Lana Turner: Unrequited Love Personified

She once said she ‘loved a challenge’ but even her life filled with tragedy and multiple heartaches couldn’t have prepared her for such a quote.


The lovely and talented actress we know as Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner to John and Mildred Turner in Wallace, a small mining town located within Burke Idaho.Julia’s father was a mine worker while her mother Mildred was a beautician and her family was constantly plagued with monetary problems due to her father who would squander his paychecks drinking and playing cards. He soon began running bootleg corn liquor until a close call with authorities caused him to flee with his family to San Francisco, California.When Julia turned six her parents separated and in December of 1930 after winning money playing poker John Turner was brutally bludgeoned to death. Mildred attempted to provide for she and Julia but was losing the fight and was forced to put Julia in foster homes where in one of them she was abused verbally and physically via her caregivers.Mildred needed desperately to move to a warmer climate due to her bronchitis and she and Julia packed up and moved to Los Angeles where Julia attended Convent of Immaculate Conception and later Hollywood High School. Now at the tender age of 16, Julia was a classic beauty with a curvaceous figure, porcelain complexion and auburn hair and her peers began to take notice.


She was skipping class one day and stopped in at Schwab’s Drug Store where she sat sipping a soda at the u-shaped lunch counter. Schwab’s was the local watering hole for Hollywood insiders and it would be during this day of skipping class that the prominent publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, Billy Wilkerson would discover Julia whilst sipping her soda at the lunch counter.He gave her his card and she reluctantly after a few days passed it on to her mother who was hesitant about his intent. She asked around about the stranger only to find out he was one of the most influential men in Hollywood and Mildred quickly phoned him and Wilkerson immediately sent Julia to the Zeppo Marx Talent Agency of the famous Marx Brothers and from there onto Warner Brothers who would introduce her to director Mervyn LeRoy.


Under LeRoy’s tutelage her first movie was in 1937 playing a college student who is murdered in They Won’t Forget. She gained the moniker “The Sweater Girl” after wearing a form fitting sweater over a black skirt accentuating her figure and LeRoy would change her name to something much more glamorous in keeping with that moniker…Lana (pronounced Law-na) Turner.She left Warner Brothers with LeRoy where she was given twice the weekly salary from $50 to $100 dollars. LeRoy also purchased a home for Lana and her mother while she accepted supporting roles in Love Finds Andy Hardy and as an Asian maid in The Adventures of Marco Polo where they shaved her eyebrows off which never grew back causing her to have to draw them on for the rest of her life.