Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  Without hesitation, she rejected the role, which went instead to Susan Hayward, which caused a rift in their long-standing friendship. Bette Davis was cast in a role based on Mildred, with Joey Heatherton tackling the role inspired by Cheryl Crane.

  While Lana was in Mexico shooting The Big Cube, Eaton, back in Hollywood, was negotiating with Robbins about a TV series. He offered to get Eaton hired as part of the production staff if he could convince his wife to play the lead in the series, that of a troubled married woman in the habit of going from bed to bed.

  The first Sunday after her return from Mexico to Malibu, Eaton invited Lana to the Bel Air Country Club, where he introduced her to Robbins. She had extended her hand, but snatched it back at once when she heard his name. “It was as if I’d touched a snake.”

  Ironically, Robbins had moved into the office she’d originally rented for Eaton in the 6000 Sunset Building. Eaton, in contrast, had been moved into a small cubbyhole.

  Lana and Eaton had a violent argument that night. “How could you do that to me?” she asked Eaton. “You know what pain Robbins has caused Cheryl and me?”

  Days later, her new agent, Sam Kamens at William Morris, approached her about appearing in a television series. With the scarcity of movie roles, she had seriously considered a move to TV for some time. But when Kamens told her Robbins was the writer behind the series, she was furious.

  Nonetheless, Kamens finally convinced her to consider the role, which would be filmed on the French Riviera, among other locales, as part of twenty-six teleplays running for an hour each.

  “Lana, in Hollywood, you’ve got to let bygones be bygones,” Kamen told her. “You, of all people, known that everybody betrays everybody out here.”

  Both her agent and Eaton finally convinced her to sign for the role, which would be entitled The Survivors. “A survivor, that’s what I am, all right!”

  To launch the series, Robbins himself hosted a lavish bash at The Bistro in Hollywood. Although Lana would always detest him, she was friendly to the novelist on the surface.

  Invitations had been extended to columnists and other members of the Hollywood elite. They read, “If you’re interested in booze, broads, and the better things of life, why not join Lana Turner and George Hamilton, stars of our new ABC-Universal television show, The Survivors, in an old-fashioned drink-up upstairs at The Bistro?”

  Lana dazzled by appearing in a black strapless chiffon, her bosom covered with black ostrich feathers on which she’d pinned eight diamond brooches and pins. Her blonde hair was page-boy style.

  Although Robbins was highly paid for his scenario, his plot was never used by Universal, which dismissed it as “too blatantly sexual.” In one scene of his proposed scenario, Lana’s lover is depicted positioning himself down under the sheets to perform cunnilingus on her, the camera concentrating on her impassioned facial expression as she enjoys a powerful orgasm.

  When the British edition of Where Love Has Gone came out, its publishers fully realized that its authorship by Harold Robbins was more important than the book’s title.

  Its publishers also understood that cover art depicting a hot male stripping down could sell as many books—perhaps more—than a traditional depiction of a woman on the cover.

  As it turned out, Robbins would not write that series. He was too busy working on another exploitative novel with the intention of co-opting it into a new and unrelated series, tentatively entitled For the Survivors. He’d written only a nine-page synopsis, for which he’d been paid one million dollars, a historic first for a television series.

  ***

  For her contribution to The Survivors, ABC-Universal agreed to pay Lana $12, 500 a week. Along with Eaton, she was flown to Nice on the French Riviera. From there, they were driven in a limousine to Cannes. The next day, she was introduced to her director, William Frye, who had produced General Electric Theater, a weekly half-hour anthology TV series hosted by Ronald Reagan.

  Frye introduced her to her fellow cast members. She needed no introduction to her co-star, George Hamilton, since they had previously appeared together in the movie, By Love Possessed.

  Lana would play Tracy Carlisle Hastings, the daughter of a banking tycoon, as portrayed by veteran actor Ralph Bellamy. She would be the mother of Jan-Michael Vincent, and Hamilton would be her half-brother. Rosanno Brazzi played the father of her illegitimate son. Her estranged husband was acted by Kevin McCarthy, with Louis Hayward cast as her uncle.

  Ultimately, the family gets involved with South American revolutionaries.

  Beginning the first week, the filming was a disaster. Lana exploded when she learned that Hamilton was not only getting paid $17,500 a week, but would get star billing over her. Frye explained that he was more of a name than she was because of all the publicity he’d received while dating the daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

  Hamilton claimed that Lana on two different occasions threatened suicide “because I was getting more money than she was. Every day, she tried to banter my self-esteem. She picked on me mercilessly, typically accusing me of trying to up-stage her by wearing a brightly colored coral tie, which had been given to me by the costume designer.”

  At one point, Robbins, with the almost universal understanding that his lavish yacht was conspicuously docked in the harbor, showed up. According to Hamilton, “I found him looking more like a bookie than a best-selling author. He wore a flowered hat, big collars, and more chains than a sommelier.”

  Lana with her two leading men, George Hamilton (standing) and Kevin McCarthy, in the ill-fated TV series, The Survivors.

  “It was a question of which actor I disliked the most,” Lana said.

  Lana complained constantly to Frye. New writers came and went, each of them tinkering, adding to, or tearing apart the scripts. Some days, at the end of filming, she was assigned ten pages to frantically memorize. The next morning, she’d be handed an entirely different script.

  Totally fed up, Frye became tired of her complaining and called her a bitch in front of the cast and crew. She slapped his face, and he slapped her back. In a rage, she took the afternoon off, secluding herself in her dressing room and applying an ice pack to her face.

  The next day, she went to the Cannes Yacht Club for lunch. There, she discovered Frye. She walked over to his table to continue their argument. Tensions escalated, and she became so angered this time that she punched him in the face. He rose to his feet and punched her right back, knocking her down onto the floor.

  Back in her dressing room, she called executives at Universal, demanding that Frye be fired for attacking her.

  Lana is depicted here with her on-screen son, Jan-Michael Vincent.

  “I think the series would have been a hit if the writers had made him my young lover instead of my son. It would have been hotter.”

  He was immediately dismissed, and Grant Tinker—the husband of Mary Tyler Moore and, from 1981 to 1986, the Chairman of NBC—was flown to the Riviera to assume temporary command. After two days on location, he surmised that The Survivors was a “turkey.”

  The studio rescued him by sending in director Walter Doniger, who had piloted the TV series based on Peyton Place.

  In the meantime, Eaton claimed, “I was squeezed out of all decisions.” With nothing to do, he began to disappear during the course of workdays. Lana claimed, “He was whooping it up with his new French female chums.”

  She said, “In the beginning of the shoot, the cast hated each other. We ended up merely disliking each other.”

  Lana feuded with the noted fashion designer, Luis Estevez, claiming that his wardrobe made her look “too matronly.” She succeeded in getting him fired, too. He told columnist Joyce Haber, “I was kind to Miss Turner. I should have been awarded the Croix de Guerre.”

  She also feuded with Kevin McCarthy, cast as her husband. She told him, “I’ve worked with the great leading men of Hollywood. You are not one of them.” She ordered the director to curtail her scenes with h
im, suggesting “We should get a divorce so he won’t be in any more of the series.”

  She and Eaton occupied the same two-bedroom hotel suite, but they came and went at different hours. On the plane back to Los Angeles, they sat in different seats, each of them in First Class, but far away from the other.

  Lana had already announced, “My marriage to Eaton is over.”

  As it turned out, most of the episodes shot on the Riviera ended up on the junk heap.

  Shooting resumed in Hollywood on fifteen episodes. The series would never be completed.

  In August, one month before The Survivors had its debut on ABC-TV, an anonymous ad appeared in Daily Variety. It read: “Congratulations to ABC-TV for coming up with the new series, The Survivors, starring $8 million and no sense.”

  As predicted, the series was viciously panned by critics, Lana receiving some of her worst reviews. She called it, “The revenge of Harold Robbins on me.”

  William Greeley, writing for Variety, said, “This meller about the jet set turned into an old-fashioned soap opera about a banking family. There was the taint of a novel in the Machiavellian twists of character and plot, but it finally boils down to suds with the gambits of daytime drama working overtime. The old debbil pregnancy, etc.”

  A midnight call came in for Lana from Stan Kamen, her agent, letting her know she’d been fired.

  Because of clauses within his contract, Hamilton, however, was retained in a downsized TV production that was renamed Paris 7000. It tried for ratings using stars past their prime, such as Anne Baxter.

  As Hamilton said, “That series, like The Survivors, went nowhere.”

  ***

  Back in Hollywood, Lana announced to the press that she was divorcing Robert Eaton. At her divorce hearing on April 1, 1969, she testified, “I found myself living under almost unbearable anxiety and nervous tension, which was beginning to tell on me, as reflected in the strained look on my face and in my actions. All this was seriously damaging my work as an actress.”

  The judge listened to her testimony and granted her a default decree. At last, she was freed of Husband No. 6.

  She appeared on The Today Show and was interviewed by Bryant Gumbel. “Eaton was charming, handsome, and he adored me, carrying me around on a satin pillow. He wooed me, really introduced me to beautiful physical love that I had never known before.” She’d never been so candid on TV.

  To Virginia Grey, she confessed, “It was the best sex I ever had, and, as you know, darling, I’ve had the best of ‘em.”

  After the divorce, she continued to live in Malibu until one day a real estate developer knocked on her door and offered her $350,000 for the property. Even though she was given only thirty days to vacate, she accepted. Hurriedly, she moved into a rented home on Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills.

  She vowed, “I will never make another movie. I will never appear in another television series. And I will never marry again.”

  As the weeks quickly passed, she broke all three of those vows.

  ***

  In the meantime, the divorced Eaton was pounding out a sensationalized roman-à-clef, entitled The Body Brokers, based on his marriage to Lana.

  Its publisher announced that it was a complete work of fiction, not based on the life of any living person. Readers, however, knew differently.

  Marla Jordan, the leading character in the novel, was a fading movie actress, who had been discovered at a soda fountain in Hollywood when she was seventeen. In her movie debut, she showed off her bouncing breasts in a tight sweater.

  As Eaton rather artlessly phrased it in his novel, Marla used her “tits and cunt” to advance herself as a movie queen. She also had a teenage daughter and took a young lover. At one point, she demanded that he seduce both of them—mother and daughter—at the same time. When he refuses, she pushes him off a steep cliff.

  Marla was also depicted as a boozer, who had to work for hours before she could appear in public. Not only that, but she was depicted as a “switch hitter,” who had once been caught by a popular male vocalist in a sexually compromising position with another Hollywood beauty queen.

  Readers quickly identified those veiled references as Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner.

  In promoting his novel to columnist Sheilah Graham, Eaton told her, “I truly believe there’s not a man in the world who can handle marriage to a movie star—the old-time film star. The mere fact of all the divorces proves my point.”

  He seemed aware that Lana had a large gay cult following, and he called The Advocate, the nation’s most widely circulated GLBT magazine, to set up an interview.

  The writer described the encounter. “The super stud knew how to dress for the part. He appeared in tight white pants, and it was obvious he wore no jockey shorts. He slid back in his chair, making his mighty bulge even more obvious. There was meat there for the poor.”

  “Every other word that came out of his mouth was ‘fucking. Fuck Harold Robbins. Fuck this one, fuck that one.’ He claimed he attended his first orgy at the age of twelve, where he was the prime attraction. He said he’d been broken into sex by his babysitter, who demanded he wear a sailor hat.”

  The writer from The Advocate concluded, “Even now, close to forty, Robert Eaton could command a very good price. Maybe a Rolls-Royce, if he were being kept. Perhaps a Caddy, or an Impala for sure.”

  ***

  In Hollywood, The Candy Store was a popular, sexually liberated disco that was packed every night, luring dancers into its darkened premises with its strobe lighting and loud music. To Lana, it seemed that all Hollywood had “gone hippie,” especially along the Sunset Strip. Although she wasn’t ready to live the rest of her life as a recluse, she felt isolated from “the scene,”.

  One night, she ventured alone into The Candy Store. From her position within the roiling crowd, she focused her eyes on the bar, where, to her dismay, she saw her divorced husband, Robert Eaton, talking to a seductive brunette who looked like Elaine Stewart, the starlet who had stolen Kirk Douglas from her in The Bad and the Beautiful.

  Suddenly, a handsome man in a white suit emerged from the crowd and asked her to dance. He had come to her rescue. About the last thing she wanted was for Eaton to discover her wandering dateless at The Candy Store.

  In the smoke-filled disco, the stranger took her into his arms and held her close to his body. With little room to maneuver, they were encircled by gyrating dancers. Rescuing her again at one point, he guided her over to a distant table. There, he introduced himself as Ronald Dante. Then he asked, “And who might my dance partner be?”

  Surprised that he did not know who she was, she answered, “I’m Lana Top-ping,” giving the surname of her third husband.

  As they talked, she learned that he was a hypnotist who performed his act in night clubs. She said she was a heavy smoker, and that he might hypnotize her so she could break the habit. Then she suggested that he might visit her sometime, and she gave him her phone number.

  He telephoned her two days later, and asked if he could come by. “It was unlike any date I’d ever had. “I thought Marlon Brando in The Wild One had arrived on my doorstep. He had a persuasive voice and strange, compelling eyes.”

  As the venue for their first date, he rode into her driveway on a motorcycle wearing a leather jacket. He invited her to get on, holding onto his back as he roared off, speeding through the hills above Malibu. That led to moonlit walks along the beach. He even taught her how to fly a kite.

  A new Lana emerged, not accessorized with ostrich feathers and satin gowns, but an updated version wearing cowgirl boots, fringed leather jackets, and designer blue jeans.

  Only weeks before, she’d told syndicated columnist Shirley Eder, “There is no new romance in my life, and I suspect there will never be again. Six husbands are enough for anyone, except Zsa Zsa Gabor. She once told me, ‘A woman can’t have too many husbands.’ I want to be free as a bird.”

  “I was ripe for it when Ronald Dante came into my li
fe,” Lana said. “I also fell for a good snow job and then later got kicked in the teeth. He seemed to be my salvation. It turned out worse than the Inferno. He would have charmed a bird out of a tree. So would a snake.”

  Dante soon learned who Lana Turner was, although he had never seen one of her movies. One afternoon, she invited him to watch Madame X. As he remembered it, “She cried through most of the picture.”

  She phoned Virginia Grey: “I’m in love again. A young man named Ronald Dante, a hypnotist who appears in night clubs. Maybe he’s put me in a hypnotic trance, I don’t know. I know I’m in love when he holds me in his arms at night. When I wake up, he’s still there, sleeping peacefully by my side. It’s 5AM, and I have to rush to Universal to be made up.”

  “I can’t warn you enough,” Grey answered. “He sounds like trouble. Don’t get too involved. It’s safer to use this new male escort service that’s opened. Very professional. Handsome, well-hung young men, some of whom look like Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, or Robert Taylor. Why don’t you call them when you get the urge? A hundred dollars and they’re out the door when you finish with them.”

  “Dear, that’s not for me. I know for many women it is. But I want romance with a capital R.”

  “Believe it or not, on the doorstep of the big 5-0, I’m still a romantic. Insecure, lonely, looking for love. I’m ripe for one final chance at happiness when the right man comes into my life. Even though I had vowed never to remarry, perhaps I was wrong.”

  Dante left her for several days as he had a night club act to perform in Phoenix. He deliberately opted not to phone her during that interim, hoping that “absence would make the heart grow fonder.” The ploy worked. She eagerly welcomed him back to Beverly Hills into her warm embrace and hot bed.

  Two nights later, he proposed that they elope to Las Vegas. “I’m game,” she said, although she didn’t really want to marry him.