How a miner's daughter Lana Turner became a Hollywood star and the dream of American soldiers
On the eighth of February, one of the sexiest actresses in the history of Hollywood, Lana Turner, was born. As a child, she lived in terrible poverty, and then at the age of 16 she became a successful actress, an icon of Hollywood, starred in more than 60 films, but her life itself was like a movie.
Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner (Lana's real name) was born in a small town in the U.S. state of Idaho in 1921. The father of the future star was a miner, he was engaged in the underground sale of alcohol and was killed. As a child, little Julie (that's what the girl was called) was poor, lived with her mother's friends for a while, where sometimes she was even beaten. This may have led to the development of a sadomasochistic complex in love and frequent change of partners; Lana had seven husbands. Then Turner ended up in an orphanage, as the mother did not particularly care about the fate of her daughter.
At the age of 16, Lana left the orphanage, deciding to become a dancer. In one of the nightclubs, a pretty girl was seen by producer Louis Mayer and offered her a small role in a movie. At that time, Julie already stood out with curvy forms, which she elegantly emphasized with closed sweaters.
In 1937, she played the first role of "the girl in the sweater" in the film by Mervyn Le Roy "They won't forget."Having changed her image in 1939 (then the actress dyed her hair blonde and changed her style), Turner received the nickname "Queen of Nightclubs" and public recognition.
The young actress had one distinctive feature, which later even became fashionable — painted eyebrows. For one of her early roles, Lana unsuccessfully plucked her eyebrows — subsequently, she had to "draw" them all her life.
The real fame came to Lana on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. In 1939, she played in the movie "These Glamorous Girls". Subsequently for Turner and secured the title of glamorous diva.
They say that during the war, to maintain the spirit, American soldiers most often took photos of the beautiful Lana with them to the front. At that time, the dawn of fashion for posters in the style of "pin-up girls", which the soldiers hung on the walls of the barracks, had just begun.
1946 became a landmark for Lana — she starred in one of the most famous paintings of the first half of the century, "The Postman always Rings twice", one of the classic films in the noir genre. In this tape, Turner played the main female role — the unfaithful wife of Cora Smith. Our contemporaries are more familiar with the remake of the picture of the 40s, the 1981 film starring Jessica Lang.
She often changed men. She was interested not only in bohemian men, not only actors, directors, singers. By the early 1940s, Lana was already one of the rising stars and married to jazz musician Artie Shaw. However, the marriage did not last a year, becoming a model of future unions of the actress, of which there were eight in the end, including after jazzman Artie Shaw (1940); millionaire Henry Topping (1948-1952), who proposed by dropping a diamond ring into her martini glass; actor who played Tarzan — Lex Barker (1953-1957), with whom she broke up after he began to molest her young daughter; and with hypnotist Ronald Dante (1969-1972). There were 2 more in between, with less famous, but rich people... Billionaire Stefan Crane — was the king of all restaurants in Hawaii and became husband number two and number three (she was married to him twice). He also became the father of Lana's only daughter, Cheryl Crane. "I planned to have one husband and seven children, but it turned out the opposite," the actress joked. But Lana eventually broke up with him, too.
The scandal in 1958, when her 14-year-old daughter killed her mother's lover of dubious reputation with a knife, oddly enough, added popularity to Lana Turner's subsequent films. At the same time, for the film "Peyton Place" (1957), she received her only Oscar nomination.
When the cinema stopped inviting her (at the turn of the 70s), she switched to TV, and then worked in casinos and restaurants, played in the theater, published a book of memoirs "Lana - Lady, legend, truth" (1983). Lana died in her apartment from throat cancer on June 29, 1995, having received several film awards for old achievements in her declining years. Her contribution to cinema was marked with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.