Book Review: Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, by Lana Turner (1982)

Book cover of Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, by Lana Turner, 1982.

The beautiful and glamorous Lana Turner at the peak of her beauty.

Another glamorous still of the lovely Lana.

Lana making her dramatic entrance in The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946. It's no wonder that John Garfield was willing to kill for her. 

Lana Turner was one of the biggest movie stars in the 1940’s and 1950’s and also one of the most beautiful and glamorous. Turner was well known for her stunning beauty, and also for her dramatic personal life. She was married 8 times to 7 different men. None of her marriages lasted longer than 5 years. Turner chronicled her extraordinary life in her 1982 autobiography Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth. The book actually started as a biography of Turner by movie critic Hollis Alpert, but once he interviewed her for the book, it slowly turned into her autobiography, which explains why Alpert’s name is listed as one of the copyright holders.

Lana the book is an interesting look at the woman behind the image. However, the book is not without its faults. The ending of the book is oddly rushed, as the last 11 years that the book covers, from 1971-1982, take up only the last 15 pages. Granted, those are not the most fascinating years of Lana Turner’s life and career, but it felt like she suddenly ran out of time and rushed the ending. And suddenly, in the last four pages of the book, Turner has a religious awakening. This seemingly life-changing moment is catalogued without much detail. 

The real focus of Lana is on her husbands, and not her movies. Unfortunately for fans of old Hollywood, there’s not much behind the scenes information on any of Turner’s movies. We learn that Clark Gable, her most frequent co-star, was nice to her, but she only saw him socially once. There’s a lot that Turner doesn’t tell us, which holds back Lana from being a classic Hollywood autobiography. Who were Turner’s good girl friends who she socialized with? What leading men did she like playing opposite? We never find out because Turner simply doesn’t tell us. It’s too bad there isn’t more focus on her acting and her movies, because Lana Turner had true acting talent, and she was much more than just a pretty face. 

Turner had an unfortunate penchant for marrying men who were bad for her, and the catalogue of failed marriages eventually becomes numbing. It also begs the question, why did she marry so many men who were not suited for her? Turner attempts to answer the question, but doesn’t come up with a very satisfactory answer. Turner wrote:

“With the exception of dear Fred May, who is still my good friend, all my husbands have taken, and I was always giving. Why? Well, I was always a giver, even as a little girl. If I had candy and you had none, I’d give you half of mine….But that’s an easy answer, one I’ve used all my life. Now I see that somewhere there was a pattern, something in me that made me choose takers, over and over again. Surely I should have learned that, when respect goes out the door, love flies out the window. So why did I lose respect again and again? I honestly don’t know. Once would have been enough for some people.” (Lana, p.249) 

My own guess is that Turner must have had low self-confidence when it came to her relationships with men. Turner once said, “My plan was to have one husband and seven children but it turned out the other way.” She got off to a bad start at age 19 by eloping with big band-leader Artie Shaw to Las Vegas on their very first date! Shaw proved to be selfish and mean, and the marriage soon collapsed. Husband number 2 was Steve Crane, who eventually became a successful restaurant owner. Turner and Crane married twice because when they first got married Crane wasn’t divorced from his first wife. Oops! Crane fathered Turner’s only child, her daughter Cheryl Crane. Steve Crane inspired perhaps my favorite line in the book. While Turner was pregnant, he bought a tiny lion cub as a pet. Why, I don’t know. Turner writes, “With a baby coming, having a lion around the house seemed too risky to me.” (Lana, p.73) Good call Lana! 

In between husbands 2 and 3 Turner had a passionate affair with matinee idol Tyrone Power, who Turner describes as her true love. But Power was in the process of getting divorced from his first wife, and when she got pregnant with his child they weren’t able to marry. Turner writes about wanting to go away and have the baby in secret and then claim she adopted it. But she dismisses it as a foolish idea, even though it’s exactly what Loretta Young did when she got pregnant with Clark Gable’s baby. Young’s career survived unblemished. Power left for a press junket in Europe, leaving the ball in Turner’s court about whether to keep the child or not, saying it wasn’t his decision to make. Power contacted Turner via shortwave radio during his trip and she told him “I found the house today,” which was their secret code that meant she decided to have an abortion. When Power returned to the United States, he had fallen in love with actress Linda Christian, who would become his second wife. 

Husband number 3 was millionaire Bob Topping, who had a drinking problem and spent too much money. When Topping proposed to her, Turner told him “You know I don’t love you.” (Lana, p.109) Which is a good sign that you shouldn’t marry someone. But she eventually said yes. Turner makes it sound as though she wanted someone who would take care of her monetary needs, but did she really want to quit making movies and become a lady of leisure? She never answers definitively. Depressed and despondent over the failure of her marriage to Topping, Turner attempted suicide in late 1951, taking an overdose of sleeping pills and slashing her wrist. Her manager Ben Cole saved her by breaking down her bathroom door. The incident was covered up, and the official story was that Turner had slipped in the bathroom and broken the glass of her shower door, thus injuring her wrist. Husband number 4 was actor Lex Barker, most famous for playing Tarzan. According to Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane, Barker sexually abused Crane, and once she told her mother about the abuse, she promptly left Barker. Turner doesn’t mention this in her autobiography.

In between husbands 4 and 5 was the most notorious relationship of Turner’s life, her year-long affair with minor mobster Johnny Stompanato, a former bodyguard for gangster Mickey Cohen. He introduced himself to her as “John Steele,” and had no inkling of his ties to gangsters until much later in their relationship. Stompanato was relentless in his pursuit of Turner, obsessively sending her flowers and trying to get her to go out on a date with him. Turner had a queasy feeling from the beginning about him, but unfortunately she finally went out with him. He quickly proved to be abusive and controlling. Once Turner learned of his connections to the underworld, she feared the bad publicity that would result if it became known that she was dating him. Ironically, Turner’s nightmares of bad publicity would come true, but not in any way she could have imagined. Turner wanted to end her relationship with Stompanato, but she proved unable to get rid of him. In the midst of this crisis, Turner was nominated for Best Actress for her role in Peyton Place. After the Oscar ceremony on March 26, 1958, when Turner came home to Stompanato that night, he went into a violent rage and brutally beat her, slapping her and punching her repeatedly. Turner wrote, “There were welts all over my face and neck, and the beginnings of what would be terrible bruises.” (Lana, p.194) Just a week later, on April 4^th, Turner and Stompanato had another loud argument and he was threatening her again. Turner’s daughter Cheryl was listening to their argument, and entered the room. Holding a kitchen knife, she stabbed Stompanato in the stomach, killing him. The incident was a huge Hollywood scandal, and Turner saw her private life splashed all over the front pages. Cheryl’s stabbing of Stompanato was ruled a justifiable homicide, and she was spared having to go to jail. Luckily for Turner, the scandal didn’t ruin her movie career, as Peyton Place’s box office totals were probably helped by all of the press coverage.

Husband number 5 was Fred May, who sounds like he was a really nice guy. He’s the only one of Turner’s ex-husbands that she remained close friends with, and Turner admits in the book that maybe she shouldn’t have divorced him. Husband number 6 was Robert Eaton, who misused lot of Turner’s money and threw extravagant parties when she was out of the country. Her final husband was nightclub hypnotist Ronald Pellar, also known as Ronald Dante. He allegedly stole a lot of money and jewelry from Turner. Turner declared herself finished with men at that point and never married again. I guess she knew that once she had basically married Gob Bluth, Will Arnett’s character from “Arrested Development,” she probably shouldn’t get married again. 

To her credit, Lana Turner was a survivor. She made it through 7 failed marriages, 2 abortions, 3 stillbirths, and she still kept going. That takes guts, and you have to respect someone who has been through all that.

Movie Review: A Life of Her Own, starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland (1950)

Ray Milland and Lana Turner in A Life of Her Own, 1950.

Lana Turner and Ray Milland make a handsome couple in A Life of Her Own, 1950.

Lana Turner, in costume for a modeling scene as Lily James in A Life of Her Own, 1950.

The 1950 film A Life of Her Own, starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland, is a fascinating look at the life of a woman who becomes a successful model. Directed by George Cukor, A Life of Her Own features an excellent performance from star Lana Turner, who showed that there was more depth to her than just her beauty. Turner plays Lily James, a girl from Kansas who takes the train to the big city (New York City) to try and become a model. Lily is willing to work hard, and she sees the dangers inherent in her profession right away when she meets Mary (Ann Dvorak) who was a very successful model and is now trying to re-start her career. Mary’s desperation is palpable as she tries to get another assignment from Tom Caraway (Tom Ewell) who runs a modeling agency. Mary takes Lily under her wing, and they go out to dinner with Mary’s seedy friend Lee (Barry Sullivan) and kindly Jim (Louis Calhern). Lily resists Lee’s advances and sees Mary home when it becomes obvious she’s had too much to drink. Lily leaves Mary at her apartment, and Lily learns the next day that Mary committed suicide by jumping out of her window. 

Lily focuses on her work and quickly becomes a top model, as she is beautiful and professional. Through Jim she meets Steve Harleigh (Ray Milland) who lives in Montana and owns a copper mine. They meet awkwardly, as Lily wakes up from taking a nap at Jim’s apartment and sees that Steve has been watching her sleep. (Which is kinda creepy.) They don’t seem to like each other at first, but they see more of each other and affection between them grows, even though Steve is married. Steve goes back to Montana and his mine, and he tells Jim to buy Lily some jewelry. Lily is not impressed with the jewelry and quickly figures out that Jim bought it for Steve and refuses it, saying she won’t be bought off. When Steve returns to New York on business, he and Lily begin an affair, and he pays for her new apartment. We learn that Steve’s wife Nora (Margaret Phillips) is in a wheelchair because of injuries suffered in a car crash. When Nora comes to New York to celebrate Steve’s birthday, Steve spends his birthday with Nora before sneaking out to the party that Lily is throwing for him. He finds the party to be full of people he doesn’t know, and he finds Lily tipsily dancing with another man. (Lily’s dance partner is played by the famous choreographer Hermes Pan, who choreographed all of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies.) Lily resolves to go to Nora and tell her all about her affair with Steve. When Lily goes to visit Nora with Jim, they find Nora lying on the floor, as she has been trying to learn how to walk with crutches. Lily feels ashamed, and in her conversation with Nora she realizes that Nora is a good person, and that she really needs Steve. She doesn’t tell Nora about the affair, and as she waits for the elevator, she runs into Steve and tells him their affair is over. Lily says to him, “I can’t live without you, but I’m going to.” Lily then finds the unsavory Lee hanging out in the lobby of her apartment, and he taunts her, telling her how she’s been ruined. Lily walks to Mary’s old apartment building and has fleeting thoughts of suicide as she stares up at the building. But she decisively turns around and walks away, determined to find happiness on her own.

A Life of Her Own is an excellent movie, and it features a fine performance from Lana Turner. It’s not too much of a stretch to see A Life of Her Own as an allegory about the Hollywood studio system and how it chewed up the young women who endured it, just as the modeling industry consumes Mary in the movie. As a veteran of the studio system from the time she was 16 years old, it’s obvious that Lana Turner knew exactly how to play the role of Lily. 

In her autobiography, Turner doesn’t show much affection for A Life of Her Own, but I would guess that she identified with Lily’s struggles to succeed in the difficult world of modeling. At the beginning of the movie, Lily says to Tom Caraway, “I want to be somebody, not just anybody, and all I have is myself and how I look. I’ll work hard because it means a lot to me.” Turner could easily be talking about herself. Towards the end of the movie Lily is talking to Jim about men and she says, “I’ve had men buzzing around me since I was 14, and I didn’t want it that way. I never wanted it that way.” I can imagine that Lana Turner would have felt the same way that Lily did.

A Life of Her Own was something of a comeback for Lana Turner, because when the movie was released in September of 1950, she hadn’t been seen on screen in almost two years, not since The Three Musketeers came out in October, 1948. Turner was suspended by MGM during part of that hiatus, and she also took a long honeymoon with her third husband, millionaire Bob Topping, who was an heir of a tin-plate magnate. Bob’s brother Dan Topping owned the New York Yankees from 1945 until 1964. Both Topping brothers were married many times, and Dan was married to the figure skater Sonja Henie from 1940-1946. Oddly enough, the actress Arline Judge married both Dan and Bob Topping. She was divorced from Bob just days before he married Lana Turner. Sadly, 1949 was a difficult year for Turner, as she gave birth to a stillborn baby boy. 

As detailed in Lana: The Memories, The Myths, The Movies, written by Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane, A Life of Her Own had a long journey to the screen. The movie was loosely based on The Abiding Vision, a short story by Rebecca West. MGM’s first treatment of the story was rejected by the censors in 1936, as the treatment of adultery was deemed too sympathetic. The censors worried that there was “no proportionate punishment of the transgressors.” (Crane, p.303) The Production Code Administration finally approved the script for filming in late 1949, but the original ending had Turner’s character Lily committing suicide, which was apparently deemed a suitable punishment for her adulterous behavior. When the movie was shown to test audiences, they hated the ending. The ending was then re-shot so that Lily survived, which I think is a much better resolution to the story. I also liked that the ending leaves Lily on her own, to make her own way in the world. She’s a strong female character, and I think she will succeed. If the movie were re-made now, Lily would probably be paired off with Jim at the end, rather than be allowed to find her own path.

Cheryl Crane writes that many different actors were considered for the role of Steve Harleigh, “among them Cary Grant, Howard Keel, James Mason, and Robert Ryan. I would have voted for James Mason. Mother was embarrassed when she had to get his autograph for me.” (Crane, p.303) I think that Cheryl Crane had good taste, and I agree with her that James Mason would have been excellent in the part. However, MGM cast Wendell Corey as Steve Harleigh. Turner didn’t think Corey was right for the part, but grudgingly accepted the studio’s decision. On the first day of filming, Turner’s costumes were still not ready, so there was a delay as the costume department worked to pin her dress so it would look okay for the camera. Turner wrote in her autobiography, “As I left the trailer I heard Corey say, as though talking to someone nearby, ‘It’s interesting, you know. The wonderful Barbara Stanwyck never keeps us waiting. Not even for one minute.’ When I whirled around I saw that he was alone. He was talking to me, or rather, he had timed the remark for my benefit.” (Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, by Lana Turner, p.127-8.) Because it was widely assumed around Hollywood that Turner had an affair with Stanwyck’s husband Robert Taylor, Turner took Corey’s odd remark as an insult to her and made MGM fire Corey. He was replaced with Ray Milland, who took home a huge salary of $175,000 for his part, as he knew the studio was in a bind. When the producers asked Turner what she thought of Ray Milland, she said, “He’d be great. You should have hired him in the first place.” (Turner, p.129) I think Milland was perfect for the part, and I can’t imagine Wendell Corey in the role at all. With his more ordinary looks, Corey might be a more believable copper mine owner than Ray Milland, but Corey had none of the suave charm that Milland had. The difference between the two actors is that Wendell Corey was a character actor, and Ray Milland was a handsome leading man. Ray Milland reminds me a lot of Jimmy Stewart. They both had a similar build-tall and lanky, and their eyes and noses are quite similar. 

All of the supporting performances in A Life of Her Own are excellent. Ann Dvorak is great as Mary, the veteran model. I loved Dvorak’s voice; it’s so natural and modern sounding. She and Turner don’t have that “movie actress” voice that so many actresses from that era had that now sounds so unnatural to our ears. Be on the lookout for Jean Hagen, most famous as Lina Lamont in Singin’ In the Rain, in a small part as Maggie, the model who brings her son to the modeling agency at the beginning of the movie. Hagen also gets some screen time during the raucous party at Lily’s apartment, which features some wonderful tracking shots that really immerse you in the party. A Life of Her Own was produced by a man with the unlikely name of Voldemar Vetluguin, a Russian whose only other producing credit was East Side, West Side, from 1949. 

I would highly recommend A Life of Her Own to fans of Lana Turner, as she looks gorgeous and gives a terrific performance.