Lana Turner

Lana Turner is depicted in the diary through a handful of carefully observed encounters: as a celebrated guest star introduced at a dinner, as the subject of a commissioned portrait, and as a relaxed presence during a private meeting at the hotel. The contrast between her formal recognition and the diary’s more personal observations captures how celebrity moved between public ceremony and intimate social contact.

Identity and Introduction

Turner appears as a major star, introduced as the thousandth guest star at a dinner. Her late arrival held up the meal, making her entrance an event in itself. She was eventually brought onto the stage alongside Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers, and Mary Martin, placing her among the evening’s honored performers.

The tribute did not mention the portrait that had been commissioned from Andy Warhol. The omission left the professional purpose of the encounter unacknowledged during the public presentation, even as a date had been set for Warhol to photograph her.

Public Recognition and Portrait Commission

The diary connects Turner’s public status to Warhol’s portrait work. Her portrait had been commissioned, and a sitting was scheduled for the following Thursday. Later, the diary records Turner among the portraits obtained during the stay, though it does not specify the final stages or completion of her particular portrait.

Warhol’s general portrait procedure helps clarify the work behind such a commission without establishing that every step was followed for Turner. He typically took about sixty photographs with a Polaroid Big Shot, selected four images for a screen printer to turn into positive images on eight-by-ten-inch acetates, and chose and altered one image before it was enlarged to a forty-by-forty-inch acetate for silkscreening. Portraiture thus joined celebrity recognition to a deliberate process of selecting and shaping a public image.

A More Informal Encounter

After the dinner, the group returned to the hotel to meet Turner. The diary describes her as tipsy and affectionate in manner, a marked change from the formal setting of the stage. She asked for a kiss, and the narrator likened her manner to Paulette Goddard’s. Turner also mentioned that she used crystals and wore a small cross, details that place her within the intimate, conversational register of the meeting rather than the public pageantry of the dinner.

The account also records Turner’s explanation that a Nolan Miller dress had caused her to trip and sustain a cracked rib; the narrator doubted that explanation and suspected she had been drunk. The diary therefore preserves both her stated account and the narrator’s skepticism, without resolving the discrepancy.

The Stay and Its Close

Turner’s portrait work took place within a twelve-day hotel stay that the diary recalls as a period of particular comfort. Its end was punctuated by a bill of $9,500, half of which the group had to pay. The narrator thought the charges might include service and Fred Hughes’s room. The portraits, including Turner’s, were among the tangible results of the stay, set against the unexpectedly large cost of its hospitality.

Narrative Role

Turner’s brief appearance is significant less for a developed life story than for the several forms of celebrity the diary places side by side: a late-arriving thousandth guest star, a commissioned portrait subject, and a guest encountered in a relaxed hotel setting. The account moves from stage introductions to a scheduled photographic sitting and then to private conversation, showing how a star’s public image and social presence could be recorded in the same sequence without becoming identical.