[Image]

Legendary actress Lana Turner dead at 75

June 30, 1995
8:30 AM EDT

CENTURY CITY, Calif. (CNN) - Hollywood screen legend Lana Turner died Thursday of apparent natural causes at her Century City home. Turner was 75. CNN's Bill Tush takes a look back at her life and career, which was often more turbulent and melodramatic, than many of her films.

Lana Turner lived the screen star image to the hilt. Even the way she was discovered - not in Schwab's drugstore as legend would have it - but skipping school one day, drinking a Coke at the Top Hat Cafe across the street from Hollywood High. She wore a sweater and went on to be known as "the sweater girl."

She and her beautician mother had moved to California when she was nine, after her father, a mine foreman, in Wallace, Idaho, was murdered during a robbery. Strangely enough, murder was to turn up later during Lana's life, when her 14-year-old daughter stabbed to death Lana's longtime boyfriend Johnny Stompanato. It was found to be justifiable homicide and the murder hardly affected her career.

MGM's glamour machine guided her career. During World War II, Lana Turner ranked among the nation's top pinup girls. She made dozens of movies during the 1940's and 1950's, including "Ziegfeld Girl" in 1941 and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" in 1946.

Her love life was often more tumultuous than her movies. She married seven times, but never wed the true love of her life, actor Tyrone Power.

In 1957 she was nominated for the Academy Awrard for Best Actress for her role as Constance Mackenzie in Peyton Place. It seemed at last she was being taken seriously as an actress. "Madame X" ten years later was another strong performance.

Lana Turner Image

During the early 1980's, she turned to television in the nightime soap opera "Falcon Crest." She retired after that, saying, "I don't want people looking at me and saying 'gosh, she's old.' I want my fans to remember me as I was."

In May of 1992, she was diagnosed with throat cancer, leaving the autobiography she wrote ten years ago to tell the rest of her story. It was called "Lana: the Lady, the Legend, the Truth." And true to the image of the ultimate screen siren, its 300 torrid pages became an instant best seller.

Legendary actress Lana Turner dead at 75

| INDEX | SEARCH | CNN HOME PAGE | MAIN SHOWBIZ PAGE |