Memo on Turner

There were rumors of a tush-pinching Louis B. Mayer and his sprint marathons, in which the elder statesman of Hollywood ran a three-yard dash around his office desk in hot pursuit of whatever soft young flesh was looking for work that day. Whether there’s any truth to such things surely can’t be corroborated by anyone still living or willing to talk. But Lana Turner (1921—1995), one would assume, ran the course well.

    She was an unlikely addition to MGM’s roster of ‘More stars than there are in Heaven,’ a fashion plate decidedly lacking the upper-crust erotica of Garbo, the highly publicized but otherwise dubious refinement of Norma Shearer, or Greer Garson’s stunning, genteel English rose. Lana had obviously been around the block, a ripe physique filling all the requirements of ‘sweater girl.’ Her thick-lipped, doe-eyed carnality carried the baby fat voluptuousness of Bernadette Peters, but one doubts Lana possessed the self-assurance to comprehend and arrest the caricature and self-parody that lay at her disposal.

Before the studio makeover (click to enlarge)

    After a string of fluff parts (she was vaporized out of memory by Ingrid Bergman in the 1941 Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde), Lana transformed into a finely burnished peroxide blonde in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), a seamy crime melodrama better suited to Warners. It was derived from James M. Cain, and nowhere near as convincing as Visconti’s fevered Ossessione (1943), an unauthorized adaptation far too gritty and lascivious for 1940’s Hollywood.

    If the Postman delivered anything, it was Lana inconceivably cast as a roadhouse hash slinger (!), radiant in open-toed shoes, white blouse and shorts, her beautiful bare legs held in awe by the lens, and those vacant, faraway eyes framed by a turban. Indeed, her introductory shot in that picture stands among the supreme and least plausible of all Hollywood glamour images. The great riddle — what madman cast the warm and fuzzy Cecil Kellaway as the husband? — went unanswered, but no one really cared. Lana had, as they say, ‘arrived.’

    She continued mostly in dross, shuttled arbitrarily from one sound stage to another, a clotheshorse for high falutin’ wardrobe in Green Dolphin Street (1947) and The Three Musketeers (1948), the increasingly clenched expression suggesting a stranger to orgasm. Along the way she found herself in Minnelli’s superb The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), her best film. She played an actress who looked and behaved like Lana Turner, on contract at a studio churning out product by the yard, falling under the spell of an impassioned, bridge-burning producer who looked and sounded like Kirk Douglas. If you haven’t seen this one yet, put it at the top of your list.

Minnelli applies finishing touches (click to enlarge).
This image was pilfered from Greenbriar Picture Shows.

    When elaborate and costly soap operas came into vogue in the late 1950’s and early 60’s, forty-year-old Lana reinvented herself. The face, though still commanding, had hardened, as if yesteryear’s manipulative tart inherited a hefty bank account but was adrift in isolation and self-pity: Peyton Place (1957), Another Time, Another Place (1958), By Love Possessed (1961), Madame X (1966). It was a gaudy merger of CinemaScope, Ross Hunter and Technicolor daydreams, where she fell like a tarnished angel from a Douglas Sirk movie. As fate would have it, the best of the lot was Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), where fakery and deception butt heads with longing for acceptance. Inspired casting, this — for Lana was by then the most artificial figure floating around in the memory of old Hollywood.

Lana at Amazon:





I’m hoping that others involved in the Lana-Thon will fill the blanks regarding Ms. Turner’s underworld connections, her intense and passionate daughter, and all manner of Hollywood Babylonia that surrounds her. Links to other Lana-Thon revelers will be added as time permits:

Agence eureka

Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee

The Evening Class

Greenbriar Picture Shows (Excellent photos)

Richard Gibson

Self Styled Siren

The Sheila Variations

Stillettos and Sneakers

That Little Round-Headed Boy