The Lana Turner Thread

[Snarky Oracle!]

The whole idea sounds fascinating and like something out of Lana's 60s melodramas. BUT, for it to be true, Lana would have to have some help from the studios and LAPD, which I don't think was possible in 1958. Remember, Lana left MGM in 1955 and was a free agent for the next couple of years, until she teamed up with Ross Hunter over at Universal in 1959. So in 1958, Lana was pretty much on her own, her career in a slump, without a huge studio behind her and its PR machine and powerful executives who indeed were capable of covering up murders, rapes and all sorts of crimes. It is well known that this kind of stuff was done, mostly in 1930s and 1940s, during the heyday of the studio system. MGM was probably the best at it, (they even had their own police station on the lot) with Eddie Mannix, The Fixer, doing most of the dirty work. Another rumor is that he knocked off Superman actor George Reeves who had an affair with his wife. So if Lana had a scandal like this in 1940s, or early 1950s, she would have a whole machinery working for her.

That said, it is possible Lana still had connections and influence at her old studio and that Mannix, or someone else, would help her out even after she left them. I guess we'll never know.... If she really got away with a murder, than she also orchestrated a brilliant comeback, with Peyton Place become a huge hit after the scandal and with its climax trial scene which had Lana sobbing in the witness stand, just like in real life. Only in Hollywood!

I understand your point, but even though Lana was a free agent by 1958, the industry still has image to maintain, and Turner had been one of their biggest stars. So wheels still turn.

All of Hollywood knew how pathological Joan Crawford's domestic behavior had been, and even hubby Alfred Steele's 1956 death seemed suspicious to some, but there were barely any peeps about any of this in the media of the time, and Joan had been independent from the early-'50s.

The industry doesn't really want their greatest movie queens smeared -- let alone charged with murder, because it reflects badly on the business... and, besides, the Turners and the Crawfords, and their pals, likely know where the others' bodies are buried. Or might.

So people don't want to go over and down like dominoes.

 

[Monzo]

News about Lana Turner!

Lana Turner Book ‘A Murder in Hollywood’, From Casey Sherman, In The Works As Series From Jake Crane

EXCLUSIVE: Lana Turner’s mobster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato was allegedly stabbed to death in her house by her daughter Cheryl Crane in 1958. This incident is the basis for Casey Sherman’s next true crime thriller; A Murder in Hollywood, and it’s also heading to the small screen. Jake Crane, no...

deadline.com

We can start speculating about who will play Lana Turner, probably someone you don't think of at all and who doesn't fit at first glance, but convinces with acting.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

News about Lana Turner!

Lana Turner Book ‘A Murder in Hollywood’, From Casey Sherman, In The Works As Series From Jake Crane

EXCLUSIVE: Lana Turner’s mobster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato was allegedly stabbed to death in her house by her daughter Cheryl Crane in 1958. This incident is the basis for Casey Sherman’s next true crime thriller; A Murder in Hollywood, and it’s also heading to the small screen. Jake Crane, no...

deadline.com

We can start speculating about who will play Lana Turner, probably someone you don't think of at all and who doesn't fit at first glance, but convinces with acting.

Interesting. I'm assuming Crane and Crane are not related.

Well, two hairdressers narked Lana out. And who can you trust more than a hairdresser -- let alone two of them?

In L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997), an otherwise great film, they cast Lana poorly (and I think I would have cast Richard Grieco as Stompanato).

Lana said in 1982, "I'm not that weird, creepy woman people think I am," so she was aware of the image... But, hey, maybe she was!

 

[Toni]

News about Lana Turner!

Lana Turner Book ‘A Murder in Hollywood’, From Casey Sherman, In The Works As Series From Jake Crane

EXCLUSIVE: Lana Turner’s mobster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato was allegedly stabbed to death in her house by her daughter Cheryl Crane in 1958. This incident is the basis for Casey Sherman’s next true crime thriller; A Murder in Hollywood, and it’s also heading to the small screen. Jake Crane, no...

deadline.com

We can start speculating about who will play Lana Turner, probably someone you don't think of at all and who doesn't fit at first glance, but convinces with acting.

Foreshadowing of la Perrault! Maybe she based her on herself!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Foreshadowing of la Perrault! Maybe she based her on herself!

So, do you people still think she was above burying nuclear waste under the vineyards to instigate those brain tumors and see the tainted Chardonnay facilitate spontaneous human combustion? She's evil!

 

[ClassyCo]

I am cautiously awaiting to hear more details concerning this film. I make it a habit not to get my hopes up too high.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Circa 1989: Lana's cheery daughter, Cheryl Crane, alongside Daughter Dearest herself, Christina Crawford, on DONAHUE:

 

[Toni]

Circa 1989: Lana's cheery daughter, Cheryl Crane, alongside Daughter Dearest herself, Christina Crawford, on DONAHUE:

B!tchfest!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

One of Lana's later listless melodramas, BY LOVE POSSESSED (1961) with Miss 'BBG' Ellie herself in, as always, a plucky supportive role.... (and you can really see the Fred Gwynne/Herman Munster in Jason Robards, Jr. here)...

 

[Caryscott]

Just saw her at the local repertory house in a remastered print of The Bad and the Beautiful. She’s mostly good playing a bad actress. Her climax in the car is way over the top - very Susan Hayward. It’s very anachronistic but probably more attributable to the time than Turner herself. Her playing an ingenue and model in Imitation of Life 7 years later always makes me chuckle. A 5’2” model who looks every day of her 38 years kind of pulls you out of the narrative but she’s fine in the later sequences where she’s older. The turgid remake of Madame X where she looks older than her mother in law is actually funny.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

. Her climax in the car is way over the top - very Susan Hayward. It’s very anachronistic but probably more attributable to the time than Turner herself.

It is hysterical, rivaled perhaps by Elizabeth Taylor's outrageous death scene at the end of BUTTERFIELD 8 when she drives off an unfinished bridge and then falls vertically back to earth as if her car was dropped from Mars. Screaming all the way.

 

[Willie Oleson]

 

[ClassyCo]

The Bad and the Beautiful. She’s mostly good playing a bad actress.

Jeanine Basinger applauded Turner's work in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL: "None of the sex symbols who have been touted as actresses -- not Hayworth or Gardner or Taylor or Monroe -- have ever given such a fine performance."

 

[Caryscott]

The person I saw it with chuckled.

I like Jeanine Basinger and I think A Women’s View is an important if not terribly successful attempt to recover the “woman’s” film. While they were still sex symbols maybe but pretty arguable. Turner in no way even come close to Taylor’s performance in Virginia Wolf but she wasn’t really a glamour girl at that point. Not sure I would give it to Turner over Taylor in A Place in the Sun or Giant either and I’m not a Taylor fan.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

The person I saw it with chuckled.

I like Jeanine Basinger and I think A Women’s View is an important if not terribly successful attempt to recover the “woman’s” film. While they were still sex symbols maybe but pretty arguable. Turner in no way even come close to Taylor’s performance in Virginia Wolf but she wasn’t really a glamour girl at that point. Not sure I would give it to Turner over Taylor in A Place in the Sun or Giant either and I’m not a Taylor fan.

Yeah, Turner's perfectly acceptable in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL -- a goodish actress in a good film. But Basinger's praise is a little overstated.

We all know Elizabeth Taylor's acting liabilities -- so did she, well-aware of the "fishwife" thing. But as much as I like Lana Turner (fortunately, we stopped dating before she took her trip to the cutlery shoppe) and find her competently adequate in numerous roles, I think Taylor could go deeper when called upon to do so.

Hell, even the film Taylor most hated, and for which she received her first Oscar (which she felt she didn't deserve), BUTTERFIELD 8, she was terrific in -- and Turner couldn't quite have done what Taylor did with that trashy role. Nor could Turner have done the other things Taylor did which worked.

 

[Caryscott]

Circa 1989: Lana's cheery daughter, Cheryl Crane, alongside Daughter Dearest herself, Christina Crawford, on DONAHUE:

Christina may have gotten some details wrong but she was always credible and never overly vindictive in interviews. Bette Davis daughter BD Hyman was a completely different story. As I recall Cheryl did sue over her mother’s will. She was a beneficiary but most of Turner’s modest estate went to her maid.

Christina was close in age to Maureen Reagan and they both attended Chadwick’s . Jane and Joan lived near one another in Bel Air (Jane’s old house provided the exterior for Joan’s in the first “Feud”). When Bette Davis left Warner Bros in 49 she bequeathed her star dressing room to Jane not Joan. It was just a few months after Jane won her Oscar. Jane said she tried to take it to Paramount for Here Comes the Groom but it wouldn’t fit through the Paramount gates.

For those that try scandalize the boarding school upbringings of the time Hyman and Dietrich’s daughter Maria Riva are both cautionary tales about the dangers of keeping your kids too close in that era.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Christina may have gotten some details wrong but she was always credible and never overly vindictive in interviews. Bette Davis daughter BD Hyman was a completely different story

Yes, 'Mommie Dearest' (the book) was more credible than the movie, and more credible than B D Hyman's "My Mother's Keeper" (which, although much of it was believable, was marred by its small and petty tone).

As I recall Cheryl did sue over her mother’s will. She was a beneficiary but most of Turner’s modest estate went to her maid.

Lana left her stuff to her maid? And Cheryl was almost left out? You'd think Turner would've wanted to keep her daughter silent about what happened "that night" -- but Cheryl has remained mummy-mum all the way.

Maybe Turner should have included her two hairdressers in the will, just in case.

 

[Caryscott]

Yes, 'Mommie Dearest' (the book) was more credible than the movie, and more credible than B D Hyman's "My Mother's Keeper" (which, although much of it was believable, was marred by its small and petty tone).



Lana left her stuff to her maid? And Cheryl was almost left out? You'd think Turner would've wanted to keep her daughter silent about what happened "that night" -- but Cheryl has remained mummy-mum all the way.

Maybe Turner should have included her two hairdressers in the will, just in case.

From Cheryl’s Wiki:

Turner would later state that she regarded Crane's partner, LeRoy, "as a second daughter."[11] Upon Turner's death in 1995, Crane and LeRoy inherited Turner's personal effects as well as $50,000 (her estate was estimated in court documents to be worth $1.7 million [$3.7 million in 2023 dollars]) with the majority of her estate being left to Carmen Lopez Cruz, her maid and companion for 45 years.[30]Crane challenged the willand Lopez claimed that the majority of the estate was consumed by probatecosts, legal fees, and medical expenses.[31]

I think I read the 50 grand was money she owed Crane and LeRoy.