Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  That night at dinner, Lana met Bob’s brother, Dan Topping, whose previous wives had included Arline Judge and Sonja Henie, the Norwegian skating star and movie queen on ice. Henie and Tyrone Power had once been lovers.

  Lana’s first date with Bob Topping. Heavy drinking was part of their dynamic as a couple.

  Shortly thereafter, Topping invited Lana to ring in the New Year of 1948 at El Morocco in Manhattan.

  About an hour after their arrival, she excused herself to go to the powder room. When she returned, she picked up her martini only to notice something flashy at the bottom of the glass.

  “Fish it out,” Topping told her. She did, and discovered a fifteen-carat marquise diamond engagement ring. “If there are two things I know, it’s men and diamonds,” she later said. “This was a true Cartier gem, the most beautiful diamond ring I’d ever seen.”

  “What’s this for?” she asked, feigning innocence.

  “You know what it’s for,” he said. “I want you to become my wife.”

  Before putting the ring on her finger, she warned him, “You know I’m not in love with you, don’t you?”

  “You will be,” he predicted. “Not today, not tomorrow, nor even the next day, but in time, you’ll love me night after night for the rest of our lives.”

  Later that evening, an alarming note was sounded, as she noticed what a heavy drinker he was. Of course, it was New Year’s and everyone was drunk. But even at the Topping estate during everyday “non-holiday” gatherings, the family began heavy boozing at five o’clock, the hard and heavy drinking continuing through the evening. She could not keep up, although on occasion, she tried.

  The press had begun to take Lana’s romance with Topping seriously. However, a New York columnist wrote, “Lana would give up anything, certainly Bob Top-ping, should Tyrone Power come back, kiss her, and make up.”

  Louella Parson’s last column for 1947 reported, “Bob Topping gave Lana a Christmas present of a pair of diamond earrings. Could this soon follow with a diamond ring...and marriage?”

  Parsons was a little late with her report. Lana was already wearing that diamond ring in New York.

  On January 2, Lana received a telegram from MGM to report to work on her latest picture, The Three Musketeers.

  “I’ll fly back with you,” Topping told her.

  ***

  During the first week of the New Year, Hollywood gossip columnists carried reports of the upcoming marriage of Lana to Topping. It was revealed that their engagement would be announced at a lavish party at Mocambo, and that invitations to that announcement party would be sent to 400 invités, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

  Mayer exploded when he read the news, and received his own invitation: “Get Eddie Mannix [from MGM’s publicity department] on the phone,” he shouted at his secretary.

  When they established telephone contact, Mayer ordered him to contact Lana at once and demand that she cancel her engagement party. “For God’s sake, the guy’s married. Lana’s name has been linked to too many married men—and that includes Tyrone Power. She has a morality clause in her contract. I want no more of this lurid publicity about her getting engaged to married men.”

  Reluctantly, and humiliated, she had to notify the hundreds of invited guests that there would be no party.

  During her first visit with Virginia Grey since her return home, Lana said, “If you want a blueprint of a woman’s life, here’s one. Lose a lover, snap right back, catch another one, perhaps not as exciting as before, but what the hell? Even if he’s not handsome, you might settle for rich.”

  ***

  No novel in the history of the movies, worldwide, has been dramatized on screen more frequently than Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers), by Alexandre Dumas, père, first published, in French, in 1844.

  Amazingly, its first film adaptation, a French production, was released in 1903, more or less at the dawn of the movies.

  [It would require a separate book to document the many screen and cartoon treatments the novel has received since then. The 1921 silent adaptation of the novel by a French studio became a blockbuster hit, as did a Hollywood version starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., that same year. Swashbuckling Fairbanks was known for his athletic ability: His one-handed handspring grabbing a sword during a duel was later interpreted as one of the great stunts of the silent era.

  His son, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., tried to persuade Louis B. Mayer to cast him as D’Artagnan in 1948, but the studio boss at MGM turned him down.

  A little-known fact is that in 1933, Mascot Studios filmed a serial set in North Africa, where three musketeers became French Foreign Legionnaires. The serial featured a little known actor by the name of John Wayne, Lana’s future co-star.

  RKO filmed its own version of The Three Musketeers in 1935, starring Walter Abel. His interpretation of D’Artagnan was denounced “as the dreariest of the many film versions of the Dumas novel.”

  In 1939, the year of release of some of Hollywood’s greatest movie classics, Don Ameche as D’Artagnan teamed with the Ritz Brothers in a comic version of Dumas’ characters. Binnie Barnes starred as Milady de Winter, with Gloria Stuart cast as Queen Anne.

  In 1942, during World War II, Cantinflas, the famous Mexican comedian, released his own version of the story, turning it into farce.]

  By 1948, Mayer had decided to adapt The Three Musketeers into a top-notch Technicolor spectacular, the greatest version of the classic ever made.

  As funding for the remake, Mayer green-lighted a budget that was considered massive at the time and whichplaced special emphasis on costumes and scenery. Robert Ardrey, best known for his scholastic writings on sociology, was hired to write the screenplay. Mayer wanted Robert Taylor and Ricardo Montalban in the male leads, with Lana Turner cast as Milady de Winter. George Sidney, who had recently helmed Lana in Green Dolphin Street, was hired to direct.

  When Taylor and Montalban were not available, the director cast Gene Kelly in “an acrobatic version” of D’Artagnan. The other two musketeers were cast with Van Heflin as Athos and Richard Coote as Aramis. Coote was unknown to Lana at the time.

  As for Heflin, ever since they had co-starred together in Green Dolphin Street, Lana had never considered him as a “romantic leading man,” but she greatly admired him as an actor, and their scenes together went smoothly. In contrast, Gene Kelly had been her friend ever since his arrival in Hollywood.

  [When news leaked out about MGM’s big film for 1948, it became clear that the independent producer Edward Small had already been working on his own version of The Three Musketeers, with the intention of starring the dashing Louis Hayward. As part of a sideshow that erupted simultaneously with MGM’s plans for an equivalent film of its own, Small soon realized that he couldn’t compete with MGM’s more lavish version, so, with regrets, he put his screenplay into mothballs.]

  With Mayer’s approval, Sidney rounded up a strong supporting cast, notably Angela Lansbury as Queen Anne, with June Allyson in the second female lead as Constance Bonaclieux. Other players include Frank Morgan as King Louis XIII, Vincent Price as Richelieu, Keenan Wynn as Planchet, John Sutton as the Duke of Buckingham, and Ian Keith as Rochefort, chief henchman to Richelieu.

  Lana was excited that for the first time, she would appear in a feature film in Technicolor, having been told that color would highlight her beauty as never before. [The only time she’d been photographed in color up to this point was during a brief camo in Du Barry Was a Lady (1943).]

  She had been promised star billing above the title of her newest project, and it had been understood that her name would appear more prominently than those of the four other featured players: Kelly, Heflin, Allyson, and Lansbury.

  Yet in spite of that star billing, Lana reported that she was horrified after reading the script. “I was not the star. Gene was. My role as Milady was just a supporting part. I called MGM and refused the role. I was immediately put on suspension.”

  During
the next few weeks, she refused to come to the studio, not answering urgent calls from MGM. Mayer negotiated with Alida Valli to replace Lana in the film. An Italian actress, she had been born a baroness, and was viewed as most capable of playing a French aristocrat. Film critic Frédéric Mitterand had hailed Valli as “the only European actress equal to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.”

  The news reached Lana, who lived in dread that Valli might play the role more convincingly than she could have. “What does a little barefoot girl from the wilds of Idaho known about how a French countess acts?” she asked Kelly.

  [When Lana’s suspension ended, based on her agreement to participate in the film, Mayer dismissed Valli. That was just as well for Valli’s career, since she was soon after cast as the mysterious Czech refugee wanted by the Soviets in Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), co-starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. That movie went on to be hailed asone of the greatest film classics ever made.]

  During Lana’s suspension, a rival actress, Angela Lansbury, loudly expressed her wish to be re-cast as Milady de Winter, as she was not satisfied with her part as the villainous, older, and stodgier Queen Anne. “I’m too young for the role,” she protested. She finally got Mayer to agree to meet with her. She remembered the long walk down the carpeted hallway to his office, where he sat behind a big round white desk.

  She appealed to him to switch her role. He listened patiently until he’d heard her pitch. Then he rose to his feet, signaling that the meeting had come to an end: “You’ll be wonderful as Queen Anne,” he assured her.

  Years later, Lansbury retraced her steps along that long walk back from his office and reflected, “I knew that from now on I would not get to the top of the class at MGM. My best roles were behind me. I was right. The studio was changing. Even Mayer himself would be booted out, as would the most stellar names on its big roster of stars, and that included both Lana Turner and Clark Gable. The MGM I knew would be no more.”

  The Associated Press, on January 14, 1948, leaked the news of Lana’s suspension. Mayer threatened to charge her from $300,000 to $400,000 for pre-production costs generated because of her absence.

  Topping flew Lana back to Dunellen Hall to ride out her suspension.

  Hedda Hopper offered advice: “If you care for your movie career, you’ll get your shapely ass out of New York and appear on the set at MGM.”

  She had lawyers negotiating with MGM, demanding that her role get beefed up. Not only that, but she was asking the studio to give her a year’s vacation with pay and $25,000 up front. Although she finally agreed to return to Hollywood to participate in filming with a revised script, with a meatier part for her, all of her other demands were rejected by Mayer.

  On the set once again, she praised the camerawork of Robert Planck, who would win an Oscar nomination for his work. She was reunited with costume designer Walter Plunkett, who was considered the best in his field ever since he’d designed the antebellum costumes for Gone With the Wind.

  Critic Jeanne Basinger described Lana’s first appearance in the film, the scene where she emerges from a darkened horse-drawn carriage into the light: “Lana Turner looks like an apparition beyond life, a mysterious creature. She is unreal, a proper goddess.”

  Allyson told Lana that she never wanted to play Lady Constance. “I don’t feel comfortable in a period piece. I think I am only convincing as the girl-next-door in a skirt and blouse, or else as the perfect wife in apron and skirt. I don’t think any fan will believe me as Lady Constance. Mayer has seen the first rushes, and he told me I’ll be fine. ‘Finish the damn picture,’ he said, ‘and stop your bellyaching.’”

  Allyson recalled a memorable scene with Lana when Milady was imprisoned, and begs her to bring her a knife so that she can commit suicide. “Lana was daring, playing the scene without makeup, a first for her. She did the scene beautifully, shedding real tears. I was mesmerized. Actually, I didn’t know that Milady wanted that knife to stab my (character’s) heart.”

  Over lunch in the commissary, Lana and Allyson discussed their former boyfriends. Both of them were surprised that each had shared a brief fling with Ronald Reagan, Peter Lawford, and John F. Kennedy. But when Lana revealed that she’d had a fling with Alan Ladd, too, Allyson’s face dimmed.

  “Oh, no, not him, too!” Allyson said. She went on to confess that Ladd had been the love of her life, even though she was married to Dick Powell during the peak of their affair.

  Allyson maintained a sense of humor about herself and her success. Mayer had told everyone, “June Allyson isn’t pretty. She certainly isn’t sexy. She sings fairly well. She doesn’t dance all that well, either. But she’s got something, including a raspy voice like that of Jimmy Durante.”

  In The Three Musketeers, Lana as Lady de Winter threatens to stab Gene Kelly as D’Artagnan. Within a decade, Lana would become more famously involved in a real-life stabbing.

  Kelly enjoyed co-starring in The Three Musketeers with Lana, claiming, “It was like being a kid again, playing cowboys and Indians. The action sequences, all that dueling, were like extensions of the dance. Lana complimented me on my agility. While I was shooting the picture, I ran into my good pal, Frank Sinatra. He asked me if I were taking leading man privileges and fucking the hell out of Lana like most of her leading men did. I firmly denied it.”

  Meet the merry band, all for one and one for all.

  From left to right: Lana Turner, Gene Kelly, Van Heflin, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, Frank Morgan, and Keenan Wynn.

  Kelly relayed this to Vincent Price, adding in a confidential whisper, “After I denied messing around with Lana, Frank kidded me and said, ‘I forgot. You’re the one who likes to take it up the ass.’”

  In one scene, the athletic Kelly had to fling Lana across a bed. He used too much force and pitched her all the way over to a point beyond the bed’s far side. She hit the floor with such force that she broke her elbow, delaying production on her scenes for two weeks.

  Lana and her other co-star, Van Heflin, never became friends. “I think he viewed me as a vapid blonde actress with noodles forming my brain matter.”

  Lana enjoyed meeting and talking with Robert Coote, born in London in 1909. She told him something he didn’t know: Had casting gone differently, she would have appeared with him in Forever Amber (1947) instead of her friend, Linda Darnell. The actor would also star with Lana in her upcoming film, The Merry Widow (1952).

  She liked working with Vincent Price, viewing him as “the master of high camp,” a term she used in later years to describe him. [At the time, that term did not exist.] He challenged her with his scene stealing, forcing her to develop new techniques of her own—the flap of a glove, the turn of her head—to distract the viewer.

  As one of her facial accessories, Lana demanded that makeup fit her with a beauty mark. They came up with three “moles”—one shaped like a star, the other two a moon and a heart.

  She liked all three of them, and appeared on camera at various times and in various scenes with one or another of them positioned on various parts of her face.

  “Vincent and Clifton Webb were two of the gayest men in the movies, and they got away with it, although homosexuality was illegal at the time and absolutely forbidden on the screen,” Lana said. “I adored Vincent. He could play any role: film noir, thriller, horror, drama, mystery, comedy. I told him that I had desperately wanted to play Laura, his 1944 movie in which he co-starred with Gene Tierney in a part that should have been mine.”

  ***

  Bob Topping was almost a daily visitor to the set for lunch with Lana. He was getting a lot of coverage in the press. His wife at the time, Arline Judge, vowed during an interview with the entertainment columnist Earl Wilson, “He won’t get a divorce from me for any amount of money.” Later, she had obviously changed her mind, telling Sheilah Graham, “When I divorce the bastard, I’ll ruin him, take every cent he has.”

  Topping told Lana that he had decided to divorce Judge after she
broke a bottle of champagne over his head, giving him a concussion. “A vintage year at that.”

  After months of legal wranglings, Topping’s divorce from Judge became final on April 23, and he was at last free to marry Lana. Judge had been awarded a lump sum of $500,000, plus her lawyer’s fees.

  In court, she claimed that on two occasions, Topping had threatened to kill her. “He is insanely jealous,” she testified. “Miss Turner better watch out that this lout doesn’t do her harm, perhaps damage that pretty face of hers.”

  She also testified that in the immediate aftermath of her appendix operation, he had flown into a rage and kicked her directly on the site of her incision.

  ***

  MGM promoted The Three Musketeers with slogans that included “LANA TURNER! FIRST TIME IN TECHNICOLOR!”

  Bosley Crowther, writing in The New York Times, said, “The Three Musketeers is a splendiferous production with dazzling costumes, more color, and more of Miss Turner’s chest than has ever before seen in a picture like this one.”

  Cue magazine pronounced her film “The best movie version yet of a Dumas novel to come out of Hollywood.”

  Cosmopolitan claimed that “This is Leo the Lion’s most successful houseparty, with its background of romance and swordplay and Lana’s lethal beauty. As the lovely, lethal Milady, she is the only really inspired casting in the film.”

  Once again, Lana scored a big box office success.

  ***