Modern Screen (Dec 1948 - Oct 1949)

REFUGE FOR LANA (Continued from page 47) couple of times I was rewarded by a really good look. Want to know something? (And this is from a cynic.) She's truly something! Don't you believe the reports that nowadays she looks like a suburban housewife. She's showy, spectacular-looking. Even in slacks and moccasins and a suede jacket she just doesn't look like a country girl or a housewife. She's Lana Turner, no matter what she has on. and looking at her no one could possibly forget it. She has given out no interviews to the two main newspapers in the area — the Greenwich Time and the Stamford Advocate— but from the people in the stores, from the high-school youngsters who follow her around when she shops on Saturdays, and from the neighbors, a portrait of Mrs. Robert Topping emerges that is perhaps more colorful than any that could be drawn from just a regular interview. At H. L. Green's five-and-ten store, a youngster named Katharine waited on her one day. Katharine goes to Greenwich High School, works part-time to get money for clothes. "There was a kind of lull," says Katharine, "and I was straightening out the paper bags and thinking about the Christmas play at school when a nice deep voice said, 'I'd like some of those chocolate kisses.' I looked up, and it was Bob Topping. Everyone in town knows him. 'Give me a lot of them,' he said. So I weighed out a pound-and-a-half, told him it would be $1.20 — and then I saw her. I remember exactly how she looked and what she had on. In the first place, she's little. I never realized she was such a half-pint. She had her hair parted on the left side and curled around, and she was wearing dark glasses. The thing I noticed most about her was her mouth. You know how hard some theatrical people's mouths get to' look. Well, hers is rather gentle. She had on sort of a cowboy jacket — you know, with fringe on the sleeves, and dark slacks and moccasins. And she looked cute. Bob handed her the candy and she gave him a big smile. She said 'Mmm, thanks!' And when they walked out I noticed that they were arm in arm." And Katharine was a heroine at Green's for at least an hour afterward. the brush-off . . . Charlie Piro at the Greenwich Time had a slightly less mellow story to tell. Reporters from his paper had twice tried to get a story from her and had been rebuffed. Not pleasantly rebuffed, it seems, but genuinely brushed off. Said one of the reporters: "Now, Henry Fonda's a nice guy — you can get him on the phone any old time. Not her. You can't break through the barrage of butlers even to hear her say 'no' in person. And there's a girl that could use some good publicity, too." At the Stamford Advocate, the word is that Lana will talk to anyone, that she's easy-going and friendly as a puppy — but that Bob hates publicity and doesn't want her interviewed. Considering Lana is offsalary at the moment at MGM, her time is her own and Bob's, this doesn't seem such an unreasonable attitude at that. And the fact "that Lana is willing to go along with Bob in spite of her own feelings, substantiates the opinion of some of her close friends that this time Lana's marriage comes so far ahead of her career that the career doesn't even show. For a neighbor's-eye view of Lana, you must drive north from +he town of Green wich eight miles or so. The Topping estate is set in a really beautiful section of rolling hills and green meadows, crossed and criss-crossed by dozens of old stone walls. Before you reach the house, you pass a country store — the kind that belongs on a cover of the Saturday Evening Post — and a lovely white New England church. There are a couple of farms — with red barns and cows and all the props — and then there's a small modest sign that says Topping. You can see the house from the road, and it's a mansion, nothing less. An English-style brick house with five enormous chimneys, it dominates the scene for acres around. There are 29 rooms, a tennis court and a swimming pool, and numerous small buildings. At one end of the 202 Topping acres, Jack, the youngest boy, bum a house and kept a string of magnificent horses (Palominos are his hobby) but this has been sold. house for sale . . . Last winter Bob's mother, Rhea Topping, a beautiful and much loved woman, died, and after her death the boys put "Dunnellan" up for sale. The house was her house, her love, and for the boys it holds hundreds of wonderful memories, but it represents a way of life that scarcely exists any longer. Nowadays when Lana goes into N. Y., it is not in splendor, with Mr. Steele, the head chauffeur who once drove for Bob's grandfather, at the wheel of the town car. Instead, Lana drives in with Bob in either the yellow Cadillac convertible with the California license plates or in the incredible red thunderbolt Chrysler 16. This is a low-slung, completely streamlined, special body job. Made in 1941, it cost around $6,500, and there are only 14 of them in the world. (Jack Topping has one of the others.) But Mr. Steele still polishes the town car, dreaming of the good old days, and wondering what's to become of this house he's known and loved so long. Bob offered the house and ten acres to the town of Greenwich for $275,000 for use as a school, but although a school is needed back there in the hills, the house is just too big and would require too much remodelling. Rumor has it that Rockefeller is dickering for it for use as a memorial to his mother — whether as a school, a hospital or what, doesn't seem to be known. At any rate, future buyers will have to be fairly well-heeled, as the assessed value of the place is just a few dollars under half-a-million. It's a little hard to picture Lana in this setting. Lana — who likes to kick off her shoes and relax; who has been called many things, but never stuffy. The neighbors have a little light to shed on this subject. She still isn't stuffy. She goes around the place in slacks — her favorites being a light blue pair. Sometimes she drives down to the store with Bob — the top down on the car more often than not, even on chilly days — her yellow hair bound up in a bright scarf. When they have guests, which isn't very often, Sunday night is their favorite for entertaining, they do it informally and they prefer small groups to great mob scenes. (The neighbors can tell by the number of cars.) Many of the younger women I spoke to in Greenwich talked mainly about her beauty, but a lot of the older ones were more concerned with the report that Lana's blood is Rh negative. They'd read that there was a chance that the Topping so softl SITROUX TISSUES strong... absorbent HOW FINER THAN EVER . . . say SIT-TRUE Van Johnson FREE PHOTO LARGE GLOSSY PICTU BE of your favorite MOVIE STAR INTRODUCTORY OFFER direct from HOLLYWOOD, home of the STARS. 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