Turner, Lana, originally Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner 1920-95
US film actress

Born in Wallace, Idaho, legend has it that as a teenager she was spotted sipping soda at a drugstore on Sunset Boulevard and asked if she would like to be in the movies. She duly appeared as an extra in A Star Is Born (1937) and was signed by MGM and promoted as 'the sweatergirl'. She appeared opposite Clark Gable in Honky Tonk (1941), and later notable films included The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), with John Garfield, and The Bad And The Beautiful (1952). Later, she appeared on stage in a succession of glossy melodramas such as Peyton Place (1957) and Imitation Of Life (1959) and also in such television series as The Survivors (1969) and the soap opera Falcon Crest (1982-83). Her stormy private life, notably the murder of her lover by her daughter, Cheryl Crane, and her seven marriages brought her some notoriety, and in 1982 she published an autobiography Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth.