The Lana Turner Thread

ClassyCo

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I'm probably at the limits of my Lana knowledge as well; truth is, I don't think I've seen more than maybe six or seven of her films.

She had a surprisingly durable career; she was a leading lady as late as 1966, far out lasting her contemporaries. I said in another thread that Hedy Lamarr was more interesting off screen than on; the opposite strikes me as being the case with Lana. She's the quintessential Movie Star -- more than Liz, more than Joan -- and hits all the beats. Career ups & downs? Check. Numerous marriages? Check. Scandals? Check. Tell-all book by child? Check. Yet through it all, Lana seemed kind of ... vacuous. A glamorous, empty vessel. Maybe there was more depth to her than I give credit for, but her life and image seem uninteresting to me. Even the Stompanato killing isn't really that interesting. Minus the murder, Liz was a similar stereotypical Movie Star, but also seemed to be a genuinely interesting, warm woman.
It's interesting that you compared Turner and Taylor in such a way. They were both equally "grand" and had "big" careers and both had called MGM home for a sizable chunk of their Hollywood heyday. Lana just gets lost somewhere in the shuffle; she's beautiful, sexy, and talented (when given the right material), but she just isn't interesting. I've tried to get into the more gossipy aspects of her career, and it never goes anywhere. She just seems void of any defining factor.​
 

DallasFanForever

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Loved her in Imitation Of Life. I actually thought it was one of her best performances.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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It's interesting that you compared Turner and Taylor in such a way. They were both equally "grand" and had "big" careers and both had called MGM home for a sizable chunk of their Hollywood heyday. Lana just gets lost somewhere in the shuffle; she's beautiful, sexy, and talented (when given the right material), but she just isn't interesting. I've tried to get into the more gossipy aspects of her career, and it never goes anywhere. She just seems void of any defining factor.​

Comparison is odious, but Lana seemed to be a pit of a poseur -- albeit a gorgeous and competent one -- as were many of the glamour queens of her era. That's not really a criticism of Turner, because it pretty much worked.

But Elizabeth Taylor, though quite capable of a flawed performance, wasn't a poseur. Or even a poser. Taylor could go a little deeper --- hell, her marriages even outnumbered Lana's!

lanarichardelizabeth.jpg

Richard Burton between Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor, at a gala soirée at the Taormina Film Fest, where Turner has been awarded with a David di Donatello award for Madame X... Taormina (Messina), Italy, July 1966.
 

Crimson

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But Elizabeth Taylor, though quite capable of a flawed performance, wasn't a poseur. Or even a poser. Taylor could go a little deeper --- hell, her marriages even outnumbered Lana's!

If I could have had dinner with any classic film star, it would have been Liz. I don't even like her much as an actress, but she seemed like a great broad. Very possibly the best person to come out of Hollywood.
 

DallasFanForever

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If I could have had dinner with any classic film star, it would have been Liz. I don't even like her much as an actress, but she seemed like a great broad. Very possibly the best person to come out of Hollywood.
Liz would probably be second on my dinner list, only behind Marilyn.

@Caproni I’m assuming will approve of my top choice LOL
 

darkshadows38

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honestly i really haven't seen that much of her movies to say how good or how bad she was? i'm sure i saw some of her films but off the top of my head i would have to look her films up
 

Crimson

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When I did watch FALCON CREST as a follow up to DALLAS, it was well after the Lana Turner season. I've seen a few clips here and there -- perhaps not fair to judge by -- but Wyman seemed to obliterate her on screen without even putting in much effort.
 

ClassyCo

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When I did watch FALCON CREST as a follow up to DALLAS, it was well after the Lana Turner season. I've seen a few clips here and there -- perhaps not fair to judge by -- but Wyman seemed to obliterate her on screen without even putting in much effort.
Wyman easily eclipses Turner in the scenes they share.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Wyman easily eclipses Turner in the scenes they share.

Oh, I don't know -- Lana had that creepy factor going on, so you believed the enmity between her and Jane, on screen and off.

Turner was in FC's best era, and became the best Soap Monster Mama of them all -- even dead!

 

Crimson

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Was Lana ill when she was on FC? I've only seen clips, but often looked older and frailer than her actual age.
 

Snarky Oracle!

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All True Divas need at least one domestic murder.

lanaturner.jpg


Hollywood hairstylist, Eric Root, claimed in 1996, the year after Lana's death at age 74, that she had admitted to him that she'd done the crime she'd long been suspected of: snuffing out her tough-guy lover with a butcher blade, Lana blurting out to Root: "I killed the son of a bitch, and I would do it again." Root said he urged her to go public with it before her own death so daughter Cheryl's name could be cleared.

The same year, 1996, MGM hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff revealed that on the morning of Johnny Stompanato's murder, Sydney had run into Turner leaving the Pioneer Hardware store in Beverly Hills, and that he asked the actress what she was doing at the hardware store, she responded: "We needed a new knife."

The next day, when Guilaroff went to see Lana, she sobbed: "Did you ever dream this could happen? And with the very knife I bought yesterday." Lana herself conceded in her 1982 memoir that Stompanato was indeed killed with the same knife, but insisted that she and Johnny had gone shopping together for kitchen utensils and several knives (but not the singular knife which Lana, alone, told Guilaroff about the day before the sensational killing.

Her daughter has maintained for 65 years that the public story is true, and that she herself -- and not her movie star mother -- had stabbed Johnny Stompanato to death.

However, when Johnny's ex-wife, Sarah Ibrahaim, filed a wrongful death lawsuit only weeks after the murder (a suit which was ultimately settled out of court four years later for $20,000, an amount far less than was requested but still substantial given that Ibrahaim was no longer married to Johnny at the time he died) Lana's daughter, Cheryl, admitted to the attorney overseeing the civil case, William Jerome Pollack, that she couldn't even remember stabbing Johnny Stompanato, and that Cheryl also could not recall providing the written statement read on her behalf during the April 11 inquest.

Tongues have, of course, wagged for two-thirds of a century that Lana Turner murdered her lover on April 4, 1958, either during a violent argument or even premeditatedly (the knife purchase only 36 hours earlier) and that the LAPD and the studios had her guilt neatly covered up, her 14-year old daughter taking the blame but not prosecuted. It became one of Hollywood's most infamous killings -- right up there with the 1921 rape trial of silent comic star Fatty Arbuckle (he was acquitted but his career was ruined, with a little help from Hearst's yellow journalism), the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, the orgiastic slaughters by the Manson Family in 1969, the strange 1981 drowning of Natalie Wood, and the two 1994 murders attributed to OJ Simpson (also acquitted to great controversy) and Stompanato's death remains one of the most famous crimes of the 20th century.

(The 1906 murder of NYC architect Stanford White by Harry Thaw over showgirl Evelyn Nesbit was a biggie, too, but that wasn't in Los Angeles).

Did Lana do it? Has all the scurrilous gossip which has churned for decades have any merit?

She was accused of "acting" during her testimony in court, there was some forensic evidence that Johnny was stabbed while lying in a horizontal position (in contrast to Lana and Cheryl's version that the gruesome event happened just inside the bedroom doorway when all three participants were standing, and many, many folks in Hollywood have always believed that Lana, one of the most glamorous stars in the history of motion pictures, got away with homicide -- perhaps even a premeditated one. Johnny's boss and friend, mobster Mickey Cohen, was convinced his "enforcer" (allegedly a less brutal man than his exaggerated reputation would have it) could never have been so easily killed by a single jab from such a young girl, and Cohen had been convinced that Lana actually stabbed Johnny Stompanato in his sleep.

It should also be noted that the celebrated movie queen was a not-insignificant alcoholic.

But a true diva's career is rarely ruined by a murder scandal -- it's enhanced by it. The dark and sordid drama only solidifying and indeed adding to their mystique... And they know it, too.

No wonder she was perfect for FALCON CREST, where she was potentially the Soapiest Soap Mother of Them All (if it hadn't forgotten about her fictional legacy as the serial eventually lost its way). But it sounds like THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and PORTRAIT IN BLACK may been de facto documentaries.

"Not a lady" indeed, Angela Channing.

As of today, Alec Baldwin has yet to be implicated in Stompanato's death. But since Baldwin was born the day before Johnny's grisly execution, nothing can be entirely ruled out.


 
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ginnyfan

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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!





 
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