Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 1, 1995 TAG: 9507030067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Lana Turner died Thursday at 75.
``She just took a breath and she was gone,'' her daughter, Cheryl Crane, was quoted as saying in Daily Variety, a trade newspaper. Turner, who had been treated for throat cancer, apparently died of natural causes, a police spokeswoman, Ramona Baety, confirmed to The Associated Press.
She was legendary from the beginning of her movie career, when she was spied in a malt shop playing hooky from Hollywood High.
Her seven marriages and dozens of romances, including the one with the gangster her daughter killed, consumed a forest of newsprint.
Except for the wrenching tragedy of the Johnny Stompanato death, Turner wore her stardom with equanimity. She never sought publicity: It always came to her. She was always candid with interviewers.
She once told this reporter how she acquired her sobriquet as Sweater Girl in her first role, in the 1937 ``They Won't Forget'':
``They had me wear a sweater and walk down the street. When you're young ... they bounce,'' she said in 1953.
Often lost among all the publicity, both trivial and lurid, was the fact that Turner became a talented actress. Of course, she traded on her startling looks through the apprentice years in Andy Hardy and Dr. Kildare movies and mindless musicals. But with her role as the tempter of John Garfield in the 1946 movie ``The Postman Always Rings Twice,'' she proved she could act.
That was confirmed with ``The Bad and the Beautiful'' in 1952, when she played a troubled movie star. Her closeup scene of driving recklessly and risking suicide on a stormy night was a masterpiece of raw emotion.
Later, she was able to lend conviction to such potboilers as ``Peyton Place,'' her only Academy Award nomination; ``Imitation of Life''; and ``Madame X.''
Lana was always news. So many news people covered her fourth wedding, to millionaire Bob Topping in 1948, that this reporter was appointed to be the pool person watching the ceremony inside a Sunset Boulevard mansion. After the vows, Lana murmured, ``This time it's for keeps.''
Lana was always optimistic and never seemed bitter, though she was piqued at how her MGM bosses treated her after 17 years as a box-office star. She had been cast in two dismal costume pictures.
``Look, I'm a modern-type girl,'' she said. ``The good pictures I've done should have proven that. But they wanted me to do costume pictures. So I did the best I could - and took the blame for them.''
As her film career was sliding in the late '60s, she refused to go along with the newfound frankness in films.
``You wouldn't believe the filth that I find in scripts that are sent to me nowadays,'' she said at the time. `It makes me physically ill to read such things. I feel sorry for the girls who think they have to play such parts just to keep in front of the public.''
In 1970, she made her first appearance on stage. She was booked for a tour in ``Forty Carats.''
``I won't have butterflies in my stomach,'' she predicted. ``There'll be eagles, flapping and clawing.''
She survived the tour and did more. She also appeared on television, spending a year as a regular cast member of ``Falcon Crest,'' which starred Jane Wyman. But the two veteran glamor stars reportedly proved incompatible, and Turner was dropped.
Miss Turner's 1982 memoir, ``Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth,'' focused on her eight marriages and many romances. The memoir also recalled a suicide attempt, two abortions, three stillbirths, alcoholism and her religious awakening in 1980.
Turner was married to and divorced from Artie Shaw, the band leader; Stephen Crane, a restaurateur (they were married and divorced twice); Bob Topping, a sportsman; Lex Barker, an actor whose roles included Tarzan; Fred May, a businessman and rancher; Robert P. Eaton, a businessman, and Ronald Dante, a nightclub hypnotist.
She is survived by her daughter.
by CNB