Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  “Why don’t you come around more?” he asked. “I miss you a lot.”

  “I miss you, too,” she said. “Lana’s nice, but, you know, talking to her is like talking to a beautiful vase filled with red roses.”

  ***

  During the miserable course of her marriage to Shaw, Lana continued to report for work at MGM. There, on one or another of its soundstages, she would make her last B movie before evolving into a major movie star.

  For reasons known only to himself, Harold S. Bucquet, who had directed Lana in Calling Dr. Kildare, cast “America’s Number One Dreamgirl” as a drab housewife in a soapy melodramatic programmer, We Who Are Young (1940). It was the story of a struggling young couple trying to make enough money to feed themselves, pay the rent, and negotiate with debt collectors and loan sharks about repossession of their furnishings.

  Amazingly, this minor soap opera had been written by Dalton Trumbo, one of Hollywood’s finest (and most politically persecuted) writers. One of the story readers at MGM had sent a memo: “Much of the world is now at war, and the United States may be sucked into it soon. Along comes Trumbo with a tired old Depression era story that might have been written by a Hollywood hack back in 1933. REJECT!”

  Obviously, no one heeded the reader’s suggestion. Lana was cast as the struggling housewife, Margy Brooks. Her natural beauty was still evident and was indeed highlighted by the photographer, Karl Freund, one of the best in the business. It would be her last movie for some time in which she would appear as a brunette.

  Gene Lockhart was cast as C. B. Bemais, their insensitive boss, who morphs into their benefactor. In the final reel, Lana’s husband, William (John Shelton), has to steal a car to rush his wife to the hospital, where she gives birth to twins. As Lana later said, “It was my first mother role.”

  On the first day of the shoot, Lana was reintroduced to the handsome but rather bland Shelton, who had been given a co-starring role. During the making of Dramatic School, the two of them had had a brief fling, and he seemed to want to reignite the flame. But for Lana, it had flickered out.

  She invited Shaw to a sneak preview of the movie in Pasadena. He didn’t like it, although he admired the way she was dressed as an unglamorous housewife. “This is the way I prefer you.”

  Shaw vehemently objected to one scene in particular—the sexiest in the movie—in which she was fetchingly depicted in a satin négligée.

  He recalled, “That scene had a tremendous impact on the audience, especially horny college boys who wolf-whistled at the screen. I didn’t like my wife showing herself off like that, driving the guys wild. I didn’t want to be married to some striptease artist.”

  As for We Are Too Young, MGM ditched its former ad campaign and promoted Lana in the scene wearing the satin nightgown. The ad read: “MODERN YOUTH IN SEARCH OF ALL THE ANSWERS—LANA TURNER, THE BLAZING BLONDE IN HER MOST DARING ROLE!”

  Reviewers were kind for the most part, at least to Lana, although critics agreed with the sarcastic assessment of the original MGM script reader. Based on its premises, at least, the film belonged somewhere in the Depression-soaked mid-1930s.

  Time magazine wrote, “Lana Turner turns into a dramatic actress of some talent, hiding her much-publicized charms behind a simple gingham house dress.”

  The New York Daily News claimed, “Lana Turner, who has not been much more than a glorified sweater model on the screen up to now, is turning out to be a surprise at the Criterion Theatre. MGM decided to de-glamourize their young star and prove that she could get along without that sweater. They assigned her to a role that required natural acting ability. Lo and behold! She turns in a fine performance.”

  Her reputation as “The Sweater Girl” still lingered, as sales of the garment across the country rose by 22%, even attracting the ire of the Breen Office (formerly known as the Hayes Office). In a memo to producers and directors, the censors issued a warning that declared that it would be forbidden “for an actress to be shown on the screen wearing a sweater in which breasts were clearly outlined.”

  ***

  Shaw’s close friend, comedian Phil Silvers, came to dinner one night to discuss an appearance of the three of them at Earl Carroll’s, a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard, which was gaining in popularity. He’d devised a routine where Shaw played the clarinet, Silvers did his jabbering comedy routine, and Lana danced one of her numbers from Two Girls on Broadway. The act played to a packed house.

  Lana was not charmed by Silvers’ second visit to their apartment, when he brought with him a stash of marijuana for an evening of “reefer magic.” At the time, marijuana was not unfamiliar to her, as many musicians, including members of Shaw’s band, made use of it regularly. As she declared in her memoirs, she had never smoked it before, and refused to do so that night.

  She later told Hyde, “I’ve never seen Artie enjoy himself so much. The whole room was going up in a cloud of smoke. I left the boys to enjoy themselves and went to bed early. The next morning, I found they had opened practically everycan of food in the pantry in an attempt to make a stew. Most of the food seemed to have made it to the floor.”

  Desi Arnaz later boasted, “Long before there was Lucille Ball in my life, there was Lana!”

  It was a very different night when Gene Krupa and Desi Arnaz showed up, as she found both young men charming, seductive, and handsome. Shaw told her that Krupa, born in Chicago, was the best drummer in America, and a high-energy entertainer known for his flamboyant show-manship. He’d made his first recording in 1927.

  Born in Cuba, Arnaz had fled to Miami following the 1933 revolution in his country. He’d been cast in his first Broadway musical, Too Many Girls (1940), and later figured he might try Hollywood. RKO had bought the film rights and planned to configure him as its star.

  “Gentleman Gene” Krupa comes to Lana’s rescue after another domestic brawl with Shaw.

  Lana was assigned the job of cooking dinner, and, since she’d worked at the studio all day, she thought spaghetti might be the safest bet. But when she served it, Shaw took only one bite before he yelled at her, “What crap!” Then he tossed the pasta platter out into the dining room and onto the floor. Then he announced to Krupa and Arnaz that he’d take them out to dinner—“Maybe line up some broads for you horndogs, too.”

  Humiliated, Lana attempted to clean it up, but Krupa intervened, volunteering to deal with the mess. After Shaw had retreated upstairs to change his clothes, he put his arm around her and gently but seductively kissed her as Arnaz looked on.

  Timed as it was in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s brutal rejection, Lana was thrilled at Krupa’s kiss. “Artie can be a bit much at times,” he whispered in her ear. “Some night you’re going to need me, and I’ll come running at your call.”

  As Krupa scooped the mess up from off the floor, she retreated from the diningroom back into the kitchen. Arnaz followed her.

  “You’re the most beautiful gal in the world,” he told her. “I can’t take my eyes off you.”

  Then he flashed a smile at her. As she turned to face him, he took her possessively into his arms. “Within minutes, I felt a foot of Cuban tongue,” she’d later tell Hyde. “It was the wettest and most delicious I’d ever tasted. He was rubbing up against me with such passion, I think he almost shot off. He was totally uninhibited. What a lover I thought he’d make. He took my hand and pressed it against his crotch. “I can really take care of a woman, and I want that woman to be you. Unlike my friend, Artie, I’ll treat you nice.”

  At that point, she heard Shaw coming down the steps from their bedroom above. Within full view of his increasingly estranged wife, he then invited Krupa and Arnaz out to a restaurant for a continuation of their aborted dinner, but pointedly did not include her.

  The next day she told Hyde, “My days with Artie are numbered. But I’ve entered both Desi Arnaz and Gene Krupa into my datebook for sometime in the future. I can’t wait!”

  Lana Turner in her early days at MGM was
n’t always photographed in ermine, diamonds, and satin gowns. She posed for this postcard dressed in high boots and wearing a leopard-skin bathing suit

  Chapter Six

  Lana’s Rise to Super-Stardom

  The World’s Most Beautiful Blonde Competes With the World’s Most Gorgeous Brunette

  In Ziegfeld Girl, Lana was never more gorgeous, enveloped in pink tulle with sequins, spangles, and silvery stars.

  “I gave the film my heart and soul. I played an elevator operator from Flatbush in Brooklyn, who was discovered by Ziegfeld himself. Joan Crawford was originally to take my role, but she was far too old, I mean, really ancient.”

  As the 1940s began, Lana Turner—shortly before she hit major stardom during World War II—had already become one of America’s leading sex symbols. Hundreds of letters from fans arrived weekly at MGM, mostly from men. Some of them included semi-nude or nude pictures of themselves.

  “The whole world seems to be lusting for me,” she told a jealous Judy Garland. “Even though I’m married, the Hollywood wolves won’t give up the chase.”

  “Lana Turner is now a full-fledged star,” reported Hedda Hopper. “Talk about oomph! She oozes it.”

  If Lana had her wish, she’d go nightclubbing every night. When he wasn’t doing a gig, Artie Shaw wanted to stay home and read. She said, “We lived in this hilltop cottage that fitted into my romantic fantasy, except for one thing: It didn’t have what it really needed, and that was a man and woman in love.”

  Occasionally, Shaw would take her out for a night on the town, usually criticizing her for dressing too provocatively. His oft-repeated remark was, “I don’t want you to look like some cheap whore.”

  Once, he invited her to Ciro’s. Within the hour, Greg Bautzer entered with Dorothy Lamour on his arm. “The Sarong Girl” was herself becoming a Hollywood sex symbol.

  “I see Bautzer’s swinging high, swinging low in a hurricane with the jungle princess,” Shaw told her. He was referring to three movies that had each featured the former Miss New Orleans: Jungle Princess (1936), Swing High (1937), and Hurricane (also 1937).

  Hollywood was a small town in those days, and Ciro’s had become the hottest spot for celebrities, so it was not much of a coincidence that Lana would patronize the same club as Bautzer and his new romance.

  Lamour later commented on her affair with Bautzer: “I made him forget all about Lana Turner,” she said.

  She might have been jealous of Lamour, but Lamour was also jealous of Lana.

  “Before Lana shot to fame as ‘The Sweater Girl,’ in They Won’t Forget, my director, Henry Hathaway, came up with the idea of putting me in a sweater without a bra,” Lamour said. “He took pictures of me which were published in the press. When Lana put on a similar sweater, she created a Hurricane of publicity. Forgive me for pushing one of my movies. But, lest the world forget, I was the first to don that damn sweater.”

  “As for Greg, he was a real Beau Brummel and an incorrigible flirt,” she continued.

  Years later, Lamour said she encountered Lana at a Hollywood party. “I admitted to her that I’d fallen in love with Greg. But I came to realize that whereas he was not a one-woman man, I was a one-man woman. I finally had to tell him that I couldn’t go on seeing him”

  “Well, dear,” Lana told her, “you are right, of course. I came to the same conclusion. However, I also decided that a girl needs a good lawyer to get her out of a jam from time to time. As for me, I’m not a one-man woman…’the more the merrier,’ I’ve often stated. Hollywood is the best hunting ground in the world. I think per square mile, it has the best-looking guys on the planet, most of them dreaming they’ll become the next Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power.”

  According to Lamour, “Lana and I were both after Bautzer, and, later, she was brazen enough to go for my handsome husband, William Ross Howard III, a captain in the U.S. Army. One night at a party, I saw her giving Bill the eye. All the girls wanted him. When I spoke to her, she admitted it. ‘Dottie,’ she told me. ‘If you and I weren’t such great pals, I could really go for that stud you’ve bagged.’ I thought nothing of it until later that night when Bill [i.e., William Ross Howard III] and I were undressing. Lana had slipped her phone number into the pocket of his coat.”

  ***

  On another occasion, Shaw escorted Lana to a club where his friend, Billie Holiday, was singing. “Lady Day,” as she was nicknamed, was a jazz musician and singer-songwriter known for her “shading, phrasing, dark tones, light tones, and bending notes,” as Frank Sinatra phrased it.

  In 1937, she’d had a brief stint as a big band vocalist with Count Basie and his band, traveling from town to town, often in harsh living conditions because of segregation. A recurring theme in her music involved women unlucky in love.

  “Dear little Lana: What Billie Holiday and I did before I married you is no one’s business but our own,” Artie Shaw said.

  After a few months, Count Basie fired her. Hearing of this, Shaw tracked her down to an address in Harlem, where she was staying in her mother’s modest apartment.

  “Her mother fried chicken for us as part of an early breakfast, and before the morning ended, Lady Day had packed her bags and was taking off with me in my car,” Shaw said.

  Shaw, his newest vocalist, and his band created a sensation at the jam-packed Madison Square Garden in Manhattan when they were configured as part of the evening’s entertainment at the Harvest Moon Ball.

  Trouble arose, however, during later gigs in the segregated South. Holiday was one of the first black singers to be featured against the background of an all-white band. Sometimes, racial tensions arose, with angry shouts from the audience. Holiday “exploded” (her words) when a redneck loud-mouth in Louisville, Kentucky, called her a “nigger wench.”

  After touring for several months with Shaw and his orchestra, Holiday could take it no more. They were booked into the Lincoln Hotel in St. Louis. “The white guests complained when I took the elevator with them, and after that, the manager asked me to use the freight elevator. I wasn’t allowed in the bar or in the dining room. That was the last straw. I finally had to tell Artie, ‘I’m getting the hell out of here.’”

  Lana, in vivid contrast, defined Holiday as a mesmerizing performer, and shared her husband’s belief that she was one of the most original and stylish singers in the country.

  After her performance, Holiday joined Shaw and Lana at table, and they talked until around 3AM when the club closed its doors.

  At that early morning hour, Holiday kissed Lana on both cheeks, and delivered to Shaw a deep, passionate goodbye kiss.

  As they drove together back to their hilltop home, Lana asked Shaw about Holiday. “You guys seemed very friendly, very intimate. She’s most attractive. It causes a wife to wonder. Just how close were you two during those lonely nights on the road? I couldn’t help but notice that lingering kiss.”

  In her memoirs, Holiday would later write, “There aren’t many people who fought harder than Artie against the vicious people in the music business or the crummy state of second-class citizens which eats at the guts of so many black musicians. He didn’t win, but he didn’t lose, either.”

  Years later, in the late 1940s, after Lana had become a big star, she met for a drink at the Beverly Hills Hotel with Shaw. During their dialogues, he spoke of Holiday, saying he’d gone to see her in her “comeback concert” at Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall in March of 1948. That was after she’d served a nine-month sentence at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. She’d been charged and convicted for possession of heroin.

  “I went backstage to visit Billie after her concert,” Shaw said. “The guys she’d hung out with had turned her into an addict and all the shit that goes with that. I was stunned when I saw her up close. She was no longer the twenty-three-year-old Harlem beauty I knew. Her rough living showed in her face, and she was hanging out with some gigolo who was just using her. Seeing her in that condition was no damn fun.
After some talk, we said goodbye. I kissed her and made off into the night—and that was that.”

  “After that, I heard that she was shacking up with Tallulah Bankhead,” he said.

  ***

  As June of 1940 neared its end, Lana—visibly nervous and constantly smoking—would sometimes break into sobs. Living with Shaw was growing worse by the day, and the frequency and intensity of his temper fits had increased. She’d heard rumors that he was seeing other women on the side. Some nights, he didn’t return home until two or three in the morning.

  When she demanded information, he’d tell her that he’d been rehearsing with the boys in the band.

  One night was worse than any that had preceded it. After a brutal fight, during the course of which he’d denounced her as “a whore” and “a slut,” she became hysterical. He could not control her, and when she continued to scream, he summoned his doctor to their home on Summit Drive. After a cursory exam, the doctor injected her with some form of sedative.

  When she awakened the next morning at a hospital in Beverly Hills, a nurse was in the room with her. “Are you feeling better, Mrs. Johnson?”

  Shaw had registered her as “Mildred Johnson.” She asked that a phone be installed in her room. When it was in place, she called Mildred with the address where she had been hospitalized.

  About an hour later, her mother arrived. Without informing Shaw, Mildred checked her out of the clinic.

  Back at her mother’s home, her nerves more or less restored, Lana gave Mildred a key to the house she’d been sharing with Shaw on Summit Drive and asked her to retrieve her possessions, especially her clothing and jewelry.

  To her surprise, her mother urged her to give the marriage one more try. “Breaking up is a bad idea after such a short marriage. The publicity might hurt you. You might be depicted as a silly movie star who doesn’t take marriage seriously. I forgave Virgil and took him back many times after each of our many blowups.”