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Lana Turner is a Actor and Co-Producer American born on 8 february 1921 at Wallace (USA)

Lana Turner

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Birth name Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner
Nationality USA
Birth 8 february 1921 at Wallace (USA)
Death 29 june 1995 (at 74 years) at Los Angeles (USA)

Lana Turner (born Julia Jean Turner; February 8, 1921 – June 29, 1995) was an American film and television actress. Discovered in 1937 by a reporter as she sipped a soda in a Hollywood ice cream parlor and signed to a film contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at the age of 16, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget (1937), and later starred in featured roles, often as an ingenue.

During the early 1940s, she established herself as a leading actress in such films as Johnny Eager (1941), Honky Tonk (1941), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), and Somewhere I'll Find You (1942). She appeared in the 1941 horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and her reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her performance in the film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Her popularity continued through the 1950s, in such films as The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Peyton Place (1957), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Media controversy surrounded Turner in 1958 when her daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed Turner's lover Johnny Stompanato to death in their Beverly Hills home; a coroner's inquest concluded that Crane had acted in self-defense. Turner's next film, Imitation of Life (1959), proved to be one of the greatest successes of her career, but from the early 1960s, her roles were fewer. Turner spent most of the 1970s and early 1980s in semiretirement, only working occasionally. In 1982, she accepted a much publicized and lucrative recurring guest role in the television series Falcon Crest, affording the series the highest rating it ever achieved. Turner made her final film appearance in 1985, and died from throat cancer in 1995, aged 74.

Biography

Turner suffered from depression for much of her life. In her autobiography, Turner admitted that she had two abortions and also suffered three stillbirths. She said she was also an alcoholic and attempted suicide in 1951 by slitting her wrists, following the end of her fourth marriage to Bob Topping. In 1980, Turner had what she referred to as a "religious awakening" and became a devout Roman Catholic.

Relationships
Turner was well known inside Hollywood circles for dating often, changing partners often, and for never shying away from the topic of how many lovers she'd had in her lifetime. However, she claimed that sex was not important to her and that she was more of a romantic, stating: “All those years that my image on the screen as “sex goddess”—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but it’s true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I’d put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I’m not masquerading as a prude, but I’ve always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that’s wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I’m involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that’s a private matter.”

Turner habitually married, marrying eight times to seven different husbands:

Bandleader Artie Shaw (1940). Married only four months, Turner was 19 when she and Shaw eloped on their first date. A young Judy Garland, who reported she had a crush on Artie at that time, was both shocked and heartbroken. The sudden marriage was highly publicized, and there was even talk of MGM releasing her from her contract. She later referred to their stormy and verbally abusive relationship as "my college education".
Actor and restaurateur Joseph Stephen Crane (1942–1943, 1943–1944). Turner and Crane's first marriage was annulled after she discovered that Crane's previous divorce had not yet been finalized. After a brief separation (during which Crane attempted suicide), they remarried to provide for their newborn daughter, Cheryl. However, their brief second marriage barely lasted a year primarily because the two were simply not compatible. This has been variously attributed to Lana's work schedule, to Crane's own ambitions to prove himself as a businessman independent of his prominent wife, and to differences over parenting.
Millionaire socialite Henry J. Topping Jr. (1948–1952). A brother of Dan Topping, owner of the New York Yankees, and a grandson of tin-plate magnate Daniel G. Reid, "Bob" Topping proposed to Turner at the 21 Club in Los Angeles by dropping a diamond ring into her martini. The ceremony occurred three days after Topping was divorced from his third wife, actress Arline Judge, who had been previously married to his brother Dan. Although worth millions when they married, Topping suffered heavy financial losses due to poor investments and excessive gambling. The couple's marriage resulted in a church trial for the officiant because the marriage took place less than a year after Topping's divorce from Judge. Cheryl Crane writes in her memoir that her mother's wedding to Bob Topping was a beautiful, lavish affair held in the spacious Topping family mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, with all of the bells and whistles accompanying a traditional wedding. Despite the fact that both bride and groom had been married and divorced multiple times previously, Lana wore a traditional white gown, the bridesmaids wore equally beautiful gowns of Lana's choosing, and young Cheryl served as the flower girl. Crane goes on to state that she later saw this as her mother's attempt to finally have a beautiful, traditional wedding while she was still young after three failed marriages (to Artie Shaw and Steve Crane) in which the ceremonies took place before justices of the peace with Lana usually attired in a simple dress suit and heels.
Actor Lex Barker (1953–1957), whom she divorced. Cheryl Crane's memoir claims that Barker repeatedly molested and raped her, and after she informed her mother of this, they divorced.
Rancher Frederick "Fred" May (1960–1962), who was a member of the May department-store family
Robert P. Eaton (1965–1969);. A movie producer, he went on to write The Body Brokers, a behind-the-scenes look at the Hollywood movie world, featuring a character named Marla Jordan, based on Turner.
Nightclub hypnotist Ronald Pellar, also known as Ronald Dante or Dr. Dante (1969–1972). The couple met in 1969 in a Los Angeles discotheque and married that same year. After about six months of marriage, Pellar disappeared a few days after Turner had written a $35,000 check to him to help him in an investment; he used the money for other purposes. In addition, she later accused him of stealing $100,000 worth of jewelry. Dante denied that he stole from Turner and no charges were ever filed against Dante.
She later famously said, "My goal was to have one husband and seven children, but it turned out to be the other way around."

The Stompanato killing
Turner met Johnny Stompanato during the spring of 1957, shortly after ending her marriage to Barker. At first, Turner fell for Stompanato's good looks and prowess as a lover, but after she discovered his ties to the Los Angeles underworld (in particular, his association with gangster Mickey Cohen), she tried to break off the affair out of fear of bad publicity. Stompanato was not easily deterred, however, and over the course of the following year, they carried on a relationship filled with violent arguments, physical abuse, and repeated reconciliations.

In the fall of 1957, Stompanato visited Turner in England, where she was filming Another Time, Another Place (1958), co-starring Sean Connery. In her autobiography, Turner said she arranged for Stompanato's visit because she was lonely and having a difficult time filming. Their reunion was initially happy, but the two soon began fighting. Stompanato became suspicious when Turner would not allow him to visit the set and, during one fight, he choked her, causing her to miss three weeks of filming. Turner later wrote that she and her makeup man, Del Armstrong, called Scotland Yard to have Stompanato deported. Stompanato got wind of the plan and showed up on the set with a gun, threatening her and her co-star Connery, whom he warned to keep away from Turner. Connery answered by grabbing the gun out of Stompanato's hand and twisting his wrist, causing him to run off set sheepishly. Turner and Armstrong later returned with two Scotland Yard detectives to the rented house where she and Stompanato were staying. The detectives advised Stompanato to leave and escorted him out of the house and to the airport, where he boarded a plane back to the United States.

On the evening of April 4, 1958, after the Oscar telecast which she had attended without him, Turner and Stompanato began arguing heatedly in Turner's rented house at 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. Fearing her mother's life was in danger, Turner's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl, grabbed a kitchen knife and ran to Turner's defense. Many theories abound as to what actually happened, but the teenager apparently stabbed Stompanato, killing him. The murder case quickly became a media sensation. It was later deemed a justifiable homicide at a coroner's inquest, at which Turner provided dramatic testimony.

Turner also famously dated Tyrone Power for several months and she considered him to be the love of her life. In her 1982 autobiography, Turner claims to have become pregnant with Power's child, in 1948, but chose to have an abortion. While on a 1948 goodwill trip to Europe and South Africa, he fell in love with Linda Christian in Rome. Power and Christian were married on January 27, 1949.