Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  After the shooting of Postman, Lana saw very little of Garfield, as she had by then launched a torrid affair with Tyrone Power. However, she did meet him one night at a party when he was making his next picture, Humoresque (1946) with Joan Crawford.

  “When I was introduced to Crawford,” he told Lana, “she extended her hand to me. Instead of taking it, I reached to pinch her nipple. At first, she looked angry, but that soon faded into a seductive smile. She told me, ‘You and I, buster, are going to get along just fine. I just hope you’re good in the sack, and that that arrogant act of yours isn’t faked.”

  At the time of Garfield’s death on May 21, 1952, he was planning to divorce his wife. He died of a heart attack in the apartment of actress Iris Whitney in New York City. Having sustained great stress because of having been blacklisted for allegedly being a member of the Communist Party, he finally surrendered to the burdens of a troubled life.

  Lana was greatly distressed to learn about his death and discussed him with her friends: “John had a penchant for picking up girls, sometimes two at a time, and a reputation as a demon lover. He died young, which was understandable.”

  “He once told me that an actor doesn’t reach maturity until he turns forty. We’ll never know what future greatness he had in him. He was only thirty-nine when he died. He never lived long enough to become a screen legend like Bogie.”

  “I was moved to learn that some 10,000 people gathered in the Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan to pay their final respects to this most talented young man. That was the largest turnout of fans since the death of Valentino. I will always have a special place for him in my heart, remembering the times he and I had making our most memorable movie, the picture in which I ended up smashed to death, and he faced the electric chair.”

  ***

  During the filming of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Lana began an affair with a tall, handsome actor from New York State, Robert Hutton. She’d met him at the Hollywood Canteen in 1944. [“Hollywood Canteen” was also the title of a movie he made that year.]

  They didn’t start to date right away until he escorted her in December of 1945 to the premiere of Leave Her to Heaven, the movie that brought Gene Tierney an Oscar nomination.

  [At the end of the film, Lana whispered to Hutton, “I could have played that part, and I wish I had.”]

  Lana thought Robert Hutton bore a strong resemblance to Jimmy Stewart, to whom he was often compared.

  He confessed that his wartime career had depended on what was called “Victory Casting,” meaning that he and other actors who didn’t have to go into military service stayed in Hollywood, taking roles that might have otherwise gone to Stewart, Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, or others.

  Hutton, the son of a hardware merchant, was famous for being the cousin of Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress who had been married to Cary Grant.

  During the period that Lana dated Hutton, Warners was promoting him as its newest heart-throb, since some of their matinee idols were beginning to fade a bit. Columnist Walter Winchell wrote about Lana’s dating of Hutton, calling him “her biggest thrill.”

  That remark brought laughter to her many friends in Hollywood, who asked her, “Is Bob really your biggest thrill?”

  Hutton later complained, “I hated that rumor. Every time I went to a urinal to take a leak, I was followed by some queen who wanted to check me out.”

  When she started dating Hutton, he was divorcing Natalie Thompson and had become a free agent like herself.

  One of the highlights of her dating schedule was when he took her to the lavishly decorated home of his mega-wealthy cousin, the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton. [When she’d married Grant, the press had collectively dubbed them “Cash and Carry,” but they had since divorced, although remaining friends.]

  At a party, Lana talked to Grant, who asked her, “Why haven’t we made a movie together?”

  “It’s about time,” she agreed.

  During Lana’s talk with the heiress, Hutton said that she preferred to date European men such as Prince Frederick Hohenzollern. “Except for the one I married, they are more sophisticated, more aware.”

  Barbara Hutton—rich and wistful. When Lana met her, she was regally seated on a throne-like chair receiving her guests.

  In the 1930s, the subject of custody battles among feuding factions within the Hutton clan, she had been dubbed “The Poor Little Rich Girl.”

  In reference to her later life, author Truman Capote called her “the most incredible phenomenon of the 20th Century.”

  She was referring to Count Kurt Haughwitz-Reventlow, a Danish nobleman. A story was making the rounds in Hollywood that, following an argument, he had forced her into the bathroom, where he made her sit nude on his lap while he relieved himself.

  She also dated movie stars, not just Grant. Her lovers had included two of Lana’s former beaux, David Niven and Errol Flynn. She had also been involved with the English actor, Michael Wilding, before he married Elizabeth Taylor.

  Lana found Barbara indiscreet during a discussion about her former lovers, as if satirizing herself. “One night, I visited Michael Rennie. He was gone for a while and then emerged from his bathroom wearing a rubber diving suit. He had a bullwhip in one hand, and a jar of Vaseline in the other. I won’t go on. I was also involved with the playboy, Fred McEvoy. He kept the preserved body of his dead baby on display at his villa in Mexico City.”

  She told Lana, “I won’t say that my husbands thought only of my money, but it held a certain fascination for them.”

  What she didn’t tell Lana, but what she had learned through gossip, was that her on-again, off-again lover, Howard Hughes, was having an affair with Grant during her marriage to him.

  At the last party Lana attended at Barbara’s residence, the heiress took her hand and held it tenderly as she said goodbye. “Remember, my dear, money can’t buy you happiness.”

  Lana continued to date Robert Hutton until she went on an extended trip to South America. Upon her return, she learned that he had fallen for Cleatus Caldwell and was soon to marry her.

  Like so many men that Lana dated, Hutton’s life ended in tragedy. He broke his back in an accident at his home and spent his last days in a nursing care facility, dying on August 7, 1994.

  In the 70s, she recalled, “If Robert had any grudge against me, he took it out on me by writing the script for my 1974 film, Persecution, one of my worst movies. I can’t bear to watch it.”

  ***

  For months, Howard Hughes had lived up to the label that Errol Flynn had bequeathed him: “The Lone Wolf.” But near the end of the war, after a long disappearance, Hughes flew to Los Angeles, landing at the airport at Burbank. A reporter spotted him and leaked word that he was back in town to the newspapers. At least three screen beauties, perhaps a lot more, awaited his phone call. Lana, Rita (Hay-worth) and Ava (Gardner) topped the list.

  Having emerged from his self-imposed exile, he re-inaugurated, once again, his pursuit of some of the world’s most alluring women. During the autumn of 1945, he was seducing actress Jane Greer and flying to Canada to make love to Yvonne De Carlo. He told his aides, “Yvonne is my hot new flame, but I don’t want to confine myself to just one woman.”

  The months immediately following the end of the war seemed to bring renewed energy to him. He had survived, more or less intact, his wartime airplane production scandals, including the furor over his ill-fated, way-over-budget, plywood-sheathed “Spruce Goose.”

  He ordered a screening of Lana’s latest film, The Postman Always Rings Twice. After watching it with Meyer, he told him, “Lana is the hottest platinum blonde in Hollywood since I first fucked Jean Harlow. She’s compellingly sexy in this film, although I usually prefer bosomy brunettes. I might contact her again.”

  That is exactly what he did, and in April of 1946, Lana and Hughes checked once again into Manhattan’s Sherry-Netherland Hotel, occupying different suites. When she walked into her elegantly furnished
lodgings, she found it filled with her favorite flowers: rare white orchids, ivory roses, and gardenias.

  It was sometime during her stay with him there that he proposed marriage. After thinking it over for a tantalizing minute, she said “yes.” He seemed so delighted by her acceptance that he immediately hauled her off to bed.

  But a complication emerged almost immediately. The very next night, Hughes phoned Linda Darnell, who had remained a close friend of Lana’s. “You have no idea how much I love you,” he told Linda. “I can’t wait for us to get married.” Darnell enthusiastically supported the plan, promising that she’d immediately divorce her husband, cameraman Peverell J. Marley.

  After Darnell transmitted this information to her then-husband, Marley imposed a condition on what soon emerged as a plan to facilitate Hughes and Darnell’s marital “reshuffling”: Marley wanted the billionaire to pay him an annual salary of $25,000 for the remainder of his life.

  Darnell discreetly decided not to inform Lana of Hughes’ proposal.

  With a mind-numbing duplicity, Hughes simultaneously, and despite his promises to Darnell, continued the plans he had set in motion to wed Lana, defining May 8 in Las Vegas as the venue for their upcoming wedding. He even commissioned a $5,000 wedding dress for Lana from Oleg Cassini, with instructions that it be delivered to her house for a fitting.

  Hughes’ elaborate “Lana” plan included an agreement that at 9AM on the morning of the wedding, he would retrieve her in a limousine for transport to the airport, where a private plane would be waiting to haul them off to a civil ceremony and honeymoon in Las Vegas.

  To her consternation, by 10AM on Lana’s big day, neither Hughes, nor his car, nor his driver, had arrived. Worried and fretful, Lana called Johnny Maschio, one of his chief aides. He told her that he had not heard from Hughes since the previous night.

  “Find out where in hell he is,” she demanded. She then called back every thirty minutes.

  Finally, at 4PM, Hughes finally contacted (by phone) Maschio, not revealing his location or his intentions.

  “Lana is enraged,” Maschio reported to his boss. “What should I tell her?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Hughes said before abruptly hanging up his phone.

  The next day, a stunning diamond bracelet from Tiffany’s arrived. Because of her love of diamonds, Lana decided to forgive him.

  ***

  After the humiliating collapse of their marriage plans, Hughes phoned Lana only occasionally, meeting with her even less frequently. She reported to Susan Hayward, who also dated him, that “Howard seems deeply troubled. He’s like a man searching, searching, for something, but never finding it.”

  One night, he dropped by Lana’s house, telling her that at long last, he was ready to be the sole test pilot aboard his experimental new aircraft, the XF-11.

  She urged him not to do it, and to select one of his trained pilots instead. She later told Hayward, “I had this incredible intuition, I smelled trouble before it happened. I just knew that that damned XF-11 was heading for disaster.”

  On Sunday morning, July 7, 1946, Hughes—at the controls and alone in the cockpit—set out on his daring test flight. Before boarding the aircraft, he told his aides, “It’s the most beautiful plane I ever built.”

  Subsequently, his plane crashed into a private home in Beverly Hills, which resulted in legal implications that dragged on for years. An emergency ambulance rushed to the rescue, and with its red dome light flashing, sped him to the nearest hospital. Blood ran from his nose, mouth, and ears, and his leather jacket had ignited into flames. Doctors gave him a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

  Lana had switched on the radio that morning. She was shocked when bulletins about Hughes and his unlucky aircraft began dominating the news broadcasts.

  In the days that followed, Hughes struggled for life. Recovering from burns and injuries, he was in great pain, his doctor shooting him with morphine to ease his agony.

  Days and days went by before his condition began to improve. America was waiting, since at that time, he was a household word.

  The hospital was overrun with visitors, a few of whom included former girlfriends Ginger Rogers and Olivia de Havilland, and a horde of people Hugheshardly knew, including James Cagney, David O. Selznick, and Danny Kaye. Johnny Meyer was ordered to turn most of them away.

  Linda Darnell, who had apparently recovered from the pre-marital embarrassments she’d suffered, showed up too. Dressed in black, she was refused entry. The next morning, the Hollywood-Citizen ran a blaring headline—LINDA DARNELL REFUSED PERMISSION TO SEE HUGHES.

  The next day, also dressed in black, Lana appeared. Because of her friendship with Johnny Meyer, she was allowed access, although he warned her, “Make it quick!”

  She was horrified by what she saw. As she later confided to Meyer, she offered to marry him, in spite of his broken promise and his disastrously embarrassing no-show on the infuriating morning of their aborted wedding. “But you’ve got to promise me you’ll never fly another plane.”

  Enigmatic, as always, about his commitments, he thanked her and falsely soothed her with the promise “I’m through with aviation.”

  The following day, as Hughes continued his recuperation in the hospital, Meyer granted access to Jean Peters, a fresh-faced, green-eyed farm girl from Ohio, another of the actresses whom Hughes had been dating. She was under contract to 20th-Century Fox.

  Although he could have dated far more glamorous stars, he’d perceived a particular affinity for her. She had wanted him to marry her, but, as with Lana, he stalled.

  [Eventually, by 1954, she abandoned any hope for marriage to him, and married Stanley M. Cramer III, a Texas oil executive, instead.

  In 1957, Peters divorced Cramer and, in a secret wedding ceremony in Tonapah, Nevada, married Hughes. Abandoning her film career, she subsequently became a virtual recluse.

  As for Lana, her relationship with Hughes was far from over, and would soon veer off the highway with a radical left turn into chaos.]

  ***

  Frank Sinatra had met Lana when each was relatively new to Hollywood.

  In the months to come, Lana—who was always with one of her many beaux— often encountered Sinatra and his wife Nancy at Hollywood parties or premieres. He knew her well enough to visit her on the set of her film, Keep Your Powder Dry. Showing up there with Gene Kelly (one of her future co-stars), they each wore sailor uniforms.

  In 1944, she appeared on the Frank Sinatra Show for CBS, and later that night a photographer snapped their picture together at the Clover Club. Daughter Cheryl remembered “Uncle Frank” calling on her mother at their marvelous home in Bel Air overlooking the local country club.

  [According to Hollywood lore and the singer’s own boastings, the notoriously promiscuous Sinatra had—based on his screening of The Postman Always Rings Twice—moved her from “Number 8” to the top of his “list of actresses to seduce.”]

  “I’ve got to have Lana,” Sinatra told Tommy Dorsey. “I know you’ve already had the pleasure.”

  Swimming star Esther Williams had been assigned the dressing room next to Lana’s at MGM. She spotted Sinatra slipping in and out for secret rendezvous. “My dressing room was modest, but Lana had a king-sized bed in hers, complete with pink satin sheets. She also had a lot of mirrors so she could oversee the action. From the sounds of things, he was having one big explosion. Why not? At the time, Lana was hailed as the most desirable woman on the planet.”

  At the time that Sinatra became involved with Lana, she was one of the most widely publicized sex goddesses of the silver screen. Many of her friends, including Linda Darnell, agreed that, “Lana tries to live up to that title. She told me that a variety of men add spice to a girl’s life. No sooner would Photoplay herald one of her romances and run a picture of the two of them, she would be dating some other man. Gossip columnists were always out of date where she was concerned. Sinatra went through women, and Lana went through men, as fast as comm
ercials on the radio.”

  An aide to Louis B. Mayer told him that he had spotted Lana and Sinatra together in the back seat of his car “smooching.” Actually, “smooching” was not the right word for it. Mayer was horrified, eager to avoid a scandal based on the fact that Sinatra was still married to his first wife, Nancy.

  Esther Williams remembered the afternoon that Nancy Sinatra arrived, unannounced, and loudly knocked on the door to Lana’s dressing room, which, as mentioned, was immediately next door to Esther’s. Hearing the knock, and with the understanding Lana was away from MGM that day, Williams invited Nancy into her own dressing room instead.

  According to Esther, “She looked distraught. Shaking all over. In tears, Nancy told me that Frank had fallen in love with Lana, and that the night before, Frank had told her that he wanted a divorce. I tried to comfort her as much as I could. That night, I attended a party at the home of Sonja Henie. Frank was there with Lana. They had eyes only for each other as they danced crotch-to-crotch. When Lana went to powder her nose, I told him that I’d seen Nancy. He confirmed that he’d asked her for a divorce so that he could marry Lana.”

  Without informing Lana, Sinatra rented a duplex apartment in Hollywood for them. He filled it with $50,000 worth of new furnishings, and even purchased several sets of pink satin sheets. [He also maintained a more modest apartment about fifteen blocks away for assignations with other women.]

  When it was sparkling and “prepped” for its role as their love nest, Sinatra drove Lana to the duplex. He later said, “She wasn’t impressed. She called it a dump and told me that she wouldn’t sleep one night in such a joint. So I took her to the Beverly Hills Hotel where I rented a bungalow, and we spent the rest of the night making love.”

  Sinatra authorized publicist George Evans to announce that he and Nancy had separated. It came as a shock to his fans. When it was revealed that Lana, as his lover, had played a role in the separation, she was denounced as a home-wrecker.