Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  “Like so many of my early boyfriends, Don was to have a short life,” Lana lamented. “He was a great guy, but died in 1966 at the age of 48. After a traffic accident, he was given a medication overdose.”

  The plot of Rich Man, Poor Girl called for Lana’s character to dream of living the plush life married to some rich man, and she tangles with her onscreen cousin, Ayres’ socialist character, who loudly defends the glories of the working class. In the film, she defines the Thayer home as “a dump,” long before Bette Davis delivered her famous and equivalent line in Beyond the Forest (1949).

  “I play the jackass cousin with his lunatic left philosophy,” Ayres told Lana.

  She bonded with her other female co-stars, Hussey, Rita Johnson and Virginia Grey. Collectively, they often lunched together during the filming. She and Grey would remain friends for decades, in spite of their shared competition for certain roles and one man (Clark Gable) in particular.

  Johnson defined her origins as derived from a working class background in New England. As a teenager, she had served hot dogs from her mother’s roadside diner to drivers along the Boston/Worcester turnpike.

  One day, she told Lana that MGM had tested her suitability for stepping into the Jean Harlow role in Saratoga (1937) after the unexpected death of its platinum blonde star.

  “After I made a screen test with Clark Gable, I was rejected. The director told me that my mouth was too big.”

  Gable said, ‘Tough break, kid. They once told me my ears were too big for the movies.”

  Hussey, a native of Rhode Island, told Lana, “I don’t have your beauty, but I’m always quick with a wisecrack. I guess that means that my destiny will be that of a second stringer for the rest of my life.”

  Lana’s glamorous cohort, confidante, and friend, Virginia Grey, retained a friendship with Lana for decades after their appearance together as budding starlettes on the make in Rich Man, Poor Girl.

  That was to some degree true, but fortunately for Hussey, in 1940, she earned a “Best Supporting Actress” Oscar nomination, based on her performance as the cynical photographer lusting for James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story, co-starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

  Grey had spent her childhood in Hollywood and always bragged that, “My claim to fame was that Gloria Swanson was my first babysitter, changing my diapers.” She had been born the youngest daughter of director Ray Grey, a friend of Swanson’s.

  Grey had made her film debut at the age of ten, playing Little Eva in the silent version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927).

  Ironically, when Lana had to drop out of Gable’s Idiot’s Delight (1939), Grey was assigned to take over her role of one of his dancing chorus girls. Later, she confessed that Gable had seduced her during the filming of the movie. Thus began and on-again, off-again affair that would survive well into the 1940s.

  MGM signed Grey to a contract in 1936 which laid out the terms of the role she’d play as the love interest in Bruce Cabot’s “B” movie, Bad Guy (1937). Cabot, a close friend of Errol Flynn, had an affair with Grey. She was the one who warned Lana that Flynn had installed a two-way mirror in his bedroom so his “fuck buddies” could oversee his conquests, or he theirs. Lana was furious when she heard she’d sexually “performed” for unseen voyeurs who had included, thanks to their concealment behind the two-way mirror, both Cabot and David Niven.

  “Lana talked to me a lot about her boyfriends,” Hussey said, “and talked a lot about her affair with Lew Ayres. I’m named Hussey, but Lana—although I just adored her—was the real hussy.”

  Many of Lana’s fans cite Rich Man, Poor Girl as the movie in which she showed off her natural beauty before it was garnished and accessorized with the studio’s barrage of makeup and glamor.

  As one reviewer noted, “Without a doubt, the person who made the biggest splash in this film is Lana Turner in her nascent phase. She’s sweet, still a brunette, and full of the dewy youth and kittenish sexuality she exuded in the early phase of her career.”

  Another critic wrote, “Lana Turner makes every single one of today’s screen beauties fade into mediocrity by comparison.”

  In Rich Man, Poor Girl, Lana interacts with Lew Ayres. This was one of her most playful roles before she became super glamorous.

  “He was a wonderful lover, taking me on picnics and drives up the coast. In some ways, it was like a schoolgirl romance. He was idealistic, a conscientious objector, devouring books on religion and philosophy. I listened politely, waiting until he got around to fucking me.”

  Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: “Rich Man, Poor Girl is a genial and heart-warming little comedy which crackles and pops so pleasantly that you can hardly hear its joint creaks.”

  ***

  According to Ruth Hussey, “Lana fell in love with Lew Ayres during the making of Rich Man, Poor Girl. Virginia Grey and Rita Johnson, along with yours truly, were witnesses to this ongoing affair. Who wouldn’t adore Lew? He was a delight. Even his wife, Ginger Rogers, thought so…at least until she divorced him [in 1940] two years later.”

  When Lana worked with Ayres, he was best known for his interpretation of the German soldier in Paul Bäumer’s film classic, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on the haunting German-language novel of World War I by Erich Maria Remarque.

  “I think I was mature for my age,” Lana told Grey. “I mean, I had the hots for boys when I was a child. After seeing Lew on the screen as a German soldier, I really daydreamed about him. Even though he was fighting for the Germans, all my sympathy was for him. I left the movie house in a daze. Someday, of my days to come, I just knew I would meet this handsome guy. I just knew he’d fall for me when that day came.”

  She had also seen him in an earlier film. As a child, her mother, Mildred, had taken her to see his performance opposite Greta Garbo in the silent film, The Kiss (1929). “Both Mildred and I swooned over him,” Lana said. “Call it a little girl’s first crush.”

  [Most movie audiences of the late 1930s and early 40s would remember Ayres for his starring role in nine Dr. Kildare films, including one that he filmed with Lana. Another famous role had been his interpretation of Ned in Holiday (1938), in which he’d starred with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.]

  On the set, she learned from the director that, though still married to Rogers, he was not actually living with her. Consequently, she felt more comfortable making herself available to him for a date.

  “Lana was definitely hot to trot,” Hussey observed. “Even on days when she wasn’t needed on the set, she showed up. She brought Lew coffee and invited herself to his dressing room one afternoon, in theory, at least, for some acting tips. Yeah, right!”

  On their first date, he drove up the Pacific coast in his Packard to an out-of-the-way beachfront dive not usually frequented by other movie stars or photographers.

  “My heart was beating like a tom-tom the night he came to pick me up,” she told Grey. “I’d spent all afternoon making myself glamorous, only to find out that he preferred the natural look in a girl.”

  “After dinner, we took off our shoes and went for a hand-in-hand walk along the moonlit beach. It couldn’t have been more romantic. He could make a girl forget that Greg Bautzer—that two-timing bastard—ever existed. The sound of the waves. My bare feet in the sands.”

  He told her he couldn’t take her out dancing “because I’m lousy at dancing. Fortunately, Ginger gets enough dancing on the screen with Fred Astaire.”

  “And then it happened,” Lana confessed. “He stopped, gently pulled me into his arms, and gave me the kiss of a lifetime. Wow! He was great.”

  Apparently, Lana did not exaggerate. In Ginger Rogers memoirs, My Story, Rogers later described her first kiss from Ayres: “I’ve never been rocked by a kiss before. He planted a super kiss on my lips. At that very instant, the ground under our feet moved again, as if by command.”

  As Lana related to Grey, “Lew delivers the most gentlemanly fuck a gal can ever ha
ve—no rough stuff, but passionate, thorough. Fortunately, he brought a rubber along. I guess he knew I’d give in, since I’d been throwing myself at him. I find him yummy-yummy, good enough to eat!”

  On subsequent dates, Lana discreetly inquired about Rogers, since she loved gossip. “Lew hates Hollywood gossip, I soon learned. He prefers to put his arm around me in his living room. We listen to classical music. He prefers the three B’s—Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. He played the piano for me, even the banjo and guitar. In 1927, he’d appeared with Henry Halstead’s Orchestra. I mean, he’s really good, and he studies arranging and composing.”

  After her third date with Ayres, Lana appeared on the set and called Grey aside to tell her the news. Later, according to Grey, “She was bubbling over with excitement and could hardly contain herself. In an almost breathless voice, she told me that Lew was going to divorce Ginger Rogers and marry her.”

  ***

  As the weeks passed, Lana dated Greg Bautzer less and less, and the frequency of his “sleepovers” dwindled to once a week, if that. Sometimes, he’d bring her home before 11PM—no more closing down of night clubs—and he’d give her a kiss on her doorstep before bidding her good night and driving off into the night, presumably for a late-night rendezvous with someone else.

  At first, she suspected that Joan Crawford had commandeered most of his nights, but she was soon to learn differently.

  “Our romance is cooling,” Lana told Grey. “He’s obviously getting it somewhere else.”

  Nonetheless, even on days he didn’t see her, he faithfully sent a bouquet of white roses. They still maintained an agreement that the arrival at her door of a box of red roses would signal the end of their love affair.

  On the nights he did take her out, she still preferred La Conga, where they were generally acknowledged as the best rumba dancers on the floor. There was an occasional weekend at the desert resort of Palm Springs. They were seen at the Racquet Club, and once, they were photographed at the Assistance League Benefit at the Roller Bowl.

  It was one night in the desert, at the edge of a swimming pool, that she confided in him that her real desire was not to be a movie star, but a married woman with children. He couldn’t believe that. He’d dated dozens of actresses, and invariably, each of them had wanted to become movie stars.

  “You truly mean you’d like to be a dreary little housewife, changing shitty diapers, cooking dinner for a hubbie when, or if, he comes home for dinner?”

  “I want what most girls want,” she said. “Is that so strange?”

  Somehow, he managed to change the subject.

  ***

  When Lana wasn’t spending the night with Ayres, she—on that rare occasion—found Bautzer in her bed. But, as she told her girlfriends, “Greg is the biggest escape artist in Hollywood when it comes to marriage.”

  One morning, she read in a gossip column that Crawford and Bautzer had concluded a public fight at Mocambo’s, and that she had stormed out of the club, roaring off into the night in a taxi, alone.

  This did not surprise Lana at all, since she, along with Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, were familiar with the ongoing feuds and reconciliations of the infamous couple.

  However, even after his breakup with Crawford, he continued his pattern of infrequent rendezvous with Lana. “What’s he up to now?” she asked anyone who might know. Then one morning, she read in the newspaper that Bautzer was dating the French actress, Simone Simon.

  That afternoon, a box of red roses arrived from him. She knew that was the end of their affair.

  Simon was a name that was vaguely familiar to her. She had read two or three items about her in Variety—and that was it. She’d never seen one of her American movies. In the fading afternoon, she called Billy Wilkerson at The Hollywood Reporter, the publisher who had discovered her. “Just who in hell is this Simone Simon?”

  He invited her over to read his file on her in the newspaper’s morgue.

  After scanning the file, she soon learned details about her competitor. To her delight, she found out that the actress was twelve years older than she was—in fact, she was slightly older than Bautzer himself.

  Simon had been born in Marseille, the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French-Jewish engineer and airplane pilot. During World War II, he had been captured by the Nazis and later died in a concentration camp.

  Simon had lived in Madagascar, Budapest, Turin, and Berlin before settling into Paris with an ambition to become a fashion designer like Chanel. Spotted by a talent agent, she was offered a film contract, making her debut in 1931 in The Unknown Singer.

  She had become one of the best-known actresses in France before Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox brought her to Hollywood in August of 1935.

  At Fox, she was known for her temper tantrums, which would ultimately lead to her dismissal. Zanuck might have put up with her had her American films made any money, but they had flopped. During the 1937 remake of the silent film classic, Seventh Heaven (1927), she was cast in the Janet Gaynor role. The movie bombed, even though its star was James Stewart.

  Friends, Nymphs, and Frenemies: Virginia Grey and Ann Rutherford, two of Lana’s friends, confidantes, and sometimes competitors, in a press and publicity postcard of their heydays. Along with Lana, they were cast in what they each remembered years later as a major break, secondary roles in a movie with lots of good-looking young women, Dramatic School.

  Lana learned that Bautzer’s affair with Simon was over when she returned to Paris to resume her film career there, even though war clouds loomed over Europe.

  Two weeks later, a box of white roses arrived on Lana’s doorstep with a note from Bautzer. “Lana, I love you passionately. I want to come over right now and make love to you all day, but I will have to force myself to wait until I come by for you at eight. Cancel any date you’ve made. You belong to me…and me only.”

  ***

  Since bringing Lana to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, she had not heard from Mervyn LeRoy for several weeks until he phoned her. He had decided to cast her in Dramatic School (1938), a romantic drama about a troupe of young aspiring actresses hoping to become the next Duse or Bernhardt. The film was to be directed by Robert B. Sinclair, with an all-star cast headed by Luise Rainer, Paulette Goddard, and Alan Marshal.

  Dramatic School was to have marked the American film debut of the British actress, Greer Garson, but she hurt her back and had to be replaced by Rainer.

  Lana in Dramatic School: As she recalled (with a touch of envy) about that film’s female lead, “Paulette (Goddard) had her heart set on playing Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.”

  “I didn’t dare tell her that at the time, I, too, was being tested for the role. She claimed that even though it hadn’t yet been announced, David O. Selznick had, more or less, already given her the part.”

  Although Lana did not voice her complaints to LeRoy, she was disappointed with her small role in this low budget version of the movie, Stage Door (1937), set in a theatrical boardinghouse and starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers.

  In spite of her meager role as “Mado,” Lana was given fourth billing. “I was such a bitch in the film,” she later said. “Audiences must have hated me, especially when I deliberately spilled a glass of champagne on Rainer’s beautiful gown designed by Adrian. Stacked up against the others, I was just a kid, a teenager really, although I looked older.”

  Professor Jeanine Basinger, an author and film historian, summed up Lana’s role: “At this stage, she is all dimples, curly hair, and a high school charm, more of a cheerleader than Cleopatra. The idea of her as a serious dramatic student is a bit far-fetched. She is exceptionally pretty, but not yet glamorous—the kind of girl every boy in school might want to take to the senior prom, provided it wouldn’t worry his mother too much.”

  Lana boasted, “I got the Argentine singer, Dick Haymes, before that other goddess, Rita Hayworth. He could melt you knees with a smile and cause your heart to flut
ter with a touch.”

  The supporting roles had been cast with a remarkable troupe of talented actors, and Lana set out to meet all of them, since she was eager to learn about how to make movies.

  LeRoy introduced her to the Viennese actress, Luise Rainer, who had become famous for winning back-to-back Oscars—the first for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the second for The Good Earth (1937).

  Lana joined others in referring to Rainer as “the Viennese teardrop,” because of her long phone scene in The Great Ziegfeld when she hears the news that the man she loves is going to marry another woman.

  When Lana met her, Rainer looked at Lana with a certain kind of disdain and did not extend her hand. Behind Lana’s back, Rainer referred to her as “LeRoy’s little piece of fluff.”

  “In many ways, Lana wanted to be me,” claimed Paulette Goddard. “She also envied the chest of jewelry—lots and lots of it—I had accumlated over the years and the millions of dollars.”

  When Lana last encountered Goddard, Lana was (disastrously) married to Ronald Dante, a nightclub hypnotist.

  At the time, in glaring contrast, Goddard was married to the wealthy, charismatic and dashingly handsome novelist, Erich Maria Remarque.

  Lana’s somewhat bitter final words to Goddard were, “Some girls have all the luck.”

  Lana was delighted to be cast with two of her favorite friends, Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey. During the shooting of Dramatic School, her friendship with Grey strengthened.

  As the days went by, it became obvious to LeRoy and others that for Lana’s interpretation of her role, she was inspired by Ginger Rogers in films such as Warner musicals 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933.

  Goddard cattily remarked to Sinclair, “Since Lana is also stealing Ginger’s husband (a reference to Lew Ayres), why not her screen persona, too?”