The real-life embodiment of every movie star cliché, Lana Turner's youthful blonde beauty earned her a Hollywood contract in the late 1930s while she was still a teenager, and MGM quickly molded the young starlet into a glamorous, popular "sweater girl" pin-up during World War II.  Though many of her film roles amounted to little more than set decoration, and her off-screen love affairs always garnered more publicity than her performances, nevertheless Turner's acting abilities improved over the course of her four-decade career, and she made credible contributions to films ranging from wartime MGM gloss and gritty, post-war film noirs to soapy, 1950s melodramas like PEYTON PLACE (1957), for which she received her first and only Academy Award nomination.

This page is still under construction.

Music Clips:

• "Main Title" (clip) from THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952) by David Raksin (a .MP3 file courtesy Rhino Records).
• "The Letdown" (clip) from THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952) by David Raksin (a .MP3 file courtesy Rhino Records).
• "Peyton Place" (clip) from PEYTON PLACE (1957) by Franz Waxman (a .MP3 file).

(For help opening any of the multimedia files, visit the plug-ins page.)

Further Reading:

• The Golden Girls of MGM by Jane Ellen Wayne (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003).
• Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1998).
• Glamour Girls (New York: Starlog Press, 1983).
• The Hollywood Beauties by James Robert Parish (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1978).

More Lana Links:

• Screen Sirens: Lana Turner
• Denny's Lana Turner Page
• The Essential Lana Turner Image Gallery
• Larry King Live: Cheryl Crane
• Intimate Portraits: Lana Turner
• CMGWW: The Estate of Lana Turner
• TVNow's monthly Lana Turner schedule -when her films will be on TV.
• Greatest Films: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
• Bright Lights Film Journal: IMITATION OF LIFE
• Class Act: LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY
• Great MGM Musicals: ZIEGFELD GIRL

Awards | Downloads | Image Credits