Lana Turner: Using the system to her advantage

Library of Congress LC-USE6-D-001605

Beginning her career in 1937, Lana Turner continued acting through the 1990s.

Like Clara Bow, Lana Turner had a Svengali-like manager who molded her appearance, biography and onscreen persona; mixed sensuality with apparent innocence; and suffered a series of misfortunes in her personal life. Unlike Bow, however, Turner overcame the scandals and at times seemed almost to use them to her advantage.

After being cast in her first role at age 15 by producer-director Mervyn LeRoy, Julia Turner looked to him for guidance in all areas of her career. Under his tutelage, she dyed her hair blonde, shaved off her eyebrows (which never grew back), gained a new glamorous wardrobe and chose her new name, Lana. Warner Bros.' publicity department crafted a fantasy background for the starlet, fabricating a background of childhood private schools and modeling jobs. From the beginning, Turner proved an eager accomplice, growing her own mythology by cultivating a wholesome veneer even while supplying the press with endless anecdotes about her lively social life.

While her first roles capitalized on both her youth and overt sensuality, promoting her as the girl next door who just happens to be dazzlingly beautiful (see They Won't Forget, Love Finds Andy Hardy), by the 1950s, the audience and their desires had changed. America's conservative political and social stance was reflected by such "chaste" female stars as Doris Day. In accord with fan preferences, Turner's sexpot image was toned down. Unlike 1946's steamy The Postman Always Rings Twice, in which Turner plays an adulterous femme fatale, in 1958's The Lady Takes a Flyer, her passion is only for settling down and raising a family.

Regardless of what role she played, however, she was presented as a classical screen diva. All the tricks of Hollywood star-making were applied: sculpted low-key lighting softened with gels and gauzes; glorious Technicolor to heighten her blue eyes and platinum hair; center-screen positioning, with other figures relegated to the background, to frame her as the primary focus in every scene.

In 1958, after she completed Peyton Place, Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed to death Turner's lover, Los Angeles mobster Johnny Stompanato. Although a judge ruled the incident a justifiable homicide, Cheryl was sent to live with Turner's mother, and the publicity surrounding the case was unrelenting. A scandal of such proportions had ruined the careers of many others, but Turner did not shy away from the press, instead calling on her personal charms and ease with reporters to win public sympathy.

By immediately accepting the lead role in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life, in which she plays a neglectful mother who becomes a successful actress at the expense of her daughter, Turner showed a canny instinct exploiting her real-life situation. The performance, for which she accepted a fraction of her usual salary, is widely considered her finest. The audience couldn't help but bring their knowledge of the scandal to their viewing of the film. The roles she played in subsequent years presented her in a less sexualized, more mature light.

The star system today
By this point in cinematic history, this subtle conflation of person, persona and role seems more commonplace, and today, as journalists have been allowed more and more access to stars' private lives, the on- and offscreen division has grown even more tenuous. Julia Roberts's career highlights this phenomenon plainly: as soon as she hit the screen in Pretty Woman, her roles became synonymous with her as a person. Article after article referred to her as "the pretty woman," a moniker that still sticks. Now, when viewers see Roberts in a new film, they see not just the character but the actress, along with everything the press has exposed about her private life. This synthesis was used to great effect in the film The Runaway Bride, in which the main character's tendency to leave fiancés at the altar mirrored Roberts' own personal peccadilloes. The role and the image can no longer be kept distinct.

	Thinking Point
	How are films, such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), presented differently to the public when they do not feature an all-star, Hollywood cast?

Today's stars have much more economic and decision-making power than their predecessors. Someone like Tom Cruise, for instance, can command more than $20 million per film, choose cast and crew members, make script changes and act as a producer on the film (which results in far greater profit sharing). They can also translate their famous personas into whole empires, as twin children's television stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have done by lending their names to television shows, films, cartoons, music albums and a cornucopia of products.

Yet stars today remain as bound to audience tastes and capriciousness as ever. Witness Demi Moore's career: after starring in hit movies throughout the 1990s, a string of flops quickly resulted in her fall from grace and near-disappearance from the screen. A continued desire for idealized images, combined with a need to be privy to every intimate detail of an actor's "real" life, has created a star system with a classic double bind. Some stars will find ways to use this system to their advantage, while others will be remembered only for their passing moments of fame.