Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  “And how! Can I assume, darling, that you’ve already enjoyed Rex—if you hadn’t, I guess you wouldn’t be recommending him.”

  “Yes, darling,” Goddard answered. “You and I on occasion have sampled the same merchandise. Gable comes to mind. So do Gary Cooper. Greg Bautzer. David Niven. Spencer Tracy.”

  “Don’t leave out my former husband, Artie Shaw.”

  “Oh yes, and him, too. In case you ever have the chance, skip John Wayne. Get him out of the saddle and a gal has got very little to work with.”

  [Goddard had co-starred with Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind (1943). Lana would co-star with him in The Sea Chase (1955).]

  “I must warn you,” Goddard said. “Rex is such a cad, very snobbish, very conceited. But I think you’ll find him amusing. His wife is out of town, so he’s free to escort you.”

  The actor might have agreed with her assessment of him. He once told an interviewer, “Off stage, I can be far from charming. I am acid. ACID! I have a direct tongue, and I say what I think is the truth. I don’t give a damn for the consequences.”

  He had also expressed his view of marriage. “I would never fit into the life of some woman. She has to fit into mine. The happiest married men I know have a wife to go home to, not to go home with.”

  Later in life, Alan J. Lerner, who wrote the lyrics of Harrison’s biggest hit, My Fair Lady, claimed, “It’s a melancholy fact, but Rex and I, between the two of us, have supported more women that Playtex.”

  During their transit to Goddard’s home, Harrison did not live up to his awful advance billing. He was the perfect English gentleman, with impeccable manners and a clipped English accent that amused her. Yet during odd moments, he could be wickedly provocative. Noticing that she was very, very blonde and dressed all in white, including her fur, he raised an eyebrow. “Are you blonde all over?”

  “That’s for you to find out, but only if you get lucky,” she shot back.

  Goddard’s dinner party was a success. Through it, Lana got to meet some of the leading members of the British expatriate colony.

  Lana was also introduced to Goddard’s third husband, whom she’d married after leaving Charlie Chaplin. Burgess Meredith was five feet seven inches tall, with ginger-colored hair. She did not find him particularly attractive, but his reputation “as a Casanova and a cocksman” on Broadway and Hollywood had preceded him. He admitted, “God knows I’m not a dashing swain, but a kind of mongrel, the way I chase the foxes.”

  Those “foxes” included Tallulah Bankhead, Ingrid Bergman, Olivia de Havilland, Marlene Dietrich, Hedy Lamarr, Ginger Rogers, and Norma Shearer.

  While Harrison was talking with Goddard and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Meredith asked Lana to walk out onto the terrace for a moonlit preview of their well-manicured garden. In the middle of their talk, he reached for her free hand and placed it on his crotch. “Does that answer the question about why I’m sought after by the ladies?”

  “It does so amply,” she answered, before turning to go inside. “When you break up with Paulette, which seems in the cards, come up and see me sometime.”

  En route back to Lana’s house, Harrison told her, “I have no idea who I am at any given time. I have six different personalities. When I wake up each morning, I never know which personality will take over.”

  “Which of the many Mr. Harrisons is driving me home tonight?” she asked.

  “A combination of Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier,” he said, “without the homosexual overtones. I’m also a bit of Noël Coward and John Gielgud. Again, without the homosexual overtones.”

  “Are all great English actors homosexual, or at least bi-?” she asked.

  “Most of them are, even Richard Burton, who frequently admits it.”

  “I’m not familiar with this Mr. Burton.”

  “You soon will be,” he predicted. “He’s a Welsh actor with a magnificent speaking voice, ideal for stage and screen. I know it sounds far-fetched, but you might one day be co-starring with him.”

  [Ironically, that is what happened in 1955 when Burton and Lana co-starred together in The Rains of Ranchipur. Fourteen years after that, Harrison, in the grotesquely campy Staircase (1969), would play Burton’s gay lover.]

  On her doorstep, Harrison took her in his arms and kissed her passionately, but she refused his request to come in for a nightcap.

  Goddard phoned the following morning for an update on what had happened with Harrison after she left the party.

  “I found him very suave, very charismatic. A bit aloof, self-enchanted. He is oh so veddy English. A real arrogant bastard, but in some way strangely appealing.”

  “Did Rex carve another notch on his belt?”

  “Not at all…although he tried.”

  ***

  After that “kiss-off” on her doorstep, Lana didn’t expect to hear from Harrison again. But he called two days later to invite her to a party at the elegant home of Merle Oberon. The beautiful actress with the porcelain skin had been born in Calcutta, the daughter of a British father and a woman of India.

  Lana had always been intrigued by her reputation, especially that she was now making a film at Universal, a somewhat confusing and silly historical fantasy with a then-massive budget of $1.6 million. Entitled A Night in Paradise (1946), it was being shot with Lana’s former lover, Turhan Bey.

  The photographer and designer, Cecil Beaton, claimed, “Merle (Oberon) is almost a nymphomaniac. She makes love because she likes it, or because of the money. She is as promiscuous as a man enjoying a quick one behind the door.”

  Oberon had just emerged from an affair with James Cagney. It had been sparked during their collaboration in a war bond drive that had toured the country. Her other lovers had included three men whom Lana knew well—Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and David Niven. She would soon seduce Prince Philip before his marriage to Princess Elizabeth.

  At Oberon’s party, Lana had an amusing chat with Cecil Beaton, the gossipy photographer and designer. She emerged from it somewhat surprised that Greta Garbo had, for a period, taken him as a lover. “He seemed ‘100 percent homosexual’ to me,” she had said.

  Lana chatted briefly with Darryl F. Zanuck, who had also been one of Oberon’s lovers. To Lana, Zanuck said, “I regret that I let you slip through my fishing net and land in the lap of that asshole, Louis B. Mayer. I could have turned you and Tyrone Power into the hottest screen team since Harlow and Gable.”

  “I regret that, too, Mr. Zanuck,” Lana answered.

  “I’m probably the straightest guy who ever set foot in Hollywood. I take a steambath with Power every day. At times, he’s so fucking pretty that I’ve considered raping him myself.”

  Ava Gardner had forewarned her, “The only thing bigger than Zanuck’s cigar is his cock, which he’s not too shy to show or put to use. He gets turned on by watching two starlets make love to each other before ravishing one of them.”

  After Oberon’s party, Harrison drove Lana home again, and this time, did the inviting, suggesting that he should come in for a nightcap. As her mother, Mildred, learned the following morning, Harrison evolved into a surprise guest for breakfast.

  This time, Lana phoned Goddard to deliver a gossipy report: “In a word, he’s proficient. Although I prefer the George Montgomery type, I find Rex wickedly amusing. Last night at the party, he wore a rather forbidding monocle over his right eye and had a long cigarette holder clenched between his teeth. He has the aura of an English aristocrat. A temporary diversion for me—nothing else.”

  ***

  Intent on playing the field, Lana did not accept Harrison’s third invitation for a night in his hotel suite. Robert Stack had introduced her to a young navy lieutenant, the son of one of the richest men in America, an Irish mogul whose fortune was based partially on bootlegging. It was clearly understood that the ex-Navy man would not remain in Hollywood for long, and she wanted to be with him.

  It came as little surprise to her that Harrison was soon sustaining an affa
ir with Carole Landis, another blonde and a longtime rival of Lana’s, although they kept up some pretend friendship. “Landis and I are acquaintances, not friends,” Lana said whenever her name came up.

  At the time Harrison began his affair with Landis, she was twenty-nine years old and at the rocky end of her fourth marriage, this time to a businessman, W. Horace Schmidlapp. The former call girl from San Francisco had also had a lesbian affair with author Jacqueline Susann, who would go on to write the mega-bestseller, Valley of the Dolls.

  At this point in her career, Landis had become known in Hollywood for prostituting herself, making her sexual favors available to studio executives at both Warners and at 20th Century Fox, hoping to get better roles.

  Although still married to Lilli Palmer, Harrison continued his affair with Landis until the night of July 4, 1948. By then, she had fallen madly in love with him, but her passion was not reciprocated. He was using her only for sex.

  On his last night with her, he told her that he was leaving her. He didn’t stop there, perhaps wanting to say something so provocative that she would drop him for good and not pester him with recriminations. “You know,” he told her, “Lana Turner and I had this thing when I first came to this boring town called Hollywood. Well, we’ve resumed our affair, and I’ve fallen in love with her, even though she’s seeing this guy Bob Topping. That doesn’t matter to me. I’m leaving you for Lana.”

  Did Lana inadvertently figure into the suicide of her rival, Carole Landis?

  On the night he dumped her, Rex Harrison told his mistress that he was leaving her for Lana Turner. Landis was found dead the next day.

  [Actually, Lana was doing more than “seeing” Topping. She went on to marry him in April of 1948.]

  Yet long before Lana married him, Landis had had an affair with him. In Walter Winchell’s column of October 12, 1944, appeared this item: “The humidity felt over the weekend in New York can be traced to Carole Landis and her latest love, Bob Top-ping, heir to a tin-plate fortune.”

  Three years later, in December of 1947, Landis rented her house to Topping, with the full understanding that by then, he was deeply involved with Lana. He wanted use of her house for four months while another home was being restored and renovated for Lana and himself in anticipation of their upcoming marriage.]

  After the completion of some final business arrangements, Landis arrived back at her home late on the morning of July 5th, 1948. She was morbidly despondent over Harrison walking out on her. Up to that point, he had misled her, telling her that he was on the verge of divorcing his German wife (Lilli Palmer) so that he could marry her.

  Landis sat down, took out a sheet of her blue stationery, and wrote a suicide note to her mother. She then swallowed some fifty Seconal tablets, known at the time as “red devils.”

  [Lupe Velez had committed suicide this way in 1944.]

  Harrison arrived at her home later that day and was let in by the maid. He wanted to remove his belongings. The maid had not ventured upstairs that day, but Harrison did, discovering Landis’ corpse sprawled out across her bathroomfloor.

  Before calling the police, he phoned Harry Brand at 20th Century Fox, who worked in the studio’s publicity department. Nicknamed “The Fixer,” he occupied the same position as Eddie Mannix at MGM.

  The news of Landis’ death could not be suppressed. Her adulterous liaison with Harrison was splashed across every frontpage in America.

  The scandal was so damaging that Fox terminated its contract with Harrison, who fled back to England. For many years, he was blacklisted in American films. Lilli Palmer would wait another decade before divorcing him.

  As Harrison later told Noël Coward and others, “Carole went to her death thinking I had returned to Lana Turner.”

  ***

  During Landis’ brief career, she was often compared to Lana, and in many cases, she appeared on the same lists together. Such was the case in 1947 when each of them made “The Top Best Undressed List.” Cited were Marie (“The Body”) Mac-Donald in a bathing suit; Rita Hayworth languorous in a négligée, Lana prettiest in a slip; and Landis loveliest in a night gown.

  Lana and Landis were linked on their final list when gossip writer Bob Thomas published his annual “Best and Biggest” roster for 1948:

  BEST PICTURE: Hamlet

  BIGGEST SOCIAL EVENT: The Lana Turner/Bob Topping Wedding;

  BIGGEST FEMALE DISCOVERY: Betsy Drake (the wife of Cary Grant); and

  BIGGEST SHOCK—the Carole Landis suicide.

  ***

  Robert Stack had met John F. Kennedy in 1940 during his first visit to Hollywood. They became immediate friends. “Jack told me he wanted to fuck every big star in Hollywood,” he said. “He called it ‘celebrity poontang.’”

  Alfredo de la Vega had introduced the two bachelors-at-large. During their first dinner together, Stack had told him about his secret hideaway, which he called “the Flag Room.” It was within a small apartment that lay at the end of a cul-desac, Whitley Terrace, between Cahuenga and Highland in the Hollywood Hills. Here stood a jumbled mass of apartments stacked on top of each other like a set of warped building blocks about to tumble over. Many of them opened onto balconies draped with wisteria.

  Stack told JFK that within the Flag Room, he learned about “the birds, the bees, the barracudas, and other forms of Hollywood wildlife.”

  The small, cramped room contained a double bed, which took up almost the entire space. The ceiling was only five feet above the floor, making standing fully upright impossible for both Stack and for JFK too. On the ceiling, Stack pinned flags of various nations. When he took a girl there, he demanded that she identify all the flags or else “pay the piper,” which meant “surrender to seduction.” JFK thought that that was a fun game. Stack jokingly told Lana, “Jack is the only man in town better-looking than I am. All the hot tamales out here are taking notice.”

  One night, Stack phoned Lana, as he often did between girlfriends, and asked her to lunch.

  Stack later said, “Unlike me, Jack was versatile in his taste in women—blondes, brunettes, redheads, young ones, mature ones, gals with large breasts, gals with lemons for breasts. But regardless of the dame, he wanted one with shapely legs.”

  He said that within the “humble portals” of the Flag Room, he and Jack seduced a gamut of women ranging from members of chorus lines to Oscar winners. “I can’t name names,”

  On his first visit to Hollywood, JFK had seduced Betty Grable. But on his second visit in 1946, he wanted Lana Turner, having seen her in three of her movies, beginning with The Ziegfeld Girl.

  After the war, and for a brief time, JFK and Stack were “the two hottest dates in town.” In the words of Judy Garland, “Robert served as Kennedy’s guide to the hottest pussies. Lana Turner topped the list.”

  Stack claimed that JFK inherited his womanizing from his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had seduced a bevy of stars, notably Gloria Swanson, but also Constance Bennett and even Marion Davies, the mistress of press baron William Randolph Hearst. His surprise seduction was Greta Garbo.

  One night Stack phoned Lana, as he often did between girlfriends, and asked her to lunch with him that following midday. He was entertaining John F. Kennedy, “the son of the ambassador,” at his home. He told her than “son John” had been newly elected to Congress from Massachusetts. She had heard many stories about his father, but knew absolutely nothing about the son. “He’s very rich, very handsome,” Stack said. “He was a military hero in the Navy.”

  That previous morning, Lana had learned that June Allyson was eagerly awaiting an invitation from Stack to visit. Gene Tierney was also getting in on the act.

  Guess who?

  “This guy must be something special,” Lana told Allyson.

  “He can literally charm the panties off any gal,” Allyson claimed.

  Stack suggested that Lana arrive at his home at 11AM, so all three of them could get into swim trunks before lunch. She arrived on time, and St
ack, in bathing trunks, escorted her out to the pool.

  There, she met a handsome, rail-thin young man who wore a pair of white shorts. He was resting on a chaise longue, but jumped up as she entered the patio.

  “My God, you’re even better-looking than you are in the movies,” JFK proclaimed.

  As they chatted over coffee, she said, “I heard you performed heroically in the Navy.”

  “Are you kidding?” He flashed a smile. “To hear Bob tell it, I single handedly beat the Japs.” The twinkle in his eyes revealed that he was satirizing his own exploits.

  After lunch, as they returned to the pool, it was JFK who suggested that all three of them go for a nude swim.

  JFK was the first to remove his shorts. As his future wife, Jacqueline, would say, “Jack was not shy about nudity. He seemed to pull off his trunks every chance he got.”

  Stack quickly dropped his trunks, too, but Lana took her time. “I knew I was putting on a show for the boys.”

  As she confided to Virginia Grey, “One thing led to another. After frolicking in the pool, we ended up in Bob’s bedroom. The boys wanted a three-way, and I didn’t disappoint. Bob was familiar terrain for me, but JFK was new and fresh. He didn’t stay long in the saddle before he blasted off to the moon. I guess he found me so delectable he couldn’t hold back.”

  When Stack phoned the next day, he said, “Jack thought you were terrific. The word he used was BOOOOOM. He wants to see you tonight.”

  “I was drawn to his quick wit and Irish charm,” she told Grey. “He’s very handsome, but it’s his humor combined with his personal magnetism that I find so appealing.”

  As she revealed, “I’d known men with better builds. He is very lanky and rather bony. I bet he weighs less than I do. He’s not only very thin, but has this yellowish cast to his skin. Maybe he came down with malaria in the Navy.”

  [Throughout his life and into his presidency, JFK would perpetuate the myth that he had had malaria. Actually, he was suffering from Addison’s disease, which destroyed his adrenal glands and immune system, making him relatively defenseless to infections.