Lana Turner Movies

Want to know the best Lana Turner movies?  How about the worst Lana Turner movies?  Curious about Lana Turner’s box office grosses or which Lana Turner movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Lana Turner movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which movie got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Gotta make mama happy. Since I started writing movie pages, my mother, BERN1960 , has been asking me for a Lana Turner page. So after putting her request off for for almost 2 years…. now…finally my Lana Turner tribute page is complete and published.

Lana Turner (1921-1995) was an Oscar® nominated actress that appeared in over 50 movies from 1937 to 1991. In 1937 Turner got her big break when she went to a Hollywood drug store for some soda pop and was discovered by a movie producer who happened to be in the same drug store. She would appear in her first movie, They Won’t Forget, later that year and immediately was noticed by the movie going public because of the tight sweater she wore in the movie. She became known as the “sweater girl”….a label that she strongly disliked. It only took her four years to go from supporting roles to leading roles in low budget movies to leading roles in the most prestige movies being made at the time.

By 1941 was sharing top billing with superstars James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. Her peak movie years happened between 1941 and 1959. During this time frame she appeared in many blockbuster hits and numerous critical hits and was one of the biggest stars working in movies. Her IMDb page shows 61 acting credits from 1937 to 1985. This page will rank Lana Turner movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that received limited North America releases were not included in the rankings.

Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner in 1952's The Bad and the Beautiful
Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful

Lana Turner Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews, and awards.

Lana Turner Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In Ther Table

The really cool thing about ther table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Lana Turner movies by the co-stars of her movies.
  • Sort Lana Turner movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Lana Turner movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Lana Turner movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Lana Turner movie received.
  • Sort Lana Turner movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR).  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Lana Turner Table

  1. Twenty-three Lana Turner movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 46.00% of her movies listed. Peyton Place (1957) was her biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Lana Turner movie grossed $118.40 million in adjusted box office gross
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  26 of Lana Turner’s movies are rated as good movies…or 52.00% of her movies.  The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is her highest rated movie while Bittersweet Love (1976) was her lowest rated movie.
  4. Nine Lana Turner movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 18.00% of her movies.
  5. Three Lana Turner movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.00% of her movies.
  6. A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00.  35 Lana Turner movies scored higher that average….or 70.00% of her movies.  Peyton Place (1957) got the the highest UMR Score while Bittersweet Love (1976) got the lowest UMR Score.
John Garfield and Lana Turner in the classic film noir movie...The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
John Garfield and Lana Turner in the classic film noir movie…The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

Possibly Interesting Facts About Lana Turner

1. Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Turner in Wallace, Idaho in 1921. Throughout her life family members called her Judy. It was not until she was discovered that she became Lana.

2. Lana Turner’s list of co-stars is pretty impressive……4 movies with Clark Gable, 2 movies with Spencer Tracy, once with James Stewart, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Richard Burton and Anthony Quinn. She even appeared opposite two James Bonds years before they became Bond….Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

3. Lana Turner received one Oscar® nomination in her career. She was nominated for Best Actress in 1957’s Peyton Place. She never received a Golden Globe® nomination.

4. Lana Turner was married 8 different times to 7 different men. They included a rancher, a hypnotist, a movie producer, an actor, a restaurant owner, a department store owner and a millionaire socialite. Lana Turner had one daughter, Cheryl.

5. In 1958 Lana Turner and her boyfriend at the time, gangster Johnny Stompanato, were in a heated argument. In an effort to protect her mother, Cheryl Turner, killed Stompanato. The amount of media coverage of the killing has been compared to the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. It was ruled a justifiable homicide.

6. Roles Lana Turner turned down or was seriously considered for: Anatomy of a Murder, Mogambo, The Sound and the Fury, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. On the other side of this fact….she did however get the role of one of her biggest hits, Green Dolphin Street, when Katharine Hepburn dropped out of the movie.

7. The first agent that had contact with Lana Turner was Zeppo Marx, Groucho’s brother.

8.  Check out Lana Turner‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

But wait….we have a few more Lana Turner Movie Stats….Adjusted Worldwide Gross on 22 Lana Turner Movies

Lana Turner Box Office Grosses – Adjusted World Wide

Jump to Domestic Box Office

Steve’s Updated Lana Turner You Tube Video

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

(Visited 23,272 times)

86 thoughts on “Lana Turner Movies”

  1. I have only seen Peyton Place and The Postman. I’ve been wanting to see The Bad and the Beautiful for sometime now but TCM hasn’t shown it lately. For some reason, I didn’t know she was married the exact same number of times to the same number of men as Liz Taylor. Sad her career didn’t go in the same direction. She reminds me of Rita Hayworth in that regard beautiful and with alot of potential but surrounded by bad men and bad choices.

    Reply

    1. Hey Alecia…I think she and Elizabeth Taylor have lots in common…..from being a star in as a teenager….to lots of marriages…to lots of divorces. The Bad and the Beautiful is one of the few movies by her that I remember…she is very good in the movie…but Kirk Douglas is the one that shines the brightest in that movie. Funny you brought up Rita Hayworth…that is the other actress my mom has been asking about….maybe I will get that one done sometime in 2014….lol. Thanks for stopping by and for the comment.

      Reply

  2. Bruce, great page. My favourite of hers hands down is The Postman….but I also love Imitation of Life which I think was ahead of its time when it was made. I read her life story years ago, she certainly had an interesting time of it!

    Reply

    1. Thanks for stopping by. Not sure how I have managed to miss Postman all of these years…but I am trying to fix that issue very soon ….as for Imitation of Life…it is one of the few movies that my favorite movie author, Danny Peary, lists in his Cult Movie books that I have not seen…..once again I am not sure how I have accomplished this ….but they are both of my movies to watch list. Thanks as always for your contribution to my page.

      Reply

  3. One of the legendary screen beauties, Lana Turner, good work Bruce.

    Hmmm she has a steadier heartbeat than Tom Hanks which is jumping about a bit. 🙂

    Btw there was a rumour that Lana killed Stompanato and her daughter covered for her so as not to harm her career, just a rumour, only three people know for sure and two of them are dead.

    Of the 50 films you’ve listed I saw just 9, hmmm not good.

    My favourites of her films are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Three Musketeers.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….I think when looking at her heartbeat chart….she was looking great from 1941 to 1950…..then up was an up and down 1950s….with the peaks being her highest ….but after the 1950s she went straight to the bottom.

      I have only seen 4 of her movies….so you have doubled plus 1 my total….and I have checked out my local awesome library….and they do not have a huge amount of Turner movies….so my total will probably remain pretty low…although tracking down Postman Always Rings Twice is high on my list of movies to watch.

      I think the mystery of Turner’s gangster boyfriend’s death will never see the light of day….which will get it alive for the foreseeable future.

      Reply

  4. Very nice work here. I remember seeing Peyton Place at the theater when it first came out. Loved the movie then and still do to this day. She was a beautiful person and I can tell you her domestic issue with her daughter and her boyfriend was indeed like the OJ trial. Where did the years go?

    Reply

    1. Hey Janice Grayson….thanks for sharing your memories of Lana Turner in the 1950s…..and I agree with you about wondering where does the time go? Thanks for the visit.
      always exploring

      Reply

  5. Man those Idaho girls are tough. I’m with your Mom on this one, no way this should have taken two years, though that chart is very impressive. I see a career brewing. Thanks again. I brought this over to Facebook, hoping to get you a couple of more views. LOL

    Reply

    1. Hey mckbirdbks…thanks for the visit. Yep I was being a bad son….and to make it even worse….to my mom that has been so supportive all my life ….from baseball to football to hub pages….I should have done this hub so much sooner.

      Glad you like the chart….still experimenting with it…but I think it does a good job of providing a quick snapshot of somebody’s career….thanks for sharing this hub on Facebook and thanks for the nice words as always.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.