American Legends: The Life of Lana Turner (Unabridged‪)‬

Includes Turner's quotes about her own life and career. Includes a bibliography for further reading. Includes a table of contents.

"My life has been a series of emergencies." (Lana Turner)

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

During the golden era of Hollywood, few actresses proved as versatile as Lana Turner, who got her start playing the wholesome, innocent young beauty as a teenager before shifting to femme fatale roles and starring in horror classics like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Lana was discovered as a result of her beauty; Louis B. Mayer immediately saw her as a potential replacement for Jean Harlow, and Turner's earliest roles played off her sexiness, with an influence that reached all the way to Argentina, where Eva Peron sought to emulate her style. At the same time, however, Turner felt disrespected by the focus on her looks and desperately wanted to show she could be a critically acclaimed actress. That eventually occurred when she was nominated for an Oscar for best actress in Peyton Place (1957), and Turner would go on to have an acting career that spanned nearly 55 years, with her final appearance coming only a few years before her death.

Throughout her life Turner sought critical acclaim to prove that she was more than a pretty face, yet she is perhaps most famous now for living the kind of life that kept gossip rags and rumor mills in business.