With two blondes and only one man, something’s got to give. Sacrificing her personal dreams in favor of those of her sister, Lana decides to accept a marriage proposal from a dissipated playboy, as portrayed by Kent Taylor, despite the fact that he’s been married four times previously, and even though she doesn’t love him.
In Two Girls on Broadway, Lana’s true love, Eddie, as played by Murphy, rushes frantically to City Hall, objecting loudly to her marriage ceremony to the dissipated playboy she doesn’t love, as portrayed by Kent Taylor.
At the conclusion of the film, the character played by Blondell ends up as the sacrificing sister. She relinquishes Murphy to Lana after they emerge on Broadway as a successful dance team. Blondell, known as the wisecracking but vulnerable blonde with the heart of gold, is subsequently degraded to status as a cigarette girl in the nightclub where her sister (Lana) reigns as a dance star and a woman in love.
Lana had seen several of Blondell’s films, especially The Public Enemy (1931), a movie she’d made at Warner Brothers long before she ever met Lana.
Hailing from New York, Blondell usually played brassy, sassy, wisecracking blondes. In 1927, she’d made her Broadway debut in The Trial of Mary Dugan.
She and Lana became quite close during the filming, and Lana turned to her like an older sister. Blondell was too generous of heart to be jealous of Lana. During their filming of Two Girls on Broadway, Blondell was married to crooner Dick Powell.
MGM’s publicity department hyped Two Girls on Broadway as “The Girl They’re All Talking About…Lovely Lana Turner, America’s Blonde Spitfire, in Her Hottest, Most Daring Film.”
Despite whatever other distractions emerged from her private life, on set ofTwo Girls on Broadway, at least, Lana was a genuine professional, devoting tireless hours to her dance routines. At first, she’d been intimidated for having been teamed with such a seasoned hoofer like Murphy, but when the cameras were rolling, at least, they danced together in harmony.
In his memoirs, Say…Didn’t You Use to Be George Murphy?, the star wrote, “Everyone at Metro was talking about this fascinating new blonde who danced so beautifully with me. You could hardly get on the set, so many people had come to see the lovely newcomer in the flesh. And that’s how Lana Turner got her big boost to stardom.”
During its filming, Lana became popular with both cast and crew. They threw a party for her to celebrate her nineteenth birthday. A dedication read, “To the Sweater Girl from the gang who made the yarn.”
Once again, the ever-faithful Hollywood Reporter came through for her, writing that “Lana Turner’s latest film seems to be a fairly entertaining bit of fluff. It proves that she is the gal Fred Astaire should be dancing with if MGM wants to duplicate the Astaire-Rogers sizzle.”
George Murphy’s dance routine with Luscious Lana in Two Girls on Broadway: “George Murphy may not have been dynamite as an actor, but that guy could sure dance,” Lana said.
One critic wrote, “George Murphy had his dedication and inoffensiveness to pull him through, not being any great threat to those more talented in the dramatic, comedic, and dancing departments.”
***
Although Lana’s relationship with Artie Shaw had started with a kiss on the set of Dancing Co-Ed, it soon degenerated into a wall of hostility because, as he admitted himself, “I’m a difficult man to work with.”
But on Monday, February 12, 1939, the pair took a detour that surprised Hollywood and, on Shaw’s part, broke the hearts of an impressionable Judy Garland and a more hardened Betty Grable.
Comedian Phil Silvers had signed a contract with MGM, a studio that liked his frantic, jabbering schtick, thinking his idiotic behavior might work if he played the role of best pal to a leading man in certain lightweight films.
Silvers phoned one of “my best pals” (Shaw himself), and invited him to MGM one afternoon. Silvers remembered that Shaw, based on their first meeting on the set of Dancing Co-Ed, had loudly and repeatedly referred to Lana as being “hot as a firecracker,” so he decided to bring them together again. He later explained, “Artie was in a black funk, and needed cheering up. I thought Miss Turner might turn the trick.”
Silvers and Shaw arrived at the same time on the set of Two Girls on Broadway, the picture Lana had been shooting at the time with George Murphy and Joan Blondell. They watched as she performed a dance routine with Murphy.
Surprisingly, when Lana spotted Shaw on the set, she went over to him and welcomed him, seemingly having forgotten—or else forgiven—him for the previous vulgar comments he had made about her. As Silvers later asserted, “Lana took to Artie like a bee to honey.”
“I’m sure Lana never looked lovelier—or sexier—than she did that afternoon,” Silvers said. “She was a real knockout in a green satin gown that looked like it had been sewn onto her curvy body. It outlined everything, even her nipples. What a sight! Even I felt a stirring down below.”
As Shaw remembered the historic moment: “Lana had been hostile to me ever since she heard me putting her down to some of the boys. But when I saw her again, she was open and friendly, a sweet, charming, sexy baby doll. I invited her to dinner and she told me, ‘Give me a raincheck.’”
During their conversation, which ended when the director called Lana back to the set, she seductively told Shaw, “I’m not free tonight. But who knows? Give me a call some long, lonely night. We’ll see.” Then she kissed him lightly on the cheek and departed.
A notorious womanizer, Shaw managed to get Lana’s phone number before he left. As they were leaving MGM, he told Silvers, “I’m determined to fuck that little hottie.”
The following week, he called on two more occasions, and each time, Lana turned him down. She didn’t tell him, but for each of the venues proposed by Shaw, she’d already arranged a date with Bautzer. She was, in fact, wearing an engagement ring he’d given her, although all of her friends had warned her, “Greg is not the marrying kind.”
Bautzer was invited to all the most prestigious parties in Hollywood. On one of their dates, he introduced Lana to Noël Coward, who at the time was visiting from London. “Lana, my dear, you’re ‘The Sweater Girl,’ right? I see that Greg has already discovered you. You’re lucky. I would have snared him for myself, but the dear chap simply has too many teeth.”
***
Lana arrived early at her home one afternoon to dress up and make herself look particularly glamorous for her date with Bautzer.
Since her birthday and Mildred’s were four days apart, he had invited both of them for a celebratory dinner. However, he called at 6:30PM, claiming he had a stomach ache. “I had some bad oysters at lunch.”
Horribly disappointed, she decided to stay in for the evening, despite Mildred’s urging to go out to dinner with her as a mother-daughter twosome. Lana, however, prevailed, based to some degree on her status as the family’s breadwinner, Ultimately, despite her mother’s objections, she stayed home.
[Months later, Lana learned that on the night that Bautzer had broken their date, he was actually entertaining the English actress, Wendy Barrie, with whom he enjoyed a romantic evening at his home.
Bautzer was treading on dangerous ground, since Barrie was the girlfriend of the gangster and mobster, Bugsy Siegel.
After Lana learned about Greg’s affair with Barrie, she hooked up with the gangster and, perhaps as payback, inaugurated a brief affair with him herself.
“I always believe in the revenge fuck,” she told several of her girlfriends, including Ann Rutherford and Rita Johnson.]
Shaw had planned an evening with band singer Helen Forrest, with whom he’d been having an on-again, off-again affair. But Helen had gotten a last-minute singing gig and had to cancel. Scrambling to recoup what was left of his evening, Shaw remembered Lana’s allure on the set of Two Girls on Broadway.
Spontaneously, at 7PM, he telephoned Lana. Thinking it was Bautzer phoning to apologize, she answered the ring herself. Impulsively, perhaps with the intention of st
abbing back at Bautzer, she accepted Shaw’s last-minute dinner invitation.
Later that evening, after retrieving her at her home, Shaw drove her to Victor Hugo’s, a chic restaurant in Beverly Hills, where she was surprised to learn that Phil Silvers would be joining them at table. She later said, “I didn’t know why Artie had invited that comic. Didn’t Phil know that three’s a crowd?”
As Silvers wandered off, she danced with Shaw. He pressed his hard body close to hers as they moved in rhythm to the music of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.
As Silvers was “chasing after some dame” across the room, Lana and Shaw ditched him and went for a ride along Mulholland Drive.
At a secluded spot, they sat and talked. “No fast moves,” she recalled. “No feeling me up.”
In her memoirs, Lana does not mention Silvers having dined with them that night. She asserted, instead, that she and Shaw drove along Sunset Boulevard, heading toward the ocean.
Years later, Shaw’s account differed from Lana’s. He recalled driving up into the Hollywood Hills, where they found a secluded spot that looked out over the lights of Los Angeles.
He discussed his dreams for the future. They included his hope that his jazz would be taken more seriously, and his plans to compose music and write books. He even quoted from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, two philosophers whose work at the time was unknown to her. Shaw also revealed that there was much he disliked about being a celebrity, especially all those jitterbugging girls who pestered him for autographs and tried to rip off his clothing as souvenirs.
Both of them, or so they claimed, shared the same dream: to live in a rose-covered cottage surrounded by picket fences. He said that he wanted a faithful wife who would bear and nurture his children.
“That’s what I want, too,” she said. “I want to be married and to have babies. I just love children. I don’t like acting. It means getting up at some horrendous hour every morning and driving to the studio to sit through long makeup sessions. Then it’s on to the set to be directed by some ego or perhaps called into Mayer’s office for a lecture on who I can love…or not. I’d give up my career to become a wife and mother.”
Even though she claimed not to have been physically attracted to Shaw, and certainly not in love with him in the way she was with Bautzer, she seemed to have been colluding with him in some shared romantic dream. Later, she’d be dismissive of the events of that night, asserting that her intentions involved “just a desire to get even with Greg.”
After their intimate conversation in the parked car on Mulholland Drive, Shaw tossed out a dare: “Let me charter a plane tonight and fly us to Vegas to get married. Will you go with me and become my bride?”
She didn’t hesitate before impulsively answering, “I’m your girl. Consider me airborne from this moment on.”
It was a spur-of-the-moment decision she’d later regret.
***
Although in any stereotypical Lana Turner movie, this would be the point at which the protagonists would kiss, Lana claimed that there, on Mulholland Drive, that didn’t happen. Instead, Shaw took her hand and held it for a while before starting the motor and driving her to his nearby home.
At his house, Shaw made a late night call to Paul Mantz, Hollywood’s most famous pilot after aviator Howard Hughes. Mantz was known as “the Honeymoon Pilot,” since he often flew couples to Las Vegas, many of whom, like Lana and Shaw, were in the emotional throes of impulsive wedding ceremonies.
Mantz was very discreet, having been involved, as he had been multiple times, in the transportation of lovers to secluded rendezvous and off-the-record trysts.
Airborne and looking down over the flickering lights of Los Angeles from a high-altitude perspective, Shaw was said to have kissed Lana shyly, evoking the gentle kiss he’d delivered on the day they first met on the set of Dancing Co-Ed.
In Vegas at 4AM, Shaw persuaded Justice of the Peace, George E. Marshall, to hustle himself out of bed to perform the ceremony. He wore red-and-white polka dot pajamas and a tattered robe, and his wife, Bertha, still in pin curlers, was a witness.
Lana later wrote, “The first time I ever kissed Artie was when we were pronounced man and wife.” [Actually, she’d kissed him the first day she’d met him, and again (several times) during the plane ride to Vegas from Los Angeles.]
When asked by the Justice of the Peace for a wedding ring, Shaw removed a blue star sapphire set in platinum from his own finger. Of course, it didn’t fit. He’d later buy her a gold wedding band to replace it.
Before Mantz transported the newlyweds back to Burbank, they celebrated their honeymoon dinner at an all-night hamburger shack—“no onions, please.”
Just before they boarded the plane, Lana sent a cryptic telegram to Mildred. “GOT MARRIED IN LAS VEGAS. CALL YOU LATER. LOVE, LANA.”
When it arrived, Mildred assumed that Lana had finally married Bautzer. She was at first delighted with the idea of this up-and-coming lawyer as a son-in-law. Then, uncertain and searching for details, she phoned Bautzer and was shocked to find him at home. Actually, as it turned out, he was in bed at the time with Wendy Barrie.
When he learned about Lana’s marriage, he told Mildred, “I think I know who the lucky guy is. I’ll get back to you.”
Within the hour, he phoned a nervous and impatient Mildred. “She married Artie Shaw.”
“I don’t believe it,” she answered. “She hates that son-of-a-bitch. She told me so herself.” Then, with a shaky voice, she said, “I’ve lost her.”
“So have I,” he said.
***
When Mr. and Mrs. Artie Shaw flew back to Los Angeles, he drove her to his home on Summit Ridge. Instantly, he flew into a rage after seeing that his house was surrounded by photographers, reporters, fans, and the idle curious. Somehow, probably through Bautzer, word of his blitzkrieg marriage to Lana had reached the press, and his house was under siege.
He cursed the reporters, surprising Lana with his venom. She’d never seen such temper in him before. He used vulgar, foul language, even threatening to kill a photographer. Enraged, he grabbed her arm and shoved her inside the house.
Then he slammed around the house, locking all the windows and bolting the doors. Fifteen minutes later, she heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the back door. After that, genuinely frightened, she phoned the Head of Publicity at MGM, Howard Strickling, who promised to send three of his staff members to deal with the swarm of reporters and photographers.
Eventually, although most of the crowd dispersed, others vowed to remain on-site till dawn. Shaw phoned his friend, Edgar Selwyn, the producer of Dancing Co-Ed, who offered them his guest bedroom for the night. Escaping hastily through the crowd assembled in front of his house, Shaw hustled Lana into his car and fled. By now, Lana wanted a bath and a change of clothing, since she’d been wearing the same navy blue dress for twenty-four hours.
When they reached their destination, Selwyn kissed her good night and then departed, and Shaw ushered her into the bedroom.
That night, in bed with him for the first time, she realized “I’ve married a stranger. I really didn’t know this man at all.” She suggested to him that since both of them were totally exhausted and needed sleep, any possible love-making could be postponed.
Defiantly, however, he pulled off his clothes and for the first time, his erection was exposed to her. He wanted her and was determined to have her.
She later wrote about the seduction, calling him “clumsy and fumbling. It was horrible, meaningless. When we finally got into position…well, it was just horrible, over in a minute. He just went limp. As for me, I experienced nothing but a question—what am I doing under this man? There had been no kissing and no cuddling, either before or afterward. He turned over and fell immediately asleep.”
The morning after her so-called “honeymoon night,” when she heard her new husband in the shower, she put through a call to her mother, Mildred, telling her, “I showed Greg Bautzer that he can�
�t break a date with me.”
About an hour later, after Shaw left the house, she drove over to see Mildred. Mother and daughter had moved into a large, Spanish-style home on Beverly Glen Boulevard. Mildred’s first words to her were, “Why did you do it?”
“I’m very happy, mother,” she answered, which was not true.
That day, she packed only a small percentage of her wardrobe and returned for a rendezvous with her new husband, dressing provocatively to greet him when he returned home.
“You look camera ready, too much makeup, and you’re overdressed,” he told her. Then he ordered her to change into a skirt and a blouse and shoes with flat heels. “And for god’s sake, remove that god damn lipstick.”
She would later ask her new agent, Johnny Hyde, “Why did he marry one of the most glamorous women in the world if he wanted a drab, dreary, and dowdy housewife?”
She didn’t even know how old Shaw was until the next day when she read it in the newspapers. She figured he was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. It turned out that he was twenty-eight.
***
Her quickie marriage made frontpage news around the country. Gossips surmised, “There’s a baby in the oven.”
Bautzer pretended to be heartbroken when he spoke to the press. “My God, I’m shocked. She was wearing my engagement ring. I can’t put into words how much I care for my baby.”
George Murphy described what happened when he reported to work that day to dance with Lana on the set of Two Girls on Broadway. “All hell had broken loose,” he said. “No one knew where Lana was. She just didn’t show up for work. All of us were really surprised when we heard she’d eloped. Things happened quickly in Hollywood in those days.”
In her column, Louella Parsons wrote, “Both Artie Shaw and Lana Turner are trusting and lovable, and they use their hearts instead of their heads. Lana, of course, has never been in any scandal, but she always acts hastily and is guided by her own ideas rather than by any advice the studio gives her.”
***
Betty Grable was in Manhattan when she read about Shaw’s elopement with Lana. Later that day, she confronted the press. She issued only a brief statement. “This love of Artie’s must have come on very suddenly.”
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