Ever since she’d received death threats and calls that Cheryl would be kidnapped, she’d gone to Greg Bautzer, who had arranged for her to purchase a revolver. The gun made her extremely nervous, and she could never imagine herself using the weapon to kill anyone. She had placed it in her chest of drawers, concealed amid her lingerie.
As she later told Armstrong, “I went insane, at least temporarily. I went to that drawer, took out the revolver, and approached Lex, who was still sound asleep. I pointed the gun at his head. I wanted that perverted brain of his to explode in the blast of the bullet’s impact.”
“My whole life flashed in front of me as I stood there with that revolver pointed at the magnificent head of Lex Barker,” she told Armstrong. “Suddenly, very gradually, sanity returned. I still had the rage, but not the desire to kill.”
“I didn’t want to destroy my career and spend the rest of my life in prison, fighting off lesbians.”
She later said she’d been horrified when she’d seen the lurid film noir, Caged (1950), starring Eleanor Parker, a brutal story of women imprisoned.
She also realized that if she killed Barker, all the tawdry stories about his repeated rapes of her daughter would eventually be exposed. As she told Virginia Grey, “Cheryl’s life would be ruined forever. Barker’s arrest and imprisonment would be one of the biggest Hollywood scandals in years.”
“I knew then that I was not going to kill him.” She returned to the living room, and there she sat, smoking until dawn. The TV set had been left on, its “snow” finally reverting to the morning news. At least stories about her weren’t leading off the dawn roundup of news. She could just imagine the lurid headlines: LANA TURNER ARRESTED FOR THE MURDER OF TARZAN.
Finally, Barker woke up and headed downstairs, where he confronted her. “What in hell is going on?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you come to bed?”
Then, as if sensing what had happened, he asked, “Has that Cheryl been telling you lies? You can’t believe a word out of her mouth.”
“I’m giving you twenty minutes to get out of my house” she demanded. “And take Pulco with you. If you’re not out, I’m phoning the police to arrest you.”
Without arguing, he seemed to accept the fact that their marriage had just ended. He rushed upstairs, got dressed, and was out the door with his dog. He’d later send someone to retrieve his clothing and other possessions, including his gym equipment.
***
After her sleepless night, Lana climbed grimly into her Cadillac and drove over to Mildred’s, where she encountered her nervous, distraught daughter. Putting her into the car, she headed in silence to the medical office of Dr. R.H. Fagin.
In a voice that was barely a whisper, she explained how her husband had sexually assaulted her daughter. He said very little until after he’d given Cheryl her first pelvic examination. She looked so very young and so very frightened.
From inside the examination room, both Cheryl and Dr. Fagin could hear Lana, out in the waiting room, sobbing. Later, she was called in to hear the doctor’s report.
“There are signs of a violent penetration,” he said. “She had been so stretched, she should have had stitches. There’s no doubt that she’s been raped, perhaps repeatedly. The girl is telling the truth. You must believe her and protect her from any future assault. She might need psychiatric help.”
During the drive back home, Lana told her that she was going to report what had happened to Stephen Crane. He was in St. John’s Hospital at the time, recovering from brain surgery. After that car crash in Paris, he had had a steel plate inserted and screwed into his skull by French doctors. During the months after that, he had suffered occasional fainting spells and migraines that lasted for days.
At the hospital, he was coherent. When Lana told him what had happened to his daughter, he flew into a rage, threatening to kill Barker. But finally, after she assured him that Cheryl would never have to confront Barker again, he settled down. Both of them agreed that for the sake of Cheryl, scandal must be avoided.
Through no fault of her own, Lana wasn’t able to keep her promise about Cheryl never having to see Barker again. The following Monday, she had drivenher daughter to a dental appointment in Westwood. When it was over, she returned to her Cadillac. Her daughter was seated in the passenger seat beside her.
Suddenly, through the open front window on the driver’s side, a strong, muscular hand and arm reached in to clutch her own delicate hand as it rested on the steering wheel.
That hand and arm belonged to Lex Barker.
In one of those terrible coincidences, he was on his way to an appointment in the same medical building as Cheryl’s dentist, and had just emerged from his own car, now parked in the same lot. He had spotted her.
“Lana, let’s talk” he shouted. “Your daughter over there is a liar. A god damn liar I never touched her”
Cheryl immediately panicked, and Lana screamed, “Let go of my arm”
“You’re a liar” he shouted, in a rage, at Cheryl. “Tell your mother it never happened. I’ve warned you”
“I want you to take me back,” he pleaded with Lana. “We’ll fight this thing together.”
“Get the hell away from us,” she yelled at him. “And stay away. I never want to see you again. I’m throwing all your stuff out on the front yard. I’ll have a security guard stationed at the front door.”
Then she started the ignition, shifting the gears into reverse, with the intention of backing up and driving out of the parking lot. “I’m getting out of here” she called out.
“LIES LIES LIES” he kept shouting.
“Let GO” she threatened, “or I’ll run over you”
Then, after backing out of her parking spot, she stepped on the accelerator, even though he was still holding onto the door of her car. She dragged him along for about ten feet before he lost his grip on the door and collapsed onto the asphalt.
Out on the street, she accelerated, looking back one final time. That was the last time she’d ever see Lex Barker.
***
After he and Lana broke up, newspapers carried the story of their impending divorce. “Our careers pulled us in different directions,” Lana told the press. “We went our separate ways. I wish him well in his future career and life choices.”
Her petition for a divorce was granted in 1958. She told the judge, “He has an uncontrollable temper, which he showed to me many times. Once at the breakfast table, he slapped my face. He used profane language to me.”
“During my marriage to Mr. Barker, I was very upset and agitated. It was very hard for me to be his wife and fulfill my professional obligations.”
Outside the courthouse, she had a different, more emphatic ring to her voice when she told a reporter, “Apeman belongs back in the jungle, hiding out in trees.”
Barker discussed his marital breakup with a reporter in Rome. “Our marriage would have worked out were it not for her daughter telling lies about me. Cheryl Crane is responsible for our splitting up.”
***
[Whatever became of Lex Barker? Many of his fans wanted to know.
He gained worldwide exposure when he appeared in a short but compelling role as Anita Ekberg’s fiancé in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960). While filming, he resumed his affair with that Swedish star.
When demand for his services dried up in Hollywood, Barker moved to Germany to make films there, and also to make recordings. His two most popular singles became “Ich bin morgen auf dem Weg zu dir” (“I’ll be on the Way to You Tomorrow”) and “Mädchen in Samt un Seide” (“The Girl in Silk and Velvet”).
He made thirteen movies in German, a language he spoke fluently, based on the novels of the German author, Karl May (1842-1912).
He would marry two more times, the first to Irene Labhart, a Swiss actress with whom he had a son. She died of leukemia in 1962.
He then married María del Carmen (“Tita”) Rosario Soledad Cervera y Fernández de la Guerra (her f
irst marriage) in 1965. She’d been voted Miss Spain of 1962. She filed for divorce in 1972 and later married the billionaire art collector, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, influencing to some degree his choice to donate many of the priceless paintings in his legendary art collection to museums in Spain.
At the time of Barker’s death in 1973, he was living with his fiancée, the talented actress Karen Kondazian. On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, he collapsed on the sidewalk on the way to meet her and died instantly. He was cremated at the age of 54.
When Lana was told of his death, she asked “Why did it take him so long to die?”]
***
Lana not only ended a marriage in 1958, but lost “the love of my life,” Tyrone Power, too. She was vacationing in Acapulco in November of that year when the owner of the Villa Vera, her friend, Teddy Stauffer, phoned with bad news: “Ty Power is dead. A heart attack.”
She remembered “going numb.” Even though it had been a decade since they had parted, “I wasn’t prepared to hear something so final. I didn’t cry: My tears had been shed years before when he closed the door on me. Now it was truly closed forever. More men were to come in my tomorrows, but none like Ty. He was special, he was the beautiful, sensitive man who broke my heart.”
Stauffer listened to her lament of a long-lost love. At the time of his death, Power was married to Deborah Ann Minardos. In Spain, he’d been filming Solomon and Sheba with Gina Lollobrigida. He was stricken by a massive heart attack while filming a dueling scene with his frequent co-star and sometimes lover, the bisexual George Sanders, who had once been married to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Like so many men Lana knew, either lovers or fellow actors, Power died young at the age of 44.
On hearing news of his death, Henry Fonda said, “His heart attack was probably caused by his fellow bisexual, George Sanders, wearing him out in the sack as well as on the set.”
Sanders was enraged when he heard that, and delivered blistering comments about Fonda’s own gay past, especially with his best friend and former roommate, James Stewart.
***
For a 1958 release from Universal-International, Lana signed on as a freelance actress to star in The Lady Takes a Flyer. Her leading man would be the handsome, masculine, Jeff Chandler, with Jack Arnold directing and William Alland producing.
The combination of players seemed a good match, the tall, virile, iron-jawed Chandler, the epitome of 1950s screen vitality, in love with the petite, delicate, short, and ultra-feminine blonde goddess.
Universal executives thought they had paired a winning team, capable of sexual chemistry on the screen. They toyed with the idea of a series of Turner/Chandler movies with “sparring of the sexes” plots. A hope was expressed that these movies might be Universal’s answer to those 1940 hit films starring Lana with Clark Gable.
From its inception, its title was fluid, beginning with Pilots for Hire. That was later altered to Lion in the Sky, followed two weeks later by Wild and Wonderful. Universal finally decided The Lady Takes a Flyer might accurately describe the plot. Shooting began in April of 1957.
In the film, Chandler starred as a daredevil pilot, Mike Dandridge, who establishes a passenger and freight-hauling business with Al Reynolds (Richard Denning), his pal from his flight school days. Mike meets Maggie Colby (Lana, cast as the lady flyer), an unusual occupation for women in the early 1950s.
Mike and Maggie become attracted to each other during a long intercontinental flight to Japan, and eventually they fall in love. At their wedding, Al is best man before he leaves the company to join the U.S. Air Force.
When Maggie becomes pregnant, she settled down to home and hearth to rear her child and to be Mike’s housewife during his infrequent moments between flights. She begins to suspect that he’s romantically involved with Nikki Taylor (Andra Martin), a flirtatious colleague and pilot.
Eventually, Maggie opts to resume her career as a pilot, leaving Mike to tend to their baby. Complications invariably follow before a “period of adjustment” concludes, amicably, between the male and female pilots.
Lana worked smoothly with her director, Jack Arnold, a New Englander known for his science fiction movies. He had only recently released It Came From Outer Space (1953).
Arnold’s main collaborator at Universal was the producer of The Lady Takes a Flyer, William Alland. He had just produced Revenge of the Creature (1953), which marked Clint Eastwood’s film debut.
Lana asked to see the first rushes of her newest film, but seemed disappointed. She told Arnold, “I’m not Amelia Earhart, not even Rosalind Russell impersonating Earhart in Flight for Freedom (1943).
During the shoot, Lana, since having evicted Barker from her life, was a free agent again, not only as an actress booted out of MGM, but as a woman on the prowl. She began to lead a promiscuous life evocative of her early Hollywood days in the ‘40s. The Lady Takes a Flyer offered many possibilities for seduction, not just with Chandler, but with actors Chuck Connors and Richard Denning, too. She decided to make a play for Connors first.
***
Cast as Frank Henshaw, Alan Hale, Jr., was privy to Lana’s off-screen flirtation. The son of character actor Alan Hale, Sr., he had worked with Lana before in such pictures as The Sea Chase with John Wayne.
“All the gals—and half the guys, at least the gay ones—were after Chuck. He stood 6’6”, and was Lana’s tallest conquest, or so she said.”
A former basketball and baseball star, he had been one of America’s best athletes before becoming an actor.
Hale said, “Chuck was a handsome, blonde-haired stud, a great guy, a prankster with a real sense of humor, a lot of fun to hang out with, and a dude who liked all sorts of people. He was captivated by Lana’s beauty and told me he’d never seen such a gorgeous woman in his life.”
“Once, when we were washing in a communal shower, I saw that Chuck was ‘bigger than life’ if you know what I mean. Now I know why he drove the gals crazy.”
Connors had first appeared on the screen in a gay porn film which was later shown at a New York Times Square Theater along with several other porn scenes populated with actors who later became famous. In Hollywood Blue, Connors as a sailor sodomizes a young man.
Lana getting high on love with Jeff Chandler.
He made his “official” film debut in Pat and Mike (1952), co-starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The bisexual Tracy fell for him, and George Cukor “directed” him to his casting couch every afternoon.
“Chuck might have let the gays have their fun as a means of breaking into the movies, but he sure knows his way around a woman’s body,” Lana said. “What a man”
Connors would become famous across America when he starred as a widowed homesteader in the hit TV series, The Rifleman (1958-63).
***
In contrast to Connors, Richard Denning, like his producer and director, became known for science fiction films in the 1950s. Right before meeting and seducing Lana, he had starred in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Day the World Ended (1955). In time, he would become even better-known for appearing in the hit CBS-TV crime drama, Hawaii-Five-O (1968-1980).
Del Armstrong, Lana’s makeup man and companion, was often on the set. She told him, “Richard is a real gentleman. He’s tall, he’s blonde, and he has a good body, but he doesn’t take acting too seriously. He told me he views it just as a way to take home a paycheck. As a lover, he’s the kind of man you marry, take home to introduce to dear ol’ dad, and then settle down with into a happy family life with some kids.”
She confessed, “He’s a real decent guy, and seems uncomfortable having an affair with me. Richard can return home to his wife and watch The Wolf Man and Son of Dracula.”
Her reference was to Evelyn Ankers, whom he’d married in 1942, when she was known as “The Horror Film Queen.”
Less glam but eternally perky—Lana as a lady aviator.
***
Brooklyn-born Jeff Chandler was one of Universal�
��s most popular stars of the 1950s. At an early age, his hair had turned gray, and he never dyed it. Before working with Lana, he had been seduced by Joan Crawford on the set of Female on the Beach (1955).
“Once again, that bitch got him before I did,” Lana complained to Armstrong. “Thank God she didn’t damage any of his vital parts. Everything is still in working order. She likes it rough, you know. Actually, Jeff was a schoolmate of my dear friend, Susan Hayward, and may have been the one who took her teenage cherry.”
“I didn’t know he was Jewish until he took me to bed, and I found a bit of skin missing. I hear he’s a switch hitter. He does women, but wanders down detours with the likes of Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. That bit of data came from Henry Willson, my expert on all things gay.”
***
In her memoir, The Million Dollar Mermaid, Esther Williams admitted, “I was drifting dangerously close to the kind of lifestyle at which I had cast a jaundiced eye in my early years in Hollywood, critical of the carrying on of both Lana Turner and Marlene Dietrich, among others.”
Regardless of what distractions were happening in their personal lives, Lana and Jeff Chandler made convincing lovers in The Lady Takes a Flyer.
He was hoping he’d work with her again in Return to Peyton Place, but she rejected the role.
In that same book, Williams also wrote about the end of her affair with Jeff Chandler. She was in the kitchen of his house, cooking chicken cacciatore for his dinner, and went upstairs to his bedroom when he didn’t answer her call.
“At the bedroom door, I froze and started screaming,” she wrote. “I couldn’t trust myself. It was a high-pitched scream that a woman makes when she sees a mouse. It’s a scream that has no logic—sheer, uncontrolled panic.”
She found Chandler standing in the middle of the floor with a red wig, wearing a chiffon dress and expensive high-heeled shoes, plus lots of makeup.
Lana Turner Page 69