The Building of a Bombshell

Lana Turner

She was a brown-haired, baby-faced, slightly pudgy, indolent-eyed 15-year-old named Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner when she was discovered in the mid-'30s at the Top Hat Cafe in Hollywood (not Schwab's drugstore, as is popularly believed). By the time director Mervyn LeRoy was through overseeing her makeover for his 1937 drama They Won't Forget, the teenager was renamed Lana Turner, her eyebrows were plucked to a thin arch, her clothes were fitted to perfection and she was told to wear a lined silk bra with no uplift to allow her breasts to move freely. She caused such a sensation as a fetching student who bops about in a tight sweater in the mini-classic that the press dubbed her The Sweater Girl. When MGM snapped her up, the little Lolita was built up as a nice girl in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy. When Turner graduated from her teens, though, her sex appeal was cranked up a notch--the studio bleached her hair blonde and she started wearing heavier makeup--to play one of Clark Gable's chorus girls in Idiots Delight, which she ended up not doing. By the time she was finally paired with Gable in Honky Tonk, Turner was a white-hot goddess who always seemed as if she had just experienced a raucous toss in the sheets. Then she went through yet another change--her image was cheapened a bit to come off like a sizzling blue-plate special at a roadside diner. This was accomplished by making her hair look like liquid platinum (some of hair expert Sydney Guilaroff's finest work) and by applying glossier makeup that caused her to look less inhibited (craftily done by the studio's elite cadre of maquillage mavens, including old pro Jack Dawn). The greatest change in her appearance, however, was brought on by Turner herself. Her love for the bottle and lust for life (not to mention strapping young men, such as Tyrone Power) added years to her face, which turned the twentysomething doll into a tougher-looking dame. The va-vooming of Turner reached its apex in the 1946 film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice, one of her signature hot-to- trot roles, in which her wardrobe--hot pants, bathing suits, tight dresses--was almost completely white. Special lighting was used to make her appear like an impossibly sexy firefly. Remember how white-hot Sharon Stone looked in Basic Instinct? The influence is pure Turner, crossed with Kim Novak in Vertigo and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief.

Marilyn Monroe

Around 1945, when she was a struggling young thing named Norma Jeane Dougherty, the girl who would one day become Marilyn Monroe was described as "a photographer's dream" with "chestnut-colored hair." Today, it is almost impossible to imagine her as anything but a photographer's dream. But wasn't she always a sexy blonde? The facts reveal otherwise. Even before she went on to become the preeminent sex symbol of the '50s, Monroe used any trick to burnish her allure. As a 21-year-old, she would pack tissue in her bra to gain attention, which it did--soon after, Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn offered her a $125-a-week contract, but only if she drastically altered her appearance. Within days, Monroe's hairline was reshaped by electrolysis and her hair was bleached. According to some, Monroe's baby-fine roots caused her agony because they didn't take platinum dye well. Notice the lock of hair that falls so casually over her forehead in certain movies; it often has to do with disguising the black roots. Orthodontia corrected Monroe's over-bite, and she was fitted for a retainer and had her teeth whitened. Perhaps conscious that she revealed too much gumline when she talked, Monroe adopted a style of speaking that pushed her top lip down. Surgeons reset her jaw and bobbed the tip of her nose. And rumors still persist that she had her breasts enlarged. When she moved to Fox, Allan Snyder devised a makeup style for Monroe that reportedly took three hours to apply, and always included red, Vaselined lips. In the late '50s, Monroe was at her peak and movie studios relentlessly promoted her siren image to sell tickets for The Seven Year Itch, Bus Stop and Some Like It Hot, but she was beginning to spiral out of control. Rumors spread that she was on drugs, and it didn't help that she was gaining weight and being labeled "difficult." When she slimmed down for 1962's Something's Got to Give, Monroe looked like a mature but still sexy seductress. Sadly, she died of a drug overdose shortly after filming began.

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