Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  In 1942, he was cast in Northwest Rangers, a Westernized reworking of Manhattan Melodrama in which Gable himself had been cast in 1934.

  In Lady Without a Passport (1949), Hedy Lamarr, still Lana’s rival, faced the same dilemma that Lana had confronted when she’d made Marriage Is a Private Affair. Her leading men were the same as Lana’s: John Hodiak and James Craig.

  She followed in Lana’s footsteps, sustaining affairs with both actors. “I was already familiar with the charms of Mr. Craig,” she told her director, Joseph H. Lewis.

  In Gore Vidal’s most controversial novel, Myra Breckenridge, there is a glowing passage concerning the sexual allure of actor James Craig.

  “I practiced self-abuse thinking of James Craig’s voice,” Myra proclaims in Vidal’s novel. “Those broad shoulders, those powerful thighs thrust between your own. No matter what condition James Craig is in today, decrepit or not, Myra Breckinridge is ready to give him a good time for old times’ sake.”

  ***

  John Hodiak first tried for a job as a radio actor, but was rejected because of his Ukrainian accent. As a caddy, he practiced his diction and studied hard, until finally, he was accepted for a job on radio in Chicago, playing the comic strip character, L’il Abner.

  But his major recognition didn’t come until Lifeboat. Bankhead spread the word—“it’s like getting fucked by a beer can, dah-ling.” News like that spread fast, and soon, Hodiak was pursued in Hollywood by a coven of sexually voracious females.

  “When I first went to bed with John Hodiak, I imagined his love gift sprinkled with sapphires and diamonds,” Lana said. “I couldn’t wait for him to recover so we could go another round.”

  “Who needs Clark Gable when you’ve got his replacement?” Virginia Grey asked Lana. “Maybe you’ll leave Clark for me when he comes marching home from the Air Force.”

  In the months to come, after they finished their picture, Lana and Hodiak became a “sometimes thing” (her words).

  Years later, Hodiak confessed to Lana that it was not only women who sexually pursued him, but an occasional male, including two of her friends. He cited Van Johnson, with whom he had co-starred in Command Decision (1948), and Robert Taylor in Ambush (1949).

  She used her affair with Hodiak to goad Stephen Crane into granting her a second divorce. As her daughter, Cheryl, later wrote, “She told Dad a baldfaced lie—that she was in love with another man. She named Hodiak.”

  Two views of John Hodiak: (top photo) braiding Lana’s hair; (lower photo) shirtless and adrift at sea with Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat.

  Lana may not have been in love with Hodiak, but she certainly was smitten with him. She told him that she had blamed him for the breakup of her marriage.

  “What the hell?” Hodiak had said. “Now Crane will come gunning for me.”

  “He’s house broken,” she responded. “He never kills my lovers.”

  Photographs snapped during the filming of Marriage reveal Lana with Hodiak during the blossoming of their romance. At one point, he was photographed braiding her hair; in another picture, she sips afternoon tea from his cup.

  She used her influence to get him a number of lucrative radio jobs, wherein, from recording studios, they each read their lines into microphones. Their first dramatization together was Once Upon a Honeymoon, a Screen Guild Players Presentation that aired on November 20, 1944.

  Originally conceived as a romantic comedy/drama that was released as a film in 1942, it had starred Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. Both of them, however, had rejected proposals to get them involved in the radio-broadcasted reprise.

  On April 11, 1946, Lana and Hodiak co-starred in a CBS presentation of the Lux Radio Theatre. The radio play was Honky Tonk, the film she had made with Clark Gable before America went to war.

  The Screen Guild Players reunited Hodiak and Lana again in their radio rendition of Marriage Is a Private Affair, which was broadcast on June 17, 1946.

  The Guild hired Lana and John Garfield to do the original radio broadcast of The Postman Always Rings Twice on CBS Radio on June 23, 1947. The show was so well-received that the Screen Guild recycled it for another radio adaptation, eventually broadcast through ABC on February 8, 1951. This time, however, Garfield was not available, so Hodiak was substituted, with Lana reprising for radio her original film role.

  During the last years of his life, Hodiak slipped around for an occasional private rendezvous with Lana. After he’d made Marriage with Lana, he was cast in the 1944 film, Sunday Dinner for a Soldier, in which he co-starred with Anne Baxter. The two actors fell in love and were married in 1946.

  As the years passed, Lana was saddened by the decline in Hodiak’s career. After he was heavily promoted for his roles in a series of lackluster films, movie exhibitors across the country labeled him “box office poison.”

  On October 19, 1955, Lana was listening to the radio when a bulletin was announced. Hodiak had suffered a fatal heart attack in the bathroom of his home [a refuge he had originally built for his parents] in Tarzana, California. He was only forty-one years old.

  “In some of his film noir roles, John was a brute,” Lana recalled. “But not in real life.”

  ***

  John Hodiak and James Craig weren’t the only men Lana dated during the course of her marriage to Stephen Crane. During that period, an especially exotic male also entered her life. Urbane and dapper, Turhan Bey became her lover, too.

  With his dark good looks, swept-back hair, and Continental charm, he had been born in Vienna, the son of a Turkish diplomat and a Jewish-Czech mother.

  Bey was typecast as a dashing, bare-chested foreigner who often played a Turk or an Arab in period pictures that included Raiders of the Desert (1941), Arabian Nights (1942), and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves (1944).

  At the time Lana met him, he was filming Dragon Seed (1944), playing the Chinese husband of Katharine Hepburn, whose performance called for her to appear throughout the film in pseudo-Asian makeup. The film had been based on Pearl S. Buck’s saga of a Chinese town torn asunder by the Japanese occupation.

  In all these movies, Screen Guide magazine found Bey ”cultured, suave, and inscrutable—made to order for moviegoers.”

  Before she ever met him, Lana appeared one day to watch the rushes from Dragon Seed. She told the director, Jack Conway, “I fancy this young Turk.”

  Eventually, she met Bey at the home of Jean-Pierre Aumont. Her French former lover was married at the time to Maria Montez, with whom Bey would eventually co-star in several Technicolor escapades. The press had already nicknamed him, “The Turkish Delight,” and his reputation had preceded him by the time Aumont introduced them.

  Lana’s first words to Bey were, “I think the newspaper gossip columns are all wrong calling you the ‘Poor Man’s Valentino.’ I think you have more going than he did.”

  He thanked her, as he hated that label himself. The Valentino comparison would be recycled when he starred in Sudan (1945). The New York Times wrote:“Turhan Bey gives a boyish imitation of Rudolph Valentino as the desert sheik.”

  Bey recalled, “At the time I met Lana, World War II was winding down. The really big male stars such as Clark Gable and Robert Taylor were away, and some of us younger actors were taking over their roles. It was a good, glorious time in my life. My career was going great, and I had Lana Turner, with Ava Gardner just around the corner.”

  One night at a party in Beverly Hills, Lana was dancing with Bey when Stephen Crane entered the room. He approached the couple and pulled them apart. Then he made an attempt to remove from her finger the diamond ring he’d given her, loudly asserting that it was a family heirloom.

  She protested, “But I’ve had it reset!”

  Ever the gentleman, Bey invited Crane to step outside into the garden to settle the dispute. Once they were there, the two men began to fight as Lana rushed out. In her frustration, she threw the ring into the shrubbery. Two other men from the party pulled Bey and Crane apart, but not befo
re Bey had given Crane a black eye. Bey sustained only minor bruises.

  The last that Lana saw of Crane that night was watching him crawl around in the bushes looking for the three-carat diamond ring.

  The scandal made the papers, and in the weeks to come, pictures of Lana on dates with Bey were widely distributed in the gossip columns.

  Gardner and Lana often shared the same man, including Peter Lawford. Such was the case with Bey. Although he rarely gave interviews after his flight from Hollywood, Bey did talk to a reporter in Vienna about the era when he was sustaining simultaneous affairs with both Gardner and Lana.

  “They were very different,” Bey asserted. “Lana was more in control. She never went wild. I can’t say the same for Ava. She was untamed, and would do almost anything if you dared her. Lana never let you forget that she was a goddess. Ava, on the other hand, would kick off her shoes and become the life of the party.”

  “Lana and Ava did have something in common. You might take one of them out on a date, but that didn’t mean you’d come home with them. If Lana or Ava saw someone more tempting than me, perhaps a waiter in tight black pants, they would ditch me and run off with that other guy. One night, Ava and I double-dated with David Niven and her friend, Peggy Maley. David and Ava practically seduced each other at table and on the dance floor. At one point, David whispered to me, ‘Dear Boy—be a good chap and take Peggy home for me. Ava and I are heading out.”

  [A Hollywood-bred playgirl, Maley was and would be Gardner’s roommate, dreaming of a stardom that never came. She immortalized herself on the screen, however, in The Wild One (1954), starring Marlon Brando. In that film, she feeds him the line, “What are you rebelling against?”

  He replies, “Whaddaya got?”]

  ***

  Katharine Hepburn encountered Lana on the set of Cass Timberlane (1948) months later, when she was visiting her friend, Spencer Tracy, Lana’s co-star. She recalled appearing in Chinese makeup with Bey in Dragon Seed. “Both of us looked pretty silly.” At one point, she asked Lana about what had happened to her romance with Bey.

  Lana looked at her squarely and bluntly said: “He gave me the clap.” Then she turned and walked away.

  In 1953, as Bey’s film career was about to end, the rumor mill in Hollywood was working overtime. Gossip had it that he was about to become embroiled in a major scandal that was set to be aired in the exposé magazines. It was never proven, and no charges were ever filed, but gossip had it that he had raped a twelve-year-old girl. The case did not go to court because the mother of the girl preferred to blackmail Bey instead of filing formal charges.

  Consequently, Bey fled from Hollywood and returned to his native Vienna, where he became a photographer for both high fashion and for girlie magazines.

  He did give one interview in Vienna about his abrupt departure from Hollywood. “I could have stayed and fought the charges, but I chose not to defend myself from those salacious rumors. I was innocent of all charges, but I finally decided it wasn’t worth it to stick around.”

  After staying away for decades, Bey slipped back into Hollywood in 1993. Jobs were scarce, but he nonetheless found a gig for a guest appearance on Murder, She Wrote, the hit TV series starring Angela Lansbury. He also nabbed a starring role in a B-movie, Healer.

  One night, he had a chance encounter with Cheryl Crane, Lana’s daughter, at a party hosted by George Sidney. He said, “Your mother was so, so beautiful, and I imagine she still is. Would you ask her if she’d consider going out with me again?”

  She conveyed the invitation, but by that time, Lana was in the throes of throat cancer. She said she was flattered by the offer, but that she must turn it down. “It’s best to keep old memories locked inside your heart. Yesterday is dead and gone.”

  Bey remained a bachelor throughout his entire life, dying in Vienna on September 30, 2012, at the age of ninety.

  ***

  By this time, although Henry Willson was no longer Lana’s agent, he called her from time to time whenever he wanted her to publicize “one of the boys in my stable,” or when he was trying to set up a management contract for yet another young actor’s career.

  Lately, he’d been captivated by John Dall, a young New Yorker who was aboutLana’s age. Dall had grown up in Panama, where his father, before committing suicide in 1929, had worked as a civil engineer.

  As John Dall was one of “Henry’s boys,” Lana knew in advance that he was either homosexual or an “indulgent bisexual,” so she wasn’t expecting much in the way of romance.

  “He sort of put on the straight act with me,” she later told Willson. “He was practically inventing a background for himself.”

  After his return to New York, the tall, thin young man with a slightly superior air, had briefly enrolled at Columbia University, but he was eventually drawn into acting, ending up in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Playhouse.

  Lana agreed to go out with him because he had received rave reviews for his portrayal of Morgan Evans in The Corn Is Green (1945), starring Bette Davis. He would later be nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Although Warners had signed him to a contract, they were planning to let him go in 1946, and he needed publicity to rekindle some interest in himself as an actor.

  Dall told her that as a teenager, he’d acted on the stage in Panama, but she learned later that he left that country to return to New York at the age of ten. He also told her that he’d been married in 1940, “but it didn’t work out.” [Later, it was revealed to her that he’d never been married.]

  After three dates with him, Lana put her foot down, saying, “I’ve done my bit for Henry,” and she moved on to other, more “connected” liaisons.

  Believing, nonetheless, that he had the makings of a star, she did, however, run into Dall from time to time in his future. That was particularly true when Alfred Hitchcock cast him as a cool-minded intellectual killer in Rope (1948), co-starring James Stewart and Farley Granger.

  [John Dall and Granger sustained an affair during the making of the film. Hitchcock later revealed, “I wanted to cast Rope with two genuine homosexuals.”]

  ***

  Ava Gardner, a barefoot North Carolina Tarheel girl, and the auburn-haired blonde, Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner, of Wallace, Idaho, each took Hollywood by storm. They should have been rivals—and indeed, they were—but through all the turmoil of their lives, they retained a strong female bond. Each of them survived countless men, broken marriages, scandals, and the ups and downs of a movie career at MGM.

  Lee Server, in Love Is Nothing—his biography of Ava Gardner—wrote:

  “Lana Turner and Ava had much in common: They had both been teenagers when plucked from nowhere without experience or education. Lana was Metro’s hot sex symbol, and so was Ava. They often fell for the same guy. Some of them, like Artie Shaw, Howard Hughes, and Frank Sinatra, had been Lana’s first; others, like the racketeer Mickey Cohen’s sleek thug, Johnny Stompanato, were Ava’s cast-offs. At times, Ava found Lana a bit of a bore, humorless except unintentionally funny, as when, with the manners of an accountant, she reviewed the genital size and ability of her various lovers.”

  The parallel courses of their lives were striking: Years before Gardner married Mickey Rooney in 1942, Lana had had an affair with “The Pint-sized Wonder” during the late 1930s and had aborted his child. Gardner stayed with him for only a short time, later asserting, “It was the mistake of my life.”

  After their divorce, Gardner and Lana became lifelong confidantes. Howard Hughes went first for Lana before succumbing to the charms of luscious Gardner. Their highly destructive relationship often turned violent.

  Both Lana and Gardner were “Queens of the Night,” dancing until dawn at many of L.A.’s late-night clubs. Although the former Mrs. Artie Shaw had warned Gardner not to become the next Mrs. Artie Shaw, Gardner did not take Lana’s advice and lived to regret it.

  They certainly doubled up on the same men, often dating Turkish actor Turhan Bey at the
same time. Likewise, Gardner had an affair with Stephen Crane, Lana’s second husband. Only a partial list of their shared lovers included the attorney, Greg Bautzer, Richard Burton, Howard Duff, Clark Gable, Fernando Lamas, Peter Lawford, and the “Three Roberts:” Mitchum, Taylor, and Walker.

  Gardner warned Lana not to take the notorious gangster, Johnny Stompanato, as a lover. Lana rejected her advice, later admitting, “Stompanato was the worst mistake of my life.”

  Frank Sinatra seduced Lana long before he married Gardner.

  Years later, on reviewing her life, Gardner admitted, “Lana and I did some acting, but our real dramas occurred off screen,” Gardner said. “We should write a joint bio, and entitle it Tales of Two Lurid Lives.”

  Gardner and Turner, as nymphomaniacal, dyed-in-the-wool night owls, prowled Los Angeles after dark, winding their ways in and out of boudoirs, but on a few occasions ending up in sleazy motels, especially if their assignations were with dishwashers or garage mechanics. “Lana and I dazzled the fuckers with our beauty,” Gardner said.

  Both of them denied that they’d arrived in Hollywood as ambition-crazed starlets determined to make it at any cost. Gardner said, “When I hit town, I came looking for a paycheck. I knew that Hollywood was filled with hundreds of gals willing to peddle their pussies for an acting job. They were straining every nerve to become a star. But, for me at least, it was a joy ride. Lots of fun. Lots of night clubs, and the world’s most beautiful men. I was like a girl on the vacation of a lifetime. I had no real acting plans, and no more ambition than a flea.”

  “Some assholes called Lana and me whores,” Gardner said. “Honey chile, we weren’t whores. We never charged. We gave it away.”

  Lana and Gardner had more or less the same point of view, especially when itcame to men and glamor. Lana told Gardner, “Life is what happens to you while you’re waiting for the appearance of crow’s feet to fuck up your looks. In time, I would name every god damn wrinkle in my face.”