Almost There: Lana Turner in "The Bad and the Beautiful"
Monday, February 3, 2020 at 10:18AM This week The Film Experience will be celebrating Lana Turner for her Centennial. Here's Cláudio Alves
According to legend, Lana Turner was discovered in 1936, when she happened to be spotted by the publisher of The Hollywood Report while drinking a Coke at Schwab's Pharmacy. As with most myths of the cinematic Olympus, the story is unlikely to be true, though that doesn't take away from the allure of the actress. Whatever her origin story, Turner appeared in her first film the following year and quickly became one of Hollywood's most beloved sirens, an icon of glamor and sensuality, a megawatt star the likes of which we haven't seen in decades.
Despite it all, stardom doesn't necessarily equal prestige. Turner was often seen as little more than a pretty face and her acting craft was underappreciated. In 1957, a conflagration of many scandals, personal and literary, secured her a single Oscar nomination for Peyton Place. That wasn't the first time she was in the running for awards, however...
Back in 52, Turner probably came close to a nomination thanks to a juicy role, a great director, a buzzy picture and the most fabulous outfits you can imagine. None of that mattered for the Academy, who ignored her and, to add insult to injury, crowned one of her film's co-stars instead.
Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful tells the story of a callous producer who rises from the shadow of his late father to become a movie tycoon. Throughout his rise to power, Jonathan Shields screws over everybody, be it friend or foe, colleague or lover. Every star eventually dies and so it happens with Hollywood producers too. When the film starts, Shields is absent, but his plight for help makes itself heard. After years of success, he's fallen in disgrace and needs those who he once betrayed. The scenario prompts a tryptic of flashbacks, all recounting Shields' career and weaselly ways. First, there's the tale of a director, then an actress and finally a writer.
Lana Turner gives life to the starlet. She's Georgia Lorrison whose life story is an amalgamation of the biographies of Diana Barrymore and Jennifer Jones, perchance with a bit of Judy Garland mixed in. She's the grieving daughter of a celebrated actor who drank himself to death and whose legacy still haunts the actress. It's thanks to Shields that Georgia gets on the path to stardom, being mentored by a man who she'd end up falling in love with. In good melodramatic fashion, the producer cheats on his protégée, breaking her heart and making her seek independence.
Shot like a femme fatale and dressed like a goddess, Georgia is the picture's most complicated character, going through an arc that takes her from crushing insecurity to the cold-hearted confidence of a resentful celebrity. She fluctuates through several other personas, always trying on a different mask when the situation calls for it. Not all of them fit, as is the case of a seducing routine she performs in her apartment or the fussy Russian costume she's asked to model for one of Shield's epics. Turner's greatest asset is the way she plays performances within performances, delineating Georgia's evolution with the growing seamlessness of her social and cinematic acting chops.
At first, she's a mess, swiveling from register to register with reckless abandon, tainting eroticism with piteous tears and aggression with the nervous smile of a drunken girl. As she grows into a professional screen icon, there's poise in her step and a schooling of her expression that projects an idea of glamor. A glamor that is brittle and drained of joy. Hers is a Hollywood tale without a happy ending, after all. Not coincidentally, Turner's best moment comes when she makes one of the boldest choices a star can make, receding into the background. Georgia appears paralyzed by anguish, her face empty like that of a porcelain doll, her magnetism smothered.
In contrast with her leading man's explosion of vociferous self-pity, Turner's quiet stillness is as unexpected as it is sharp. The smiles of yore and romantic camaraderie burn in her shining eyes, her insecure persona finally shattered and forcefully rebuilt. Whatever the mercenary smiles of the film's final shot may suggest, Georgia was irrevocably broken by Shields in the night he revealed his betrayal. Turner's performance never lets us forget. It's not a great feat of transformative acting, but this characterization is vital to the film, modulating a real star's persona into a tragic figure that stands in for every woman similarly abused and mistreated in the dream factory of Hollywood.
In the end, Hollywood's elite overlooked Turner's work, preferring to reward Gloria Graham's unsubstantial portrait of a southern belle in the same movie. She would end up winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, while Lana Turner never conquered the coveted statuette.
Reader Comments (21)
Nice insight into Lana's neglected work. She was without doubt an inconsistent performer, to be fair some of the dross she had to breathe life into really didn't give her a chance to be anything but glamorous surface, but she nails the many emotions of Georgia.
She should have had Gloria's spot but part of what might have cost her a nomination was that at that point in Hollywood there was no way a major star like Lana would be allowed to be considered a supporting actress. I know in these award hungry days performers regularly participate in category fraud but there was a pecking order and prestige involved back then that ruled such things out.
This and her performance in The Postman Always Rings Twice are probably her best onscreen work, though she was often much better than given credit and always watchable.
Like most legends there are grains of truth in Lana's discovery story. She was in a drugstore drinking a Coke but it was the Top Hat Drugstore directly across from Hollywood High School where she was a student, she was cutting class and spied by the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter who asked her if she wanted to be in the movies. Her reply "I'll have to ask my mother"!
I adore Gloria Grahame but how she won for the flyaway role of Rosemary is a real mystery especially when she was seen to much better advantage in Sudden Fear this same year!
Gloria Grahame is one of those performers I am glad has an Academy award but it totally was for the wrong film (also her win prevented a win from one of the all time great supporting performances, Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont in Singin in the Rain). Grahame was more memorable in Sudden Fear, In a Lonely Place, Crossfire, heck even her small supporting role in It's a Wonderful Life than in The Bad and the Beautiful.
Adore Lana (shoulda won that Oscar in '57) and love this series!
This was a really interesting read and a totally wild card pick,I always found turner beautiful but too melodramatic saying that I think i'd have nominated her for Imitation of Life,thanks,
Lana was not a great actress But a beautiful movie star.
Melodrama in the 40s and 50s was the Marvel movies of Today.
Should for The Bad and The Beautiful and Imitation of Life. She's better actress than she thought.
The best written on this series. Lana Turner was a titan of charisma and stardom. And and amazing clothehorse. AMPAS is a conservative man - likes his girls gorgeous but not too much sexy.
Lana Turner didn't think much of her nominated performance in Peyton Place. She believed her work in this film and in Postman Always Rings Twice were stronger and she is right. She is an inspired casting choice in Bad and the Beautiful.
Nice post. Regarding Lana’s later nomination, the biggest scandal took place after the Academy Awards in 1958. The overall love for Peyton Place during initial voting (resulting in nine nominations) was probably the main factor in Turner breaking through and gaining a spot among the top five. I think Lana and her regal iciness fits the role of Constance perfectly, as a woman trying to hide a spotty past via the mask of a cool exterior- she herself may not have been impressed, but I’m glad Turner got in for a nom that year. Lana really could cut loose given an emotionally-challenging scene and, although I understand her artificial movie star, above-it-all approach to some scenes can be a turn-off, watching her do something like that bedside scene with Annie/Juanita Moore near the end of Imitation of Life, you gotta her the lady her due as a moving screen performer.
I need to check my Inside Oscars, but I feel like Turner was campaigned as a lead for The Bad and the Beautiful. I'm fairly certain I read it somewhere - it would explain her missing given she is absent for large chunks of the movie.
Reading this, I realized that my only association of Lana Turner onscreen is the infamous "A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker" scene in L.A. Confidential ... although the actress in question turns out to be the real deal.
I'll look into one of her movies soon, I swear!
Lana would be mad if you’re celebrating her centennial this year, she always maintained her year of birth was 1921, and it irritated her no end when it was reported as 1920. Why, she said, would I lie about a year!
Lana is really good in this movie- it's still one of the best movies made about studio era Hollywood
I'm only recently becoming familiar with her work, but after seeing The Bad and the Beautiful and Madame X last year, I can already tell that she's a better actress than she's gotten credit for. I couldn't believe Grahame was nominated (and won!) over her, and I think she's fantastic in the incredibly overwrought but totally watchable Madame X.
I wonder who her proxy would be in the current era?
thefilmjunkie: I wonder who her proxy would be in the current era?
You'd have to go back to the 1990s and Sharon Stone for a comparable sex siren rarely taken seriously for her acting. In fact, in the late 90s, Stone was tapped to play Lana in a movie about the Stompanato affair (Antonio Banderas was attached to play opposite) but, alas, the movie never came to be.
@Joseph: For a moment I was thinking maybe Halle Berry, who even as an Oscar winner isn’t necessarily “respected” as an actor. But Sharon Stone makes much more sense!
What I like about some of Hollywood's glamorous screen sirens is that given the right role and director, they could truly shine. Lana showed everyone that she could turn in a memorable performance in this film, and I do like her in Peyton Place and especially Imitation of Life, which both suited her style well.
Lana is sensational in this film n she was def campaigned as a Lead back in 1952. She IS "the Beautiful" in the film title, u kno 😂
I agreed tt she shld've been nom for this or Postman Alws Ring Twice or even Imitation of Life, rather than Peyton Place. But well, betta late than never!
It's a shame tt Golden Globes never ever nom her w their penchant for glamour n movie stars. Guess back in her heyday, even the Golden Globes tink tt she is *ahem* beneath them...
Gloria Grahame totally won for the wrong movie!! I alws imagine she had won for Sudden Fear in my parallel universe! 😂
RIP Kirk Douglas (1916-2020)
I really should watch this film in his honor.
I didn't know Grahame and Turner were both going for the supporting actress Oscar as you replied. That's fun trivia I never knew! I thought considering those days that Turner would have pushed for lead, that way you wouldn't have needed to say "In the end, Hollywood's elite overlooked Turner's work, preferring to reward Gloria Graham's unsubstantial portrait of a southern belle in the same movie." or "None of that mattered for the Academy, who ignored her and, to add insult to injury, crowned one of her film's co-stars instead." once again implying direct category competition. I'd love to see your source for the Tuner going supporting fact as i bet they would have many other curious category incidents at their site or publication.
Also I saw the film years ago and because of everybody's rock bottom opinion on Grahame's work I was pleasantly surprised.
I don't think Claudio is suggesting they were direct competition just that it would have been galling for Turner to watch her co-star win for such an insubstantial role when she didn't even get nominated.
There is zero chance that Lana Turner would have been campaigned in Supporting.