The design of The Prodigal gives the impression of various studio departments struggling to create the world of 700 B.C. and forgetting to communicate with one another. Turner is dressed like a cooch dancer, and Louis Calhern, the grand factotum of the temple, is dressed like a Victorian lampshade. Tur- ner and the little girl she is training to take her place as high priestess wear matching outfits—mother-daughter goddess costumes. The scriptwriters have strung together a list of lines from other biblical epics and let it go at that. “I can never belong to any one man,” says Turner. “I belong to… all men.” (“She’s what every blind man sees,” one slave sagely observes to another.)
For all its idiocy, The Prodigal nevertheless silences laughter at the awful moment when Lana Turner, as the ultimate sex goddess, is pelted with rotten vegetables and stoned by the populace. She is bewildered and hurt, having believed “her people” would always love her. With a sudden movement, she jumps from a high tower into a flaming cauldron below, a human sacrifice to those who have elevated her but no longer care. No movie star needs a scene like that, particularly when it can be read as mirroring her real situation.
Watching Lana Turner clack across a marble floor in modern high heels, and seeing her move among “her people” like a movie star among her fans, audiences can’t help but wonder. Casting a star like Turner this way must have seemed like a great idea to someone, but what about her? How did she feel when, having proved she could act, she was assigned roles like this?
MGM had always had a solidly bankable property in their golden girl. Not once since Mervyn LeRoy first brought her through the gates had they ever loaned her to another studio. Now, with her films not doing as well as before, Metro made a deal for Turner’s services, loaning her out twice. She was to make The Sea Chase for Warners and The Rains of Ranchipur at 20th Century–Fox. The Sea Chase (1955) teamed her for the first time with John Wayne. Toe to toe, they were equals in star magnitude. Head to head, they were not as well matched, as tiny Turner (even in her highest heels) barely grazed the big Duke’s shoulder. Wayne knows, as always, what he is doing, and Turner, swathed in mink, blond and blue-eyed, wearing a low-cut, clinging gown as she stands in the doorway of Wayne’s quarters, tries her best. Her face wears a look that seems to be saying, “Me Turner. You Wayne.” The two stars try, but there’s no real chemistry between them. Together in the frame they look like a bad splice job, seeming to come from two different movies.
Turner didn’t fare much better at Fox with The Rains of Ranchipur (1955).* A remake of The Rains Came in color and wide screen, Ranchipur afforded her little except some lovely costume changes.
Following these loan-outs, Turner returned to Metro to make her last picture under contract to the studio. Diane (1955) was a sumptuous costume picture based on the life of the Countess de Brézé, the infamous Diane de Poitiers. There is wealth in every tiny detail. A fruit bowl in the shape of a black swan. Handsome carved screens. Lovely tapestries. Oranges hollowed out into little baskets and filled with strawberries. And, of course, Turner, wearing so much fur that she’s practically an ecological disaster. The elegance and polish she had acquired in her years at Metro enable her to pull herself—and the cast—through the film. The part of Diane is one of those cleavage-and-catastrophe roles for which her regal carriage is perfect. By the end of her sojourn at Metro, Turner is no longer an elevator girl who wants to wear mink. She may be Queen of the Gypsies, but she is a queen.
The reaction to Diane was not good, and Lana Turner faced a major career crisis. After more than eighteen years as a top moneymaker (her films had grossed over $50 million), MGM dropped her contract. (After all, the business didn’t expect a female movie star to last more than ten years, and MGM had been coping with Lana for more than fifteen.) In February 1956, shortly after her thirty-sixth birthday, Lana Turner left the studio that had been both her schoolroom and her home, kicked out of the big nest she had helped to feather. For the first time, she was a star without a home studio to protect her and promote her. “I didn’t know how to make a hotel or airline reservation,” said Turner. “For a long time I waited for my limousine that never came to pick me up. I was an orphan. MGM had prepared me for stardom, but not for life.”
How did Lana Turner feel about her change in status? Was she frightened or was she worried? “You know those little toys they have for children?” Turner said. “The ones that bounce back when you hit them? That’s me.” Producer Jerry Wald, searching for an actress with a box office name to head the cast in his planned production of Peyton Place (1957),* offered Turner the important role of Constance MacKenzie. MacKenzie was the mother of a teenage daughter, and Turner’s friends advised her not to start playing mother roles because it would destroy her glamour image. Turner wisely felt otherwise. She sensibly pointed out that, after all, she was the mother of a teenager and everyone knew it. Besides, why should Lana Turner worry about playing a mother? She looked enough like a teenager herself to let would-be critics say anything they could. And she needed to work.
With characteristic good humor, Lana flashed a smile and gave out her optimistic philosophy: “I am quite sure that around the corner is something good.” Around Lana Turner’s corner was something named Johnny Stompanato. Shortly after she separated from Lex Barker, in the spring of 1957, and before she began Peyton Place, Turner was approached by the young and aggressive operator of a gift shop in Hollywood. He had allegedly obtained her telephone number from underworld figure Mickey Cohen. This young man, Johnny Stompanato, already had been married three times himself and, at age thirty-two, was a veteran hoodlum who knew his way around. Inexplicably, Lana Turner fell for him.
Everyone knows what happened. On the evening of Good Friday, April 4, 1958,† Lana Turner was threatened in her own home by an angry Stompanato. Her teenage daughter, fearing for her mother’s life, drove a butcher knife deep into his abdomen, and he died before the authorities arrived. This was one of the most sensational scandals in Hollywood history. Combined with her shaky marital record, it made Turner appear to be one step out of the gutter, an image journalists did much to promote. Turner’s pathetic breakdown in court, when she attempted to testify on her daughter’s behalf, was treated in newspapers almost as a joke. At the very best, it was regarded as no more than another Lana Turner piece of casting. Her testimony was called “a dramatic personal triumph far beyond anything she has achieved as an actress.” Her words were referred to as a “Hollywood scenario,” her sobbing as a “performance.” Newsreels of the trial were shown in every movie theatre across the country, and there was Lana, sobbing, “I didn’t know what was happening!” Time magazine referred to her as a “wanton,” describing her sex life as a men’s room conversation “everywhere from Sunset Boulevard to Fleet Street.” Her love letters to Stompanato (pitifully childish) were published in the papers, and large photos of Cheryl sitting alone at juvenile hall were spread across magazines. Every word of the testimony was printed. Life magazine ran pictures of Turner’s trial scenes in films (Postman, Cass Timberlane, and her current release, Peyton Place).
It was a three-ring circus of yellow journalism. Except for a few articles by old-time hacks like Louella Parsons and Walter Winchell, there was very little sympathy for Lana Turner. There a great deal of sensational press coverage not only of the murder and of Cheryl’s trial, but also of the tragic aftermath of misunderstanding and confusion both mother and daughter suffered in the following years.* After the Stompanato trial, not only was Lana Turner’s private life in a mess but her professional life was also up for grabs. Reportedly she suffered anxiety coupled with shame that immobilized her and left her fearful of the future. She had, after all, been the sole support of herself, her mother, and her daughter since she was little more than a girl. If she couldn’t work, what would they do? More important, what would she do? With no real education, Turner only knew how to do one thing: be a glamorous movie star.
As she aged, the pain of these years was seldom mentioned b
y her, but near the end of her life, she commented, “Whoever started the idea that we [stars] are public property? We give the public performances, glamour, and a dream. But we are all human beings, and we should have moments that are our own. If I were just an ordinary working girl and someone asked me some of the questions I’ve been asked, I’d say, ‘Get lost, Buster!’ But I just take a deep breath and try to answer. I resent stupid questions, but I can’t do anything about the Lana Turner image. I’ve lived with it too long.”
During Cheryl Crane’s trial, Peyton Place was in the theatres, drawing huge crowds. It had been made prior to the scandal but released almost simultaneously with the trial. Turner’s big scene in Peyton Place occurs in a courtroom, where she breaks down on the witness stand. Ironically, about the time she was breaking down on movie screens all over America, she was breaking down in that same chair in real life. Fascinated movie audiences felt they were experiencing her private anguish, reenacted for their benefit. They saw her character only as “Lana Turner.”
The film became a giant hit. Turner actually plays well in her role of Constance MacKenzie, an unwed mother whose lover is a married man. Wearing her hair in a tight French twist and pursing her lips, she represses her own native sensuality, creating the opposite of her usual film self. Lana Turner was nominated for a Best Actress award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, her first and only such nomination. She lost to Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, but for the first—and last—time, Hollywood had taken its goddess seriously in the acting department.
Lana Turner willingly accepted mother roles … with Diane Varsi in Peyton Place …
The brouhaha surrounding Turner, combined with the success of Peyton Place, encouraged distributors to hurry the two pictures she had made after the Wald production into 1958 release: The Lady Takes a Flyer, made for Universal, and Another Time, Another Place, the film she had been working on in England during the last difficult days of her affair with Stompanato. In both, Turner looks almost frozen, unreal, as if she’s been sprayed on the screen with a can of Day-Glo. Her makeup is perfect, but the glamour seems to be defining her where once she had defined the glamour. For the first time, her bubbling sense of fun (translate: her youth) seems to be gone, although that fact is nowhere visible on her face. All three films went into release during Lana Turner’s most sensational publicity. After the trial, when Cheryl was placed in the custody of her grandmother, Turner faced her greatest uncertainty. For a year or more she hid from the press. Ironically, Lana Turner had ahead of her the best film she ever made in terms of financial success and cinematic excellence. This film, Imitation of Life (1959), ensured her a solid income for life, as she owned a percentage of the profits. It also revitalized her career, though in a limited way.
Ross Hunter, a producer famous for furniture over form in film, signed her to play the lead in his remake of Claudette Colbert’s 1930s success, Imitation of Life, based on Fannie Hurst’s novel. The film was to be directed by Douglas Sirk, a man noted for turning sows’ ears into silk purses. For those who see a trip to the movies as a good escapist browse through gorgeous goods, Imitation of Life is stuffed with clothes, furniture, jewelry, makeup, and hairdos, each one more eye-filling than the last. For the literary set, there is a strong story, and for theatrical types, there are excellent performances. For those who care about good filmmaking, here’s a PhD thesis on how to do it.
Lana Turner in Imitation of Life with Sandra Dee … and clutching her little son, who will never know she’s really his mom, in Madame X.
Turner plays the leading role of Lora Meredith, a woman so caught up in her life as a successful stage star that she’s blind to those around her who need and love her. Again, the movie was specifically designed to provide Turner fans with another uncanny real-life parallel, as Turner plays a mother who wants her daughter to have all the advantages she never had but forgets to give her what she needs most: love and attention. (“I haven’t been a good mother,” sobs Turner to her daughter, played by Sandra Dee. “You meant to be,” replies Dee.) The public, having lived through the Turner trial with its sobbing mother and bewildered daughter, having witnessed the tragedy that a career-driven mother brings to the family table by ignoring the emotional needs of her daughter, was ready to gobble up Lana Turner as a career-driven show business mother. As a result, Imitation of Life was a huge success, so much so that the Turner films that followed it were more handsomely produced soap operas designed to imitate the imitation (of life) at the box office. Without Douglas Sirk, however, these films fell flat.
The first of these, Portrait in Black (1960), paired Turner with two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Quinn. The credits reflected a trend in Turner films—a listing for who did her jewelry as well as her gowns, furs, and hairstyles. In this phase of her career, these credits were as important as anything else. Maybe even more important. Pinning a great white orchid on her black sequined gown, glittering with diamond earrings, bracelet, and matching pin, Turner flashes her famous dimples and proves to the audiences that she’s the last working movie star who can generate the old-time glamour.
In 1961 and 1962, her career managed to keep going with one drama and two comedies: By Love Possessed (1961), based on one of the great literary successes of the ’50s, earning its author, James Gould Cozzens, an inflated reputation late in his life; Bachelor in Paradise (1961), co-starring Bob Hope, in which she has one delicious moment sloshed on Polynesian drinks doing a slow, sexy hula; and Who’s Got the Action? (1962), which teams her with Dean Martin.
After she completed By Love Possessed, Turner had wed Fred May, her fifth husband. He was a Los Angeles businessman who was said to worship her, but by the time she had completed Who’s Got the Action?, it was apparent that this marriage, like all her others, was collapsing. In October 1962, she obtained a quickie divorce from May in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In 1961, Turner was only forty-one years old. She had been a big-time movie star for more than twenty years, and she was still youthful and extraordinarily attractive. But the times were changing, the business was undergoing serious revisions, and Turner was, however slowly, aging. She did not make another movie until 1964, spending the intervening years reading the many scripts she was submitted (none of which she found appropriate) and filling her professional time with television, considering permanent retirement, and touring with Bob Hope on an 18,000-mile trek through the Far East with his show for military troops.
Finally, she was offered a film, Love Has Many Faces. Released in 1965, the movie put her back on familiar ground. Some might even say too familiar. Sunbaked and sleek, Turner plays a rich lady with a shady past. Married to a former beach bum (Cliff Robertson), she tries to keep their love from being destroyed by the bored life they lead in Acapulco. The character is another of those “I spoil everything I touch” women. Love Has Many Faces is no worse than some other Turner films, but there’s a sadness to it, and to her being in it, that can’t go unnoticed. The character she plays openly panders to what was believed to be Turner’s real self—rich, bored, destructive, and preoccupied with sex. Hugh O’Brian (whose wardrobe is rivaled only by her own) is playing an obvious Johnny Stompanato type, a gigolo who blackmails the wealthy women who fall for him. (Turner and Stompanato were known to have vacationed in Acapulco together.) Scenes of Turner stretched out on a king-sized bed like a human sacrifice in the afternoon light have an eerie quality. The finale, in which she is gored in her abdomen by a bull, is too symbolic to even think about.
Once again, the credits list the men who did the jewels, clothes, and home furnishings. Once again, Turner is dressed to the teeth. Whether wearing a simple black bathing suit topped off with a vivid yellow turban or decked out in a glittery set of blue cocktail shorts with matching stole and jewelry, Turner looks sensational. Critics could say her films were awful—and they did—but they had to admit that Lana Turner still epitomized “movie star.”
All of her films during this period were panned by
critics. However, they rose to new heights insulting the next one, a remake of the old turkey Madame X (1966). This film earned Turner one of the most famous put-downs any actress ever received when critic Pauline Kael wrote, “She’s not Madame X, she’s Brand X. She’s not an actress, she’s a commodity.” (Ironically, Turner plays with absolute conviction, giving a good performance.) In her big final scene, she—down-and-out and accused of murder—is defended by her grown son, who doesn’t know she’s his mother. Once again put on the witness stand and once again evoking her private life, Turner gives a touching performance that in earlier times could have earned her an Oscar.
Turner celebrated the film’s completion in what was becoming a tradition: She got married. This time it was another young man-about-town who neglected to mention a previous marriage (although at least, unlike Steve Crane, he was legally divorced): Robert Eaton, number six. Turner was then off the screen for three years, coming back to make a disastrous film shot in Mexico and titled The Big Cube (1969). After thirty-two years in the business, Lana Turner for the first time looks less than gorgeous. Playing the role of a famous actress, she wears an expensive wardrobe but is undermined by a series of gorgonlike wigs, knee-high boots that belong on a teenager, and armloads of jewelry. She looks false and unreal, an imitation of Lana Turner. Or worse, an imitation of Mae West. Although The Big Cube would seem to be as bad as a film could be, Turner, as always, could surprise her audiences. Persecution (1974), also released as Sheba and The Terror of Sheba, was by her own admission even worse. (“A bomb,” she called it.)
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