Over the course of her nearly 50-year career, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. [239][217] The following year, she made her final film at MGM with Bob Hope in Bachelor in Paradise (1961), a romantic comedy about an investigative writer (Hope) working on a book about the wives of a lavish California community; the film received a mostly positive critical reception. Heart Attack. Turner was a regular drinker[270] and cigarette smoker for most of her life. [97] They remained friends throughout her later life. [306] In They Won't Forget (1937) and Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), she embodied an "innocent sexuality" portraying ingnues. "[250] The role earned Turner a David di Donatello Golden Plaque Award for Best Foreign Actress that year. With her film career launched in earnest by the dawn of the forties, she became a top pin-up . [92], Throughout the war, Turner continued to make regular appearances at U.S. troop events and area bases, though she confided to friends that she found visiting the hospital wards of injured soldiers emotionally difficult. Turner played women who wanted things: money, status, a successful man. natural causes; Cause of death: esophageal cancer; Place of burial: California; Work period (start) 1937; Work period (end) 1991; Country of citizenship: United States of America; . [229] During this time, Turner's daughter Cheryl privately came out as a lesbian to her parents, who were both supportive of her. They were the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (minus kids) of Hollywood's Golden Era but the legendary romance of superstars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard ended abruptly when she was killed in a. [52] In her early films, Turner did not color her auburn hairsee Dancing Co-Ed (1939), in which she was billed "the red-headed sensation who brought "it" back to the screen". [55] Instead, she was assigned opposite teen idol Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the Andy Hardy film Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). Some of the stars are magnetic dazzlers on celluloid and ordinary, practical, polo-coated little things in private life. ChickComedy/YouTube Comedian Lahna Turner was married to Ralphie May. [133] By this period, Turner was at the zenith of her film career, and was not only MGM's most popular star, but also one of the ten highest-paid women in the United States, with annual earnings of $226,000. Shortly after, the two eloped and moved west, settling in Idaho. [144] A Life of Her Own was among the least successful of Cukor's films, receiving unfavorable reviews and low box-office sales. He was replaced by Ricardo Montalbn. Johnny Stompanato Is Killed By Lana Turner's Daughter. Despite being a comedian, May had a serious side to him. [268] Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times wrote that the film served "as a reminder that Miss Turner was never one of our subtler actresses". [50][51], In late 1937, LeRoy was hired as an executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and asked Jack L. Warner to allow Turner to relocate with him to MGM. [68] In the spring of 1940, after the two had divorced, Turner discovered she was pregnant and had an abortion. However, she doesn't look like a vamp. "[314] In addition, Basinger credits Turner as the first mainstream female star to "take the male prerogative openly for herself", publicly indulging in romances and affairs that in turn fueled the publicity surrounding her. [8] John was 24 years old at the time, and Mildred's father objected to the courtship. [187], In January 1958, Paramount Pictures released The Lady Takes a Flyer, a romantic comedy in which Turner portrayed a female pilot. He was convicted of killing actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 at his castle-like mansion on the edge of Los Angeles. A long-time heavy smoker, Turner was diagnosed with throat cancer in May 1992. [53] Turner left Warner Bros. and signed a contract with MGM for $100 a week ($1,885 in 2021 dollars [43]). "[271] In 1975, Turner gave a single performance as Jessica Poole in The Pleasure of His Company opposite Louis Jourdan at the Arlington Park Theater in Chicago. [204] Stompanato, angered that he did not attend with her, awaited her return home that evening, whereupon he physically assaulted her. Following her film debut in . [222] When she returned to the set, "her face was so swollen, she couldn't work", Moore said. Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner: Date of death: . [156], Turner's next project was opposite Kirk Douglas in Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), a drama focusing on the rise and fall of a Hollywood film mogul, in which Turner portrayed an alcoholic movie star. I'll work for nothing, just give me a good story. [65][66] Though they had only briefly known each other, Turner recalled being "stirred by his eloquence", and after their first date the two spontaneously decided to get married. [261] Pellar denied the accusations and no charges were filed against him. [199][200] Stompanato got wind of the plan and showed up on the set with a gun, threatening her and Connery. [14][15] She was the only child of John Virgil Turner, a miner from Montgomery, Alabama, of Dutch descent, and Mildred Frances Cowan from Lamar, Arkansas, who had English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. [297], In September 1994, Turner made her final public appearance at the San Sebastin International Film Festival in Spain to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award,[298] and was confined to a wheelchair for much of the event. [176] Turner gleefully told a reporter at the time that she was "walking around in a daze. [282][283] On October 25, 1981, the National Film Society presented Turner with an Artistry in Cinema award. [307] Film historian Jeanine Basinger notes that she "represented the girl who'd rather sit on the diving board to show off her figure than get wet in the water the girl who'd rather kiss than kibbitz". [277] Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Tribune praised her performance, writing that, "though she is still a very nervous and inexpert actress, she is giving by far her most winning performance". [238] Turner moved in with him on his ranch in Chino, California, where the two took care of horses and other animals. [86] "I adored Mr. Gable, but we were [just] friends," she later recalled. [224] Imitation of Life made more than $50 million in box office receipts. Turner spent most of the 1970s in semi-retirement, making her final film appearance in 1980. Imperium', "The Screen in Review; 'Betrayed,' War Story, Opens at the State", "In a 1958 inquest, killing of Lana Turner's boyfriend was detailed", "Lana Turner Says She's Had It; Won't Marry Again", "Lana Turner Suspense Film Strains Credibility", "Lana Turner, Fifth Husband Separate; No Divorce Yet", "Lana Makes Melodrama 'Madame X' Credible", "Lana Turner in 'Divorce' Entertains Just Being Lana", "Music, Dance, Drama, Comedy Highlight Winter Play Season", "Lana Turner, the Sultry Actress, Is Dead at 75", "Lana Turner to Appear On CBS's 'Falcon Crest', "PPT's Shaktman led city's theatrical renaissance", "Lana Turner reveals she has throat cancer", "Lana Turner recovering after throat cancer surgery", "Lana Turner Determined to Beat Cancer Recurrence", "Lana Turner's Troubled Legacy Shows Signs of Life After Death: Tales of Suzy Bombmaker a "Politically Incorrect" boss and the judge who said too much", "Appeals Court Allows Lana Turner's Daughter to Challenge Trust Provisions", "GLS 592: The Hard Boiled Dames of Film Noir", "It only took 30 years for "My Baby Just Cares For Me" to be a hit", "Lana Del Rey has legs, a stalker, four Grammy nominations and a possible Broadway musical", "The 50 Most Infamous Actresses of All Time", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lana_Turner&oldid=1138339762, Converts to Roman Catholicism from Protestantism, United Service Organizations entertainers, Pages using Sister project links with wikidata namespace mismatch, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, TCMDb name template using numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 9 February 2023, at 04:01. Lana Turner. [72][73] Ziegfeld Girl marked a personal and professional shift for Turner; she claimed it as the first role that got her "interested in acting",[74] and the studio, impressed by her performance, marketed the film as featuring her in "the best role of the biggest picture to be released by the industry's biggest company". [147] On May 24, 1950, Turner left her handprints and footprints in cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. In the 1980s she had a recurring role on the TV series Falcon Crest. [179][180] According to Cheryl, Turner confronted Barker before forcing him out of their home at gunpoint. She was the subject of the poem "Lana Turner has collapsed" by Frank O'Hara,[340] and was depicted as a minor character in James Ellroy's novel L.A. [244] In September of that year,[245] Turner and May separated, divorcing shortly after in October. "[33] Several years after the film's release, Modern Screen journalist Nancy Squire wrote that Turner "made a sweater look like something Cleopatra was saving for the next visiting Caesar". They were married on July 3, 2005, and had two kids, a daughter and a son. ``She just took a breath and she was gone,'' her daughter, Cheryl Crane, was quoted as saying in Daily Variety, a trade newspaper. "Bob" Topping Jr., a millionaire socialite and brother of New York Yankees owner Dan Topping, and a grandson of tin-plate magnate Daniel G. [85] Meanwhile, the press continued to fuel rumors that Turner and Gable were romantic offscreen, which Turner vehemently denied. [139][140] Studio head Louis B. Mayer threatened to suspend her contract, but Turner managed to leverage her box-office draw with MGM to negotiate an expansion of her role in the film, as well as a salary increase amounting to $5,000 per week ($60,678 in 2021 dollars [43]). [112] In 1945, she co-starred with Laraine Day and Susan Peters in Keep Your Powder Dry, a war drama about three disparate women who join the Women's Army Corps. [61] Turner's onscreen sex appeal in the film was reflected by a review in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which she was characterized as "the answer to 'oomph'". [194][195] Turner would also claim that on one occasion he drugged her and took nude photographs of her while unconscious, potentially to use as blackmail. Lana Turner's autobiography was finished just before her death. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner's office, Ronnie died due to "complications of metastatic. [231], Shortly before the release of Imitation of Life in the spring of 1959, Turner was cast in a lead role in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder, but walked off the set over a wardrobe disagreement, effectively dropping out of the production. In 1936, when Turner was 15, she was discovered while purchasing a soda at the Top Hat Malt Shop in Hollywood. [292] She died nine months later at the age of 74 on June 29, 1995, of complications from the cancer, at her home in Century City, Los Angeles, with her daughter by her side. [324] She favored the designers Salvatore Ferragamo, Jean Louis, Helen Rose and Nolan Miller. [235][236] Ray Duncan of the Independent Star-News wrote that Turner "suffers prettily through it all, like a fashion model with a tight-fitting shoe". By the time this one comes out, it will be almost three years since I was last on the screen, in The Three Musketeers. [196], In September 1957, Stompanato visited Turner in London, where she was filming Another Time, Another Place, co-starring Sean Connery. "That, and a sense of loss and of growing up too fast. [60] This was followed by These Glamour Girls (1939), a comedy in which she portrayed a taxi dancer invited to attend a dance with a male coed at his elite college. [171] After completing Diane, Turner was loaned to 20th Century-Fox to headline The Rains of Ranchipur (1955), a remake of The Rains Came (1939), playing the wife of an aristocrat in the British Raj opposite Richard Burton. In a 50 plus year career, she developed from a pin-up model into true Hollywood royalty. Humor has been the balm of my life, but it's been reserved for those closest to me. Dana Andrews, whose film portrayals ranged from a sensitive, tough-talking detective in the 1944 movie "Laura" to a bombardier returning to a . [317], Historians have cited Turner as one of the most glamorous film stars of all time, an association that was made both during her lifetime[318][319][320] and after her death. Lana Turner was one of the most enigmatic and iconic actresses of all time. [121], The Postman Always Rings Twice became a major box office success, which prompted the studio to take more risks on Turner, casting her outside of the glamorous sex-symbol roles for which she had come to be known. The growth of maturity is reflected neatly in her distinguished portrayal. [9][33] Turner subsequently attended the Convent of the Immaculate Conception[10] in San Francisco, hoping to become a nun. Born to working-class parents in northern Idaho, Turner spent her childhood there before her family relocated to San Francisco. The same year, she had what she referred to as a "religious awakening", and again began practicing her Catholic faith. Date of death. [308] 1941's Ziegfeld Girl was the first film to showcase Turner with platinum blonde hair, which she wore for much of the remainder of her life and for which she came to be known. I don't think it's healthy to stay off the screen that long. Turner, Lana (September 28, 1982). "I'm getting close to that point, honey. "When six o'clock came, he went his way and I went mine. [169] The film, released one month after The Prodigal, was a commercial success. [237], In November 1960, Turner married her fifth husband, Frederick "Fred" May, a rancher and member of the May department-store family whom she had met at a beach party in Malibu shortly after filming Imitation of Life. "[69] By the mid-1940s, Turner had been married and divorced three times, had given birth to her daughter Cheryl and had numerous publicized affairs. Groucho Marx wept at the funeral. [148], In response to the poor reception for A Life of Her Own, MGM attempted to rebrand Turner by casting her in musicals. The pair, per TCM, divorced shortly after. [94] Upon completing the tour, Turner had sold $5.25 million in war bonds. [251], In late 1968, she began filming the low-budget thriller The Big Cube, in which she portrayed a glamorous heiress being dosed with LSD by her stepdaughter in hopes of driving her insane and receiving the family estate. [121] In August 1946, it was announced she would replace Katharine Hepburn in the big-budget historical drama Green Dolphin Street (1947), a role for which she darkened her hair and lost 15 pounds. [295] After undergoing radiation therapy,[292] Turner announced that she was in full remission in early 1993. [192] After a friend informed her of who Stompanato actually was, she confronted him and tried to break off the affair. In her early 60s, Turner reportedly took a photo of herself at 27 to a plastic surgeon, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, and said, "This is what I want to look like." . [289] She subsequently guest-starred on an episode of The Love Boat in 1985,[290] which marked her final on-screen appearance. [11] In 2012, Complex named her the eighth-most infamous actress of all time.[347]. Cause of death: esophageal cancer. Miss Turner was discovered in. There was something smoldering underneath that innocent face. That licked me. CONTACT DETAILS Web Site: . Lana Turner relationship list. [159] Her next film project was Latin Lovers (1953), a romantic musical in which Lamas had originally been cast. 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 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941); and the romantic war drama Somewhere I'll Find You (1942), one of several films in which she starred opposite Clark Gable. She was 74 years old when she passed away. According to his son, Arthur Marx, it was the only time he ever saw his father cry. [327] She has also been cited by scholars as a gay icon because of her glamorous persona and triumphs over personal struggles. [33] In 1965, she met Hollywood producer and businessman Robert Eaton, who was ten years her junior, through business associates. Nevertheless, she insisted she would not give up her glamorous image. [215] Stompanato's family sought a wrongful death suit of $750,000 in damages against both Turner and her ex-husband, Steve Crane. However, Turner notes in her autobiography that her birth certificate lists Julia Jean Turner as her official birth name. [97] She later claimed Topping's drinking problem and excessive gambling as her impetus for the divorce. Lana Turner was married to seven men, including bandleader Artie Shaw. "She'd completed. Stompanato's rage reportedly reached its boiling point on the night of the 1958 Academy Awards when Turner refused to bring him as her date. "[151] It earned her unfavorable reviews, with one critic from the St. Petersburg Times writing: "Without Lana Turner, Mr. Imperium would be a better picture. In the 1980s she had a recurring role on the TV series Falcon Crest. "I knew that my looks might get me . She was 74 years old when she died. Stompanato was known to have been physically abusive to Turner. [22], The Turner family struggled financially, and relocated to San Francisco when she was six years old, after which her parents separated. "Guest: Lana Turner". After all those years as a sex symbol, nothing had changed--Lana was still as beautiful as ever. [125][33] During this time, she also had romantic affairs with Frank Sinatra[126] and Howard Hughes, the latter of which lasted for 12 weeks in late 1946. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Ray Hamel and Denny Jackson Family (2) Trade Mark (2) Attractive figure Blonde hair Trivia (64) Born at 12:30pm-PST [212][213] Cheryl remained a temporary ward of the court until April 24, when a juvenile court hearing was held, during which the judge expressed concerns over her receiving "proper parental supervision". [316] Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen took note of the intersections between Turner's life and screen persona early in her career, writing in 1946: Lana Turner is a super-star for many reasons but chiefly because she is the same off-screen as she is on. [154] The following year, she began filming her second musical, The Merry Widow. Turner, who disclosed in May 1992 that she had been treated for throat cancer, died at her Century City home with her daughter Cheryl Crane at her side, police Officer Sonia Monaco said. [165][166] She was reluctant to appear in the film because of the character's scanty, "atrocious" costumes and "stupid" lines, and during the shoot struggled to get along with co-star Edmund Purdom, whom she later described as "a young man with a remarkably high opinion of himself". Lana Turner was an American actress who had a net worth of $5 million at the time of her death. On the evening of April 4, 1958, 14-year-old Cheryl Crane stabbed 32-year-old Johnny Stompanato, the boyfriend of her mother, actress Lana Turner, at Turner's rented home in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California. [241] The same year, she starred in By Love Possessed (1961), based on a bestselling novel by James Gould Cozzens. Three out of four head and neck cancers are linked to tobacco use, and men are . [160], In the spring of 1953, Turner relocated to Europe for 18 months to make two films under a tax credit for American productions shot abroad. [67] Their marriage only lasted four months, but was highly publicized, and led MGM executives to grow concerned over Turner's "impulsive behavior". [312] Film scholar Richard Dyer cites Turner as an example of one of Hollywood's earliest stars whose publicized private life perceptibly inflected their careers: "Her career is marked by an unusually, even spectacularly, high degree of interpenetration between her publicly available private life and her films not only do her vehicles furnish characters and situations in accord with her off-screen image, but frequently incidents in them echo incidents in her life so that by the end of her career films like Peyton Place, Imitation of Life, Madame X and Love Has Many Faces seem in parts like mere illustrations of her life."[313]. According to Closer Weekly, Turner was married eight times, including twice to the same man. Popular African-American vocalist and entertainer Barbara McNair dazzled audiences with her singing prowess and exceptional beauty for well over four decades until her death on February 4, 2007 of throat cancer in Los Angeles. "I do owe Mickey one thing: he taught me how much I enjoyed sex." Rooney was a player. . October 1968 203. [111] A lifelong Democrat, she spent the remainder of the year campaigning for Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1944 presidential election. [212][299] According to Cheryl, Turner's death was a "total shock", as she had appeared to be in better health and had recently completed seven weeks of radiation therapy. Turner, Lana (September 29, 1982). [322][325] Film historians Joe Morella and Edward Epstein have observed that, unlike many female stars, Turner "wasn't resented by female fans", and that women made up a large part of her fan base in later years. [174] Meanwhile, Diane was given a test screening in late December 1955, and was met with poor response from audiences. [78] MGM had initially cast Turner in the lead, but Tracy specifically requested Bergman for the part. [97] Topping proposed to her at the 21 Club in New York City by dropping a diamond ring into her martini, and they married shortly after in April 1948 at the Topping family mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Burton reportedly said: 'She set out to get me, and I let. When Frank Sinatra saw the film The Postman Always Rings Twice, his eyes were on stalks. [228] Both films depicted the troubled, complicated relationship between a single mother and her teenage daughter. Upon Turner's death, John Updike wrote in The New Yorker that she "was a faded period piece, an old-fashioned glamour queen whose fifty-four films, over four decades didn't amount, retrospectively to much As a performer, she was purely a studio-made product. [216] The suit was settled out of court for a reported $20,000 in May 1962. [137][138] Turner's wedding celebrations interfered with her filming schedule for The Three Musketeers, and she arrived to the set three days late. [218], In the wake of negative publicity related to Stompanato's death, Turner accepted the lead role in Ross Hunter's remake of Imitation of Life (1959) under the direction of Douglas Sirk. [149] The first, Mr. Imperium, released in March 1951, was a box-office flop, and had Turner starring as an American woman who is wooed by a European prince. lana turner cause of death. In 1958, during an intense argument between Ms. Tuner and Johnny Stompanato, Lana's 14-year-old daughter Cheryl came to her mother's defense and, according to court records, stabbed, and killed Stompanato. Her tempestuous personal life -- seven marriages, a stable of lovers, and a very public murder scandal -- only increased her reputation as a larger-than-life screen and sex goddess. "[131], In August 1947, immediately upon completion of Cass Timberlane, Turner agreed to appear as the female lead in the World War II-set romantic drama Homecoming (1948), in which she was again paired with Clark Gable, portraying a female army lieutenant who falls in love with an American surgeon (Gable). Lana was 74 years old at the time of death. "She was doing fine. [64] A remake of The Broadway Melody, the film was marketed as featuring Turner's "hottest, most daring role". [22] At age three, she performed an impromptu dance routine at a charity fashion show in which her mother was modeling. [189] Stompanato had close ties to the Los Angeles underworld and gangster Mickey Cohen, which he feared would dissuade her from dating him. [100] After discovering she was pregnant in November 1942, Turner remarried Crane in Tijuana in March 1943. [130] Cass Timberlane earned Turner favorable reviews, with Variety noting: "Turner is the surprise of the picture via her top performance thespically. "[163] Upon returning to the United States in September 1953, Turner married actor Lex Barker,[97] whom she had been dating since their first meeting at a party held by Marion Davies in the summer of 1952. Turner left the majority of her estate to her maid, Carmen Lopez Cruz, who had been her companion for 45 years and caregiver during her final illness. [64], In February 1940, Turner garnered significant publicity when she eloped to Las Vegas with 28-year-old bandleader Artie Shaw, her co-star in Dancing Co-Ed. Turner's reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her critically acclaimed performance in the noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), a role which established her as a serious dramatic actress. Her hands were trembling so she could barely read the script. Contents. [209], Because of Turner's fame and the fact that the killing involved her teenage daughter, the case quickly became a media sensation. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon of Hollywood glamour and a screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema.[4]. [79] The studio recast Turner in the smaller role, though she was still given top billing. In her years as a top box office draw, she and longtime studio MGM forged her statuesque form into any number of pop . The flesh is the same. [184] She also received critical acclaim, with Variety noting that "Turner looks elegant" and "registers strongly",[185] and, for the first and only time, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best 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. [329] Basinger considers her the "epitome of the Hollywood machine-made stardom". Anne Heche's Official Cause Of Death Revealed. [27] Her mother worked 80 hours per week as a beautician to support herself and her daughter,[30][31] and Turner recalled sometimes "living on crackers and milk for half a week". [322] No matter the setting, Turner also took care to ensure she was always "camera-ready", wearing jewelry and makeup even while lounging in sweatpants. The clothes she wears are just like the clothes you pay to see her in on Saturday night at the Bijou. "I wasn't dumb," Gardner said. [122] Turner later recalled she was surprised about replacing Hepburn, saying: "I'm about the most un-Hepburnish actress on the lot. [98] The two eloped to Las Vegas a week after they began dating. In a 1958 inquest, killing of Lana Turner's boyfriend was detailed Deputy Dist. [281] In 1980, Turner made her final feature-film appearance alongside Teri Garr in the comedy horror film Witches' Brew. [56] During the shoot, Turner completed her studies with an educational social worker, allowing her to graduate high school that year. Indeed, there is cause for suspicion that they didn't even bother to think. In January 1982, Turner reprised her role in Murder Among Friends, which toured throughout the U.S. that year; paired with Bob Fosse's Dancin', the play earned a combined gross of $400,000 during one week at Pittsburgh's Heinz Hall in June 1982. [276] During rehearsals, a stagehand told reporters that Turner was "the hardest working broad I've known". The last time I begged for a good story they gave me The Prodigal. [16] Lana's parents had first met while 14-year-old Mildred, the daughter of a mine inspector, was visiting Picher, Oklahoma, with her father, who was inspecting local mines there. [4] While she consistently embraced her glamorous persona, she was also vocal about her dedication to acting[121] and attained a reputation as a versatile, hard-working performer. Advertisement More from Distractify All but One of the Ninja Turtles Are Dead in 'The Last Ronin' Comic [260] Meanwhile, after six months of marriage, Turner discovered Pellar had stolen $35,000 she had given him for an investment. [206][207] The two began arguing heatedly in the bedroom, during which Stompanato threatened to kill Turner, her daughter Cheryl and her mother. Gardner repeatedly contemplated suicide near the end of her life. [161] The films were Flame and the Flesh, in which she portrayed a manipulative woman who takes advantage of a musician, and Betrayed, an espionage thriller set in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands; the latter marked Turner's fourth and final film appearance opposite Clark Gable. Her next marriage was to Joseph Stephen Crane in 1942 (via Livingly ). [64] The following year, she had a lead role in her second musical, Ziegfeld Girl, opposite James Stewart, Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr. [70], In 1940, Turner appeared in her first musical film, Two Girls on Broadway, in which she received top billing over established co-stars Joan Blondell and George Murphy. "[89], At the advent of US involvement in World War II, Turner's increasing prominence in Hollywood led to her becoming a popular pin-up girl,[90] and her image appeared painted on the noses of U.S. fighter planes, bearing the nickname "Tempest Turner". Mildred was four days shy of her 17th birthday when she gave birth to her only child. [150] "The script was stupid," she recalled. [129] Production of Cass Timberlane was exhausting for Turner, because it was shot in between retakes of Green Dolphin Street. In 1992, Turner was diagnosed with throat cancer and died of the disease three years later at age 74. "[4] Michael Gordon, who directed Turner in Portrait in Black, remembered her as "a very talented actress whose chief reliability was what I regarded as impoverished taste Lana was not a dummy, and she would give me wonderful rationalizations why she should wear pendant earrings.