Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  The actor told Lana that he was modeling his character after Siegel himself, who was known for his thousand dollar suits, his smooth talking, and his good looks.

  In addition to his involvement with the British actress Wendy Barrie, Siegel took for his mistress Virginia (“Sugar”) Hill. Born in a backwater of Alabama, Hill was a bosomy, auburn-haired, green-eyed beauty. She had persuaded director Howard Hawks to give her a role in Ball of Fire. Perhaps coincidentally, Stanwyck’s character in the movie was named “Sugarpuss.”

  Gene Krupa, who was also in the cast, could not escort Lana anywhere that night since he was scheduled for a gig out of town.

  At the party, Andrews introduced Lana to the film’s director, Hawks, who told her he’d like to direct her in a movie.

  However, when she ran into Stanwyck, the actress turned her back on Lana, who would soon be co-starring with her husband, Robert Taylor, in Johnny Eager.

  The highlight of the evening occurred when Andrews introduced her to the charismatic Siegel, whom she found “extraordinarily handsome.” Although he was accompanied with his girlfriend Sugar, she was called away by Hawks to meet the people at his table while Andrews was otherwise occupied at the bar.

  Alone together, Lana flirted shamelessly with Siegel. Perhaps she did it for vengeance against Greg Bautzer. [As part of a complicated romantic rondelay, Bautzer had once canceled a date with Lana for a tryst with Wendy Barrie, and perhaps in some perverse way, she was getting back at Bautzer for tossing her over, if only for a night.]

  When Andrews returned from the bar, Siegel invited them, as a couple, to one of his lavish Hollywood parties scheduled for the upcoming Saturday.

  After their exit from the party at Formosa, Lana took the wheel of his car, driving Andrews to her home, where she suggested that he spend the night. “You’ve had too much to drink,” she told him, “and I think you’ll be safer in my bed.”

  She later discussed her night with Andrews with Virginia Grey. “Dana certainly has the equipment to satisfy a woman, but he drinks too much. I’m convinced he wasn’t half as good as he would have been if he’d been reasonably sober.”

  After a late breakfast, Andrews assured her that he’d retrieve her at 8PM on the designated night to escort her to Siegel’s party. But when he showed up at Lana’s doorstep, he was already intoxicated.

  Surmising that there was no way she could sober him up, she devised a scheme, offering him a series of three more drinks, even though before he drank them, he looked as if he were close to passing out on her sofa.

  He eventually did that (pass out) before 9PM, at which time she put a blanket over him and left him to sleep it off. Then she drove to Siegel’s party alone.

  ***

  Arriving alone that Saturday night at Siegel’s party, Lana was ushered into the lavishly furnished Holmby Hills home of Bugsy Siegel. Over the decades, she would attend countless Hollywood parties, many of them spectacular, but Siegel’s big bash would stand out in her mind “It was the first real A-list party I ever attended,” she said.

  Lana had never seen a man as expensively dressed as Bugsy Siegel, beginning with the best-tailored suit she’d ever seen a man wear. With it, he wore a red silk shirt in an era when men tended only to wear white shirts. From his alligator shoes to his red silk tie, he looked like he’d stepped out of some gentlemen’s style magazine.

  Seeing her from across a crowded room, the gangster rushed to her side and greeted her warmly, kissing her on both cheeks. She found him likable and ingratiating, even though she knew he was a murderer.

  The guest list stunned her, particularly when she chatted with her boss, Louis B. Mayer. He warned her, “You should be home getting your beauty sleep.”

  She also ran into Jack Warner, one of her former bosses. “I was wrong about you, girl,” he said. “I thought you didn’t have what it takes to make it. But you’ve got it, baby.”

  She spoke with Clark Gable, with whom she briefly discussed their upcoming picture, Honky Talk, until he was rescued by his wife, Carole Lombard.

  Frank Sinatra approached and gave her a passionate kiss on the lips before introducing her to his friend, Cary Grant, who had recently married, after breaking Randolph Scott’s heart, the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton.

  Before the night was over, as she was standing alone on his moonlit terrace, Siegel approached her from behind. Within a few minutes, he’d arranged a date with her for the following Monday night.

  “I can’t wait, baby,” he whispered in her ear.

  At 8PM on that scheduled night, a bulletproof limousine pulled up in her driveway, conducted by “the handsomest chauffeur in the history of the world,” as she recalled. “I never saw or heard of him again. Perhaps he couldn’t act, but he would have lit up the screen.”

  For her night with Siegel, “Everything was champagne-colored—my hair, my shoes, my gown, even my undergarments.”

  As if he’d known in advance what she’d be wearing, he’d arranged a catered champagne supper. “Even the sofa was made of champagne-colored fabric, so I blended in.”

  Throughout dinner, Siegel never seemed to take his eyes off Lana. He was a fascinating host, relaying tales of his life without mentioning the criminal elements.

  “Jean Harlow went wild over me. Of all the blondes in Hollywood, I think you’re the only one who has what it takes to replace her.”

  “Tell me that and I’ll follow you anywhere.”

  “Even to my bedroom?” he asked.

  “Perhaps if you give me just a little more champagne,” she responded, coquettishly.

  Then he retrieved five gold lockets and opened them for her, describing their contents as pubic hair “harvested” from the nether regions of Jean Harlow.

  “I didn’t collect them personally,” he said. “Another mobster did when Harlow had some emergency surgery. They were plucked off without her permission, and I paid $500 each for five of these.”

  In his bedroom, as he was undressing, Lana wasn’t surprised when he removed his trousers to reveal monogrammed, red silk underwear. As she’d later relay to Virginia Grey, “Bugsy looked even better with his clothes off. He was one of those men that wives dream about when their dull husbands are screwing them.”

  [Another mobster, Abe Zwillman, had already spread the word that, “Bugsy is God’s gift to women.” When Lana heard that, she chimed in, “I second the motion. Before me, and before Harlow, Bugsy had brought joy to the likes of everybody from Sophie Tucker to Mae West.”]

  During a chat with Grey, she said, “The only surprise about this he-man is that before he goes to sleep, he puts on a chin strap to keep his perfect profile intact, and blue shades over his eyes. Otherwise, he sleeps in the nude, as befits God’s gift to women. And the next morning, he told me that even if I become a big star, making a lot of money, he’d never ask me for a loan.”

  “Why would you need a loan from me?” she had asked him. “It looks like you’ve got more money than God Herself.”

  “It’s a sideline for me. Mayer and Warner pay me off so I won’t cause problems at their studios and disrupt production. I also borrow money from stars like Cooper, Gable, and Grant. Although they know that I’ll never pay them back, they come through for me. During my first year in Hollywood, I pocketed $400,000 in loans from stars.”

  “Thanks for excluding me,” she said. “But I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll give you five pubic hairs and I won’t even charge you $500.”

  “It’s a deal,” he said.

  Before she left that morning, she heard him on the phone with his lawyer, Jerry Giesler.

  When he came back into the breakfast room, he said, “This Giesler is a great guy. He’s the best lawyer in Hollywood. If you ever commit murder, call Giesler. He’ll get you off.”

  Director Victor Fleming had directed Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind before tackling Lana in this horror movie.

  She didn’t think a lot about that remark at the time,
but years from that date, she’d place an emergency call to Giesler during the pre-dawn hours of a blood-soaked Hollywood morning. Her call originated from within what the press would loudly define as “the murder house.”

  ***

  Lana’s second film for 1941 was a prestige production, Hollywood’s third reprise of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was, of course, based on the 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  In 1920, John Barrymore had been cast in the silent version of this classic, turning it into one of the most famous of the silent horror films. His co-star was Nita Naldi, a well-known actress and vamp during her heyday.

  Barrymore was able to replicate the monstrous Mr. Hyde wearing almost no makeup, relying on his uncanny ability to contort his face.

  This was in radical contrast to the 1931 Talkie with the same name. It had starred Fredric March as the doctor/monster. His Mr. Hyde was a hairy simian with canine fangs. The role brought March an Oscar as Best Actor the year of its release.

  Since the second version was crafted during the Pre-Code era of relatively loose censorship, it allowed Miriam Hopkins, cast as Ivy Peterson, the tarty barmaid, to be more sexually provocative than either of the other two.

  Like Barrymore, Spencer Tracy, co-starring with Lana in the classic theme’s third (1941) incarnation, did not rely on heavy makeup, but used facial contortions to establish his character.

  The familiar story, known to most school children at the time, reveals that Dr. Jekyll is motivated by the battle raging in his soul between good and evil. His experiments, which involve ingestion of a serum, transforms the kindly Dr. Jekyll into the cruel, evil, and violent Mr. Hyde.

  Victor Fleming was assigned to helm the 1941 remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Tracy and Lana.

  [The son of a truck salesman from Wisconsin, Tracy had made his film debut in Up the River (1938). He’d gone on to win two Best Actor Oscars (for Captains Courageous (1937) and again for his portrayal of Father Flanagan in Boys Town (1938).]

  He was at first reluctant to accept the role of Dr. Jekyll until his best friend and sometimes lover, Katharine Hepburn, persuaded him to do it.

  Hepburn’s advice was motivated by reasons of her own. After reading the script, she became intrigued with each of the two roles it contained for women. One was that of Jekyll’s prim, ladylike fiancée, Beatrix Emery.

  The other role that appealed to her was that of a slutty barmaid, Ivy Peterson. It was Hepburn’s idea that she would star in both roles, interpreting “the good girl” who (in a transformation similar to that of Dr. Jekyll himself) mutates into “the bad girl” through makeup and talent. Both Mayer and Fleming vigorously rejected the idea.

  On screen, Lana played Dr. Jekyll’s virginal fiancée, Beatrix, who was “Victorian sweet, but spirited.”

  Off screen, Tracy added Lana to his long lists of A-list movie star conquests that ranged from Joan Crawford to Nancy Davis (aka Nancy Reagan).

  For a while the mogul and his director considered casting the virginal fiancée role with either Ruth Hussey or Maureen O’Hara. Finally, in an agreement with David O. Selznick, it was decided that Ingrid Bergman—the beautiful and soft-spoken Swedish actress—would be ideal as Dr. Jekyll’s elegant fiancée.

  But when Bergman read the script, she decided that she wanted to play the slutty barmaid who is terrorized by Mr. Hyde.

  “I’m tired of playing good girls,” she said. “I want a role with some meat on it.” Secretly, without Selznick’s knowledge, Bergman made a screen test whose results Fleming had interpreted as powerful.

  By that time, however, Lana had been offered the role of the amoral barmaid. But after she read the script, she protested to Mayer at a meeting where she told him that she was too young and inexperienced to portray the battle-hardened Ivy, survivor of many a seduction. “That role is so deep, I don’t know if I could trust the director enough to let me try to reach those emotions.”

  Consequently, she convinced him that she’d be better cast as Beatrix, a polite well-mannered Victorian girl. As such, Mayer acquiesced to Bergman’s wish to interpret the role of the prostitute.

  When Lana first met Bergman, the Swede thanked her for surrendering the role of the bad girl barmaid, Ivy Peterson, for the demure role of Beatrix. “I want to show the bastards in Hollywood that I can play a sexy whore,” Bergman said. Lana responded, “In Adrian’s billowy, 19th-century gowns, I’m sure I’ll look virginal. Me, Lana Turner! Isn’t that a hoot?”

  Whereas Lana had not bonded very well with her female co-stars in previous films, such as Ziegfeld Girl, where her rivals had included Hedy Lamarr, on the set of the Jekyll & Hyde movie, she and Ingrid bonded and shared long talks with each other.

  Bergman, who was married at the time to the Swedish doctor, Petter Lindstrom, shared with Lana her theory about how to be authentic and convincing on screen with her leading man.

  Lindstrom later revealed that his wife had asserted, “I can’t work well as an actress unless I’m in love with either the leading man or the director.”

  “Your romance,” Bergman suggested to Lana, “will not necessarily continue after the picture is finished, except in some rare cases.”

  Lana took Bergman’s advice to heart, and followed the Swede’s example in her future pictures, as many of her leading men could later testify.

  ***

  Since the debut of his career in Hollywood, Fleming had been known mainly as a man’s director, and Lana was intimidated by the idea of being helmed by him.

  When she had first met him, he’d said, “So I didn’t get to direct you as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, as I got stuck instead with Vivien Leigh.”

  “I’m sure you’re teasing me, Mr. Fleming,” Lana responded.

  As filming progressed, Fleming suffered through several blow-ups with her, at one point referring to her as a “no-talent, bosomy bitch.”

  One scene called for her to shed tears, but none would emerge from her dry eyes. Exasperated, Fleming grabbed her by her arm and sharply twisted it behind her back. In the aftermath, he got his tears streaming down her face.

  Within the first week of filming, she saw firsthand that Ingrid practiced what she preached, as it applied to falling in love with either her leading man or director. In this case, it involved them both.

  “Ingrid was juggling both Tracy and Fleming,” Lana said, “keeping both of them satisfied, or so it seemed to me.”

  Although Ingrid frequently appeared onscreen during the course of her career as innocent, serene, and pure, her future director, Alfred Hitchcock, once said, un-gallantly, “Ingrid would do it with a doorknob.”

  Indeed, as the years passed, Bergman continued to practice her theory about the benefits associated with seductions of her leading man of the moment. Her love affairs seemed to dovetail neatly with her filmmaking schedule, beginning with Leslie Howard and moving on to Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Yul Brynner, Joseph Cotten, Bing Crosby, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif.

  Spencer Tracy posed for this publicity shot with Ingrid Bergman (left) and Lana. The tarty bar-maid, Ingrid, and Lana, his fiancée, had switched roles before filming began because Ingrid had wanted to play “against type,” in an attempt to broaden her range of acting skills.

  Offscreen, Tracy seduced first Bergman, then Lana. At some point, Bergman left Tracy altogether in her pursuit of the film’s director, Victor Fleming.

  Despite his ongoing cohabitations with Katharine Hepburn, Tracy stayed married to the former actress, Louise Treadwell. Hepburn showed up only once on the set of Jekyll & Hyde, where she was polite but not especially friendly, to both Bergman and Lana.

  “Hepburn obviously didn’t demand fidelity from him,” Lana speculated. “Judy Garland told me that Tracy had seduced her when she was an underaged teenager.”

  Near the end of filming, after Fleming apparently fell in love with Bergman, she paid less attention to Tracy.


  “But I filled in for her,” Lana confessed. On at least five different occasions, she was spotted exiting from Tracy’s suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel at 5AM, presumably on her way to an early-morning appointment with makeup at the studio. Insofar as these writers know, she never revealed any of the details of her intimacies with Tracy, but she did tell Fleming, “Spence makes the best cup of morning coffee I’ve ever had.”

  On the final day of filming, Fleming threw a cast party which Lana attended. She asked Bergman what would be next for her.

  “I’m doing this cheap little melodrama at Warners, Casablanca (1942), with Bogart. I don’t want to do it, but it’ll be shot rather quickly. I’m just biding my time until I get to co-star with Gary Cooper in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1943).

  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde became one of MGM’s biggest grossing films of the year it was released (1941). But although Tracy usually got rave reviews for his movies, reactions to his dual role in this one were mixed. Some critics asserted, “Tracy is hamming it up too much.”

  Lana didn’t expect rave reviews for herself. “I was mostly an adornment in the film, beautifully made up and gowned, sitting in opera boxes or at dinner tables.”

  One critic noted, “Lana Turner has too much carnality to be effective as a symbol for Victorian purity.”

  Life magazine claimed: “Pictorially, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is well worth a look at such moments when the purity of Lana Turner, who plays Jekyll’s fiancée, is symbolized by white flowers, and Ingrid Bergman lies in a mud puddle to indicate the baser nature of Hyde.”

  The review that Lana disliked the most was when a critic called her “colorless and wooden in her nice-girl role.”

  Reviews of Ingrid as a slutty tart were so effusive that they aroused Lana’s jealousy. But the envy she experienced in 1941 was different from the rage she suffered years later, when it became clear that two of her beaux, Greg Bautzer and Howard Hughes, were each in pursuit of Ingrid.