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Lana Turner Biography

orig. Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner

(1921–1995)

Related Works

1937 They Won't Forget
1940 We Who Are Young
1945 Keep Your Powder Dry

1937 A Star is Born
1958 The Lady Takes a Flyer
1948 The Three Musketeers
1945 Week-End at the Waldorf
1938 Four's a Crowd
1955 The Prodigal
1980 Witches' Brew
1947 Green Dolphin Street
1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice
1938 Rich Man, Poor Girl
1952 The Bad and the Beautiful
1939 Dancing Co-Ed
1976 Bittersweet Love
1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1943 Slightly Dangerous
1950 A Life of Her Own
1941 Honky Tonk
1958 Another Time, Another Place
1952 The Merry Widow
1941 Ziegfield Girl
1943 Du Barry Was a Lady
1966 Madame X
1956 Diane
1941 Johnny Eager
1948 Homecoming
1940 Two Girls on Broadway
1982 Falcon Crest (TV series)
1960 Portrait in Black
1955 The Rains of Ranchipur
1947 Cass Timberlane
1954 The Flame and the Flesh
1938 The Chaser
1962 Who's Got the Action?
1965 Love Has Many Faces
1955 The Sea Chase
1939 These Glamour Girls
1969 The Last of the Powerseekers (TV)
1938 The Adventures of Marco Polo
1974 Persecution
1944 Marriage Is a Private Affair
1961 By Love Possessed
1951 Mr. Imperium
1954 Betrayed
1939 Calling Dr. Kildare
1938 Dramatic School
1969 The Big Cube
1953 Latin Lovers
1959 Imitation of Life
1937 The Great Garrick
1938 Love Finds Andy Hardy
1942 Somewhere I'll Find You
1961 Bachelor In Paradise
1957 Peyton Place

» More

Related People

Tyrone Power

Related Sites

Official Lana Turner Web site

Actress. Born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner, on February 8, 1921, in Wallace, Idaho. (Though Turner claimed in her autobiography that she was born in 1921, most sources agree on the earlier date.) One of America's most celebrated sex symbols during the 1940s and 1950s, Turner made over 50 films. Her tempestuous personal life -- seven marriages, a stable of lovers, and a very public murder scandal -- only increased her reputation as a larger-than-life screen and sex goddess.

After her father, Virgil, a gambler and bootlegger, was murdered, the young Turner and her mother, Mildred, left the Idaho mining town of Wallace for San Francisco. In 1935, they moved again, this time to Los Angeles. While still a student at Hollywood High School, Turner was "discovered" by William R. Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, as she sat drinking a soda in the Top Hat Café (not Schwab's drugstore, as the famous Hollywood legend would have it). Wilkerson introduced Turner to Zeppo Marx (of the Marx Brothers), who owned his own casting agency, and Marx in turn sent her to the director Mervyn LeRoy. LeRoy cast the voluptuous 15-year-old actress (who chose the screen name "Lana" herself) in the thriller, They Won't Forget (1937), in which she appeared briefly but memorably in a form-fitting skirt and sweater. She soon signed a contract at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio.

It was not long before Turner became known as the "Sweater Girl" -- the subject of a series of tremendously popular posters cherished by GI's around the world during World War II. Appearances in such films as The Great Garrick (1937), The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), Love Finds Andy Hardy (1939), and These Glamour Girls (1939) only increased the potency of her sex symbol image. As her fame grew, she soon began winning leading roles, and in 1941 earned critical acclaim for her performance in Ziegfield Girl. In the next several years, Turner was cast opposite some of Hollywood's most prominent leading men, including Clark Gable (1941's Honky Tonk and 1942's Somewhere I'll Find You), Spencer Tracy (1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and Robert Taylor (1941’'s Johnny Eager).

After World War II ended, Turner was able to move further away from the "Sweater Girl" moniker she hated. She gave one of her most respected performances as a cold-blooded adulteress in The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1946. After appearing in various other films, including Green Dolphin Street (1947), The Three Musketeers (1948), and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Turner took a risky move and left MGM, preferring to go out on her own. The move paid off, and in 1958 Turner garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in Peyton Place.

Throughout her career, Turner's tempestuous personal life threatened to overshadow her professional triumphs. Her first marriage, at age 20, to the bandleader Artie Shaw, lasted less than six months. She married Stephen Crane, a businessman, in 1942, only to find out that his divorce from his first wife was not yet legal. They married again (this time legally) in 1943, then divorced a year later, after Turner gave birth to a daughter, Cheryl. In 1948, Turner married the multimillionaire Bob Topping, but divorced him in 1951. She divorced her fourth husband, Lex Barker, the onetime star of the Tarzan movies, in 1957, after she learned that he had sexually abused the young Cheryl. She had three more unsuccessful marriages -- to rancher Fred May, businessman Robert Eaton, and nightclub hypnotist Ronald Dante -- and was rumored to have many more lovers, including such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Richard Burton, Howard Hughes, Fernando Lamas, Dean Martin, Kirk Douglas, and Tyrone Power.