She was gorgeous and funny and talented. And she also managed to marry the divine Rhett Butler.
Sadly she died in tragic circumstances, (in a plane crash at the height of her career)...leaving him and the world heartbroken.
Not only was she a great actress, but also a superb cabaret and stage performer.
She would often perform the first part of her show in one of her body-hugging dresses and a swansdown coat, and change to top hat and tails for the second half of the performance. She was openly bisexual, loved to cross dress, and only married once. Throughout her career Dietrich had an unending string of affairs, some short-lived, some lasting decades; they often overlapped and were almost all known to her husband, to whom she was in the habit of passing the love letters of her men, sometimes with biting comments!
Favourite quote: "if God exists, he needs to review his plans."
She is not one of my favourites. I think it's mostly because her eyebrows are terrifying, but also she kind of always looks unwell. Which makes sense when you think she died of kidney failure at the tragically young age of 26. To give her her due, she really set a standard with that peroxide and created the classic bombshell look that still makes us all weak at the knees (think Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera). |
But oh baby, Lana Turner had the most tumultuous life of all. She was well known inside Hollywood circles for dating often, changing partners often, and for never shying away from the topic of how many lovers she had in her lifetime. She described her life as a "series of emergencies". She married 7 times and endured a lot of scandal... including having her daughter stab one of her lovers to death ! |
The public loved her, but she was apparently renowned for being extremely difficult to work with.
She only married four times, but struggled with mental illness and alcoholism all her life, the poor thing.