INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

Lana was never once in the annual Motion Picture Exhibitors of America list of the top ten box office stars.

Adela Rogers St. Johns once said, "Let's not get mixed up about the real Lana Turner. The real Lana Turner is Lana Turner. She was always a movie star and loved it. Her personal life and her movie life are one."

Her famous co-star, Robert Taylor, said of her, "I couldn't take my eyes off her, and there were times during Johnny Eager when I thought I'd explode... She was the type of woman for whom a guy would risk five years in jail for rape. I don't think she knew how to talk without being sexy. When she said 'Good morning,' I melted.".

When Turner co-starred with Robert Taylor in Johnny Eager they were billed as "T-N-T... they're dynamite in Johnny Eager."

Liberty magazine claimed that between her first and second marriages she "dated, conservatively, 150 members of the opposite sex, was engaged to be married to five different men, and actually was on the verge of going to the altar with a dozen."

Her first marriage, to bandleader Artie Shaw, lasted a whole four months and seventeen days, and forever after, Lana referred to it as her "college education."

When one critic defined Lana's performance in the film, The Merry Widow, "more fizzle than fizz," she encountered him at a party the following week. "Stick a dildo up your ass," she told him. "Which is the only way you'll ever get fucked, you hideous beast."

After a request from Howard Hughes and Tyrone Power, Lana agreed to a three-way.

Ava Gardner confided in her best gal pal, Lana, that "Robert (Taylor) and Clark (Gable) weren't worth messing up your mouth with." Lana, who had also seduced both men, ranked both Taylor and Gable a "2" on a scale of 1 to 10.

During World War II Lana became one of Hollywood's most popular pin-up girls. Unlike Betty Grable and other pin-ups she was not paraded around in bathing suits. MGM wanted her to have a more glamorous image so she was photographed in lingerie and fur.

Lana had a hard time dealing with the fact that her daughter Cheryl was gay but eventually she accepted her steady girlfriend, Josh, as part of the family.

'The Bad and the Beautiful' (1953) holds the record for the most Academy Awards won by a film (five) not nominated for Best Picture.

'Peyton Place' (1957) was nominated for nine Academy Awards, but the film didn't win any.

'By Love Possessed' (1961) was the very first film shown on a commercial airplane (TWA) as an "in-flight" movie.

Lana sold $12 million in saving bonds in one day by selling her kisses on a Seattle dock.

In later life she developed the bizarre habit of refusing to walk in and out of any airport. Since the mid-sixties a wheelchair has fetched Lana from curb to ramp.

She refused to attend funerals and stated in her will that she was not to have one. She said she wanted to be cremated, her ashes scattered by plane over the Pacific Ocean.

She became furious if her personal bills were not attended to at once by her business office. By her own admission, Lana was the fastest pay in town.

Her favorite expression was "I don't have to do anything."

To assist her in photograph sessions, Lana always insisted that there be a floor-length mirror beside the camera so that she could check every detail of her person before the shutter began to click. She also required soft romantic music to help her mood, and she admitted no one into the studio except her party plus the photographer and his assistant.

Lana was known as Two-take Turner in the industry. She was able to hit a scene on target and to the director's satisfaction by the second take, and would become edgy when a scene had to be shot more than two or three times through the fault of another actor.

Lana never went on a trip of any kind without a well-packed portable bar. In airplanes, it always rode with her since Lana didn't want to be at the mercy of the stewardesses who seemed to take forever serving drinks.

One thing she did at the end of any serious relationship, was to have the bed taken from her home and disposed of.

On rising she always made her own bed. It was the only housework she knew-- maids were never to touch the intimate place where she slept.

Georgia Holt, mother of Cher, was a huge fan of Lana's and baptized her daughter as Cherlyn, a spin on Cheryl, the name of Lana's only daughter.

She could afford the world's costliest creams (and had even endorsed one or two), but Lana herself used humble products bought in the five-and-dime. After bathing, she slathered her body with Nivea cream, and once a week, to achieve deep-down cleansing of pores, she scrubbed her face with a paste made of Twenty Mule Team Boraxo, an industrial-strength scouring powder used to clean greasy hands.

Whenever she bought a pair of shoes, she invariably added, "I'll take them in every color they come in."

Her favorite color in home decor was movie-star white, with accents of gray, mauve or pink.

She owned fifty percent of the net profits of 'Imitation of Life,' her comeback movie.  The film grossed eleven million dollars the first year alone. Though Elizabeth Taylor would make headlines three years later when she was paid a breathtaking one million dollars to make 'Cleopatra,' Lana's earnings from 'Imitation of Life' handily topped that.

Early in her career, Lana would facetiously instruct the press on the correct pronunciation of her name, saying, "That's Lana as in la-dee-da, not lady." Or she told them her name name didn't rhyme with banana but should sound like "Lawn-A."

She was so vain about her looks that, during the filming of 'Madame X', she wore a veil to and from her dressing room and the set, which was closed.

Was supposedly engaged to Howard Hughes for eight hours while on a cross-country flight with Howard at the controls. In her eagerness to marry him, Lana had towels made up that were monogrammed "H.H."  When they abruptly split up, Hughes supposedly advised her, "Go marry Huntington Hartford."

Lana's auburn hair was bleached for "Idiot's Delight" (1939). She was withdrawn from the film, but the fact that she had become a blonde not only changed her screen image but gave her such an outgoing, swinging personality that Hollywood called her the Nightclub Queen.

She was a true American hybrid, with a mixture of Scotch, Irish, Dutch and English ancestry."

She was called the Sweater Girl.  Interestingly, Lana, translated into Spanish means "wool."

Once when she was being interviewed by Hedda Hopper, Lex Barker, Lana's future husband, was in the same room.  There was a large vase of flowers blocking her view of Lex, so Lana got up, walked across the room and removed them, remarking, "He's brand new and I want to look at him!"

A fan met Lana at Macy's when she was signing her autobiography, back in the days when Macy's had book signings. He said "I love you." She said "I know!"

Once she was forced to evacuate her apartment building when a fire broke out. Having only minutes to collect what she needed, Lana grabbed her lipstick, her eyebrow pencil and her hairdryer.

Her father Virgil was robbed, beaten and killed after winning big at the crap table. His body was found on the street with one sock missing-- the sock where he stashed his money.

In 1937 she starred in "The Adventures of Marco Polo" with Gary Cooper. Part of her make-up consisted of black slanted eyebrows that were glued on with fishnet and pulled off after filming each day. By the time the movie was finished Lana's eyebrows had disappeared completely and would never grow back, forcing her to paint them on for the rest of her life.

In 1973 her ex-husband Lex Barker collapsed and died of a massive heart attack. When Lana heard the news she said, "What took him so long?"

In 1983 Lana retired from show business after appearing in the prime time soap opera "Falcon Crest."  Jane Wyman, who was the star of the series, was miffed that Lana demanded star treatment. Her character was killed off at the end of the first season.

Lana died on the night of 29 June 1995 in the arms of Carmen Cruz, her maid of 44 years. She was cremated and her ashes are in her daughter's possession. Cheryl inherited a small sum of money, jewels and furs from her mother. The balance of Lana's $ 2,000,000 estate was willed to Carmen Cruz.

Lana was not discovered by Mervyn Leroy while drinking a coke at Schwab's.  The legend persists but it was only a publicist story put out by the studio. She was discovered at the Top Hat Cafe by Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter.

Lana's mom Mildred did hair for a living. Lana took care of her for her entire career in film. In fact, when Lana got her very first paycheck from MGM she put it in her mother's hand and said, "Mama, you will never have to work again."  And she didn't.

During her reign as First Lady of Argentina, Eva Perón patterned herself after Lana, in particular she copied Lana's hairstyles, makeup and tailored suits.

In 1958 Lana picked a relatively unknown actor, Sean Connery, over eight other contenders to play opposite her in "Another Time, Another Place".  During that movie the two began a short lived affair.

Claimed to have lost her virginity to a young, handsome Beverly Hills celebrity attorney, Greg Bautzer whose name was legendary in the bedrooms of Hollywood.

Married Stephan Crane on July 17, 1942 only to find out that his Mexican divorce from his first wife was not valid in the U.S.  Lana by now was pregnant with her daughter Cheryl so in order to avoid  a scandal, Louis B. Mayer pulled strings, got the Mexican divorce sanctioned in the US and arranged a quickie re-marriage to protect his star.

In her autobiography "The Lady; The Legend; The Truth" she went into detail about her lust for oral sex.

In the movie "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman she was originally supposed to play the part of Ivy, the tart, and Bergman was supposed to play the innocent girl engaged to Tracy but Bergman wanted Turner's part and so the roles were switched.

Director Victor Fleming couldn't get her to cry on cue for a scene in "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1941) so in a fit of anger he grabbed her arm and twisted it sharply round her back until the waterworks started.

Said her ambition in life was to have one husband and seven children, but it worked out the other way around.

When she was three years old her mother took her to a train station. A woman appeared at the window of a passing train and Turner's mother said, 'That's your real mother, not me.' She had no reason for doing this beyond playing a prank, but it traumatized Lana for years afterwards.

Her daughter Cheryl stabbed Lana's boyfriend Johnny Stampato to death when he threatened to carve her up.

When told that Pearl Harbor had been destroyed, Lana reportedly answered, 'Who's Pearl Harbor?'