Lana Turner

Julia Jean "Lana" Turner ( LAH-nə; February 8, 1921 – June 29, 1995) was an American actress. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid American actresses and one of MGM's biggest stars, with her films earning approximately one billion dollars in 2024 currency for the studio during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon due to her glamourous persona and a screen legend of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She was nominated for numerous awards.

Born to working-class parents in Idaho, Turner spent her childhood there before her family relocated to California. In 1936, at the age of 15, she was discovered by a talent scout while shopping at the Top Hat malt shop in Hollywood. At the age of 16, she was signed to a personal contract by Warner Bros. director Mervyn LeRoy, who took her with him when he transferred to MGM in 1938. She soon attracted attention by playing a murder victim in her screen debut, LeRoy's film They Won't Forget (1937), and she later moved into supporting roles that often cast her as an ingénue.

During the early 1940s, Turner established herself as a leading lady and one of MGM's top stars, appearing in such films as the film noir Johnny Eager (1941), the musical Ziegfeld Girl (1941), the horror Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), and the romantic war drama Somewhere I'll Find You (1942), the latter being one of several films in which she starred opposite Clark Gable. Her reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her critically acclaimed performance in the film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), a role which established her as a serious dramatic actress. Her popularity continued through the 1950s in dramas such as The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Peyton Place (1957), the latter for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1958, intense media scrutiny surrounded Turner when her lover Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death by her teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane, during a domestic struggle in their home. Her next film, Imitation of Life (1959), proved to be one of the greatest commercial successes of her career and her starring role in Madame X (1966) earned her a David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress. She spent most of the 1970s in semi-retirement, making her final film appearance in 1980. She accepted a much-publicized and lucrative recurring guest role in the television series Falcon Crest in 1982, with the series subsequently garnering notably high ratings. She was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1992, and died three years later at the age of 74.