Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  George Cukor, the director, detested the suicide ending, and so did Lana, but they filmed it that way anyway. However, at the first preview of the movie in Burbank, the audience objected to it, as expressed on the notes they scribbled on their survey questions before exiting from the theater.

  Consequently, Lana was summoned back to MGM to shoot another ending, one in which she was allowed to live, albeit with remorse, regret, and guilt. Approval for filming from the Breen office was finally granted, but most begrudgingly.

  In the script, Lana, as Lily, goes to New York and becomes a highly successful fashion model. As a favor to her attorney, Jim Leversoe (Louis Calhern), she entertains Steve Harleigh (Ray Milland), the owner of a copper mine from Montana. The two fall in love, but she soon finds out that he is married. His wife, Nora (Margaret Phillips), is a paraplegic whose disability stems from an automobile accident for which her husband was responsible.

  Lily’s love for Steve grows stronger as the film progresses, until she summons the courage to confront Nora, asking her to divorce her husband. But when she encounters the disabled woman in a wheelchair, Nora is kind and polite to Lily. Seeing how totally dependent Nora is on her husband, Lily realizes that she cannot continue her affair with Steve. Leaving the apartment, she encounters him exiting from the elevator. She forces herself to inform him that their affair is over.

  In the final cut, one of Lily’s lines almost echoes the career of Lana herself. “All I want is to be somebody. All I have is myself and how I look.” She makes a decision to go on with her life with courage, even though she faces a life of loneliness.

  The new ending was a bit of a stretch for movie-goers. At the peak of her glam our and beauty, the character of Lily, a single woman on the loose in Manhattan, leaves the impression that she won’t be lonely for long.

  In A Life of Her Own, Lana and Ray Milland are supposed to play lovers, but in this publiciy still, it looks as if he wants to choke her to death. When Lana saw it, she said, “It should be the other way around. Before filming the ending, I wanted to choke him.”

  The scene depicted above does not appear in the final cut.

  Even before Lana signed to make A Life of Her Own, there was a flurry of casting, both for the director and for the film’s leading man. Originally, Vincente Minnelli—the gay director who had married Judy Garland—was assigned to helm the project. But after the many starts and stops, MGM reassigned him to direct Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor in Father of the Bride. George Cukor replaced him.

  Cary Grant had been offered the role of the leading man, but rejected it as “too downbeat for me.” When MGM sent over George Murphy as a replacement for Grant, Cukor rejected him, saying, “Ronald Reagan’s best friend is just too wholesome a guy to play an adulterer cheating on his crippled wife.”

  Howard Keel was selected next. Cukor, who was fully aware that Lana had previously sustained an affair with him, was physically attracted to the big, macho actor himself. But at the last minute, MGM withdrew him, fearing that the role was too dark for a star the studio was promoting as Frank Butler in Annie Get Your Gun.

  MGM then offered the role to the British actor, James Mason, who was believable as an adulterer. He was attractive, suave, and had a melodious voice. “I know how to play an adulterer,” he told Cukor. “I frequently cheat on my wife.”

  Despite Mason’s acceptance of the role, he dropped out a week before shooting began. “I decided that no one would believe me as a Montana man, the owner of a copper mine. I’m too elegant for that. Get someone else.”

  Over Cukor’s objection, MGM then designated Wendell Corey as the leading man. He had launched his career in 1947 as Burt Lancaster’s closeted lover in Desert Fury with the lesbian actress, Lizabeth Scott. In spite of his ordinary looks, he went on to star with some of the silver screen’s leading ladies, including Joan Crawford (“He’s a dud in bed”), Margaret Sullavan (“It was like getting fucked by Henry Fonda, no great compliment”), and Barbara Stanwyck (“I could hardly stand him”).

  Forced to work with him, Lana admitted to Cukor, “Corey and I will have as much sexual chemistry on the screen as Pa Kettle and me,” a reference to character actor Percy Kilbride.

  It was not just A Life of Its Own that was having difficulties, but MGM itself. In the previous year, the studio had lost $6.5 million, and Dore Schary had been hired by the banking interests to take over production. It was rumored that Louis B. Mayer was on his way out the door.

  Lana was nervous about meeting Schary, because in reference to her, he had told his aides, “I don’t like that kind of popcorn blonde.”

  The first time she met Schary, she had loudly protested Corey’s candidacy as her leading man. He listened for only a few moments before ignoring her plea. Unlike Mayer, Schary did not pay much attention to her concerns.

  After her meeting with him, Lana grew more concerned about her career, and had a frank talk with Cukor one night when she visited his home. She’d become alarmed when columnists started referring to Marilyn Monroe as “the new Lana Turner” after her casting in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve.

  Cukor advised her that she could still have some big box office triumphs in the 1950s “and perhaps beyond, depending on the scripts.” She listened carefully. Although he’d been replaced as director of Gone With the Wind (1939), he’d made such screen classics as Dinner at Eight (1933) with Jean Harlow; The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Katharine Hepburn; and Gaslight (1944) with Ingrid Bergman. He also beat out some stiff competition to help Judy Holliday prepare for her role in Born Yesterday (1950), a part that Lana had wanted.

  From the beginning, Lana did not like her leading man, Wendell Corey. After two days, she told Cukor, “Making love to Corey is like coming on to a stern Presbyterian deacon. I don’t understand why he’s even considered a leading man. Would you, a self-respecting homosexual, go to bed with him?”

  Cukor told her he would not.

  After a week of shooting, Cukor, Corey, and Lana sat through the rushes. Her opinion of him was confirmed.

  Even Corey himself told them, “I’m completely wrong for this role. Before we shoot anymore, I want out.”

  The news was flashed to Mayer, who called executives at Paramount, which had lent the actor. A truce was worked out that morning. By 3PM, Mayer had personally phoned the agent of Ray Milland, who was out of work at the moment. “Do you want to be Lana Turner’s leading man in an illicit love story?” the agent asked the actor.

  “I’ve had worse jobs,” Milland answered, sarcastically. “I’ll take the god damn thing without even seeing the script.”

  Reporters converged around Lana and asked her why Corey had bolted. “I don’t know,” she answered. “If being a movie star doesn’t work out for him, he can always go back to selling washing machines in a department store. His ancestors are very impressive: John Adams and John Quincy Adams.”

  ***

  In the late 1940s, when Ray Milland walked onto an MGM set to co-star with Lana in A Life of Her Own, he was at the pinnacle of his career, having already won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend (1945).

  As the highest-paid actor at Paramount, he would have a long career, co-starring with other big name actresses who included Gene Tierney, Marlene Dietrich, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, Hedy Lamarr, and Loretta Young.

  In the future, he would fall in love with one of his co-stars, Grace Kelly, during the filming of Dial M for Murder (1954). Their romance would threaten his long-enduring marriage to Muriel Weber, whom he had wed in 1932. He would ask her for a divorce until she reminded him that all the property they shared was in her name.

  Back on the set the following Monday, Lana began to meet and work with the film’s strong supporting cast, many of whom she knew.

  Cast as her roommate, the fading model Mary Ashlon, Ann Dvorak had reached her peak in the Pre-Code 1930s. Groomed as a dramatic actress sponsored by Howard Hughes, she had previously c
o-starred with Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Muni, Spencer Tracy, Joan Blondell, and James Cagney.

  She told Lana, “Like the character I’m interpreting, it’s about time for me to make a graceful exit from the screen.” In the year that followed the release of A Life of Her Own, Dvorak retired from movies.

  Helen Rose was assigned to design Lana’s super-glam wardrobe in a style that suited her character’s definition as a Manhattan model. Quite recently, she’d designed the wedding gown of Elizabeth Taylor for her marriage to Nicky Hilton, and she was also designing Taylor’s wardrobe for Father of the Bride. She’d soon be creating Lana’s wardrobe for The Bad and the Beautiful.

  Margaret Phillips delivered a sympathetic, convincing performance as Steve’s pathetic, wheelchair-bound wife. The Welsh-born actress had trained at the Actors Studio, and had rehearsed with such actors as Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.

  In a party sequence, Lana danced with Hermes Pan, Fred Astaire’s choreographic collaborator in those 1930s movie musicals with Ginger Rogers. He’d previously appeared on film with both Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth in dancing sequences.

  Barry Sullivan was cast as Lee Gorrance, an advertising executive whose romantic advances are spurned by Lana in the film. She had come close to working with him in Three Guys Named Mike, but the role she’d wanted was ultimately assigned to Jane Wyman. They would soon be working together in her next film, Mr. Imperium, and eventually, he’d play opposite her in The Bad and the Beautiful.

  After his performances in A Life of Her Own were filmed, he told Lana that he’d been cast in The Story of a Divorce (later re-titled Payment on Demand; 1951) with Bette Davis, and then suggested, “I didn’t get much of a love scene with you on screen. How about something off-screen?”

  “Give me a raincheck, doll,” she answered. “As for Miss Davis, I suggest you wear a jockstrap made of steel. She castrates her leading men.”

  As Lana’s lawyer, Louis Calhern delivered his usual stellar performance. He’d already been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (1950). “Louis was a dear old thing,” Lana said. “He’d made his first film when dinosaurs roamed the earth.” She noticed that his health was declining. In 1956, he made his last film, High Society, with Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, a remake of Katharine Hepburn’s The Philadelphia Story. He died shortly thereafter.

  In the beginning, Lana and Ray Milland got along, and he entertained her between takes with stories of his early days in films. He revealed that when he’d made The Jungle Princess (1936) with Dorothy Lamour, “I indulged in water sports. We were in this swimming pool together, and the water was very cold. Somehow, it caused me to start to urinate, and soon, the Sarong Girl was enveloped in a sea of yellow piss.”

  That same year, he’d filmed Beau Geste, “with this beast of a man, Brian Don-levy, whom I detested, along with the rest of the crew. During a fencing sequence, I deliberately nicked his unpadded penis with the tip of my sword. He was rushed to the hospital, where it was discovered that I’d halfway circumsized him. Doctors competed the rest of the operation. Donlevy emerged from the hospital with a bandaged penis. He’d become a Jew overnight.”

  Milland also admitted that he’d suffered a permanent loss of a lot of his hair during the filming of Reap the Wild Wind (1942). “My character was supposed to have curly hair. Those shitheads in makeup gave me all these women’s permanents and used electric curlers. The result left me with a receding hairline.”

  “In one of my early films, the makeup men destroyed my eyebrows,” she admitted.

  As for their love scenes, Lana agreed with the assessment of Marlene Dietrich. During the making of The Golden Earrings in 1947, she claimed that “Milland has a hygiene problem. He stank!”

  As for whether or not she had sex with Milland, Lana, when asked by Cukor, said, “Forget it. The closest we came to getting physical offscreen was when he showed me this grotesque tattoo on his upper right arm. It was of a skull with a snake curled up on top of it with the tail of the reptile sticking through one of the eyes of the skull.”

  Before filming A Life of Her Own, Lana went on a strict diet to slim down. She showed she was “camera ready” when she posed for this glamorous publicity shot.

  What ultimately turned Lana against Milland was his almost constant attack on homosexuals. “He was always making nasty remarks about Cukor, Hermes Pan, Tom Ewell, and others in the cast, calling them faggots and lurid names. Once, he grabbed his crotch in front of me, telling me, ‘The bastards will never get a taste of this.’”

  She had looked at him with contempt, saying, “I’m sure they’ll survive the deprivation.”

  Eventually and off the set, as a woman who befriended homosexuals, she made a point of avoiding Milland whenever possible. In his autobiography, Wide-Eyed in Babylon, he made no mention of her, despite having described in detail his appearances with Paulette Goddard in that silly period piece, Kitty (1945).

  As a high fashion model in A Life of Her Own, Lana wore her most dazzling headress, studded with fake raindrop diamonds. Dressed like this, she would have looked more at home on the set of Ziegfeld Girl.

  Lana ultimately came to despise Milland, but she was still sorry to see how far a bigtime movie star could sink, an insight which ignited fears of her own. The last time she saw him onscreen was when he starred in The Thing With Two Heads (1972), cast as a bigot whose head was grafted onto a black man’s body.

  Although she’d eagerly looked forward to working with Cukor as her director, each of them was disappointed when they saw the final cut, agreeing that A Life of Her Own would eventually be judged as one of their weaker pictures.

  Most critics panned it, Cue magazine writing, “All the plush and polish can’t turn this gushing goo into a substantial drama.”

  One of Lana’s most consistently negative critics, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, wrote: “Two years’ absence from the movies obviously didn’t improve Lana Turner’s talents as an actress, or her studio’s regard for what she can do.”

  Variety reported, “The soap opera plotting has been polished to a certain extent, the playing by the femme cast members is topnotch, and the direction aids them, but it is still a true confession type of yarn concerned with a big city romance between a married man and a beautiful model. Script is spotted with feeling and character and also a lot of conversation that doesn’t mean much. A decided asset is Turner’s performance.”

  After production costs were deducted, A Life of Her Own suffered a loss of about $700,000, making it the only movie of Lana’s that never paid off. She told Cukor, “I’ve got to succeed in my next picture, or they’ll throw me out of MGM!”

  In recognition of her past stardom, she was asked to put her hand and footprints into wet cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She willingly complied. Fans gathered, many of them calling for her to (obscenely) immortalize those features of her body that had earned her a label as America’s Sweater Girl. She demurred, claiming, “We must keep this event in good taste.”

  Nonetheless, columnists reminded her that Betty Grable had immortalized her leg in cement, Bob Hope his ski nose, and Monty Woolley his beard.

  In her assessment of Lana Turner, columnist Adela Rogers St. Johns articulated why Lana Turner’s legend lives on. “Lana is an exaggerated, unconventional, slightly mad, utterly enchanting creature unlike anybody else in the world, with plenty of brains and practically no sense at all. She drinks martinis and assorted beverages from 86 to 100 proof, collects elaborate négligées and embroidered nighties, loves Clark Gable movies, Palm Springs, sun-bathing, owns 250 pairs of shoes but roams her house barefooted, drives a robin’s egg blue Cadillac convertible with red leather cushions, and lives in a $100,000 mansion on three rolling acres above Sunset Boulevard with daughter Cheryl, husband Topping (whom she calls Poppa), and six TV sets. She is a success story in search of an explanation, a love s
tory in search of a happy ending, and an endless list of contradictory quotes.”

  ***

  While still a twelve-year-old schoolgirl, Norma Jeane Baker (also known as Marilyn Monroe), had begun to menstruate, and her breasts had developed rapidly.

  She was mesmerized when she went to see Lana Turner in her screen debut, They Won’t Forget. She both envied and was jealous when Lana, in a form-fitting sweater, walked down the street with her breasts the focus of the camera. Norma Jeane wanted to be like her, especially when Lana became known across America as “The Sweater Girl.”

  Inspired by young Lana, Norma Jeane transformed a red cardigan into a more form-fitting garment. She removed all her underclothing and wore only the sweater, buttoning it in back in ways that made it tighter in front so that it would emphasize the size and shape of her breasts. She described the cardigan as, “my magic sweater. I was a budding Lana Turner.”

  Wearing that sweater during her first year at Emerson School in Los Angeles, she was avidly pursued by older teenaged boys.

  After that, Norma Jeane never missed a Lana Turner movie. Her favorite for glamour alone was Ziegfeld Girl, although she was also thrilled by Lana’s love scenes with Robert Taylor in Johnny Eager and by Clark Gable in Somewhere I’ll Find You. Often, she’d schedule her arrival at a movie house for the first screening of a Lana Turner movie and remain there until that day’s last show, surviving on a coke and a bag of popcorn.

  Later, when Norma Jeane began to model, photographers didn’t like her curly hair, suggesting that she should style it smoothly like Lana Turner, whose coiffure was then in vogue.

  When she was hired to pose for a shampoo ad, the representative for the product suggested that she dye her hair blonde and have it straightened to more closely resemble Lana Turner’s.

  Norma Jeane, who needed the money from the modeling gig, straightened and dyed her hair accordingly. In the aftermath, she looked more like Lana than ever.