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Lana Turner (February 8, 1921 – June 29,
1995) was an American actress famed early in her
career for tight sweaters and smoldering
sensuality and later in her career for sudsy
romance films with maximum tragedy and glamorous
gowns.

The name on her birth certificate, as she stated
in her autobiography, was Julia Jean Turner, not
Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner as many sources
claim. In any case, she was called Judy as a child
and became Lana Turner when she became an actress.
She was born in Wallace, Idaho, and died in
Century City, California. Her father was John
Virgil Turner, who was born and raised in
Hohenwald, Tennessee.  Virgil was a clerk and
gambler who was murdered when she was a child. 
Her mother was Mildred Frances Cowan. 

She was "discovered" at the age of 15 in the Top
Hat Café in Hollywood by film journalist William
R. Wilkerson, who introduced her to
actor/comedian/talent agent Zeppo Marx. 

Turner reached the height of her fame in the
1940's and 1950's. She earned the nickname the
"Sweater Girl" due to her opening scene in her
debut movie They Won't Forget, in which her
breasts bounced in her tight sweater. During WWII,
Turner became a popular pin-up girl due to her
popularity in such films such as Ziegfeld Girl,
Johnny Eager, and two films with MGM's king of the
lot: Clark Gable (the films' successes were only
heightened by gossip column rumors about a
relationship between the two). After the war,
Turner's career hit a new high with the classic
1946 film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice
co-starring John Garfield. During the 1950's,
Turner's films started to flop at the box-office,
until she starred in Vincente Minnelli's
masterpiece The Bad and the Beautiful and later
the big screen adaptation of Grace Metalious's
best-selling novel Peyton Place in which she
earned an Academy Award nomination as Best
Actress.
 

Off screen, Turner was married eight times to
seven different husbands, and had many lovers,
including a gangster named Johnny Stompanato who
was fatally stabbed by Turner's daughter, Cheryl
Crane (The killing was deemed a justifiable
homicide by coroner's inquest.)

Her husbands were bandleader Artie Shaw (1940);
actor-restaurateur Josef Stephen Crane (1942-1943,
1943-44); millionaire socialite Henry J. Topping,
Jr. (1948-52); actor Lex Barker (1953-57), whom
she divorced after her daughter Cheryl claimed
that he molested her; rancher Fred May (1960-62);
businessman Robert Eaton (1965-69); and nightclub
hypnotist Ronald Peller, a.k.a. Ronald Dante
(1969-72).

In the 1970s and 1980s|80s, Turner appeared in
several television roles, but the majority of her
final decade was spent out of the public eye. She
died in 1995 of throat cancer which was diagnosed
in 1992.

For her contribution to the motion picture
industry, Lana Turner has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame at 6241 Hollywood Blvd.

The eminent American poet Frank O'Hara wrote a
poem entitled "Lana Turner Has Collapsed" inspired
by Turner after seeing a headline about her soon
after her lover Stompanato's murder.


==Filmography==
*A Star Is Born (1937) (scenes deleted)
*They Won't Forget (1937)
*Topper (1937)
*The Great Garrick (1937)
*The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
*Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
*The Chaser (1938) (scenes deleted)
*Four's a Crowd (1938)
*Rich Man, Poor Girl (1938)
*Dramatic School (1938)
*Calling Dr. Kildare (1939)
*These Glamour Girls (1939)
*Dancing Co-Ed (1939)
*Two Girls on Broadway (1940)
*We Who Are Young (1940)
*Ziegfeld Girl (1941)
*Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
*Honky Tonk (1941)
*Johnny Eager (1942)
*Somewhere I'll Find You (1942)
*Strictly G.I. (1943) (short subject)
*The Youngest Profession (1943) (Cameo)
*Slightly Dangerous (1943)
*Show Business at War (1943) (short subject)
*Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) (cameo)
*Marriage Is a Private Affair (1944)
*Keep Your Powder Dry (1945)
*Week-End at the Waldorf (1945)
*The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
*Green Dolphin Street (1947)
*Cass Timberlane (1947)
*Homecoming (1948)
*The Three Musketeers (1948)
*A Life of Her Own (1950)
*Mr.Imperium (1951)
*The Merry Widow (1952)
*The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
*Latin Lovers (1953)
*The Flame and the Flesh (1954)
*Betrayed (1954)
*The Prodigal (1955)
*The Sea Chase (1955)
*The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)
*Diane (1956)
*Peyton Place (film)|Peyton Place (1957)
*The Lady Takes a Flyer (1958)
*Another Time, Another Place (1958)
*Imitation of Life (1959)
*Portrait in Black (1960)
*By Love Possessed (1961)
*Bachelor in Paradise (1961)
*Who's Got the Action? (1962)
*Love Has Many Faces (1965)
*Madame X (1966)
*The Big Cube (1969)
*Persecution (1974)
*Bittersweet Love (1976)
*Witches' Brew (1980)
*Thwarted (1991)
 

==External links==
* http://www.classicactresses.com/lana.html Lana
Turner at Classic Actresses
* http://www.lanaturneronline.com/ Lana Turner
Online