Lana Turner was an American actress. Over the course of her nearly 50-year career, she achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress, as well as for her highly publicized personal life. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid actresses in the United States, and one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's biggest stars, with her films earning the studio more than $50 million during her 18-year contract with them. Turner is frequently cited as a popular culture icon of Hollywood glamour and a screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema.During the early 1940s, Turner established herself as a leading lady and one of MGM's top stars, appearing in such films as the film noir Johnny Eager; the musical Ziegfeld Girl; the horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and the romantic war drama Somewhere I'll Find You, one of several films in which she starred opposite Clark Gable. Turner's reputation as a glamorous femme fatale was enhanced by her critically acclaimed performance in the noir The Postman Always Rings Twice, a role which established her as a serious dramatic actress. Her popularity continued through the 1950s in dramas such as The Bad and the Beautiful and Peyton Place, the latter for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.Intense media scrutiny surrounded the actress in 1958 when her teenage daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed Turner's lover Johnny Stompanato to death in their home during a domestic struggle. Her next film, Imitation of Life, proved to be one of the greatest commercial successes of her career, and her final starring role in Madame X  earned her a David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress.