The Full Biography
Lana Turner. Actress. MGM’s platinum weather. The sweater that became a career she spent a lifetime trying to take off.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a white turban and a white two-piece in a roadside diner, lipstick like a dare. The year was 1946. The picture was The Postman Always Rings Twice. John Garfield was the drifter. She was Cora. What the still cannot show is a miner’s daughter from Wallace, Idaho, a malt shop that was never Schwab’s, and a bedroom in Beverly Hills that would file her, unfairly, as a headline instead of a worker.
She was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner on February 8, 1921, in Wallace, a silver town in the Idaho panhandle. Her father, John Virgil Turner, worked the mines and a dry-cleaning shop. Her mother, Mildred Frances Cowan, had been a girl when she married him. The family moved to San Francisco when Judy — the name at home — was small. On December 14, 1930, her father won at craps, stuffed the money in a sock, and was found beaten to death on the edge of Potrero Hill. She was nine. The killing was never solved. Mildred worked as a beautician. The girl boarded with other families, ate crackers and milk, and for a time wanted the convent. Sacramento and the Bay were the rooms before Hollywood High.
The door was not Schwab’s Drugstore. That is a columnist’s invention, Sidney Skolsky’s error that hardened into folklore. In 1936 she skipped a typing class, bought a Coca-Cola at the Top Hat Malt Shop on Sunset near McCadden — sometimes remembered as Currie’s Ice Cream — and was seen by William R. Wilkerson of The Hollywood Reporter. He sent her to Zeppo Marx. Marx sent her to Mervyn LeRoy. Warner Bros. signed her in February 1937. LeRoy put her in They Won’t Forget as a teenage murder victim who walks down a street in a tight sweater. The walk lasted minutes. The nickname lasted decades. She hated it.
LeRoy took her to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Louis B. Mayer wanted another Harlow. Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) put her beside Mickey Rooney. Ziegfeld Girl (1941), with Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and James Stewart, is the picture she named as the first that made her care about acting. Johnny Eager (1941) put her with Robert Taylor in a gangster picture. Then came Clark Gable: Honky Tonk (1941), Somewhere I’ll Find You (1942). The public decided they were a pair. She said they were friends who left the lot at six. Pin-ups went onto fighter planes, sometimes lettered Tempest Turner. She sold war bonds until Wallace hung a banner that said welcome home.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is the monument. James M. Cain’s novel, Tay Garnett’s picture, a diner, a husband in the way, heat that the Production Code could not quite sand off. Critics who had filed her as décor had to start over. She said she was tired of walking across a frame and looking pretty. MGM, seeing money, let her try ragged clothes in Green Dolphin Street (1947). George Sidney’s The Three Musketeers (1948) put her in the gown as Lady de Winter, a villain the studio still photographed as a product. Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) put her inside a Hollywood that ate its own, opposite Kirk Douglas, as an actress the town had already used up. The Merry Widow the same year was Metro’s idea of a tonic. Peyton Place (1957), from Grace Metalious’s novel, brought her only Academy Award nomination, for Best Actress. She did not win. Joanne Woodward did, for The Three Faces of Eve. The town had already decided what kind of woman she was.
The Metro years before the diner are a catalog the sweater still tries to eat. Victor Fleming’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) put her opposite Spencer Tracy as Beatrix Emery, a fiancée the monster would ruin. Johnny Eager (1941), with Robert Taylor, is a gangster picture that asked her to be more than décor. Honky Tonk (1941) and Somewhere I’ll Find You (1942) locked her to Clark Gable in the public mind. She said they were friends who left the lot at six. Homecoming (1948) put her back with Gable as a nurse. A Life of Her Own (1950), for George Cukor, is a model who learns the invoice. The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and Diane (1956) are the last Metro gowns, period pictures that treated her face as architecture. By then the contract system that had made her was already dying. She left MGM in 1956 and took her name into independent weather.
War work sat beside the pin-ups. She sold more than five million dollars in bonds. Wallace declared a holiday and hung a banner. Fighter planes carried Tempest Turner on the nose. Slightly Dangerous (1943), Marriage Is a Private Affair (1944), and Weekend at the Waldorf (1945) kept Metro’s platinum on screens while the war used the face as municipal weather. She was never only the walk in the sweater. She was a contract player who hit her marks while the studio decided what the walk meant. After the Bedford Drive inquest she did the work the true-crime retellings skip. Another Time, Another Place (1958) was already in the can. Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), at Universal, is a mother who chooses the career and then has to watch what the choice costs. It was one of the biggest commercial successes of her life. She had already proved she could act. After the bedroom, she proved she could still open a picture. Michael Gordon’s Portrait in Black (1960) and John Sturges’s By Love Possessed (1961) kept her in the maternal-and-guilty shop. Bachelor in Paradise (1961) opposite Bob Hope and Who’s Got the Action? (1962) opposite Dean Martin are comedies that used the face as a brand. Love Has Many Faces (1965) put her in Acapulco as a woman the plot would punish. Madame X (1966), for David Lowell Rich at Universal, was another maternal melodrama, a last big studio gown. The face that had been a product was, by then, a woman who knew the product’s price.
I find men terribly exciting, and any girl who says she doesn’t is an anemic old maid, a saint, or a liar.Lana Turner
On the night of April 4, 1958, in her house on North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, her boyfriend Johnny Stompanato died of a knife wound in the bedroom. Her daughter, Cheryl Crane, was fourteen. A coroner’s jury called it justifiable homicide. The papers did not stop. Cheryl had to grow up as a headline. The work, after that week, is the part the true-crime retellings skip.
That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the sweater and the inquest. Imitation of Life (1959), for Douglas Sirk at Universal, is a mother who chooses the career and then has to watch what the choice costs. It was one of the biggest commercial successes of her life. She had already proved she could act. After the bedroom, she proved she could still open a picture. Madame X (1966) was another maternal melodrama, a last big studio gown. The face that had been a product was, by then, a woman who knew the product’s price.
Six things most people never knew
- Schwab’s is a myth. The Top Hat Malt Shop, Sunset and McCadden, is the room. Wilkerson is the scout. She spent years correcting a story that sold better than the truth.
- Her father was murdered when she was nine. San Francisco, December 1930. A craps game, a sock of winnings, a sidewalk. No arrest.
- She wanted the convent before she wanted a close-up. After the boarding and the crackers, Catholic ritual looked like order. Hollywood High came after the desert air her mother needed.
- Eight marriages, seven husbands. She married Steve Crane twice so Cheryl would have a legal father. The count in the columns is a sport. The arithmetic is ordinary and grim.
- Peyton Place is her only Oscar nomination. Postman is the performance people name. The Academy showed up for the small-town novel.
- She sold more than five million dollars in war bonds. Wallace declared a holiday. The pin-up was also a municipal errand.
The husbands, in order, are a ledger, not a soap. Artie Shaw, the bandleader, four months in 1940. Joseph Stephen Crane, the restaurateur, married, annulled, remarried; Cheryl was born July 25, 1943, after a pregnancy the doctors feared because of Turner’s Rh-negative blood. Henry J. “Bob” Topping Jr., the tinplate heir. Lex Barker, who had been Tarzan. Fred May. Robert Eaton. Ronald Dante, born Ronald Pellar. Cheryl is the only child. The marriages filled the columns. The work had to share the page. Friends from sets describe a professional who arrived on time and a private life the studio could not schedule.
The later years
Features thinned. She did not vanish. Stage tours paid bills the studio no longer scheduled. She took Forty Carats on the road, then Murder Among Friends, then the kind of dinner-theater and regional week that a former Metro face had to learn after the lot stopped calling. The 1969 ABC series The Survivors, produced by Harold Robbins, was a misfire with her name above the title beside George Hamilton — oil, Europe, a plot that could not decide what it was. The Big Cube (1969) put her in a psychedelic thriller she did not pretend was Postman. Perilous Voyage (1976) was television. Bittersweet Love (1976) was a small feature about a marriage the plot would punish. Witches’ Brew (1980) was her last theatrical film, a horror comedy that used the face as a brand and did not ask her to be Cora again.
In 1982 she took a recurring part as Jacqueline Perrault on Falcon Crest, Jane Wyman’s wine-country serial, a mother who arrived to disturb Angela Channing’s house. The ratings jumped the weeks she appeared. She lasted into 1983 and left when the writing no longer interested her. She published a memoir, Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth, the same year and did not sand the kitchen: the malt shop that was not Schwab’s, the eight marriages, the Bedford Drive night, the work after the inquest. She had become a Christian in middle age and said the old weather had finally quieted. Friends from those years describe a professional who still arrived on time and a private woman who no longer needed a premiere to get dressed.
The last stage weeks were not a farewell with a logo. She played Forty Carats as a woman the plot still wanted to punish for wanting, then took the kind of regional booking a Metro face had to learn after 1966. Friends from those tours describe a professional who still dressed for the room and no longer needed the room to be Culver City. The sweater was a cage she had already left. The diner and Sirk’s funeral were the jobs that traveled without her. Home was a Century City apartment, not a Bel Air set. Cheryl was in the city, in real estate, building a life that had to share a headline from 1958. Turner sold war bonds in the 1940s and still treated Wallace, Idaho, as a town that had hung a banner. She kept the platinum as a choice, not a cage. She smoked. She watched the old pictures with the sound off, friends said, because she already knew the lines. The studio system that had made her was gone. The diner still played. Sirk’s funeral still emptied a room. Those were the jobs that outlasted the contract.
Throat cancer was diagnosed in 1992. She took treatment and stayed in the apartment. She died there on June 29, 1995. She was seventy-four. Cheryl was the one who had to take the calls. Wallace is the first room. The Top Hat Malt Shop is the hinge. Metro is the cage. Century City was the last address. Postman and Imitation of Life are the weather. What she did in those last decades was not a fade into a sweater. It was a working actress’s calendar after the lot had closed: a tour, a serial, a book, a room she paid for herself.
After she was gone
Cheryl remains. She wrote her own book, built a life in real estate, and had to keep answering a night she was fourteen. The Postman Always Rings Twice still teaches a young actress what a diner can do. Imitation of Life still empties a room at the funeral. The sweater still gets named first by people who have not seen Cora.
She came out of Wallace and a San Francisco sidewalk, skipped typing, walked through a malt shop that was not Schwab’s, wore MGM’s platinum until it was a cage, then made two or three pictures that outlast the cage. The inquest will be retold because it is easy. The work after the inquest is the correction.
If you only remember the sweater, you have the studio’s first product. If you remember Cora, Sirk’s mother, and the daughter who had to live as a headline, you have her.
Portrait: MGM · Public domain (studio publicity still) · via Wikimedia Commons