This brief book review is a contribution to the 2022 Classic Film Summer Reading Challenge, run by Raquel Stecher of the Out of the Past blog.
After re-watching Ziegfeld Girl (1941), the film that turned Lana Turner into a big star, I decided it was past time to learn more about Turner's life and career. Fortunately, her autobiography is still readily available. Published in 1982, the book is called Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth, and it is an engrossing story of a fascinating—and somewhat puzzling—life.
The text flows so smoothly that I would not be surprised if Turner had a ghost writer—but her voice really comes though. It feels as if she is talking to the reader directly. She discusses so much personal detail of her life, including some very painful stories and many embarrassing details, that I emerged feeling like I knew her as a person. Even so, it is still difficult to understand some of the decisions she made—particularly in her choice of husbands. She had almost too many to keep track of and the quality started bad and did not get better.
Notable episodes in the first portion of the book are her pre-stardom period at Warner Brothers and MGM, her ridiculously bad marriage to bandleader Artie Shaw, her horrible experience with an abortion, and her relationship with Tyrone Power, who she considered the love of her life. Turner later devotes a substantial amount of space to the story of her and Johnny Stompanato—including details that could not be recounted by anyone else. As many may already know, her violent relationship with this gangster ended when Turner's teenage daughter Cheryl stabbed him to death in their home. Turner relates the whole horrific story. The book proceeds through her life all the way up to the early 1980s, when Turner was emerging, apparently successfully, from a semi-alcoholic depression.
This is an excellent first-hand look at a character who personified the image of the glamorous classic Hollywood movie star and played into that image with all her energy—highly recommended.
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