| Lana Turner |
Article Index for Lana |
Website Links For Lana |
Information About ™Lana Turner |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT LANA TURNER | |
| american film actors | |
| american television actors | |
| hollywood walk of fame | |
| people from idaho | |
| throat cancer deaths | |
| 1921 births | |
| 1995 deaths | |
|
Lana Turner ( February 8 , 1921 – June 29 , 1995 ) was an American Actress famed early in her career for her appearances in tight Sweater s, and her smoldering sensuality, and later in her career for sudsy romance films with maximal glamorous evening gowns and tragedy. BIOGRAPHY The name on her birth certificate, as she stated in her autobiography, was Julia Jean Turner, not Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner as many sources claim. In any case, she was called "Judy" as a child and became '''Lana Turner''' when she became an actress. She was born in Wallace, Idaho . Her father was John Virgil Turner, who was born and raised in Hohenwald, Tennessee . John Virgil Turner was a clerk and a gambler who was murdered when she was a child. Her mother was Mildred Frances Cowan who was about 15 when she married John Virgil Turner. Lana was discovered at the age of 15 in 1936 at the Top Hat CafĂ© in Hollywood by film journalist William R. Wilkerson , who introduced her to actor/comedian/talent agent Zeppo Marx . She was soon signed by MGM . Turner earned the nickname the "Sweater Girl" due to a scene in her debut movie '' (the films' successes were only heightened by gossip column rumors about a relationship between the two). After the war, Turner's career hit a new high with the classic 1946 Film Noir '' The Postman Always Rings Twice '', co-starring John Garfield . During the 1950s, Turner's films started to flop at the box-office, until she starred in Vincente Minnelli 's masterpiece '' The Bad And The Beautiful '' and later the big screen adaptation of Grace Metalious 's best-selling novel '' Peyton Place '' in which she earned an Academy Award For Best Actress . Douglas Sirk 's '' Imitation Of Life '' also proved a big commercial success. Critics and audiences couldn't help noticing that both ''Peyton'' and ''Imitation'' borrowed from Turner's private life -- a single mother coping with a troubled teenage daughter. PERSONAL LIFE Off-screen, Turner was married eight times to seven different husbands, and had many lovers, including Tyrone Power (whom she calls the love of her life in her Autobiography ), Howard Hughes (who is reported to have given her Syphilis ), and a minor gangster named Johnny Stompanato who was fatally stabbed by Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane . (The killing was deemed a justifiable homicide by coroner's inquest.) Her husbands were:
LATER LIFE In the 1970s and 1980s , Turner appeared in several Television roles, but the majority of her final decade was spent out of the public eye. She died rather suddenly at the age of 74 in 1995 of complications from the throat cancer which was diagnosed in 1992 , and which she had been battling ever since, at her home in Century City, California . She was survived by her only child, her daughter, Cheryl Crane , and Cheryl's female Life Partner , whom she said she accepted "as a second daughter". They inherited some of Lana's sizeable Estate , built through shrewd Real Estate holdings and Investments . INFLUENCE For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lana Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at 6241 Hollywood Blvd. The eminent American poet Frank O'Hara wrote a poem titled "Lana Turner Has Collapsed" inspired by Turner after seeing a headline about her soon after her lover Stompanato's murder. The Stompanato incident is also alluded to in a short scene in the film '' L.A. Confidential '' (1997). FILMOGRAPHY
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|