20 Startling Secrets About The Stunning Lana Turner – Who Would’ve Been 100 This Year

Lana Turner is considered the epitome of old-school Hollywood glamor. But in contrast, her private life was messy, misfortunate and, on one fateful night, even murderous. In the year that she would have turned 100, here’s a look at 20 things you may not know about the actress who, according to Madonna’s “Vogue,” always gave good face.

20. She once lived on milk and crackers

Turner’s childhood was far removed from the glitz and glamour she’d later enjoy as a Hollywood star. After losing her father at a young age, the future actress was forced to seek refuge with others while her mom worked 80-hour weeks in a beauty salon to make ends meet. And Turner wasn’t always treated particularly well.

That’s right: during her pre-teen years Turner lived with one particular family in the city of Modesto that she claims “treated her like a servant.” And her diet wasn’t exactly the healthiest, either. The Oscar nominee once recalled living on nothing but milk and cookies for several days a week.

19. She originally wanted to be a nun

It seems hard to believe now considering her pin-up reputation, but there was a time when Turner wanted to be a nun! Indeed, during her teenage years the future Hollywood star studied at San Francisco’s Convent of the Immaculate Conception. And this appeared to give Turner an idea for her true calling.

Turner had actually been christened as Protestant. But after regularly attending mass with a family with whom she briefly lived, the Ziegfeld Girl actress was allowed to convert to Roman Catholicism by her mother. Of course, having become a star of the silver screen before she reached adulthood, Turner soon abandoned her spiritual ambitions.

18. She was launched to fame via a red sweater

Both Jane Russell and Jayne Mansfield were labeled “Sweater Girls” during their silver-screen careers. But the first star of Hollywood’s Golden Age to be given that nickname was Turner. The actress was launched to fame thanks to the tight-fitting red sweater that she sported in her first movie appearance, 1937’s They Won’t Forget.

You might not know that Turner detested the nickname. In a documentary about the Oscar nominee, her daughter Cheryl Crane revealed, “My mother told me that when she first sat there in that darkened theater watching herself on-screen in that sweater, she went scarlet. She was so embarrassed. And it took her a long time to get over it.”

17. She married eight times

Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t the only star of mid-20th-century Hollywood who walked down the aisle an astonishing eight times. Yes, Turner also went through husbands like they were going out of fashion. Her first marriage in 1940 to Artie Shaw, a famous bandleader with whom she worked on Dancing Co-Ed, lasted barely four months.

Turner’s other marital partners included fellow Hollywood star Lex Barker, ranch owner Fred May and man-about-town Henry J. Topping. But after divorcing Ronald Dante in 1972 she finally seemed to realize that marriage wasn’t her thing. Turner famously once said, “My goal was to have one husband and seven children but it turned out to be the other way around.”

16. She worried MGM with her impulsive behavior

It’s fair to say Turner didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the heads of the first two studios with whom she signed contracts. When the man who discovered her, filmmaker Mervyn LeRoy, left Warner Bros for MGM, he asked boss Jack Warner whether the actress could follow suit. The big cheese had no qualms about letting Turner go, claiming that she wouldn’t “amount to anything.”

Of course, Turner soon proved Warner wrong. But the early stages of her apparent addiction to walking down the aisle also gave MGM cause for concern. The studio believed she was too headstrong and impetuous, having married Artie Shaw at the age of just 19, only to get divorced months later.

15. She married a man who was already married

Turner may have got hitched eight times, but she only had seven husbands. Just like Elizabeth Taylor, the actress ended up saying “I do” to one man twice. Although it turns out that unbeknown to Turner, her first wedding to him – and her second ceremony overall – was something of a sham. For her groom was already married!

Yes, in 1942 Turner tied the knot in Las Vegas with Steve Crane. Unfortunately for the Oscar nominee, her husband’s divorce from his previous wife hadn’t officially gone through. Following the annulment of their marriage, Turner and Crane tried again a year later and this time it was for real. Sadly, by the end of 1944 the couple had gone their separate ways.

14. She was rumored to have had an affair with Clark Gable

Despite tying the knot on eight occasions, Turner somehow found the time to embark on several affairs during her glittering career, too. And Clark Gable was reportedly one of the men who succumbed to her charms. The Hollywood legend played Turner’s love interest in four films, Betrayed, Somewhere I’ll Find You, Honky Tonk and Homecoming.

According to author Robert Matzen, Turner and Gable’s alleged affair had tragic consequences. The latter’s wife, Carole Lombard, famously died in a plane crash in 1942. And Matzen argues that she’d only taken that flight home following a row with Gable over his apparent marital indiscretion with his regular co-star.

13. She taught a James Bond how to kiss

Before becoming the third man to assume the role of Hollywood’s ultimate secret agent, Roger Moore appeared alongside Turner in period drama Diane. The James Bond icon not only had to share the screen with the eight-time bride, he also had to share a kiss. Unfortunately for Moore, his co-star wasn’t too impressed with his technique.

While appearing on Irish TV’s The Late Late Show in 2016 Moore recalled, “I go in for the kiss, and I dive in. I said, ‘What’s wrong, Lana?’ She says, ‘Sweetheart, when a lady gets to 35, she has to be very careful about this [gesturing to her neck]. So could you give me all that passion, but a little less of that pressure?’ And so I learned to kiss gently. My wife will attest to that.”

12. Sean Connery once fought over her

According to rumors, there was at least one occasion when two men literally fought over Turner. In 1957 the actress was shooting Another Time, Another Place with future James Bond star Sean Connery in London. Her boyfriend at the time, violent gangster Johnny Stompanato, believed that the pair were spending time with each other away from the cameras, too. He subsequently turned up on set to threaten Connery with a gun.

But Stompanato very quickly learned that you mess with Connery at your peril. Legend has it that the Scotsman managed to disarm the mobster before beating him up. Having taken place on the film’s set, some believe that this brawl was inadvertently captured by the cameras that were still rolling.

11. She wore false eyebrows

As you would expect, Turner was very particular about her beauty regime – to the extent that there were whispers that while being evacuated from a burning building, the actress made sure she took her lipstick, hair dryer and eyebrow pencil with her, too. The last make-up item makes more sense when you learn what happened while Turner was preparing for one of her earliest roles.

In 1938 Turner landed a part in the Hollywood movie The Adventures of Marco Polo. Showing she was fully committed to her character, the star ended up shaving her eyebrows. Unfortunately for Turner this proved to be a lifelong sacrifice. Yes, Turner’s eyebrows didn’t ever grow back, and she was forced to sport false ones for the entirety of her remaining career.

10. She turned down a role over wardrobe issues

Turner proved that she could be quite the diva in 1959 when she left a movie because she didn’t agree with its wardrobe. The actress was all set to star alongside James Stewart in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder. But Turner was so disgruntled with the clothes that the filmmaker had chosen for her character – which were shop-purchased rather than bespoke – that she decided to walk away from the project altogether.

That proved to be good news for Lee Remick. The actress had turned down the much-less-pivotal part that she had been first offered by Preminger. But after Turner’s hasty exit, Remick was upgraded to leading lady. The star initially believed that her recasting was a prank, though, and hung up on the call informing her of the news.

9. She continued to smoke after being diagnosed with throat cancer

Turner was almost as renowned for her smoking habits as her pin-up looks. In fact, MGM even had to remove cigarettes from some of her publicity photos using developing-room trickery. Sadly, Turner’s love of smoking ultimately led to her death: in 1992 she was told she had throat cancer.

The disease also later spread to Turner’s jaw and lungs. But having smoked all her life, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde star wasn’t willing to give up the habit. In fact, she continued to puff away until she passed away from the illness at her Los Angeles home in 1995 at the age of 74.

8. She left her housekeeper almost her entire fortune

Turner’s daughter Cheryl may well have got quite the shock when her mother’s will was read out after her passing in 1995. The Somewhere I’ll Find You star had an estate reportedly worth $2 million at the time of her death. But she left her only child the relatively paltry sum of just $50,000!

Instead, Turner gave almost everything to her housekeeper. This included the apartment she owned in Los Angeles and all of the income-producing rights to movies including The Imitation of Life. Turner had only changed the main beneficiary of her will from daughter Cheryl to her housekeeper companion during her final years.

7. She was engaged to Howard Hughes for eight hours

It’s probably easier to list the stars of the silver screen that Howard Hughes didn’t date than all the ones he did. Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth and Bette Davis were just a few of the actresses with whom the eccentric business mogul had dalliances over the years. Turner was also part of that not-particularly-exclusive club, too.

Rumor has it that Turner and Hughes hooked up twice in the early 1940s. Then in the immediate post-war era, the pair allegedly even got engaged. But Turner didn’t get much time to start planning their wedding. Apparently things were called off just eight hours after Hughes decided to put a ring on it.

6. Frank Sinatra reportedly described her as a nymphomaniac

According to celebrity biographer J. Randy Tarborrelli, Rat Pack crooner Frank Sinatra became another of Turner’s conquests in the mid-1940s. But the actress apparently had little interest in making Ol’ Blue Eyes one of her many husbands. In fact, the only thing she was interested in was getting him into bed.

In Sinatra: Behind the Legend, Tarborrelli claims that the musical legend was left fascinated by Turner’s free spirit, writing, “He’d never known a woman so at ease with her sexuality that she didn’t care if a man saw her as nothing more than a sex object. In fact, she encouraged it. For a man so used to being the hunter, not the prey, it was a remarkable turnaround.”

5. She two-timed Frank Sinatra with the love of her life

Apparently both Sinatra and Turner somehow found the time to pursue other affairs while they were embroiled in their own. The former, who was also married at the time, was rumored to have been bedding actress Marilyn Maxwell. Turner was reportedly seeing Tyrone Power, another already attached man who’s said to be the true love of her life.

Yes, Turner didn’t get to walk down the aisle with Power, who was also a big name in Hollywood. But allegedly the actor captured her heart like no other. In 1948 Power issued his wife with divorce papers. Unfortunately for Turner, this wasn’t a sign of commitment. He ended up ditching her, too, before marrying another star of the silver screen, Linda Christian.

4. She struggled with alcohol abuse

In 1952 Turner was cast as a fallen star’s alcoholic daughter in melodrama The Bad and The Beautiful. Sadly, this would later prove to be a case of art imitating life. That’s right: as her career took a downturn in the 1970s Turner coped the only way she knew how: the demon drink.

Turner’s daughter Cheryl had previously developed substance abuse issues of her own, too. But thankfully, both parties got clean. Turner found religion in the early 1980s which helped with her battle for sobriety. And Cheryl managed to turn her life around when she threw herself into a career in hospitality.

3. Her father was murdered

At the age of just nine years old Turner suffered unspeakable tragedy when her father was brutally murdered. Known for pursuing a shady lifestyle, Virgil M. Turner had just won a significant amount of money after emerging victorious at a card game in San Francisco. While walking away with his winnings, the moonshine smuggler was fatally assaulted.

Sadly, police were never able to track down who robbed Virgil of both his money and his life. As you can imagine, the incident had a devastating effect on his daughter. Turner is quoted as saying, “The shock I suffered then may be a valid excuse for me now. [It] may explain things I do not myself understand.”

2. Her daughter stabbed her boyfriend to death

Turner’s abusive relationship with Stampanato ended in dramatic circumstances in 1958 when the mobster was slain. And by the actress’ daughter, too. After hearing the gangster threaten both her own and her mother’s lives at their Beverly Hills home, the then-14-year-old Cheryl picked up a knife from the kitchen. She then stabbed Stampanato in what would prove to be a fatal blow.

This shocking incident was deemed to be a justifiable homicide by a 12-strong coroner’s jury, which meant that Cheryl didn’t have to face trial. The youngster did have to spend three weeks in custody before the decision was reached. But after being released, she requested to be placed in the care of her grandmother.

1. Some believe Turner was the one who killed her boyfriend

Although daughter Cheryl admitted to killing gangster Johnny Stampanato in self-defense, there’s also a theory that she was covering for her mother. Darwin Porter, a noted film historian claimed in his book, Lana Turner: Hearts and Diamonds Take All, that the Oscar nominee was the real culprit. He even alleged that Turner admitted to the crime to some of her nearest and dearest.

Porter also claimed that Fred Otash, the case detective, confessed to tampering with the crime scene alongside Jerry Giesler, Turner’s lawyer. The now-deceased Otash reportedly said, “‘I was the one who wiped the fingerprints off the knife in Lana’s bathroom sink. I was a naughty boy doing what I’m not supposed to do.” Giesler apparently advised the Hollywood star to let Cheryl accept responsibility for the death because she wouldn’t have to stand trial.