Cheryl Crane, LANA: THE MEMORIES, THE MYTHS, THE MOVIES author, daughter: Mr. Media Interview

Every actor has their own story of discovery, but can anything top cutting class and getting discovered at age 15 in a soda shop? It sounds made up, something out of a movie, and yet that’s exactly how Lana Turner, formerly Julia Jean “Judy” Turner, got her start in Hollywood. Lana was the ultimate personification of the term “movie star”—a world-class beauty who lived a glamorous lifestyle, one that included seven marriages and a murder that would make her and her daughter infamous. In LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies (Running Press; November 2008), Lana’s daughter, Cheryl Crane, tells her mother’s story for the first time. “I don’t feel that anything heretofore published has captured the woman that I knew, including her own autobiography,” says Crane, who presents an honest, captivating portrait of her mother’s life both on and off camera in this new book. Complete with never-before-published photographs from her private family collection, LANA showcases not only the stunning glamour of one of Hollywood’s classic celebrities, but also Lana’s life as a mother, a wife, an adventurer, and above all, a woman with a zest for life.