Today is the Lana Turner Blog-a-thon – if you didn’t know already.<\/p>\n
Definitely go check out all of these well-written insightful essays – I’ve been having a lot of fun reading them.<\/p>\n
Here is Flickhead’s post<\/a>. I liked this part:<\/p>\n If the Postman <\/i>delivered anything, it was Lana inconceivably cast as a roadhouse hash slinger (!), radiant in open-toed shoes, white blouse and shorts, her beautiful bare legs held in awe by the lens, and those vacant, faraway eyes framed by a turban. Indeed, her introductory shot in that picture stands among the supreme and least plausible of all Hollywood glamour images. The great riddle \u0097 what madman cast the warm and fuzzy Cecil Kellaway as the husband? \u0097 went unanswered, but no one really cared. Lana had, as they say, \u0091arrived.\u0092<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here is Greenbriar Picture Shows post <\/a>(that site is my new addiction, by the way – thank you SO much Hank for the link!) Read the whole post, and make sure to check out the picture of the absolute MOB scene beneath the marquee with her name. It’s a really interesting take on Lana, on how in her heyday – there was nobody bigger. And yet it’s hard to see, now, what all the fuss was about. But it would be a huge mistake to just blow off that Lana Mania as “Well, they just didn’t know what was good”. No, no. Let’s look at her in the context of her time.<\/p>\n One excerpt:<\/p>\n The ones who could tell us all about Lana Turner and what she meant to her once wildly enthusiastic fan base are a dwindling lot of world war veterans — the men who served and worshipped Lana, and the women who crowded her movies stateside and lived vicariously through her romances, both onscreen and off. It\u0092s easy for our generation to regard her as a studio manufactured joke, for we never experienced the anxieties that a star like Lana was there to alleviate. She was comfort food with a brief shelf life, but like strawberries fresh from the market, she had an intoxicating flavor that just can\u0092t be experienced so many years after the initial purchase, and a movie like Marriage Is A Private Affair <\/i>can give but the barest hint of what it must have been like to taste Lana in her prime. She would certainly make better pictures (The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Bad and The Beautiful, Imitation Of Life<\/i>), but none that summon up her essential appeal like this one. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n And I so agree with John (who wrote that) that her films are “fascinating time capsules” for those of us who love the movies. Go read his whole post<\/a>, though – and definitely scroll around his unbelievable site. I am DROOLING over some of the images.<\/p>\n A beautiful articulate post<\/a> by one of my favorite bloggers – the Self-Styled Siren. REALLY cool insights there about Lana’s beauty – and how she used it, and knew she had to use it.<\/p>\n In The Postman Always Rings Twice<\/i>, probably the peak of Lana’s looks if not her talent, the power turns to desperation. See her clinging to John Garfield, throwing every bit of her allure at him like a spear. Can’t he see, for God’s sake? Lana knows, she knows she’s never going to get more beautiful and she sure as hell isn’t going to get any smarter. She has to get away from Cecil Kellaway (Flickhead is right, that casting was bizarre), and Garfield’s feckless character is unfortunately the only way out. When what she wants is murder, even Lana has to put some muscle into it. The result is that Lana’s scenes of persuasion with Garfield are not subtle, but they are entirely true to a woman actually having to work on a man for the first time, after years of having them roll over and play dead. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wow. SO true. Go read the whole post.<\/p>\n Here is a post by The Evening Class<\/a>. It makes me NEED to see Imitation of Life<\/i> again, in order to watch that one moment.<\/p>\n Coffee, coffee, and more coffee does a post about The Sea Chase<\/i><\/a> – a film I have not seen with John Wayne and Lana. Excerpt:<\/p>\n It may have been part of her contract, but Turner first appears wearing a fur coat. Later she is seen wearing some form fitting sweaters, a reminder of what made her a star in the first place. While the ship’s crew gets grubbier as the film progresses, Turner remains her glamorous self no matter how primitive the conditions around her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Those were the days.<\/p>\n Here’s John Garfield and Lana in Postman<\/i>. I have a postcard of this image on my fridge. There’s just something about it.<\/p>\n Lana Turner died on this day, in 1995.<\/p>\n Her star has faded a bit – she is now seen as a symbol of other things – but I’ve got to believe that someone whose career lasted that long<\/a> – (she may not have done a gazillion movies a year – but she worked steadily) had a hell of a lot of moxie, ambition, and … maybe not smarts (uhm … 7 husbands, Lana? Johnny Stomponato? Uhm … Lana?) … but survival skills. She started out as the “It Girl” because of how she looked in a sweater. “It Girls” are a dime a dozen. If you want to last beyond your big season of being the “It Girl”, you need to have more going on than just looks, or luck. Will we ever have a Sienna Miller Blog-a-Thon day? Time will tell.<\/p>\n I am not saying I think Lana Turner is under-rated. I don’t. I’m not saying she’s an unsung Great Actress. But she has her damn fine moments – when she is used well – when a director “gets” her – and I celebrate that part of her. I really like watching her act. It’s a bunch of hoo-hah, really – breathy sleepy-eyed hoo-hah – and a relic from another time – but that’s part of why I like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the Lana Turner Blog-a-thon – if you didn’t know already. Definitely go check out all of these well-written insightful essays – I’ve been having a lot of fun reading them. Here is Flickhead’s post. I liked this part: … Continue reading