of his death at 27 become a con man who was murdered on the streets of San Francisco where the family had moved. After his death, nine year-old Lana and her mother moved to Los Angeles where jobs for women were easier to find. With her mother working 80 hours a week as a beautician, Lana was often shuttled off to friends and acquaintances and later became a latchkey kid, on her own most of the time. She dreamed of becoming a movie star with a husband and seven kids and ended up having seven husbands and one kid. At 15 she was discovered in a Hollywood drugstore by Hollywood Reporter publisher William R. Wilkerson who referred her to agent Zeppo Marx who introduced her to Warner Bros. director Meryn LeRoy.

LeRoy cast her in a small role in 1937’s They Won’t Forget in which she walks down the street braless in a tight sweater with her breasts bouncing, making her an overnight sensation and the heir apparent to Jean Harlow who had died the year before. Moving with LeRoy to MGM where she was nurtured and given a big build-up, she was soon starring opposite Mickey Rooney in Love Finds Andy Hardy. In 1939 she had been in a relationship with famed Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer, but when it became clear he wasn’t the marrying kind, she entered into an impulsive marriage with bandleader Artie Shaw. The marriage ended quickly when he asked her to iron his shirts.

Now cast opposite Hollywood’s top stars such as Clark Gable in Honky Tonk and Robert Taylor in Johnny Eager, she was reputed to have had affairs with both before marrying second husband, restaurateur Stephen Crane in 1942. Discovering that he had not legally divorced his former wife, the marriage was quickly annulled, but the pregnant star remarried him after his official divorce in 1943. They were divorced after the birth of daughter Cheryl.

After a series of films in which she did little more than look pretty, Turner finally got to prove her acting ability with 1946’s The Postman Always Rings Twice opposite John Garfield and 1948’s Green Dolphin Street in a role intended for Katharine Hepburn, during which time her affair with Tyrone Power, allegedly the love of her life, ended when he walked out on her after learning of a one-night stand she had while they were apart.

Her 1948 marriage to husband no. 3, millionaire Bob Topping would last four years, but by 1950, they had gone through his fortune and hers and she was forced to make her first film in two years. A Life of Her Own was supposed to be her big comeback film, but it flopped at the box office. Her real comeback was in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful opposite Kirk Douglas.

Her affair with Latin heart-throb Fernando Lamas ended after he slapped her for flirting with Tarzan star Lex Barker who became husband no. 4 in 1953. That marriage ended in 1957 when daughter Cheryl told her that Barker had repeatedly raped her, something Turner had no inkling of.

Unceremoniously let go by MGM in 1956, Turner at 36 agreed to play the mother a teenage daughter for a percentage of the profits in 1957’s Peyton Place which was a huge hit and earned her the first and only Oscar nomination of her career. At this time she was in another abusive relationship, this time with gangster Johnny Stompanato. A few days after the Oscars, daughter Cheryl, fearing for her mother’s life, grabbed a carving knife from the kitchen and stabbed Stompanato in the chest, killing him. It took a jury twenty minutes to return a verdict of justifiable homicide, but Cheryl’s life was ruined. She spent much of the next four years in reform schools and sanitariums after arrests for drunken behavior and other minor offenses.

Shunned by most of Hollywood, Turner was nevertheless given a lucrative deal by independent producer Ross Hunter to star in the 1959 remake of Imitation of Life, which netted her $2 million in a sweetheart of a net profit deal. Subsequent hits included 1960’s Portrait in Black; 1961’s By Love Possessed and 1966’s Madame X. Although she continued to appear every so often on TV and in an occasional film through 1991, she was no longer a major star. Her last important role was in support of Jane Wyman in the TV series, Falcon Crest in that nine year series’ second season (1981-82).

Turner’s subsequent marriages were to rancher Fred May (1960-62); producer Bob Eaton (1965-69) and hypnotist Rob Pellar AKA Dr. Dante (1969-72). The life-long heavy smoker died of throat cancer on June 29, 1995 at 74.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946), directed by Tay Garnett

James M. Cain’s steamy novel had been filmed three years earlier in Italy by Luchino Visconti as Ossessione, but that version wouldn’t be seen in the U.S. for decades. Audiences of the day were, however, familiar with prior film versions of Cain’s novels. 1944’s Double Indemnity had earned Barbara Stanwyck an Oscar nomination and 1945’s Mildred Pierce had earned Joan Crawford an actual Oscar. There would be no Oscar nomination for Turner for her unforgettable portrayal of the seductress/murderess in this one, but it did establish her as MGM’s biggest female star, supplanting the seven year reign of Greer Garson.

You wouldn’t know that Turner and John Garfield didn’t like each other from their on-screen chemistry which was so hot that several scenes had to be trimmed to keep the censors at bay.

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952), directed by Vincente Minnelli

Kirk Douglas was the main character of this Hollywood expose, playing a thinly disguised version of David O. Selznick, but Turner received top billing as the alcoholic daughter of a legend based on Diana Barrymore that he makes into a star.

The film was quite shocking in its day, but some of the scenes, especially Turner’s attempted suicide car accident don’t hold up very well. Still, there are some good performances here, notably those of Dick Powell, who turned down the lead to play the secondary role of the betrayed Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Gloria Grahame who won an Oscar as his unfaithful wife. The film won a Total of five Oscars, the most ever for a film not nominated for Best Picture.

PEYTON PLACE (1957), directed by Mark Robson

No one was more surprised by Turner’s Oscar nomination than the star herself for a role in which her daughter has said she was basically playing herself. Based on Grace Metalious’ scandalous best-seller, the film’s production values far outweighed the sensational subject matter which was considerably watered down.

Turner plays the uptight mother of teenager Diane Varsi who also received an Oscar nomination as did Hope Lange as Varsi’s friend from the wrong side of the tracks; Arthur Kennedy as Lange’s rapist/stepfather and Russ Tamblyn as as a mixed-up boy with an overbearing mother who was much more explicitly incestuous in the novel. The film received a total of nine nominations, but won none. Turner’s first participation deal netted her a nice paycheck in addition to her only Oscar nod.

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959), directed by Douglas Sirk

Audiences went in droves to see the fallen star and new star Sandra Dee play mother and daughter in the remake of the 1934 film, but came away in awe of the performances of Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner as the black mother and daughter who passed for white.

The grief stricken star, despite her more than twenty years before the cameras, failed to realize that director Sirk was focusing on the more substantial characters portrayed by Oscar nominees Moore and Kohner than he was on the shallow characters of Turner and Dee. Nevertheless her tears at Moore’s fabled deathbed scene are real, although Moore herself felt they were more for her real-life situation than for the character Moore was playing. Even so, Turner gave more in that scene than in any other in her entire career. The laugh may have been on her, but she laughed all the way to the bank with the $2 million profit she earned thanks to a sweetheart participation deal that netted her 50% of the profits.

MADAME X (1966), directed by David Lowell Rich

Alexandre Bisson’s play was previously filmed in 1914 with Dorothy Donnelly; in 1920 with Pauline Frederick; in 1929 with Ruth Chatterton in an Oscar nominated performance and in 1937 with Gladys George on the heels of her Oscar nomination for Valiant Is the Word for Carrie. It would be filmed again for TV in 1981 with Tuesday Weld.

This is, of course, the old warhorse about a mother forced out of her husband and son’s life who ends up killing a vicious blackmailer to keep him from embarrassing her now grown son. Turner pulls out all the stops and is terrific in the trial scenes with Keir Dullea as the lawyer who doesn’t know the intransient woman he is defending is his own mother. John Forsythe as his father and Constance Bennett, in her last film, as his grandmother have little to do but are effective in the little they’re given.

Turner won the David di Donatello Award (the Italian Oscar) for her performance in what would be the last successful film of her career.