Lana Turner, actress: biography, filmography

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Actress Lana Turner was remembered by the viewer as the owner of a beautiful chiseled figure, haughty features and blond curls, that is, she was a typical standard of the traditional appearance of movie stars of that era. She was not endowed with a unique acting talent, but is better known for an endless number of novels and marriages. Her changing lovers and husbands were featured in the press, making her so famous for three and a half decades.

Biography of the legend

Lana Turner is the pseudonym that the actress took for her creative career. Relatives and friends knew her as Julia Jean Mildred Francis Turner. She was born in the small mining town of Wallis, Idaho, on February 8, 1921. Her parents, Mildred and John Turner, were ordinary workers. Irish, Danish, English and Scottish blood mixed in the veins of the future world star.

Lana Turner, whose biography is set out in the article, did not always live in abundance. The carefree childhood of a little girl was overshadowed by the death of her father. John was an avid poker player, and one day while playing, there was a robbery in which he was killed. Lana's mother, after the death of her father, moved the whole family to California, wheremore job prospects.

Lucky occasion

By a lucky coincidence and thanks to her expressive appearance, the producers spotted the girl in one of the city cafes. Thanks to this fateful meeting, at the age of 17, Lana Turner signed her first contract with a film studio.

An amazing story about how a young beauty was accidentally spotted in a cafe and invited to act in films, for a long time walked a legend among Hollywood actors and was an inspiration for the same young girls who dreamed of a movie star career.

First film

It was behind the counter of the cafe, sipping soda through a straw, that Turner was first seen on the screens by the audience. She made her debut in 1937 in the film A Star Is Born. However, the film "They Won't Forget" by Melvin Le Roy, which was released in the same year, made a greater impression on the audience. Her character is treated very cruelly and is killed at the end of the film. In this film, for the first time, the public saw the naked body of Turner, which added topics for conversation. Very flattering remarks about the young star were published in the Hollywood Reporter. After the premiere of this film, everyone called her "The Girl in the Sweater", as her heroine went around in a tight blue sweater.

Rapid success

After the film "They Won't Forget" offers just rained down on "the girl in the sweater". Turner was given roles that allowed her to fully enjoy her beautiful figure and slender legs. Every year her new hit came out: 1938 - "The Adventures of a Venetian"("The Adventures of Marco Polo"), 1939 - "Dancing Student", 1940 - "Two Girls on Broadway", 1941 - "Ziegfeld Girl" and many others.

For the role in the film "Dancing Blonde" Turner had to dye her hair blonde and radically change her image. After this role, Lana began to be called the queen of nightclubs. The rapid rise of her popularity began after the death of Jean Horlow, who has long been called "the most charming blonde in Hollywood."

The role of frivolous and windy blondes was excellent for her, but when it came to the dramatic role, it became clear that Lana Turner could not cope with it. This became clear from the film "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", released in 1941.

However, this did not affect the popularity of Turner. During the war years, her fame especially increased, and as it became clear, not because of her talented acting skills, but because of the “blue sweater”, which successfully tights her chest. During World War II, Lana Turner became the most famous actress to pose for the Pin-Up Girls. Her posters were hung on the walls of the barracks. During this time, she began doing community work and selling war bonds as she traveled around the country. Lana wrote the speeches for her performances herself, and promised everyone who purchased a bond with a face value of $ 50,000 or more to give her a kiss. The strategy worked, and, as she herself claimed, it helped replenish the country's budget by several million.

A worthy role

Despite the fact that by 1946 Lana Turner had already starred in a large number of films, real recognition came to her only after the role of Cora Smith, which she played in the film "The Postman Always Rings Twice", a film adaptation of the novel by James Caine directed by Tay Garnet.

Her life image of a cold, arrogant woman is the best suited to the image of the main character, who was able to force her lover to kill her own husband. Her heroine manages to escape punishment, but not divine retribution. The hallmark and the main role of the actress is the image of the femme fatale Cora, it was she who was played by Lana Turner. "The Postman Always Rings Twice" is the most famous film the actress starred in.

Variety of looks

The most successful role at the turn of the decade, according to film critics, is Milady Winter in the film The Three Musketeers, filmed in 1948. However, the career of the actress during these years was not so smooth, a large number of Turner's roles were left without attention. However, her role as Georgia Lorrison in Vincent Minnelli's The Evil and the Beautiful is considered her most successful.

Already in the mid-40s, she was in the top ten highest paid actresses. In the 1950s, Lana Turner became the queen of MGM. Her filmography includes dozens of roles in gangster, adventure films and melodramas, but her acting skills did not get better from this. She played gangster girlfriends in the films Slightlydangerous”, “Johnny Eager”, “Stash” and sophisticated ladies in the films “The Three Musketeers” and “Dubarry Was a Lady”. The lack of acting skills in films was more conspicuous than in musicals, where they decided to return her. This is followed by roles in the musicals The Merry Widow and Mister Impirium.

Lana and her men

The personal life of the actress was more like a love story or one of her roles as a "femme fatale". She was legally married eight times, and the number of lovers is difficult to count. Celebrities also became Lana's husbands: Lex Barker (the courageous Tarzan), Artie Shaw, millionaire Bob Topping, and lesser-known, but very rich personalities. The windy actress often joked that as a child she dreamed of having one husband and seven children, but it turned out the other way around.

During her numerous love affairs and marriages, she had only one child. Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl, was born to husband Stephen Crane, whom the actress officially married twice.

Love and death

Every marriage or love affair was loud and scandalous for Lana. She brought some men to such an extent that they pushed her down the stairs, others poured champagne in public or slapped her in the face. All stories were enthusiastically described by newspapers and famous magazines. Lana's name was constantly on everyone's lips.

But this is not the most scandalous story that happened to her. The life of heroines from gangster novels was to her liking, and she was looking for communication with such people. This then played a cruel joke with Turner. One of her lovers was a famous gangsterJohnny Stompanato. He was an unspoken standard of male sexuality and valor, and was also able to completely subjugate the actress. Their romance was especially stormy, with constant scandals and quarrels. Johnny considered Lana completely his property and was terribly jealous. During one of these strong quarrels, he wanted to slash her face so that no one would get it after him. Their quarrel was witnessed by fourteen-year-old Cheryl, who, in fear, grabbed a carving knife and inflicted a mortal wound on her mother's lover.

There have been rumors around this story for a long time that everything did not happen exactly as it was presented in court, but, despite the large amount of dirt poured on the movie star, her popularity only increased from this.

After this turning point, Lana Turner began to play only in melodrama the role of mothers who lived for their daughters. Lana Turner, in her old age, when she had already left big cinema, acted on television and published a book about her memories called “Lana is a lady, a legend, really.”