Between pictures, Warners didn’t know quite what to do with its still-undefined starlet. Early publicity photographs reveal that she was searching for a screen identity. She was depicted in a sweater with those protruding breasts from They Won’t Forget, or else in a clinging satin gown that might have been alluring on Marlene Dietrich.
At other times, “Hayseed Lana” appeared in a barnyard with a straw sticking out of her succulent mouth. She could be photographed with a come hither gaze or else in a lace collar looking like a refugee from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.
Some photos show her smouldering and sophisticated. Others made her look like a wild and crazy girl with the wind blowing through her hair. As late as 1930, Lana, as a red-haired beauty with scarlet lips, looked like the girl next door—that is, if you lived next door to the winner of the Miss California beauty pageant.
During her nightly prowls, whenever she made an entrance into a chic club, she was always a show-stopper. Since she was still young enough to look beautiful, she could party all night and still emerge from makeup the next morning at 5AM looking fresh, young, and glamorous.
After They Won’t Forget (1937) until as late as 1941, she had no more particularly memorable movie roles. But she was learning her trade, building up a name in Hollywood, and studying how to be a movie star.
Frances Wyndham, in The London Times, summed up her status at this time: “Wearing sweater and skirt, insolently hunched over an ice cream soda, Lana Turner exuded a homespun glamour in the late 1930s that was particularly American. Both frail and tough, she appealed to the masculine protective instinct at the same time she promised danger.”
At the age of sixteen, she truly discovered men, diversions which would become her life-long passion. Her legend was birthing.
Years later, she recalled, “I dated them young, perhaps too young, and even older, maybe too much older.”
“She was both warm and beautiful,” said Mickey Rooney. “I should know.”
Billy Wilkerson of The Hollywood Reporter continued to grind out publicity, as did the fan magazines and the newspaper gossip columnists.
“Lana’s phone number was passed around a lot in the late 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and even beyond,” said gossip maven Louella Parsons. “How did she find time to work in all those husbands?”
“I know one Sunday, she had a luncheon date that turned into love in the afternoon beside his pool. That morphed into a supper club date and dancing with another man ending in a sneak-away midnight romp in a bachelor pad, with a third lover. And she still made that make-up call at 5AM.”
That was the voice of Louella’s rival, Hedda Hopper, speaking off the record.
***
For some bizarre reason known only to himself, her agent, Henry Willson, hooked Lana up with George Raft for a date. Raft had been born in 1895 in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, that poverty and crime-infested stretch of “Midtown West” in Manhattan. [Hell’s Kitchen, which has since then been gentrified, is traditionally considered to stretch north-south between 34th and 59th Streets, and east-west between Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River.]
In time, he became a “taxi dancer” at Churchill’s Tea Room, along with his roommate, Rudolph Valentino. They danced with older women and often accepted invitations for sex-for-pay later at their apartments. Marlene Dietrich once said, “When I sang, ‘Just a Gigolo,’ I thought of George.”
Movie actor and part-time gangster, George Raft devoted his other waking hous to seductions. “Screwing was his only game,” said Mack Grey, his closest friend. “He could devote a whole day to doing just that.” But Lana never got to sample “Black Snake.”
In the 1930s at Warner Brothers, Raft had evolved into a movie gangster icon, along with Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart. He was also known as a “ladies’ man,” with a string of seductions that included not only Dietrich, but Mae West, Lucille Ball, Norma Shearer, and hundreds of hookers and showgirls.”
A frequent movie goer, Lana had seen only two of his films, Night After Night (1932) with Mae West (“She stole the picture from me”), and Scarface (also 1932) with Paul Muni. [In Scarface, Raft had played coin-tossing Rinaldo, bumped off by a vicious killer, Tony Camonte (Paul Muni).]
Lana didn’t know what to expect when Raft showed up on her doorstep. He was the best dressed man she’d ever seen, with a tight-fitting tailored black suit, black shirt, and white tie. She’d never seen a man dressed in a black shirt before. He’d slicked back his hair with Vaseline, and he wore a pearl gray Fedora pulled down over one eye, which he did not remove. His pointy shoes were so shiny she could almost see her reflection in them. He was sleek, solemn faced, and imbued with a sexual menace.
He arrived in a black Packard with a driver to take her to the Cocoanut Grove. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s bulletproof.”
“Of all the men I ever danced with, and we’re talking dozens upon dozens, Raft had the best movement. He’d been a professional dancer in New York, known for his erotic movements such as rubbing parts of his body as he performed.”
“He was a smooth talker and had a real big ego,” she recalled.
On their third date, he invited her to his lavishly decorated home. Although she fully realized that he wanted to seduce her, she had reached that point in her young life where the most she allowed was for men to indulge in “heavy petting.”
For Raft, that meant fondling her breasts while he masturbated “Black Snake.”
His nearly nine-inch penis had been nicknamed “Black Snake” by Mae West, since it was many shades darker than the rest of his body’s skin tone.
Lana later talked to Betty Grable about their joint involvements with Raft. She delivered a frank appraisal. “I think he’s a latent homosexual. He and Valentino were lovers when they lived together. He never touched me except to beat me up.”
Willson was at the Trocadero to witness Lana’s final date with Raft—the one that gossips claimed ended their romance. Lana was table hopping, going around introducing herself to established stars, producers, and directors, and pointedly not including Raft in any of her hob-nobbing.
He sat alone looking depressed. He never drank liquor. “When I came up to him, it was obvious he’d soured on Lana,” Willson said.
“She’s still wearing the god damn chastity belt,” he said. “I even gave her a fur coat, and she still is holding off. I wanted to teach her the facts of life, but some other guys will have to do that. I’ve moved on to Ann Sheridan and Betty Grable.”
Within days, Raft was back to hosting his nude pool parties. On his patio, clad in a silk robe, overlooking the pool and its terrace, he seemed to be deciding which woman, or women, would “get lucky” that night.
Months after he stopped dating Lana, she agreed to star with him in the radio dramatization of his 1941 film, They Drive by Night. The film had starred truck-driving brothers, Raft and Humphrey Bogart, with the women’s roles played by Ida Lupino and Ann Sheridan. Since they were not available for the radio broadcast, Lucille Ball and Lana assumed their roles.
***
Additional roles, albeit small, weren’t long in coming, yet Lana was disappointed when she read the script that outlined the small part she’d been offered in what evolved into her second movie, The Great Garrick (1937), a Warner Brothers film. Its director was James Whale, and its stars included Olivia de Havilland and the English actor, Brian Aherne.
Set in the 18th Century, the plot was a fictionalized episode in the life of David Garrick (1717-1779), acclaimed as one of the greatest of all English actors.
In the drama, he travels to France to appear at La Comédie française during the most dissipated days of the ancien régime. In a farewell speech at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane in London, he announces that he is going to Paris to teach Frenchmen how to act.
Apprised of his arrogance, the French actors decide to play a dirty trick on him They take over an inn in the French countryside where Garrick is sched
uled to spend the night en route to Paris. Maliciously, the French actors assume the role of landlord and servants, and try to scare Garrick out of his wits.
The exception to that is the lovely, demure Olivia, cast as Germaine Dupont, a countess who falls in love with the dashing English actor.
As for Lana, she was cast as a scullery maid. “It was type casting,” she said. “After all, I was a virtual scullery maid when I lived with that horrid family in Modesto.”
Her fellow chambermaids included Linda Perry, whose film career was to go virtually nowhere, and Marie Wilson, who would go on to stardom as a radio, TV, and film actress, scoring great success in My Friend Irma (1949), and its spin-offs.
***
Lana was directed by James Whale, who had “frightened the daylights out of me when I went to see his classic horror film, Frankenstein (1932). He was very dear and kind to me. I was mildly surprised that he was quite open about his homosexuality.”
“My role in The Great Garrick called for me to squeal, giggle, and curtsy in several scenes, all in Restoration costume,” Lana said. “I tried to provide a certain lustiness, but I fear I didn’t succeed.”
Throughout her life, Lana easily related to the many homosexuals who paraded through her films. She had none of the usual prejudice of the day, and gay men became her most enduring fans.
One day, Whale invited her to lunch, predicting big stardom for her. “I don’t know what it is, but you have something that’s just bursting into bloom. I predict you’ll become the femme fatale of the 1940s.”
He was fascinating to talk to, telling her at one point that he had been captured in Flanders in August of 1917 and had become a prisoner of war. “I staged amateur theatricals for my fellow English soldiers in camp. It was the only amusement they had. Some of them showed their gratitude to me by slipping into my bunk late at night.”
Sixteen-year-old Lana Turner, cast as a bawdy Restoration wench, flirts with studly Craig Reynolds. But was he really sexier than Errol Flynn?
Whale’s fellow Englishman, Brian Aherne, the star of the film, was elegant with a certain charm and style. He gave Lana little attention, having preferred the romantic company of such illustrious women as Marlene Dietrich and tobacco heiress Doris Duke.
The actor in The Great Garrick who caught Lana’s roving eye was handsome Craig Reynolds, a rising star of the 1930s. At the time, he had a small fan club and was getting letters from young girls who found him sexier than Errol Flynn.
“I slipped around and dated him three or four times—that is, when Jane Wyman didn’t have her claws in him. Like a fool, I was still holding onto my virginity. I later regretted not surrendering it to Craig.”
***
Despite countless offers, some of which were most persuasive, from some of the handsomest men in Hollywood, Lana was still “sweet sixteen” and had never lost her cherry. [That fruity reference derived from the appraisal of her casual friend, Ann Sheridan.]
Lana expressed an almost daily confessional of details associated with her heavy dating schedule to two of her best friends, both of them actresses. One was Ann Rutherford, who would soon be cast as Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in Gone With the Wind (1939). The other was Bonita Granville, the sharp-nosed, brazen child star, two years younger than Lana, who had just scored a big hit in the 1936 These Three. She played a monstrous brat who, by spreading vicious gossip, ruins the lives of Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, and Merle Oberon.
“Lana was just itching to get deflowered, but holding back,” Granville said.
“Lana faced a dilemma,” Rutherford said. “She wondered if it would hurt or feel good.”
“It must feel good or else gals wouldn’t chase after guys so much,” Lana told her friends.
One night at the Café Vendome, in Los Angeles, in early February of 1939, her life was about to change. She was on the dance floor twirling around with actor Alan Curtis when attorney Greg Bautzer cut in.
She’d read about him in the gossip columns, as he was called “Hollywood’s Bachelor Number One.”
He was also known as “The Don Juan of the Hollywood Boudoir.” In time, he’d seduce some of the most glamorous movie queens of the 20th Century, not only Lana, but Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Jane Wyman, singer Peggy Lee, Ginger Rogers, Dorothy Lamour, Merle Oberon, and Ingrid Bergman. His reputation as a “swordsman” had already been well-established by the time he danced into Lana’s life.
As an attorney, he was known for his high-profile clients, none more notable than Howard Hughes, the billionaire aviator and film mogul.
As Bautzer would later inform Lana, “Most of my job with Hughes involves writing checks to his harem of kept women.”
The first time Bautzer and Lana were mentioned as an item in gossip columns was on February 13, 1938, in the “Beau Peep Whispers” section of the Los Angeles Times. As a couple, they were spotted by tout Hollywood at the Riviera Club in the Pacific Palisades. The writeup stated that Bautzer—“that man about town with the roving eye”—had been seen with a “new Titian-haired beauty decorating his arm.” The reference was to teenaged Lana on the arm of a man a decade older than she was.
“He was tall and husky, with soulful dark eyes, a tanned complexion, and a flashing smile that showed a lot of white teeth,” she wrote. “He was so smooth, so self-assured, that all the other boys I knew seemed like children.”
He phoned Lana the following night, and the two of them began to see one another at a rate estimated by Lana at around three evenings a week. On nights when he wasn’t seeing her, he falsely told her that he was involved with business clients. On the party and nightclub circuit, “Lana & Greg” became an item, often closing down Ciro’s or the Mocambo.
As she accurately stated, “Greg was far too sophisticated to wrestle me in the front seat of a car or steal a kiss at the front door. On the dance floor, he rubbed himself against me until he produced an erection. I knew he was going to seduce me, but when?”
“There was no way, with my heavy dating schedule, that I was to remain a virgin until I got married,” Lana said. “I decided the man to do the honors was Greg Bautzer, an experienced lover to judge by his conquests of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. I was seventeen when I lost it. Greg was my first love, my first heartbreak.”
He was taking his time, not rushing her into bed. That came one rainy Saturday night when he pulled up at his house and invited her inside, telling her that his mother was away playing cards with her women friends.
“That later turned out not to be true, as we heard her going down the stairs to the kitchen,” Lana said.
She would remember the experience for the rest of her life. Greg Bautzer became the first of dozens of men who would seduce her in her future.
“He was loving and patient with me, even though I was awkward,” she wrote. “I had no idea how to move or what to do. The act itself hurt like hell, and I must confess I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t even know what an orgasm was. But I loved being close to Greg and holding him, and the feeling that now, at least, I was giving myself to him.”
The next day over lunch, she confided to Rutherford and Granville, “Last night Greg Bautzer made a woman out of me. And I’m still sore.”
In gossipy Hollywood, Lana soon learned that those other four nights a week, when he wasn’t with her, he was not entertaining business clients. He was out with other beauties, especially Joan Crawford, with whom he seemed to be having the most serious engagement.
Lana was furious and cried one night, but woke up determined to take a different course of action. She complained to Granville, “I’m very, very jealous, but I’m going to get back at him. Now that Greg has broken me in, I’m going to let other guys get what they want. Serves him right!”
***
Lana was thrilled when she heard the news that Samuel Goldwyn had borrowed her for his next big epic, The Ad ventures of Marco Polo (1938), starring Gary Cooper. She looked upon him as the handsomest and sexiest
actor in films, even more so than Clark Gable and Robert Taylor.
The picture, The Adventures of Marco Polo, bombed at the box office, but Lana was enthralled to meet her screen idol, Gary Cooper, cast as the handsome explorer popular with the ladies of Venice’s back canals. When Lana met him, the horse-hung “Montana Mule” had already seduced tout Hollywood, from Mae West to Cary Grant. He told Lana, “Grow up real soon and come back around.”
She had to go to the library to look up who Marco Polo (1254-1324) was. He was, of course, the great Venetian explorer who traveled to China to establish trade with the Far East. While there, he met Kublai Khan and was introduced to his fabulous court.
The script by Robert Sherman was rather tongue-in-cheek and by today’s standards, even a bit campy. Originally, Goldwyn had selected John Cromwell to direct, but within five days, after some bitter disputes about presentation and content, he was replaced.
Archie Mayo, who had worked in silent films since 1917, was brought in at the last minute to take over.
One of the most elaborate and costly films Goldwyn ever made, Marco Polo had a strong supporting cast. The villain, Ahmed, was played by Basil Rathbone, the devious, crooked adviser to Kublai Khan (George Barbier).
Lana had a small role, cast as the maid to Nazama (Binnie Barnes). “Another maid part,” she lamented. A Londoner, Barnes had been working in films since 1923, her most memorable role that of Katherine Howard, the monarch’s fifth wife, in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).
“She was rather rude to me, insisting, for example, that I bring her fresh coffee,” Lana said. “That was not part of the script.”
In the film, Lana is also pawed over by a Chinese warlord, the improbably cast Alan Hale, Sr. “I was supposed to be this Oriental sex object,” she said. “Nothing more, nothing less. Alan helped me in the role.”
Lana Turner Page 6