Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

Like Lana, Gardner was also defined and promoted as “the most irresistible woman in the world,” sultry, tempestuous, and ravishingly beautiful. Columnists proclaimed that “Ava and Lana sizzle both on and off the screen. They serve up a plate of glamor with passion as the main course. Their breasts are world-renowned. Lana virtually invented the tight-fitting sweater. Rooney proclaimed that “Ava’s big brown nipples, when aroused, stood out like some double-long golden California raisins.”

  “We were hard-living and hard-drinking broads, Gardner said. “Right from the beginning, we recognized that fact in each other. Life played us wild cards. In spite of all the scandals, the disastrous love affairs, the tragic, costly mistakes, Lana and I lived life to the hilt.”

  In a candid admission to Virginia Grey, Lana said, “I was drawn to Ava because she was the most liberated woman I’d ever known. She went through life following her own rules, not those dictated by some man. She chose her own men. She didn’t lie on any casting couch. Ava often pitched sex to a guy before he got around to it. She followed Mae West’s advice: ‘When you hit town, don’t keep it a secret.’”

  “Ava projected sex appeal. According to rumor, so did I. Men flocked to us. We rejected most of them, but gave a few hundred the thrill of their lives. We ruled as queens over the heyday of movie making, a time that Hollywood will never see again. We seduced and discarded men like Kleenex.”

  ***

  Lana released two films in 1945, the year World War II ended. The war was in its final stages when she reported to work on Keep Your Powder Dry, with co-stars Susan Peter and her least favorite actress, Laraine Day. Lana had worked with Day before on the set of Calling Dr. Kildare, and neither actress was fond of the other. Lana had always referred to Day as “The Ice Queen.”

  In Keep Your Powder Dry, director Edward Buzzell said, “Lana and Laraine played antagonists in the movie, and they weren’t acting. It was the real thing.”

  Joan Crawford had been slated to play the lead, in which she’d impersonate a WAC [i.e., a member of the Women’s Army Corps, a subdivision of the U.S. Army created for women during World War II.]

  George Bruce and Mary McCall wrote its original story as a tribute to theWACS and the fighting spirit of American womanhood. [The theme was in vogue at the time: Paramount had released So Proudly We Hail (1943). MGM had shot Cry Havoc (1943) and Universal made Ladies Courageous (1944).]

  In this movie which hovered between comedy and drama, Lana was cast as Val Parks, a spoiled society girl who must join the WACs to save her inheritance. Natalie Schafer, who had played her mother in Marriage Is a Private Affair, was cast this time as her parasitic best friend, Harriet Corwin.

  Lana’s fellow WACs included Day as “Napoleon” Rand, and the ill-fated Peters as Annie Darrison, who suffers the loss of her soldier husband in the movie.

  In the beginning, Lana’s character of Val didn’t take being a WAC seriously. “Napoleon” (Day), an army brat since birth, is a thorn in her side, strictly maintaining military discipline. One reviewer appraised Day’s performance as “pathologically bossy.” Despite the venom they release at each other, the women triumphantly reconcile before the end of the final reel. [Hey, it’s a movie!]

  Peters, acting as peacemaker, interpreted her sympathetic role with great sensitivity, providing a luminous presence on the screen. If a tragic gunshot hadn’t ruined her life, she might have become a star.

  Before the movie’s release, Peters was accidentally shot during a duck-hunting trip with her husband, Richard Quine. After the accident, she was permanently paralyzed from the waist down, spending the remainder of her short life in a wheel-chair.

  After a few unsuccessful attempts at a comeback, she lived in seclusion. On October 23, 1952, wracked by almost constant pain, she died at the age of thirty-one, having virtually starved herself to death.

  Three WACs in a row: Laraine Day, Lana Turner, and Susan Peters star in a wartime propaganda film.

  Cast as a New York playgirl, Lana found her role unusual in that “there was almost no romantic element for me in the script. That forced me to go after Susan Hayward’s husband off screen.”

  On the set of Keep Your Powder Dry, Lana worked well with the film’s Brooklyn-born director, Edward Buzzell, who had once been married to Ona Munson, the whorehouse madam, Belle Watling, in Gone With the Wind (1939).

  ***

  In the film, in addition to the role essayed by Schafer, Lana’s other martini-soaked “sponger” friend was Jess Barker, cast as a sleazy gigolo. In the year (1944) that Lana met Barker on the set, he’d married Susan Hayward, who was still, at least on the surface, one of Lana’s best friends.

  If she’s a WAC, she’s the best-coiffed, most manicured GI in military service. Some soldiers said that this is photo of Lana—a credit to the U.S. Armed Forces—is even sexier than those in which she appears in ribbons and lace.

  For some reason, Lana had never broken from Hayward, even after she learned that she was sleeping with her husband, Stephen Crane.

  There is no record that Lana ever confronted Hayward for having an illicit affair with her husband.

  During the making of the film, it was Barker who pursued Lana. He turned to her for comfort, as he was having lots of difficulty with Susan. Their nights often ended in arguments, leading to violence.

  “I felt sorry for him,” Lana confessed to Buzzell. “Susan seemed to be castrating him. Of course, she’s the big star, and he’s a nobody. He was tired of being known as Mr. Susan Hayward. He turned to me for comfort, and perhaps things got a bit out of hand.”

  It became obvious to the entire cast and crew that Lana was inviting Barker to her dressing room for sex whenever there was a break in filming.

  “There sure must have been something hot going on in there,” Schafer said. “I feared that word would get back to Hayward, and that she’d storm onto the set for a catfight with Lana. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.”

  “At the end of filming, Barker went back to Hayward, and Lana was off to her next conquests,” Schafer said. “That happens a lot while films are being shot. That’s Hollywood for you. I don’t want to judge Lana too harshly. Barker is a handsome man. If I’d been a few years younger, I would have gone after him myself.”

  Keep Your Powder Dry opened at the Capital Theatre in Washington, D.C. on March 8, 1945. The highlight of the evening was a personal appearance of Lana, who looked far more glamorous than she had in any of the film’s WAC uniforms.

  Virginia Wilson in Modern Screen, wrote: “When you see Lana in uniform, you’ll probably rush right out and join up for yourself.”

  In the Los Angeles Times, critic Philip K. Scheuer wrote: “Even when it turns to the severities of military discipline, MGM managed to pour on the glamor. The film somehow emerges as a high-powered vehicle for the studio’s stable of beauties, notably Miss Turner herself, who at first appears as a playgirl specializing in high-balls and high heels.”

  The film’s most scathing review was published in The New York Times. “The writers dashed off the script on the doorstep of the studio beauty shop.”

  After meeting Susan Hayward’s handsome husband, Lana told her director, “Jess Barker sure looks delectable. Susan always raves about his performance in bed, which she considers better than anything he does on the screen. Dare I go where angels fear to tread and find out for myself what causes Susan such joy?”

  “Don’t go there,” the director warned her. “You’re inviting trouble.”

  “I think it’s fair play,” she answered. “I know for a fact that Susan slept with my husband.”

  “I’ll say it again. Don’t go there.”

  Most of Lana’s personal reviews concentrated on her beauty, not on her acting.

  ***

  Henry Willson, the gay talent agent, phoned Lana once again with another request. He wanted her to take as her escort a young actor he was promoting. He needed both of them to show up at the world premiere of Spellbound, the 1945 movie co-starr
ing Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.

  “His name is Rory Calhoun—for two weeks I’d named him Troy Donahue,” Willson said. “I can see you making an entrance in all your platinum blonde glory. It’ll be a perfect match, Rory with his raven-black hair and dark, feral look. The photographers will go wild.”

  Willson’s prophecy came true.

  The son of a professional gambler in Los Angeles, Rory Calhoun (born Francis Timothy McCowan), was the same age as Lana and exceedingly handsome. “He was oozing with masculinity,” she later told Willson. “Unlike John Dall, he does women, too, and how! And he can go all night.”

  In his promotion, Willson didn’t mention that Calhoun had spent much of his young life in prison, mostly on convictions for robbing jewelry stores. As Calhoun himself later admitted himself, “I skipped high school and grew up in a federal penitentiary.”

  Before his “discovery” the rugged young man had been a firefighter, lumber-jack, miner, and cowboy. When he first arrived in Hollywood, he was a male hustler. “I had a weapon that all the homos went for,” he accurately boasted.

  Calhoun had first been discovered by the bisexual actor, Alan Ladd (Lana’s former lover), who doted on Calhoun’s perfect physique before turning him over to Willson. Ladd had spotted him while horseback riding in the Hollywood Hills. Willson soon added him to “my stable of boys,” and even got David O. Selznick to sign him to a movie contract.

  When Lana first met this striking young man, he had recently signed to star in The Great John L (1945), based on the life of the turn-of-the-20th-Century heavyweight champion, John L. Sullivan. Its producer was Bing Crosby. [In an earlier version, Errol Flynn had played the boxer in Gentleman Jim (1942).]

  The Great John L gave Calhoun a chance to show off his impressive physique and athletic prowess, which earned him a devoted following among horny teenage girls and ravenous gay men.

  At the premere of Spellbound, Lana spent at least ten minutes chatting with its co-stars, Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.

  She later told Henry Willson, “When Ingrid finishes with Greg, I’m next in line. I don’t know if I can hold out that long.”

  After his first night with Lana, Calhoun gave her an anklet, which she often wore, according to her daughter, Cheryl. Before he dated Lana, Willson had already phoned Louella Parsons, hawking Calhoun “as the next Clark Gable.”

  By this time, Willson’s lust for Guy Madison had dimmed, somewhat, and he began revealing to his entourage that he was “mad about the new boy,” as he said, meaning Calhoun. To Lana, Willson confessed that “Rory is the most exciting man I’ve ever met.”

  The premiere of Spellbound marked Calhoun’s first public appearance.

  With Lana, looking her most glamorous, on his arm, the couple was a sensation, their photograph appearing in most of the nation’s newspapers the next morning.

  “Henry demands that I spend three nights a week in his company,” Calhoun told Lana, “but I’m free on the other nights of the week.”

  The day after Calhoun seduced her, Lana delivered a rave report to Willson. “He’s six feet three and all man,” she said, “and I’m sure you’ve explored every foot.”

  “My job has been to transform this thug into a movie idol,” Willson said. “Thanks for helping to get his picture in the paper. I plucked his eyebrows…too hirsute.”

  “After those pictures of Rory and me appear, I’m sure Joan Crawford will have him on the phone.”

  When he wasn’t dating Lana, Calhoun was often seen on the town with Willson and Guy Madison. There was talk of a ménage à trois. As a trio, they were seen dining at Chasen’s and at Romanoff’s, and night clubbing at Ciro’s and the Trocadero. It was only later that she learned that Madison had fallen in love with Calhoun.

  As the years went by, Calhoun didn’t confine his charms to Willson or Lana, but shared them with Betty Grable, Yvonne De Carlo, the French actress Corinne Calvet, Susan Hayward, and Marilyn Monroe.

  In That Hagen Girl (1947), Calhoun competed with Ronald Reagan for a very young Shirley Temple.

  In 1948, he married the Mexican actress, Lita Baron. In 1970, when she divorced him, she named seventy-nine women, including Grable and Lana, with whom her husband had committed adultery. When the actor was asked by a reporter if that charge were true, Calhoun said, “Heck, she didn’t even include half of them.”

  Lana stayed in touch with Calhoun, even as both of their careers declined. She spoke to Virginia Grey about him. “Time goes by, and my phone doesn’t ring as often as it might. But, sitting home on a rainy night, without a date, I could always give Rory a ring. Even as he got older, it was forever steel hard. Or, as he often boasted, ‘In my day, I’ve re-arranged a few guts.’”

  ***

  For another 1945 release, director Robert Z. Leonard cast Lana in Week-End at the Waldorf, a radical “refurbishment” of Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel, a novel, published in 1929, which MGM had first adapted in 1932 with an all-star cast headed by Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Joan Crawford.

  Lana was disappointed when she was told that she’d have to relinquish first billing, in the 1945 reprise, to Ginger Rogers.

  In their version of the film, Crawford and Garbo had had no scenes together. Likewise, Rogers and Lana didn’t either, which was just as well. Rogers was “seriously pissed off at Lana” for the affair she’d had with Lew Ayres during the years she’d been married to him.

  Envisioned as film that would dovetail neatly (and glamorously) with America’s Victory celebrations, Week-End at the Waldorf assembled an all-star cast that included Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Edward Arnold, Phyllis Thaxter, Keenan Wynn, Robert Benchley, Leon Ames—even Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra. Irene, when sober, was in charge of Lana’s gowns, and Sydney Guilaroff tended to her “Victory Bob” tresses.

  The movie focuses on various guests lodged at the famous New York landmark, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Rogers, who handled the role previously made famous by Greta Garbo, was cast as the lonelyscreen star, Irene Malvern, in town for the premiere of her latest movie.

  This scene at the desk of the Waldorf-Astoria showed the four major stars of Week-End at the Waldorf checking in.

  (Left to right), Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, Lana Turner, and Van Johnson. It was just a publicity still, not actually a scene from the movie.

  In contrast, Lana as Bunny Smith, the hotel’s stenographer, followed in the footsteps of Crawford, who had originated the role.

  Walter Pidgeon played war correspondent Chip Collyer, who is mistaken for a jewel thief.

  Van Johnson was cast as Captain James Hollis, a wounded hero who’s scheduled, within a few days, for some perilous surgery.

  Lavishly produced and brilliantly directed by Leonard, Week-End at the Waldorf became the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1945.

  Leonard was already adept at handling temperamental stars, having been married to the silent screen diva, Mae Murray. Her most famous movie had been the silent version (1925) of The Merry Widow, in which Lana would star in the 1950s re-make. Adding to his “skill set,” Leonard had directed Lana before in Ziegfeld Girl.

  Edward Arnold, who had co-starred with Lana in Johnny Eager, was cast as Martin X. Edley, a bull-headed businessman trying to sign the Bey of Aribajan to a shady oil deal.

  Many reviewers pointed out that Week-End would have been a better movie if Lana and Rogers had reversed their roles.

  Week-End at the Waldorf was released in October, 1945, about a month after the Japanese surrender. In the movie, the war was still slogging on.

  Variety noted that “there is never a dull moment in this Week-End.” Cue praised the film as “an elaborately frothy three-corner comedy drama.”

  ***

  During the filming of Week-End at the Waldorf, Lana was introduced to the famous hoteliers, Conrad Hilton and his son, Nicky, who was four years younger than she was.

  When Lana checked into the film’s namesake hotel, she was assigned to the best suite at th
e hotel. She found it filled with roses. And before fifteen minutes had passed, three bottles of chilled champagne, each in an icy silver bucket, were delivered to her suite.

  When she was introduced to Conrad, the founding father of the chain that borehis name, she found him deeply suntanned and quite handsome for a man born in 1887. As she later said, “He’d held up well, despite his (1942) marriage to Zsa Zsa.”

  Walter Pidgeon and Ginger Rogers bond with each other before a panoramic view of New York, a city in the throes of celebrating the end of World War II.

  The character she played was that of a lonely movie star, he a foreign correspondent.

  The founder of Hilton Hotels and author of the bestselling promotional bio, Be My Guest, Conrad was a tall, powerful Texan, who started out with nothing. A bellhop in Dallas once lent him money to buy himself a hamburger and a Coke. From such lowly beginnings, he’d created an empire.

  He was Lana’s first overnight guest in the suite he had provided for her. And he seemed delighted that MGM was making a movie that featured his hotel as the backdrop. He expressed only one disappointment: He had wanted Louis B. Mayer to film the (black & white) movie in Technicolor as a means of better “showing off the glories of my hotel.”

  Lana interpreted Conrad as “a Gary Cooper type,” rather rugged, a real “ride ‘em cowboy” type. Was that her reference to him in bed?

  That night, Conrad danced with her downstairs. “He held me so close I could hardly breathe. I felt the State of Texas rising, if you get my drift.” All of this she confided to her director, Robert Z. Leonard.

  Back in her suite, Conrad invited her to fly to Texas with him for the weekend. “Instead of a Week-End at the Waldorf, why not in Dallas?” He went on to confide that his favorite sport was shooting rattlesnakes and then having his chef sauté the reptiles for supper, serving them with his Lone Star hot sauce.

  Lana is seen with Van Johnson, whose character faces surgery so dangerous his life is in peril.