Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  After his sleepover, Barker came by nightly for extended visits. As she confessed in writing, “He began occupying all my free time. I fell in love again, slowly at first, but surely.”

  In the ensuing weeks, entire forests were felled in Canada for the paper needed to print the news of Lana’s latest romance.

  Lana and Barker flew to Aspen for a vacation. She later defined it as “the most romantic days of my entire life. At last, I’ve found the man who can make me forget Ty Power. I might have been closer to Ty as a spiritual soulmate, but when it came to raw sex, Lex is my man. No man has ever equaled Lex in my bed.”

  ***

  Ava Gardner dropped in at Lana’s house, excited to be flying to Africa for the filming of Mogambo alongside Clark Gable, her former co-star and lover, and Grace Kelly. Gardner had been cast as “Honey Bear,” a vivacious American showgirl trying to forget.

  The movie was actually a remake of Gable’s 1932 Red Dust, in which he had co-starred with Jean Harlow and Mary Astor.

  [What Lana didn’t tell Gardner was that she had previously been offered the role of Honey Bear, weeks before it was eventually assigned to Gardner. Benny Thau at MGM had offered Lana her choice of two roles: Mogambo in Africa or Flame and the Flesh, to be shot in Italy.]

  Lana’s doctor warned her against going to Africa, claiming that if she got sick with an infection, her Rh blood factor might kick in, to her detriment.

  That night, Barker arrived with the news that he was going to Italy to make two pictures back-to-back: Tiger of Malaya and a costume drama, The Temple of Kali. In the latter, he would wear a turban and balloon-like pantaloons. “At least you’d be dressed unlike you were in those Tarzan movies,” she said.

  Barker made up her mind for her. So that she could be with him, she chose The Flame and the Flesh because of its set locale in Rome. She later regretted her decision to turn down Mocambo.

  On many a night, Barker pitched the idea to Lana that she should co-star with him. “We’d be the hottest team on the screen, especially if we appear in scenes wearing as few clothes as possible.”

  One script that came to their attention was entitled, The Great Fall, a romantic melodrama with a strong woman’s role. She loves a former U.S. Army officer back from World War II. Because of the trauma he suffered, he has a hard time adjusting to civilian life.

  He is hired by Murder, Inc. Lana liked the script because it evoked memories of playing opposite Robert Taylor, cast as a murdering gangster in one of her first big hits, Johnny Eager.

  To take advantage of income tax laws, many stars were working abroad, making films in European settings: If a star stayed out of the United States for a total of eighteen months, he or she could avail themselves of that privilege. Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, and Gene Kelly were among the first to take advantage of this loophole. Actresses who included Gene Tierney and others were flying to Europe, and Lana began her “exile” with Flame and the Flesh. She would send for Cheryl and Mildred later.

  As she began to consider scripts with European settings, she decided she needed a continental address and rented (“at an outrageous cost”) an elegant penthouse in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

  It was understood that Mildred and her daughter would come for a visit when Cheryl’s school term ended in the spring of 1953.

  Barker was very ambitious, and he confided to close friends that he hoped Lana would do wonders for his career. He began to present her with other scripts, each set in Europe, that she might consider as vehicles for co-starring with him.

  They were particularly intrigued with concepts then circulating for a film eventually released in 1956, The Ambassador’s Daughter.

  During a phone call to Hedda Hopper, Lana told her she wanted MGM to lend her out for the role “with a possible romantic lead going to Lex.”

  Its producer Norman Krasna seemed eager for her to take the role, and with the understanding that she’d be living in her new apartment throughout the course of its filming in Paris, she looked forward to making the film.

  In the end, to her distress, MGM refused to “lease her out,” and Krasna cast Olivia de Havilland instead. Then, in lieu of Barker, he assigned the male lead to John Forsythe, one of Lana’s future co-stars.

  Both Lana and Barker were deeply disappointed, but continued their search for the right script for their joint film together.

  ***

  Flame and the Flesh, eventually released in 1954, would be Lana’s first film shot in Europe. It represented the beginning of her “exile” from the United States, a means of benefitting from the Internal Revenue’s new tax loophole that many members of the Hollywood movie colony were using. She still owed the IRS thousands of dollars, so any reduction in her tax burden would be welcomed.

  After all her heavy dating of Lex Barker, there was a lot of press speculation that “Hollywood’s most beautiful couple” were on the verge of finally getting married.

  After the failure of her love affair with Tyrone Power, and her four failed marriages (that is, if the double marriage to Stephen Crane is to be counted twice), she was not eager to rush into another union. She had another reason which she shared with only her most trusted confidantes. She feared that Barker might be using her for his career advancement.

  Before flying out of Los Angeles, she spoke to the press. “I have reached that point in my life where I’m filled with skepticism about getting married again. At this moment, there is no possibility of a marriage to Mr. Barker. He’s wonderful, but we’re just friends. I want to concentrate on my future and my career. I’ll be away from Hollywood for almost two years, and I need to adjust to a whole new way of life. Making films abroad will be my panacea.”

  In Flame and the Flesh, Lana presented a new image to her fans—–that of a brunette. She was told to style her hair like Gina Lollabrigida.

  There was another reason: Lex Barker told her he preferred brunettes like Hedy Lamarr as opposed to blondes like Marilyn Monroe.

  Arriving in Italy, Lana shocked photographers, who didn’t recognize her at first. Paparazzi lined up to photograph the blonde goddess of Hollywood, but as a brunette, Lana got off the plane and walked past most of them.

  The director, Richard Brooks, asked her to dye her hair. As a brunette, Lana found that she could go shopping, navigating her way through streets in the heart of Rome, without being recognized.

  MGM went to work publicizing her new look, even before the picture was shot. Publicity sent out pictures of her (revised) image, and some of them subsequently appeared on magazines which included Modern Screen.

  Posters were designed with the headline: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL GIRL IS A BAD AND BEAUTIFUL BRUNETTE NOW!

  Barker was waiting for her in Rome. “Our first night was so romantic,” she recalled. “He took me on a carriage ride through the heart of Rome at night, past the Colosseum. We rode by the Roman Forum lit at night and even visited St. Peter’s Square.”

  After the Pantheon, they went for drinks at Harry’s Bar on the Via Veneto before heading for the Piazza Navona for nightcaps.

  Then it was back at their suite at the Excelsior Hotel for a night of “love-making, Tarzan style.” When Mervyn LeRoy called from the U.S. the next day, he told her he was working on the final cut of Latin Lovers. She told him, “Lex and I made love until a pinky dawn came over the skyline of the Eternal City.”

  “Did you read that line in a guidebook?” he asked.

  The next night, Lana and Lex dined at the chic Taverna Flavia, where she was surprised to encounter Frank Sinatra and members of the “Hollywood on the Tiber” crowd. She wasn’t alone in being an American movie star making movies abroad.

  Marcello Mastroianni called and invited her to a party, where he introduced her to the film elite of Rome, including director Luchino Visconti, who raved about her beauty.

  She also met another director, the very avant-garde Federico Fellini, who told her he was envisioning a future film that would call for a blonde movie sta
r, in case she ever wanted to dye her hair blonde again. She told him she’d be thrilled to work with him one day.

  Ultimately, Fellini’s “movie with a blonde,” La Dolce Vita, was released in 1961 and became his most famous work. The blonde actress he selected was the busty Swedish star, Anita Ekberg. When she sensuously wanders into the splashing waters of the Trevi Fountain, she entered film immortality.

  Before Lana read the script of Flame and the Flesh, its producer, Joe Pasternak, had arranged a screening for her, with Barker, of a 1937 French version of the same film. Based on a novel by Auguste Bailly, the theme had actually reached the screen in 1925 as a silent movie. The 1937 French-language version had been entitled Naples au Baiser de Feu, but the title was changed to The Kiss of Fire for its release in the United States.

  FLESH, NEAPOLITAN STYLE

  In the slums of Naples, a street urchin (a term that translates into the local dialect as a “scugnizzo”) generated laughter from photographers and from members of the cast, thanks to her irreverent (and to some degree successful) imitation of Lana’s sexy walk.

  ***

  Lana had read and memorized most of her lines before her first meeting with Brooks.

  In Flame and the Flesh, she played Madeleine Douvane, a Neapolitan tramp, a pleasure-loving woman of the night who uses and abuses men with her seductive powers.

  Near the beginning of the film, her landlady throws her out of her room for failure to pay back rent. Out on the streets, she’s befriended by a kind musician, Ciccio (Bonar Collenao), who invites her to live with him. She’s introduced to his roommate, Nino (Carlos Thompson), a handsome heartbreaker who is also a singer. He’s engaged to a sweet Italian girl, Lisa (Pier Angeli). As could be predicted, Nino is lured away from “nice girl” Lisa and runs off with trampy Madeleine. Their affair seemed doomed from the beginning.

  Before the end of the film, Nino finally tells his simmering siren, “Faithfulness is not one of your great virtues,” and returns to the safety net of Lisa.

  At the fade-out, Lana, in high heels, is seen walking into the foggy night toward an uncertain future.

  Over lunch with Richard Brooks, he told her that he wanted their film to recreate one of those earthy, post-war, Neo-Realist Italian films. He even showed Lana an artist’s rendering of an early version of a poster for the film. It featured an image of her standing, provocatively, under a lamppost at night.

  ”A real tramp,” she said.

  “You’ve got that right, even though I know it’s hard for a real lady like you to play a slut.”

  Brooks, a talented descendant of Russian Jewish immigrants, would become one of the major players in Hollywood. He was also a screenwriter, and an occasional producer. In his near future, he would helm such classics a Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Elmer Gantry (1960).

  At their first meeting, he was highly critical of the Production Code, which he felt placed too many restrictions on movie-makers. He claimed that it greatly hampered directors such as himself in both subject matter and expression.

  During their upcoming work together, she found Brooks difficult and demanding, and he would often explode at her. But she always forgave him, because she knew he was trying to make her look good. Many actresses objected to his harsh style of directing, but she later said, “Brooks is tough as nails, but the finished product is worth the suffering.”

  Their first week was devoted to rehearsals, as Lana got acquainted with her leading man, Carlos Thompson.

  On the set, she also met Pier Angeli. Born in Sardinia, Angeli was frail, tiny, and undeniably lovely, a rather innocent-appearing Italian waif and gamine.

  But, as Lana relayed to Brooks, “I don’t think she’s as innocent as she looks.”

  Angeli was supposed to be sustaining both an affair and an engagement with Kirk Douglas. Prior to that, she had been famously linked, romantically, to James Dean.

  “The only thing angelic about her is her last name,” Lana said. To Brooks, Lana boasted “I had both Kirk and Jimmy before ‘Miss Angelic’ arrived on the scene.”

  During the first day of rehearsals, Lana couldn’t help notice that Angeli was flirting quite openly and consistently with Thompson. During Lana’s second day on the set, Lana saw Thompson disappearing with Angeli into her dressing room. At rehearsals that followed, she’d be holding Thompson’s hand.

  “I think Lana was jealous of her,” Brooks said. “For me, that was perfect for the role. After all, in the film, Lana steals Carlos from Pier. I’m sure Lana knew that she was a decade older than Pier.”

  During this period, even though Lana claimed to be madly in love with Lex Barker, they were often in different parts of the Continent.

  On the set in Rome, Brooks noticed that she seemed very attracted to Thompson, the third of that era’s famous Latin lovers. The first was Ricardo Montalban, with whom Lana had struck out. The second was Fernando Lamas, with whom she’d had a turbulent affair.

  Thompson was actually of Swiss and German descent. Before Hollywood discovered him, he had been highly visible in Buenos Aires, based on his leading roles on stage and in Spanish-language films. Like Lana’s current lover, Lex Barker, Thompson would eventually migrate, postwar, to Germany and appear in a number of films there.

  Lana with Pier Angeli, rivals in love on and off the screen.

  She found him tall, dark, handsome, and stalwart, a man who moved and spoke with manly grace. Hollywood had already decided that he was convincing on screen as a European womanizer.

  Noël Coward had had an affair with him in London, and spread the rumor along the Hollywood grapevine that the matinee idol was bisexual. Lana learned later that after Flame and the Flesh, he’d made Valley of the Kings (1954), in which, as it was rumored, both Robert Taylor, a fellow bisexual, and Eleanor Parker had made plays for him.

  In the end, Thompson married Lilli Palmer, the German actress and international beauty, after her divorce from Rex Harrison in 1957.

  Leaving their respective lovers (Barker and Angeli) behind, Lana and Thompson were flown to Naples for filming of Flame and the Flesh’s exterior scenes. Each of them lodged at the Hotel Excelsior, directly on the waterfront (via Partenope), with its views over the harbor and faraway Mount Vesuvius.

  Their suites had interconnecting doors. After their first night there, Lana phoned his suite and invited him over for breakfast. He gladly accepted Her excuse for wanting to see him was: “If we’re going to play lovers in the film, we might as well get to know each other.”

  A morning newspaper had been delivered to her suite. On the frontpage was a picture of Clark Gable and Angeli strolling hand in hand along the Via Veneto.

  “Your girlfriend didn’t waste much time,” she said. “Clark and I are going to make another picture together in Holland.”

  “My dating of Pier was just a harmless flirtation. She’s free to do what she wants, date whom she wants.”

  “I guess that goes for you, too,” she said.

  “Is that an invitation?” he asked provocatively.

  “We’ll see.”

  During the next few days, when not filming, they set out together to explore Naples and its environs, even going to see the ruins of Pompeii. He tipped the guards to show them the private erotic frescoes.

  At night, they frequented Gran Caffè Gambrinus, Naples’ oldest café, dating from 1860. They sought out little trattorie along the waterfront, overlooking the Bay of Naples.

  One Sunday, they explored the little resort town of Positano, a hillside village along the Amalfi Drive, with its legendary Sirenuse Island featured in Homer’s Odyssey. In Positano, they learned that this was one of Tennessee Williams’ favorite hideaways. Exterior scenes of the film they were making would eventually be shot there.

  At the café, he kept looking over his shoulder, and she asked him why. He told her it was an old habit from his days in Buenos Aires, where he had incurred the disfavor of both Juan and Eva Perón. “I really want
to be a writer, not an actor. I wrote three novels, the first of which won a prize. The other two were forbidden by both the state and the Perón government. My political views were too outspoken for Eva. It was time to get out of Argentina, after I was released from jail.”

  In Naples, he’d ordered the hotel to open the connecting doors between their suites. It wasn’t until she got to London that Lana gave her usual report on a man’s technique in bed. Thompson got an A, or so she claimed to Ava Gardner. “It was the most tender lovemaking of any man I’ve ever known. He searches a woman’s body for her most sensitive nerve endings, which he then proceeds to tantalize. His darting tongue knows how to dance the rumba. He has a beautiful physique. God was kind to him in all the right places.”

  Lana and Thompson’s eventual migration back to Rome signaled the end of their affair, in ways that reflected the plotline of Flame and the Flesh. In Rome, whereas she was reunited with Barker, Thompson did not return to Angeli.

  In reference to herself and Thompson, “Both of us moved on to other lovers,” Lana said.

  ***

  Lex Barker remained in Italy, as Lana flew alone to London for interior shooting on Flame and the Flesh at the Estree Studios.

  During her first week in London, she heard rumors that Barker had been spotted, out in public, with the Swedish bombshell, Anita Ekberg. Ironically, Barker would later be cast as her fiancé in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).

  Lana was not alone for very long. Her two friends, Ava Gardner and Clark Gable, had flown back from Africa after stopovers in Rome. They had completed Mogambo, a project that Lana had previously rejected.

  Gardner was in Rome at the time, aborting Frank Sinatra’s baby.

  In London, Lana met with many other friends from Hollywood, who were working in Europe to take advantage of the current loopholes in the U.S. Income Tax regulations.

  Director Tay Garnett and his wife invited her to dinner. He and Lana had been friends ever since he directed her in The Postman Always Rings Twice.