title: Juan Perón

text: The new military regime went to great lengths to destroy both Juan and Eva Perón's reputation, putting up public exhibits of what they maintained was the Peróns' scandalously sumptuous taste for antiques, jewelry, roadsters, yachts and other luxuries. In addition, they highlighted the association between Peronism and Nazism and accused Perón of having committed genocide. They also accused other Peronist leaders of corruption; but, ultimately, though many were prosecuted, none was convicted. The junta's first leader, Eduardo Lonardi, appointed a Civilian Advisory Board. However, its preference for a gradual approach to de-Perónization helped lead to Lonardi's ousting, though most of the board's recommendations withstood the new president's scrutiny.


title: Juan Perón

text: Lonardi's replacement, Lieutenant-General Pedro Aramburu, outlawed the mere mention of Juan or Eva Perón's names under Decree Law 4161/56. Throughout Argentina, Peronism and the very display of Peronist mementos was banned. Partly in response to these and other excesses, Peronists and moderates in the army organized a counter-coup against Aramburu, in June 1956. Possessing an efficient intelligence network, however, Aramburu foiled the plan, having the plot's leader, General Juan José Valle, and 26 others executed. Aramburu turned to similarly drastic means in trying to rid the country of the spectre of the Peróns, themselves. Eva Perón's corpse was removed from its display at CGT headquarters and ordered hidden under another name in a modest grave in Milan, Italy. Perón himself, for the time residing in Caracas, Venezuela at the kindness of ill-fated President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, suffered a number of attempted kidnappings and assassinations ordered by Aramburu.


title: Juan Perón

text: Continuing to exert considerable direct influence over Argentine politics despite the ongoing ban of the Justicialist Party as Argentina geared for the 1958 elections, Perón instructed his supporters to cast their ballots for the moderate Arturo Frondizi, a splinter candidate within the Peronists' largest opposition party, the Radical Civic Union (UCR). Frondizi went on to defeat the better-known (but, more anti-Peronist) UCR leader, Ricardo Balbín. Perón backed a "Popular Union" (UP) in 1962, and when its candidate for governor of Buenos Aires Province (Andrés Framini) was elected, Frondizi was forced to resign by the military. Unable to secure a new alliance, Perón advised his followers to cast blank ballots in the 1963 elections, demonstrating direct control over one fifth of the electorate.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón's stay in Venezuela had been cut short by the 1958 ousting of General Pérez Jiménez. In Panama, he met the nightclub singer María Estela Martínez (known as "Isabel"). Eventually settling in Madrid, Spain under the protection of Francisco Franco, he married Isabel in 1961 and was admitted back into the Catholic Church in 1963.


title: Juan Perón

text: Following a failed December 1964 attempt to return to Buenos Aires, he sent his wife to Argentina in 1965, to meet political dissidents and advance Perón's policy of confrontation and electoral boycotts. She organized a meeting in the house of Bernardo Alberte, Perón's delegate and sponsor of various left-wing Peronist movements such as the CGT de los Argentinos (CGTA), an offshoot of the umbrella CGT union. During Isabel's visit, adviser Raúl Lastiri introduced her to his father-in-law, José López Rega. A policeman with an interest in the occult, he won Isabel's trust through their common dislike of Jorge Antonio, a prominent Argentine industrialist and the Peronist movement's main financial backer during their perilous 1960s. Accompanying her to Spain, López Rega worked for Perón's security before becoming the couple's personal secretary. A return of the Popular Union (UP) in 1965 and their victories in congressional elections that year helped lead to the overthrow of the moderate President Arturo Illia, and to the return of dictatorship.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón became increasingly unable to control the CGT, itself. Though he had the support of its Secretary General, José Alonso, others in the union favored distancing the CGT from the exiled leader. Chief among them was Steel and Metalworkers Union head Augusto Vandor. Vandor challenged Perón from 1965 to 1968 by defying Perón's call for an electoral boycott (leading the UP to victories in the 1965 elections), and with mottos such as "Peronism without Perón" and "to save Perón, one has to be against Perón." Dictator Juan Carlos Onganía's continued repression of labour demands, however, helped lead to Vandor's rapprochement with Peróna development cut short by Vandor's as-yet unsolved 1969 murder. Labour agitation increased; the CGTA, in particular, organized opposition to the dictatorship between 1968 and 1972, and it would have an important role in the May–June 1969 "Cordobazo" insurrection.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón began courting the far left during Onganía's dictatorship. In his book "La Hora de los Pueblos" (1968), Perón enunciated the main principles of his purported new Tricontinental political vision:


title: Juan Perón

text: He supported the more militant unions and maintained close links with the Montoneros, a far-left Catholic Peronist group. On 1 June 1970, the Montoneros kidnapped and assassinated former anti-Peronist President Pedro Aramburu in retaliation for the June 1956 mass execution of a Peronist uprising against the junta. In 1971, he sent two letters to the film director Octavio Getino, one congratulating him for his work with Fernando Solanas and Gerardo Vallejo, in the "Grupo Cine Liberación", and another concerning two film documentaries, "La Revolución Justicialista" and "Actualización política y doctrinaria".


title: Juan Perón

text: He also cultivated ties with ultraconservatives and the extreme right. He supported the leader of the conservative wing of the UCR, his erstwhile prisoner Ricardo Balbín, against competition from within the UCR itself. Members of the right-wing Tacuara Nationalist Movement, considered the first Argentine guerrilla group, also turned towards him. Founded in the early 1960s, the Tacuaras were a fascist, anti-Semitic and conformist group founded on the model of Primo de Rivera's Falange, and at first strongly opposed Peronism. However, they split after the 1959 Cuban Revolution into three groups: the one most opposed to the Peronist alliance, led by Catholic priest Julio Meinvielle, retained the original hard-line stance; the New Argentina Movement (MNA), headed by Dardo Cabo, was founded on 9 June 1961, to commemorate General Valle's Peronist uprising on the same date in 1956, and became the precursor to all modern Catholic nationalist groups in Argentina; and the Revolutionary Nationalist Tacuara Movement (MNRT), formed by Joe Baxter and José Luis Nell, who joined Peronism believing in its capacity for revolution, and without forsaking nationalism, broke from the Church and abandoned anti-Semitism. Baxter's MNRT became progressively Marxist, and many of the Montoneros and of the ERP's leaders came from this group.


title: Juan Perón

text: Following Onganía's replacement in June 1970, General Roberto M. Levingston proposed the replacement of Argentina's myriad political parties with "four or five" (vetted by the "Revolución Argentina" regime). This attempt to govern indefinitely against the will of the different political parties united Peronists and their opposition in a joint declaration of 11 November 1970, billed as "la Hora del Pueblo" (The Hour of the People), which called for free and immediate democratic elections to put an end to the political crisis. The declaration was signed by the Radical Civic Union (UCRP), the Justicialist Party (Peronist Party), the Argentine Socialist Party (PSA), the Democratic Progressive Party (PCP) and the "Partido Bloquista" (PB).


title: Juan Perón

text: The opposition's call for elections led to Levingston's replacement by General Alejandro Lanusse, in March 1971. Faced with strong opposition and social conflicts, General Lanusse declared his intention to restore constitutional democracy by 1973, though without Peronist participation. Lanusse proposed the "Gran Acuerdo Nacional" (Great National Agreement) in July 1971, which was to find an honorable exit for the military junta without allowing Peronism to participate in the election. The proposal was rejected by Perón, who formed the FRECILINA alliance ("Frente Cívico de Liberación Nacional", Civic Front of National Liberation), headed by his new delegate Héctor José Cámpora (a member of the Peronist Left). The alliance gathered his Justicialist Party and the Integration and Development Movement (MID), headed by Arturo Frondizi. FRECILINA pressed for free and unrestricted elections, which ultimately took place in March 1973.


title: Juan Perón

text: Che Guevara and Perón were sympathetic to each other. Pacho O'Donnell states that Che Guevara, as Cuban minister, attempted to arrange for the return of Perón to Argentina in the 1960s and sent financial support for that end. However, Perón disapproved of Guevara's advocacy of guerrilla warfare as antiquated. In Madrid, Perón and Guevara met twice. These meetings, as the meetings Perón held with other leftists in Madrid (such as Salvador Allende), were arranged with great secrecy to avoid complaints or expulsion from Francoist Spain. According to Enrique Pavón Pereyra, who was present at the second meeting between Guevara and Perón in Madrid, Perón would have discouraged and warned Guevara of his guerrilla plans in Bolivia: "you will not survive in Bolivia. Suspend that plan. Search for alternatives. [...] Do not commit suicide."


title: Juan Perón

text: Enrique Pavón Pereyra was only present for the first part of the meeting; he then served mate so that Perón and Guevara could drink together and left the meeting room to provide them with some privacy. Pavón Pereyra speculated about the conversation that followed in his absence: according to him, Perón would likely have explained to Guevara that he could not compromise support for his planned operations, but that "when" Guevara "moved activities" to Argentina he would provide Peronist support. After the encounter, Perón commented to a friend in a letter about meeting Guevara, calling him "an immature utopian – but one of us – I am happy for it to be so because he is giving the yankees a real headache."


title: Juan Perón

text: General elections were held on 11 March 1973. Perón was banned from running, but a stand-in, Dr. Héctor Cámpora, a left-wing Peronist and his personal representative, won the election and took office on 25 May. On 20 June 1973, Perón returned from Spain to end his 18-year exile. According to "Página 12" newspaper, Licio Gelli, master of Propaganda Due, had provided an Alitalia plane to return Perón to his native country. Gelli was part of a committee supporting Perón, along with Carlos Saúl Menem (future President of Argentina, 1989–1999). The former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti recalled an encounter between Perón, his wife, Isabel, and Gelli, saying that Perón knelt before Licio Gelli to salute him.


title: Juan Perón

text: On the day of Perón's return, a crowd of left-wing Peronists (estimated at 3.5 million according to police) gathered at the Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires to welcome him. Perón was accompanied by Cámpora, whose first measures were to grant amnesty to all political prisoners and re-establish relations with Cuba, helping Fidel Castro break the United States embargo against Cuba. This, along with his social policies, had earned him the opposition of right-wing Peronists, including the trade-unionist bureaucracy.


title: Juan Perón

text: Camouflaged snipers opened fire on the crowd at the airport. The left-wing Peronist Youth Organization and the Montoneros had been trapped. At least 13 people were killed and 365 injured in this episode, which became known as the Ezeiza massacre.


title: Juan Perón

text: Cámpora and Vice President Vicente Solano Lima resigned in July 1973, paving the way for new elections, this time with Perón's participation as the Justicialist Party nominee. Argentina faced mounting political instability, and Perón was viewed by many as the country's only hope for prosperity and safety. UCR leader Ricardo Balbín and Perón contemplated a Peronist-Radical joint government, but opposition in both parties made this impossible. Besides opposition among Peronists, Ricardo Balbín had to consider opposition within the UCR itself, led by Raúl Alfonsín, a leader among the UCR's center-left. Perón received 62% of the vote, returning him to the presidency. He began his third term on 12 October 1973, with Isabel, his wife, as Vice President.


title: Juan Perón

text: On Perón's advice, Cámpora had appointed José Ber Gelbard as policy adviser to the critical Economy Ministry. Inheriting an economy that had doubled in output since 1955 with little indebtedness and only modest new foreign investment, inflation had become a fixture in daily life and was worsening: consumer prices rose by 80% in the year to May 1973 (triple the long-term average, up to then). Making this a policy priority, Ber Gelbard crafted a "social pact" in hopes of finding a happy median between the needs of management and labour. Providing a framework for negotiating price controls, guidelines for collective bargaining and a package of subsidies and credits, the pact was promptly signed by the CGT (then the largest labour union in South America) and management (represented by Julio Broner and the CGE). The measure was largely successful, initially: inflation slowed to 12% and real wages rose by over 20% during the first year. GDP growth accelerated from 3% in 1972 to over 6% in 1974. The plan also envisaged the paydown of Argentina's growing public external debt, then around US$8 billion, within four years.


title: Juan Perón

text: The improving economic situation encouraged Perón to pursue interventionist social and economic policies similar to those he had carried out in the Forties: nationalizing banks and various industries, subsidizing native businesses and consumers, regulating and taxing the agricultural sector, reviving the IAPI, placing restrictions on foreign investment, and funding a number of social welfare programs. In addition, new rights for workers were introduced.


title: Juan Perón

text: The 1973 oil shock, however, forced Ber Gelbard to rethink the Central Bank's projected reserves and, accordingly, undid planned reductions in stubborn budget deficits, then around US$2 billion a year (4% of GDP). Increasingly frequent collective bargaining agreements in excess of Social Pact wage guidelines and a resurgence in inflation led to growing strain on the viability of the plan by mid-1974, however.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón's third term was also marked by an escalating conflict between the Peronist left- and right-wing factions. This turmoil was fueled primarily by calls for repression against the left on the part of leading CGT figures, a growing segment of the armed forces (particularly the navy) and right-wing radicals within his own party, notably Perón's most fascist adviser, José López Rega. López Rega, appointed Minister of Social Welfare, was in practice given power far beyond his purview, soon controlling up to 30 percent of the federal budget. Diverting increasing funds, he formed the Triple A, a death squad that soon began targeting not only the violent left; but moderate opposition, as well. The Montoneros became marginalized in the Peronist movement and were mocked by Perón himself after the Ezeiza massacre. In his speech to the governors on 2 August 1973, Perón openly criticized radical Argentine youth for a lack of political maturity.


title: Juan Perón

text: The rift between Perón and the far left became irreconcilable following 25 September 1973, murder of José Ignacio Rucci, the moderately conservative Secretary General of CGT. Rucci was killed in a commando ambush in front of his residence. His murder was long attributed to the Montoneros (whose record of violence was well-established by then), but it is arguably Argentina's most prominent unsolved mystery.


title: Juan Perón

text: Enraged, Perón enlisted López Rega to target left-wing opponents. Shortly after Perón's attack on left-wing Peronism, the Montoneros went underground.


title: Juan Perón

text: Another guerrilla group, the Guevarist ERP, also opposed the Peronist right-wing. They started engaging in armed struggle, assaulting an important Army barracks in Azul, Buenos Aires Province on 19 January, and creating a "foco" (insurrection) in Tucumán, a historically underdeveloped province in Argentina's largely rural northwest. In May 1973 the ERP claimed to have extorted $1 million in goods from the Ford Motor Company, after murdering one executive and wounding another. Five months after the payment, the guerrillas killed another Ford executive and his three bodyguards. Only after Ford threatened to close down their operation in Argentina altogether, did Perón agree to have his army protect the plant.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón's failing health complicated matters. He suffered from an enlarged prostate and heart disease, and by at least one account, he may have been senile by the time he was sworn in for his third term. His wife frequently had to take over as Acting President over the course of the next year.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón maintained a full schedule of policy meetings with both government officials and chief base of support, the CGT. He also presided over the inaugural of the Atucha I Nuclear Power Plant (Latin America's first) in April; the reactor, begun while he was in exile, was the fruition of work started in the 1950s by the National Atomic Energy Commission, his landmark bureau. His diminishing support from the far left (which believed Perón had come under the control of the right-wing "entorno" (entourage) led by López Rega, UOM head Lorenzo Miguel, and Perón's own wife) turned to open enmity following rallies on the Plaza de Mayo on 1 May and 12 June in which the president condemned their demands and increasingly violent activities.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón was reunited with another friend from the 1950s – Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner – on 16 June to sign the bilateral treaty that broke ground on Yacyretá Hydroelectric Dam (the world's second-largest). Perón returned to Buenos Aires with clear signs of pneumonia and, on 28 June, he suffered a series of heart attacks. Isabel was on a trade mission to Europe, but returned urgently and was secretly sworn in on an interim basis on 29 June. Following a promising day at the official presidential residence of Quinta de Olivos in the Buenos Aires suburb of Olivos, Juan Perón suffered a final attack on Monday, 1 July 1974 and died at 13:15. He was 78 years old.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón's corpse was first transported by hearse to Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral for a funeral mass the next day. Afterwards the body, dressed in full military uniform, was taken to the Palace of the National Congress, where it lay in state over the next 46 hours, during which more than 130,000 people filed past the coffin. Finally, at 09:30 on a rainy Thursday, 4 July the funeral procession commenced. Perón's Argentine flag-covered casket was placed on a limber towed by a small army truck (escorted by cavalry and a large motorcade of motorcycles and a few armored vehicles) through the capital's streets back to Olivos. At least one million people turned out for Perón's funeral, some of whom threw flowers at the casket and chanted, "¡Perón! ¡Perón! ¡Perón!" as it passed by. Along the 16-kilometer (10-mile) route from the Palace to Olivos, hundreds of armed soldiers lining it were assigned to restrain the crowd. As many as 2,000 foreign journalists covered the ceremony. The funeral cortege reached its final destination two and a half hours later. There, the coffin was greeted by a 21-gun salute. Many international heads of state offered condolences to Argentina following the demise of President Perón. Three days of official mourning were declared thereafter. Perón had recommended that his wife, Isabel, rely on Balbín for support, and at the president's burial Balbín uttered an historic phrase: "The old adversary bids farewell to a friend."


title: Juan Perón

text: Isabel Perón succeeded her husband to the presidency, but proved incapable of managing the country's political and economic problems, including the left-wing insurgency and the reactions of the extreme right. Ignoring her late husband's advice, Isabel gave Balbín no role in her new government, instead granting broad powers to López Rega, who started a "dirty war" against political opponents.


title: Juan Perón

text: Isabel Perón's term ended abruptly on 24 March 1976, during a United States backed military coup d'état. A military junta, headed by General Jorge Videla, took control of the country, establishing the self-styled National Reorganization Process. The junta ramped up the "dirty war", combining widespread persecution of political dissidents with state terrorism. The death toll rose to thousands (at least 9,000, with human rights organizations claiming it was closer to 30,000). Many of these were "the disappeared" ("desaparecidos"), people kidnapped and executed without trial or record.


title: Juan Perón

text: Salvador Allende had actively rejected Perón's attempts of establishing cooperation between Chile and Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s. Allende received the election of Héctor Cámpora, who had previously lived in exile in Chile, as good news. Allende sent Aniceto Rodríguez to Buenos Aires to work on an alliance between the Socialist Party of Chile and the Justicialism. Later Allende attended the presidential inauguration of Campora. All of this was greeted favorably by Perón, who came to refer to Allende as "compañero". However, Perón also pointed to Allende as a cautionary example for the most radical of his followers. In September just a few days before the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat he addressed Tendencia Revolucionaria:


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón condemned the coup as a "fatality for the continent" stating that the coup leader Augusto Pinochet represented interests "well known" to him. He praised Allende for his "valiant attitude" of committing suicide. He took note of the role of the United States in instigating the coup by recalling his familiarity with coup-making processes.


title: Juan Perón

text: On 14 May 1974 Perón received Augusto Pinochet at the Morón Airbase. Pinochet was heading to meet Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay so the encounter at Argentina was technically a stopover. Pinochet and Perón are both reported to have felt uncomfortable during the meeting. Perón expressed his wishes to settle the Beagle conflict and Pinochet his concerns about Chilean exiles in Argentina near the frontier with Chile. Perón would have conceded on moving these exiles from the frontiers to eastern Argentina, but he warned "Perón takes his time, but accomplishes" ("Perón tarda, pero cumple"). Perón justified his meeting with Pinochet stating that it was important to keep good relations with Chile under all circumstances and with whoever might be in government.


title: Juan Perón

text: Perón was buried in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires. On 10 June 1987, his tomb was desecrated, and his hands and some personal effects, including his sword, were stolen. Perón's hands were cut off with a chainsaw. A ransom letter asking for US$8 million was sent to some Peronist members of Congress. This profanation was a ritualistic act to condemn Perón's spirit to eternal unrest, according to journalists David Cox and Damian Nabot in their book "Second Death", who connected it to Licio Gelli and military officers involved during Argentina's Dirty War. The bizarre incident remains unresolved.


title: Juan Perón

text: On 17 October 2006, his body was moved to a mausoleum at his former summer residence, rebuilt as a museum, in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Vicente. A few people were injured in incidents as Peronist trade unions fought over access to the ceremony, although police were able to contain the violence enough for the procession to complete its route to the mausoleum. The relocation of Perón's body offered his self-proclaimed illegitimate daughter, Martha Holgado, the opportunity to obtain a DNA sample from his corpse. She had attempted to have this DNA analysis performed for 15 years, and the test in November 2006 ultimately proved she was not his daughter. Holgado died of liver cancer on 7 June 2007. Before her death, she vowed to continue the legal battle to prove she was Perón's biological child.


title: Shrek 2

text: Shrek 2 is a 2004 American computer-animated comedy film loosely based on the 1990 picture book "Shrek!" by William Steig, produced by DreamWorks Animation and released by DreamWorks Pictures. The sequel to "Shrek" (2001) and the second installment in the "Shrek" franchise, the film was directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, and Conrad Vernon (in his feature directorial debut), from a screenplay written by Adamson, Joe Stillman, and the writing team of J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. It stars the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Julie Andrews, Antonio Banderas, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, and Jennifer Saunders. In the film, Shrek (Myers) and Donkey (Murphy) team up with the swashbuckling cat Puss in Boots (Banderas) to foil plans by Fiona's (Diaz) Fairy Godmother (Saunders) to destroy Shrek and Fiona's marriage.


title: Shrek 2

text: Development began in 2001, and following disagreements with producers, the first film's screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were replaced with Adamson. The story was inspired by "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), and new animation tools were utilized to improve the visual appearance of each character, particularly Puss in Boots. The lead actors also received a significant bump in salary to $10 million, which at the time was among the highest contracts in their respective careers. Like its predecessor, "Shrek 2" also parodies other films based on fairy tales and features references to American popular culture.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" premiered at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood and was later shown at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or, and it was released in theaters on May 19, 2004. Met with highly favorable reviews like its predecessor, the film grossed US$928.7 million worldwide. It scored the second-largest three-day opening weekend in U.S. history and the largest opening for an animated film at the time of its release. It went on to become the highest-grossing film of 2004 worldwide. "Shrek 2" is also DreamWorks Animation's most successful film to date, and it held the title of being the highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide until "Toy Story 3" surpassed it in 2010. The film received two Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, and its associated charted in the Top 10 on the US "Billboard" 200. A sequel to the film, "Shrek the Third", was released in May 2007.


title: Shrek 2

text: Newlyweds Shrek and Fiona return from their honeymoon to find they have been invited by Fiona's parents to a royal ball to celebrate their marriage. Shrek initially refuses to attend, but Fiona convinces him, and along with Donkey, they travel to the kingdom of Far Far Away. They meet Fiona's parents, King Harold and Queen Lillian, who are shocked to see the ogres, with Harold particularly repulsed. At dinner, Shrek and Harold get into a heated argument, and Fiona, disgusted at their behavior, locks herself away in her room. Shrek worries that he is losing Fiona, particularly after finding her childhood diary and reading that she was once infatuated with Prince Charming.


title: Shrek 2

text: Harold is secretly reprimanded by the Fairy Godmother, as her son, Prince Charming, was to marry Fiona in exchange for Harold's own happy ending. She orders him to get rid of Shrek, so Harold arranges for Puss in Boots to assassinate him under the guise of a hunting trip. Unable to defeat Shrek, Puss reveals that he was paid by Harold and offers to be an ally. Shrek, Donkey, and Puss sneak into the Fairy Godmother's factory and steal a "Happily Ever After" potion that Shrek thinks will make him good enough for Fiona. Shrek and Donkey both drink the potion but nothing happens. Shrek laments before he and Donkey both suddenly fall asleep. Meanwhile, in Far Far Away, Fiona prepares to find Shrek so they can return home, but she too falls asleep.


title: Shrek 2

text: The following morning, the potion transforms Shrek and Fiona into humans, and Donkey into a white stallion. In order to make the change permanent, Shrek must kiss Fiona by midnight. Shrek, Donkey, and Puss return to the castle. However, the Fairy Godmother, having discovered the theft, has sent Charming to pose as Shrek and win Fiona's love. At the Fairy Godmother's urging, Shrek leaves the castle, believing that the best way to make Fiona happy is to let her go.


title: Shrek 2

text: Fiona does not reciprocate Charming's advances, so to ensure she falls in love with Charming, the Fairy Godmother gives Harold a love potion to put into Fiona's tea. This exchange is overheard by Shrek, Donkey, and Puss, who are arrested by the royal knights. While the royal ball begins, friendly fairy-tale creatures rescue the trio from jail, and storm the castle with the help of the one of the Muffin Man's monstrous living gingerbread men.


title: Shrek 2

text: Shrek fails to prevent Charming from kissing Fiona, but instead of falling in love, Fiona knocks him out; Harold reveals that he swapped Fiona's tea that has the love potion with another tea. The now-enraged Fairy Godmother tries to kill Shrek with her magic wand, but Harold jumps in front of it; the spell ricochets off his armor and disintegrates her. With the Fairy Godmother gone, Harold reverts back into the Frog Prince. Harold apologizes, admitting to using the "Happily Ever After" potion years earlier to gain Lillian's love, and approves Shrek and Fiona's marriage. Lillian assures Harold that she still loves him. As the clock strikes midnight, Fiona rejects Shrek's offer to remain human, and they revert into ogres, while Donkey also returns to normal. In the mid-credits scene, Dragon, who had previously married Donkey, reveals that they now have several dragon-donkey hybrid babies.


title: Shrek 2

text: In 2001, soon after the original "Shrek" proved to be a hit, Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz negotiated an upfront payment of $10 million each for voicing a sequel to the film. This pay increase represented a significant rise from the $350,000 salary that each of the three were paid for the first film. According to Jeffrey Katzenberg, the executive producer of "Shrek 2" and a co-founder of DreamWorks, who led the negotiations, the payments were probably the highest in the actors' entire careers. Each of the actors were expected to work between 15 and 18 hours in total. The film was produced with a $70 million budget.


title: Shrek 2

text: Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the screenwriters of the first "Shrek" film, insisted that the sequel be a traditional fairytale, but after disagreements with the producers, they left the project and were replaced by director Andrew Adamson. His writing of "Shrek 2" was inspired by the 1967 comedy-drama film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and was completed with the help of the film's co-directors, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon, who spent most of the film's production duration in Northern California while Adamson spent most of his time with the film's voice actors in Glendale, California.


title: Shrek 2

text: DreamWorks began production of "Shrek 2" in 2001, before the first "Shrek" film was completed. The studio added more human characters to the film than there were in its predecessor and improved character appearance and movement with the use of several new animation/rendering systems. In particular, Puss in Boots necessitated development of a whole new set of film production tools to handle the appearance of his fur, belt, and hat plume; Puss' fur especially required an upgrade to the fur shader. All of the character setup was completed in the first three years of production.


title: Shrek 2

text: In an early version of "Shrek 2", Shrek abdicated the throne, and called for a fairy tale election. Pinocchio's campaign was an "honesty" campaign, while Gingy's was a "smear" campaign. Adamson said that although this plot did have many funny ideas, it was also too overtly satiric and political, and considered "more intellectual than emotional". "Shrek 2" also appears much darker in terms of lighting when compared to the original film. Designers reportedly took inspiration from 19th century French illustrator and engraver Gustav Doré to improve the film's richness of detail and setting. According to production designer Guillaume Aretos, "There are a lot of medieval paintings and illustrations [and] my own influences, which are classical paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries...The design of Shrek is always a twist on reality anyway, so we tried to [pack] as much detail and interest as we could in the imagery."


title: Shrek 2

text: The soundtrack for "Shrek 2" was composed solely by Harry Gregson-Williams, who previously composed the score for the first "Shrek" film, with John Powell, who did not return to score the sequel due to conflict. The soundtrack reached the 8th position on the US "Billboard" 200 and 1st on the US Soundtracks ("Billboard"). It also features two versions of the 1980s Bonnie Tyler hit "Holding Out for a Hero".


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" was originally scheduled for release on June 18, 2004. The film was then moved forward from June 18, 2004, to May 21, 2004; however, due to "fan demand", it was released two days earlier from May 21, 2004, to May 19, 2004. A day before the film went to theaters, the first five minutes were shown on Nickelodeon's "U-Pick Live".


title: Shrek 2

text: Playing in 4,163 theaters over its first weekend in the United States, "Shrek 2" was the first film with over 4,000 theaters in overall count. Over 3,700 theaters was its count for an opening day.


title: Shrek 2

text: In July 2014, the film's distribution rights were purchased by DreamWorks Animation from Paramount Pictures (owners of the pre-2005 DreamWorks Pictures catalog) and transferred to 20th Century Fox before reverting to Universal Studios in 2018.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" was released on VHS and DVD on November 5, 2004 and on Game Boy Advance Video on November 17, 2005. It became one of the best-selling DVD releases of all time with over 37 million copies being sold. A 3D-converted version of the film was released exclusively with select Samsung television sets on Blu-ray on December 1, 2010, along with the other three films of the series. A non-3D version was released on December 7, 2010, as part of "Shrek: The Whole Story", and a stand-alone Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was released individually on August 30, 2011, along with the other two films of the series. A stand-alone 3D Blu-ray version of the film was released on November 1, 2011. The DVD release features two full-length commentary tracks, one by co-directors Conrad Vernon and Kelly Asbury, and a second by producer Aron Warner and editor Michael Andrews.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on November 22, 2022, by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Far Far Away Idol" is a special feature on the DVD and VHS release based on "American Idol" and guest starring Simon Cowell. Taking place right after "Shrek 2" ends, the short features characters from "Shrek" compete in a sing-off while being judged by Shrek, Fiona, and Cowell.


title: Shrek 2

text: After the performances, on the DVD release, the viewer gets to pick the winner. If any character besides Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, or Puss is selected, an alternate ending plays where Cowell would refuse to accept the winner and proclaim himself the victor, leaping onto the judging table and performing his "own" rendition of "My Way". At the end of the VHS release, it gives a link to a website where the viewer can vote for their favorite to determine the ultimate winner. DreamWorks Animation announced on November 8, 2004, three days after the DVD and VHS release, that with 750,000 votes cast, the "winner" of the competition was Doris.


title: Shrek 2

text: The film opened at No. 1 with a Friday-to-Sunday total of $108 million, and $129 million since its Wednesday launch, from a then-record 4,163 theaters, for an average of $25,952 per theater over the weekend. At the time "Shrek 2"s Friday-to-Sunday total was the second-highest opening weekend, only trailing "Spider-Man"s $114.8 million. In addition, Saturday alone managed to obtain $44.8 million, making it the highest single-day gross at the time, beating "Spider-Man"s first Saturday gross of $43.6 million. The film remained at No. 1 in its second weekend, expanding to 4,223 theaters, and grossing another $95.6 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, narrowly beating out the $85.8 million four-day tally of new opener "The Day After Tomorrow". It spent ten weeks in the weekly Top 10, remaining there until July 29, and stayed in theaters for 149 days (roughly twenty-one weeks), closing on November 25, 2004. The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 2, 2004, and topped the country's box office for the next two weekends, before being dethroned by "Spider-Man 2".


title: Shrek 2

text: The film grossed $441.2 million domestically (US and Canada) and $487.5 million in foreign markets for a total of $928.7 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of both 2004 and in its franchise. This also puts the film at 14th on the all-time domestic box office list and 42nd on the worldwide box office list. The film sold an estimated 71,050,900 tickets in the US.


title: Shrek 2

text: The film also took away the highest worldwide gross made by an animated feature, which was before held by "Finding Nemo" (2003), although the latter still had a higher overseas-only gross. With DVD sales and "Shrek 2" merchandise estimated to total almost $800 million, the film (which was produced with a budget of $150 million) is DreamWorks' most profitable film to date.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" remained the highest-grossing animated film worldwide until the release of "Toy Story 3" (2010), and held the record for the highest-grossing animated film at the North American box office until the release of "Finding Dory" (2016) as well as the highest-grossing non-Disney animated film at this box office.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" has an approval rating of based on professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, "It may not be as fresh as the original, but topical humor and colorful secondary characters make "Shrek 2" a winner in its own right." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned "Shrek 2" a score of 75 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Shrek 2

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, saying it is "bright, lively, and entertaining", and Robert Denerstein of "Denver Rocky Mountain News" called it "sharply funny". James Kendrick of "QNetwork" praised the plot, calling it "familiar, but funny". J. R. Jones of the "Chicago Reader" called it "unassailable family entertainment", and similar to the first film. Michael O'Sullivan of "The Washington Post" called it "better and funnier than the original".


title: Shrek 2

text: Though he wrote that it is not as good as the first film, Kevin Lally of "Film Journal International" described it as "inventive and often very funny". Peter Rainer of "New York" magazine, however, stated the film "manages to undo much of what made its predecessor such a computer-generated joy ride."


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. It won five awards at the 31st People's Choice Awards: "Favorite Animated Movie", "Favorite Animated Movie Star" for "Donkey" (Eddie Murphy), "Favorite Movie Comedy", and "Favorite Movie Villain" for "Fairy Godmother" (Jennifer Saunders), and "Favorite Sequel". It also won a Teen Choice Award in the category of "Choice Award Choice Movie – Comedy". The film was nominated at the 3rd Visual Effects Society Awards in the category of "Outstanding Performance by an Animated Character in an Animated Motion Picture."


title: Shrek 2

text: Along with "Shark Tale", the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but lost to "The Incredibles". One of the film's songs, "Accidentally in Love" received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2: The Movie Storybook" was published by Scholastic in 2004. It was written by Tom Mason and Dan Danko and illustrated by Michael Koelsch.


title: Shrek 2

text: "Shrek 2" has two sequels; they are "Shrek the Third" and "Shrek Forever After". A spin-off film "Puss in Boots" was released on October 28, 2011, and focuses on the character of Puss in Boots, who was introduced in this film. On November 6, 2018, it was reported by Variety that Chris Meledandri had been tasked to reboot both Shrek and Puss in Boots, with the original cast potentially returning.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: George Michael Dolenz Jr. (born March 8, 1945) is an American actor, musician, TV producer and businessman. He is best known as the drummer and one of three primary vocalists for the pop-rock band the Monkees (1966-1970, and multiple reunions through 2021), and a co-star of the TV series "The Monkees" (1966–1968). Following the death of Michael Nesmith in 2021, Dolenz is the only surviving member of the band.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz was born at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, California, the son of actors George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson. He has three sisters, Gemma Marie ("Coco"; born April 5, 1949), Deborah (born 1958), and Kathleen ("Gina"; born 1960). Gemma's nickname, Coco, is a shortened form of "Coco Sunshine", a nickname given to her as a child by Micky. Coco was a frequent guest on the set of "The Monkees" TV show and sometimes a guest performer on records by the Monkees, singing background vocals or duetting with Micky. She often performs as a member of Micky's backing band during his concerts.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz suffered from Perthes disease as a child, affecting his hip joint and right leg, leaving that leg weaker (and shorter) than the other. This resulted in Dolenz adapting an unorthodox drum setup – right-handed and left-footed – in his musical career.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz began his show-business career in 1956 when he starred in a children's TV show called "Circus Boy" under the name Mickey Braddock. He played Corky, an orphaned water boy for the elephants in a one-ring circus at the start of the 20th century. The program ran for two seasons, after which Dolenz made sporadic appearances on network television shows and pursued his education. Dolenz went to Ulysses S. Grant High School in Valley Glen, Los Angeles, California and graduated in 1962. In 1964, he was cast as Ed in the episode "Born of Kings and Angels" of the NBC education drama series "Mr. Novak", starring James Franciscus as an idealistic Los Angeles teacher. Dolenz was attending college in Los Angeles when he was hired for the "drummer" role in NBC's "The Monkees".


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz originally had his own rock band called "Micky and the One-Nighters" in the early- to mid-1960s with himself as lead singer. He had already begun writing his own songs. According to Dolenz, his band's live stage act included rock songs, cover songs, and even some R&B. One of his favorite songs to sing was Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode", which he sang at his Monkees audition, resulting in his being hired as one of the cast/band members. He recorded two 45s in 1965 that went unreleased until the Monkees' success in 1967. Issued on the Challenge label, the recordings were "Don't Do It" b/w "Plastic Symphony III" and "Huff Puff" b/w "Fate (Big Ben)". Neither B-side on the Challenge 45s is by Dolenz, but rather a band later credited as The Obvious.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In 1965, Dolenz was cast in the television sitcom "The Monkees" and became the drummer and a lead vocalist in the band created for the show. He was not actually a drummer and needed lessons to be able to mime credibly, but eventually was taught how to play properly. By the time the Monkees went on tour in late 1966, Dolenz was competent enough to play the drums himself.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, writers of many of the Monkees' songs, observed quickly that when brought into the studio together, the four actors would try to make each other laugh. Because of this, the writers often brought in each singer individually. The antics escalated until Dolenz poured a cup of ice on Don Kirshner's head. At the time, Dolenz did not know Kirshner on sight.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: According to Michael Nesmith, Dolenz's voice made the Monkees' sound distinctive, and during tension-filled times, Nesmith and Peter Tork voluntarily turned over lead vocal duties to Dolenz on their own compositions.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz wrote a few of the band's self-penned songs, most prominently "Randy Scouse Git" from the album "Headquarters". He provided the lead vocals for such hits as "Last Train to Clarksville", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", and "I'm a Believer". Dolenz also directed and co-wrote the show's final episode.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz purchased the third modular Moog synthesizer sold commercially. (The first two belonged to Wendy Carlos and Buck Owens.) His performance on the Monkees' song "Daily Nightly" (written by Nesmith), from the album "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.", was one of the first uses of the synthesizer on a rock recording. He eventually sold his instrument to Bobby Sherman.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: He is the last surviving member of the Monkees (after Davy Jones's death in 2012, Tork's in 2019, and Nesmith's in 2021). He is the only member of the Monkees who was part of every lineup from the band's inception, and the only member with contemporary recordings of his vocals on all studio albums.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: The Moog synthesizer that Dolenz had bought proved vital when he composed a song entitled "Easy on You" in 1971; he began recording it in his home studio, playing acoustic guitar and drums, and using the Moog like a keyboard. With that song completed, he next invited former Monkee Peter Tork over to help with more recordings. Then, a fortuitous street encounter led to former Monkee stand-in David Price joining, as well as contributing a rock song he had written called "Oh Someone". With Dolenz on drums and vocals, Tork on bass, and Price on rhythm guitar, the song was completed in only two hours; subsequently, guitarist B.J. Jones came in two days later and added lead guitar. With these two songs recorded, Dolenz contacted his former high school friend Mike Curb, then the head of MGM Records; after playing the songs for Curb, Dolenz was immediately signed to MGM.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz recorded and released songs for MGM for about three years (with a few of the songs being credited to Starship, an ersatz group, not the later Jefferson Starship). After the first year, Dolenz's friend Harry Nilsson contributed his song "Daybreak", also arranging and producing the recording, which included Keith Allison on guitar, former Monkees producer Chip Douglas on bass, and steel-guitarist Orville "Red" Rhodes.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: By early 1974, with no chart successes to date, Dolenz headed to England, and with Tony Scotti, he cut four songs for MGM: two rock classics, "Splish Splash" and "Purple People Eater", as well as "I Hate Rock and Roll" and a new song, "Wing Walker". Meanwhile, Mike Curb left MGM and joined Warner Bros. Records. Dolenz's association with MGM then ended (and those final four songs remained unreleased).


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Due in part to reruns of "The Monkees" on Saturday mornings and in syndication, "The Monkees Greatest Hits" charted in 1976. The LP, issued by Arista (a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures), was actually a repackaging of a 1972 compilation LP called "Re-Focus" that had been issued by Arista's previous label imprint, Bell Records, also owned by Columbia Pictures.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz and Jones took advantage of this, joining ex-Monkees songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to tour the United States. They could not use the Monkees name for legal reasons, but from 1975 to 1977, as the "Golden Hits of The Monkees" show ("The Guys Who Wrote 'Em and the Guys Who Sang 'Em!"), they successfully performed in smaller venues such as state fairs and amusement parks, as well as making stops in Japan, Thailand, and Singapore. They also released an album of new material, appropriately called "Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart", and a live album, "Concert in Japan", was released by Capitol in 1976.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Nesmith had not been interested in a reunion. Tork also did not participate, as they didn't know where he was at that time to invite him. A Christmas single (credited to Dolenz, Jones and Tork) was produced by Chip Douglas and released on his own label in 1976. The single featured Douglas's and Howard Kaylan's "Christmas Is My Time of Year" (originally recorded by a 1960s supergroup, The Christmas Spirit), with a B-side of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" (Douglas released a remixed version of the single, with additional overdubbed instruments, in 1986). Tork also joined Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart on stage at Disneyland on July 4, 1976, and also joined Dolenz and Jones on stage at the Starwood in Hollywood, California in 1977.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In 1977, he performed with former bandmate Davy Jones in a stage production of the Harry Nilsson musical "The Point!" at London's Mermaid Theatre, playing and singing the part of the "Count's Kid" and the Leafman to Jones' starring role as Oblio (according to the CD booklet). An original cast recording was made and released. The comedic chemistry of Dolenz and Jones proved so strong that the show was revived in 1978 with Nilsson inserting additional comedy for the two, plus two more songs, with one of them ("Gotta Get Up") being sung by Dolenz and Jones together. The show was considered so good that it was planned to be revived again in 1979, but it proved cost-prohibitive. After the show's run, Dolenz remained in England and began directing for stage and television, as well as producing several of the shows he directed.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In June 2006, Dolenz played Charlemagne at the Goodspeed Opera House for the revival of the musical "Pippin" in East Haddam, Connecticut. He also toured in that role. Also in the mid-2000s, Dolenz played the role of Zoser in the Broadway production of Elton John and Tim Rice's "Aida".


title: Micky Dolenz

text: After "The Monkees" television show ended, Dolenz continued performing providing voice-overs for a number of Saturday-morning cartoon series including "The Funky Phantom", "Partridge Family 2200 A.D.", "The Scooby-Doo Show", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids", "These Are the Days", "Devlin", and "Wonder Wheels" (from "The Skatebirds"). Dolenz provided the voice of Arthur in the first season of the animated series "The Tick". In 1972, Dolenz played Vance in the murder mystery film "Night of the Strangler". He was featured in an episode of "Adam-12", entitled "Dirt Duel" (season 5, episode 1), and an episode of "Cannon", entitled "Bitter Legion" (season 2, episode 3). Dolenz provided the voice of Two-Face's twin henchmen Min and Max in the two-part episode "" on "". In a September 2006 radio interview, Dolenz reported that he was the current voice of Snuggle the Fabric Softener Bear at that time. In 2017, Dolenz returned to voice-over, providing the voice of Wendell the Love Grub, as well as singing the featured song, in the Cartoon Network series "Mighty Magiswords" half-hour episode, "The Saga of Robopiggeh!". Dolenz recorded the voice-acting remotely in New York weeks before his Good Times! tour.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Both Dolenz and Michael Nesmith auditioned for the role of Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli on "Happy Days", but neither was selected due to both being taller (6 ft., 1 in.) than lead actor Ron Howard (Richie Cunningham), who is 5 ft., 9 in. tall, and co-stars Anson Williams (Warren "Potsie" Weber) and Don Most (Ralph Malph), both under 6 ft. The producers preferred a shorter Fonzie in hopes that Fonzie would not overshadow the rest of the cast, a strategy that eventually proved to be unsuccessful, as the Fonz would be the show's breakout character. A search for a shorter actor eventually resulted in Henry Winkler's hiring.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Early in the development of "Batman Forever", Dolenz was a contender for the role of the Riddler, which ultimately went to Jim Carrey.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In 1994–95, Dolenz played in two episodes of the sitcom "Boy Meets World"; in the first one (entitled "Band on the Run"), he played Norm, a bandmate of Alan Matthews. In 1995, he joined Davy Jones and Peter Tork in episode eight of the third season (entitled "Rave On"), although they did not play the Monkees, per se – Dolenz's character is "Gordy", while Davy Jones is "Reginald Fairfield" and Tork is "Jedidiah Lawrence". However, at the climax of the program, the three are put on stage together and perform the classic Buddy Holly song "Not Fade Away", and the Temptations' "My Girl". As an inside joke, actor Dave Madden, who had played the manager on "The Partridge Family", cameoed as a manager; he suddenly appears, wanting to handle the "new" group, and tells them that they "could be bigger than The Beatles", which they all scoff at.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: On January 29, 2011, Dolenz appeared in the Syfy Channel film "Mega Python vs. Gatoroid", alongside Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. On February 21, 2015, he had a cameo as himself in the Adult Swim TV special "Bagboy". In 2017, he appeared as himself on the sitcom "Difficult People".


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In 1980, Dolenz produced and directed the British television sitcom "Metal Mickey", featuring a large metallic robot with the catch-phrase "boogie boogie". In 1981, he directed a short film based on the sketch "Balham, Gateway to the South", with Robbie Coltrane playing multiple roles. In the early 1980s, Dolenz directed a stage adaptation of "Bugsy Malone". He was producer of the TV show "Luna" in 1983–84.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In 1986, a screening of the entire Monkees television series by MTV led to renewed interest in the band, followed by a single, "That Was Then, This Is Now", which reached No. 20 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the U.S., a 20th-anniversary tour, a greatest hits album, and a brand new LP, "Pool It!" in 1987. The band's original albums were reissued, and all hit the record charts at the same time.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Beginning in 1986, Dolenz joined the other ex-Monkees for several reunion tours and toured extensively as a solo artist. He continued to direct for television both in the United Kingdom and the United States, and had occasional acting gigs, including roles in the TV series "The Equalizer" and as the mayor on the cable TV series "Pacific Blue".


title: Micky Dolenz

text: On January 10, 2005, Dolenz replaced Dan Taylor as the morning disc jockey at oldies radio station WCBS-FM in New York. On June 3, 2005, Dolenz celebrated his 100th show with a special morning show at B.B. King's. In an ironic and controversial twist, that was also his last regular show at the station; at 5:00 pm, WCBS-FM announced that the station would replace its oldies format with a "Jack" format, eliminating the need for on-air disc jockeys.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: However, WCBS-FM eventually returned to its oldies format on July 12, 2007, with Taylor re-assuming his role as the morning disc jockey the following day. Several months later, on February 3, 2008, Dolenz was invited back to the station to present his long-postponed 101st show and final in-studio appearance there by guest-hosting a three-hour broadcast during WCBS' Sunday evening "New York Radio Greats" program.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In 2009, Dolenz signed a deal to record an album of the classic songs of Carole King, titled "King for a Day". The album (released on Gigitone Records) was produced by Jeffrey Foskett, who has worked extensively with Brian Wilson and played on Wilson's 2004 Grammy-winning "Brian Wilson Presents Smile". King's songs "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Sometime in the Morning", and "Porpoise Song" (Theme from "Head") have emerged as signature songs from the Monkees. As of February 2010, he was appearing on stage in London in "Hairspray" with Michael Ball. The show also went on tour and had a successful run in Dublin, Ireland, during November 2010. In 2011, he rejoined Tork and Jones for .


title: Micky Dolenz

text: After Jones' sudden death in February 2012, Dolenz and Tork reunited with Michael Nesmith for a 12-concert tour of the United States as a tribute. The three remaining Monkees toured again in 2013 and 2014 and Dolenz toured as a duo with Tork in 2015 and 2016.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Following Tork's death in 2019, Dolenz toured with Nesmith as "The Mike and Micky Show" in 2018 and 2019. On May 4, 2021, Dolenz and Nesmith announced "The Monkees Farewell Tour" which was the last for the group. The tour consisted of 40 US dates from September to November. The final show was held on November 14, 2021, at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, California.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: On May 21, 2021, Dolenz released a solo album, "Dolenz Sings Nesmith", featuring songs written by Nesmith and produced by Christian Nesmith.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: In late 2019, Dolenz toured with Todd Rundgren, Jason Scheff, Christopher Cross, and Joey Molland of Badfinger, in celebration of the Beatles' White Album on the "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today – A Tribute to the Beatles' White Album" tour. Dolenz performed the Monkees' songs "I'm a Believer" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday".


title: Micky Dolenz

text: Dolenz has been married three times and is the father of four daughters. In 1967, while in the UK on tour with the Monkees, Dolenz met future wife Samantha Juste, a co-presenter on BBC TV's pop music show "Top of the Pops". They married in 1968, and their daughter Ami Bluebell Dolenz was born on January 8, 1969; she became an actress who was particularly active in the 1980s and 1990s. Dolenz and Juste divorced in 1975, but remained close friends until her death following a stroke on February 5, 2014.


title: Micky Dolenz

text: He married Trina Dow in 1977. The couple had three daughters: Charlotte Janelle (born August 8, 1981), Emily Claire (born July 25, 1983), and Georgia Rose (born September 3, 1984). They divorced in 1991. Trina Dow Dolenz has become a couples therapist, still using her married name. Dolenz married his third wife, Donna Quinter, in 2002.


title: Lana Turner

text: Lana Turner ( ; born Julia Jean Turner; February 8, 1921June 29, 1995) 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 (MGM) biggest stars, with her films earning more than $50 million for the studio 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.


title: Lana Turner

text: Born to working-class parents in northern Idaho, Turner spent her childhood there before her family relocated to San Francisco. In 1936, when Turner was 15, she was discovered while purchasing a soda at the Top Hat Malt Shop in Hollywood. At 16, she was signed to a personal contract by Warner Bros. director Mervyn LeRoy, who took her with him when he transferred to MGM in 1938. She soon attracted attention by playing the role of a murder victim in her film debut, LeRoy's "They Won't Forget" (1937), and she later moved into supporting roles, often appearing as an ingénue.


title: Lana Turner

text: 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" (1941); the musical "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941); the horror film "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1941); and the romantic war drama "Somewhere I'll Find You" (1942), 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" (1946), 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" (1952) and "Peyton Place" (1957), the latter for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.


title: Lana Turner

text: 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" (1959), proved to be one of the greatest commercial successes of her career, and her starring role in "Madame X" (1966) earned her a David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actress. Turner spent most of the 1970s in semi-retirement, making her final film appearance in 1980. In 1982, she accepted a much-publicized and lucrative recurring guest role in the television series "Falcon Crest", which afforded the series notably high ratings. In 1992, Turner was diagnosed with throat cancer and died of the disease three years later at age 74.


title: Lana Turner

text: Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Turner on February 8, 1921, at Providence Hospital in Wallace, Idaho, a small mining community in the Idaho Panhandle region. She was the only child of John Virgil Turner, a miner from Montgomery, Alabama of Dutch descent, and Mildred Frances Cowan from Lamar, Arkansas, who had English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. Mildred was four days shy of her own 17th birthday when she gave birth to her only child. Lana's parents had first met while 14-year-old Mildred, the daughter of a mine inspector, was visiting Picher, Oklahoma, with her father, who was inspecting local mines there. John was 24 years old at the time, and Mildred's father objected to the courtship. Shortly after, the two eloped and moved west, settling in Idaho.


title: Lana Turner

text: The family lived in Burke, Idaho at the time of Turner's birth, and relocated to nearby Wallace in 1925, where her father opened a dry cleaning service and worked in the local silver mines. As a child, Turner was known to family and friends as Judy. She expressed interest in performance at a young age, performing short dance routines at her father's Elks chapter in Wallace. At age three, she performed an impromptu dance routine at a charity fashion show in which her mother was modeling.


title: Lana Turner

text: The Turner family struggled financially, and relocated to San Francisco when she was six years old, after which her parents separated. On December 14, 1930, her father won some money at a traveling craps game, stuffed his winnings in his left sock, and headed for home. He was later found bludgeoned to death on the corner of Minnesota and Mariposa Streets, on the edge of San Francisco's Potrero Hill and the Dogpatch District, with his left shoe and sock missing. His robbery and homicide were never solved, and his death had a profound effect on Turner. "I know that my father's sweetness and gaiety, his warmth and his tragedy, have never been far from me," she later said. "That, and a sense of loss and of growing up too fast."


title: Lana Turner

text: Turner sometimes lived with family friends or acquaintances so that her impoverished mother could save money. They also frequently moved, for a time living in Sacramento and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Following her father's death, Turner lived for a period in Modesto with a family who physically abused her and "treated her like a servant". Her mother worked 80 hours per week as a beautician to support herself and her daughter, and Turner recalled sometimes "living on crackers and milk for half a week".


title: Lana Turner

text: While baptized a Protestant at birth, Turner attended Mass with the Hislops, a Catholic family with whom her mother had temporarily boarded her in Stockton, California. She became "thrilled" by the ritual practices of the church, and when she was seven, her mother allowed her to formally convert to Roman Catholicism. Turner subsequently attended the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in San Francisco, hoping to become a nun. In the mid-1930s, Turner's mother developed respiratory problems and was advised by her doctor to move to a drier climate, upon which the two moved to Los Angeles in 1936.


title: Lana Turner

text: Turner's discovery is considered a show-business legend and part of Hollywood mythology among film and popular cultural historians. One version of the story erroneously has her discovery occurring at Schwab's Pharmacy, which Turner claimed was the result of a reporting error that began circulating in articles published by columnist Sidney Skolsky.


title: Lana Turner

text: By Turner's own account, she was a junior at Hollywood High School when she skipped a typing class and bought a Coca-Cola at the Top Hat Malt Shop located on the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and McCadden Place. While in the shop, she was spotted by William R. Wilkerson, publisher of "The Hollywood Reporter". Wilkerson was attracted by her beauty and physique, and asked her if she was interested in appearing in films, to which she responded: "I'll have to ask my mother first." With her mother's permission, Turner was referred by Wilkerson to the actor/comedian/talent agent Zeppo Marx.


title: Lana Turner

text: In December 1936, Marx introduced Turner to film director Mervyn LeRoy, who signed her to a $50 weekly contract with Warner Bros. on February 22, 1937 ($ in dollars ). She soon became a protégée of LeRoy, who suggested that she take the stage name Lana Turner, a name she would come to legally adopt several years later.


title: Lana Turner

text: Turner made her feature film debut in LeRoy's "They Won't Forget" (1937), a crime drama in which she played a teenage murder victim. Though Turner only appeared on screen for a few minutes, Wilkerson wrote in "The Hollywood Reporter" that her performance was "worthy of more than a passing note". The film earned her the nickname of the "Sweater Girl" for her form-fitting attire, which accentuated her bust. Turner always detested the nickname, and upon seeing a sneak preview of the film, she recalled being profoundly embarrassed and "squirming lower and lower" into her seat. She stated that she had "never seen myself walking before… [It was] the first time [I was] conscious of my body." Several years after the film's release, "Modern Screen" journalist Nancy Squire wrote that Turner "made a sweater look like something Cleopatra was saving for the next visiting Caesar". Shortly after completing "They Won't Forget", she made an appearance in James Whale's historical comedy "The Great Garrick" (1937), a biographical film about British actor David Garrick, in which she had a small role portraying an actress posing as a chambermaid.


title: Lana Turner

text: In late 1937, LeRoy was hired as an executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and asked Jack L. Warner to allow Turner to relocate with him to MGM. Warner obliged, as he believed Turner would not "amount to anything". Turner left Warner Bros. and signed a contract with MGM for $100 a week ($ in dollars ). The same year, she was loaned to United Artists for a minor role as a maid in "The Adventures of Marco Polo". Her first starring role for MGM was scheduled to be an adaptation of "The Sea-Wolf", co-starring Clark Gable, but the project was eventually shelved. Instead, she was assigned opposite teen idol Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the Andy Hardy film "Love Finds Andy Hardy" (1938). During the shoot, Turner completed her studies with an educational social worker, allowing her to graduate high school that year. The film was a box-office success, and her appearance in it as a flirtatious high school student convinced studio head Louis B. Mayer that Turner could be the next Jean Harlow, a sex symbol who had died six months before Turner's arrival at MGM.


title: Lana Turner

text: Mayer helped further Turner's career by giving her roles in several youth-oriented films in the late 1930s, such as the comedy "Rich Man, Poor Girl" (1938) in which she played the sister of a poor woman romanced by a wealthy man, and "Dramatic School" (1938), in which she portrayed Mado, a troubled drama student. In the former, she was billed as the "Kissing Bug from the Andy Hardy film". Upon completing "Dramatic School", Turner screen-tested for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). She was then cast in a supporting part as a "sympathetic bad girl" in "Calling Dr. Kildare" (1939), MGM's second entry in the Dr. Kildare series. This was followed by "These Glamour Girls" (1939), a comedy in which she portrayed a taxi dancer invited to attend a dance with a male coed at his elite college. Turner's onscreen sex appeal in the film was reflected by a review in the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" in which she was characterized as "the answer to 'oomph. In her next film, "Dancing Co-Ed" (1939), Turner was given first billing portraying Patty Marlow, a professional dancer who enters a college as part of a rigged national talent contest. The film was a commercial success, and led to Turner appearing on the cover of "Look" magazine.


title: Lana Turner

text: In February 1940, Turner garnered significant publicity when she eloped to Las Vegas with 28-year-old bandleader Artie Shaw, her co-star in "Dancing Co-Ed". Though they had only briefly known each other, Turner recalled being "stirred by his eloquence", and after their first date the two spontaneously decided to get married. Their marriage only lasted four months, but was highly publicized, and led MGM executives to grow concerned over Turner's "impulsive behavior". In the spring of 1940, after the two had divorced, Turner discovered she was pregnant and had an abortion. In contemporaneous press, it was noted she had been hospitalized for "exhaustion". She would later recall that Shaw treated her "like an untutored blonde savage, and took no pains to conceal his opinion". In the midst of her marriage to Shaw, she starred in "We Who Are Young", a drama in which she played a woman who marries her coworker against their employer's policy.


title: Lana Turner

text: In 1940, Turner appeared in her first musical film, "Two Girls on Broadway", in which she received top billing over established co-stars Joan Blondell and George Murphy. A remake of "The Broadway Melody", the film was marketed as featuring Turner's "hottest, most daring role". The following year, she had a lead role in her second musical, "Ziegfeld Girl", opposite James Stewart, Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr. In the film, she portrayed Sheila Regan, an alcoholic aspiring actress based on Lillian Lorraine. "Ziegfeld Girl" marked a personal and professional shift for Turner; she claimed it as the first role that got her "interested in acting", and the studio, impressed by her performance, marketed the film as featuring her in "the best role of the biggest picture to be released by the industry's biggest company". The film's high box-office returns elevated Turner's profitability, and MGM gave her a weekly salary raise to $1,500 as well as a personal makeup artist and trailer ($ in dollars ). After completing the film, Turner and co-star Garland remained lifelong friends, and lived in houses next to one another in the 1950s.


title: Lana Turner

text: Following the success of "Ziegfeld Girl", Turner took a supporting role as an ingénue in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1941), a Freudian-influenced horror film, opposite Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman. MGM had initially cast Turner in the lead, but Tracy specifically requested Bergman for the part. The studio recast Turner in the smaller role, though she was still given top billing. While the film was financially successful, "Time" magazine panned it, calling it "a pretentious resurrection of Robert Louis Stevenson's ghoulish classic ... As for Lana Turner, fully clad for a change, and the rest of the cast ... they are as wooden as their roles."


title: Lana Turner

text: Turner was then cast in the Western "Honky Tonk" (1941), the first of four films in which she would star opposite Clark Gable. The Turner-Gable films' successes were often heightened by gossip-column rumors about a relationship between the two. In January 1942, she began shooting her second picture with Gable, titled "Somewhere I'll Find You"; however, the production was halted for several weeks after the death of Gable's wife, Carole Lombard, in a plane crash. Meanwhile, the press continued to fuel rumors that Turner and Gable were romantic offscreen, which Turner vehemently denied. "I adored Mr. Gable, but we were [just] friends," she later recalled. "When six o'clock came, he went his way and I went mine."


title: Lana Turner

text: Her next project was "Johnny Eager" (1941), a violent mobster film in which she portrayed a socialite. James Agee of "Time" magazine was critical of co-star Robert Taylor's performance and noted: "Turner is similarly handicapped: Metro has swathed her best assets in a toga, swears that she shall become an actress, or else. Under these adverse circumstances, stars Taylor and Turner are working under wraps."


title: Lana Turner

text: At the advent of US involvement in World War II, Turner's increasing prominence in Hollywood led to her becoming a popular pin-up girl, and her image appeared painted on the noses of U.S. fighter planes, bearing the nickname "Tempest Turner". In June 1942, she embarked on a 10-week war-bond tour throughout the western United States with Gable. During the tour, she began promising kisses to the highest war bond buyers; while selling bonds at the Pioneer Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, she sold a $5,000 bond to a man for two kisses, and another to an elderly man for $50,000.


title: Lana Turner

text: Arriving to sell bonds in her hometown of Wallace, Idaho, she was greeted with a banner that read "Welcome home, Lana", followed by a large celebration during which the mayor declared a holiday in her honor. Upon completing the tour, Turner had sold $5.25 million in war bonds.


title: Lana Turner

text: Throughout the war, Turner continued to make regular appearances at U.S. troop events and area bases, though she confided to friends that she found visiting the hospital wards of injured soldiers emotionally difficult.


title: Lana Turner

text: During World War II the Royal Canadian Air Force 427 Lion Squadron had been "adopted" by MGM. Many of the aircraft had dedications or nose art honoring MGM's Stars. A Handley-Page Halifax bomber "London's Revenge" DK186 ZL L carried the name of Lana Turner into battle over Germany.


title: Lana Turner

text: In July 1942, Turner met her second husband, actor-turned-restaurateur Joseph Stephen "Steve" Crane, at a dinner party in Los Angeles. The two eloped to Las Vegas a week after they began dating. Their marriage was annulled by Turner four months later upon discovering that Crane's previous divorce had not yet been finalized. After discovering she was pregnant in November 1942, Turner remarried Crane in Tijuana in March 1943. During her early pregnancy, she filmed the comedy "Marriage Is a Private Affair", in which she starred as a carefree woman struggling to balance her new life as a mother. Though she wanted multiple children, Turner had Rh-negative blood, which caused fetal anemia and made it difficult to carry a child to term. Turner was urged by doctors to undergo a therapeutic abortion to avoid potentially life-threatening complications, but she managed to carry the child to term. She gave birth to a daughter, Cheryl, on July 25, 1943. Turner's blood condition resulted in Cheryl being born with near-fatal erythroblastosis fetalis.


title: Lana Turner

text: Meanwhile, publicity over Turner's remarriage to Crane led MGM to play up her image as a sex symbol in "Slightly Dangerous" (1943), with Robert Young, Walter Brennan and Dame May Whitty, in which she portrayed a woman who moves to New York City and poses as the long-lost daughter of a millionaire. Released in the midst of Turner's pregnancy, the film was financially successful but received mixed reviews, with Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" writing: "No less than four Metro writers must have racked their brains for all of five minutes to think up the rags-to-riches fable ... Indeed, there is cause for suspicion that they didn't even bother to think." Critic Anita Loos praised Turner's performance in the film, writing: "Lana Turner typifies modern allure. She is the vamp of today as Theda Bara was of yesterday. However, she doesn't look like a vamp. She is far more deadly because she lets her audience relax."


title: Lana Turner

text: In August 1944, Turner divorced Crane, citing his gambling and unemployment as primary reasons. A lifelong Democrat, she spent the remainder of the year campaigning for Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1944 presidential election. In 1945, she co-starred with Laraine Day and Susan Peters in "Keep Your Powder Dry", a war drama about three disparate women who join the Women's Army Corps. She was then cast as the female lead in "Week-End at the Waldorf", a loose remake of "Grand Hotel" (1932) in which she portrayed a stenographer (a role originated by Joan Crawford). The film was a box-office hit.


title: Lana Turner

text: After the war, Turner was cast in a lead role opposite John Garfield in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946), a film noir based on James M. Cain's debut novel of the same name. She portrayed Cora, an ambitious woman married to a stodgy, older owner of a roadside diner, who falls in love with a drifter and their desire to be together motivates them to murder her husband. The classic film noir marked a turning point in Turner's career as her first femme fatale role. Reviews of the film, including Turner's performance, were glowing, with Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" writing it was "the role of her career". "Life" magazine named the film its "Movie of the Week" in April 1946, and noted that both Turner and Garfield were "aptly cast" and "take over the screen, [creating] more fireworks than the Fourth of July". Turner commented on her decision to take the role:


title: Lana Turner

text: "The Postman Always Rings Twice" became a major box office success, which prompted the studio to take more risks on Turner, casting her outside of the glamorous sex-symbol roles for which she had come to be known. In August 1946, it was announced she would replace Katharine Hepburn in the big-budget historical drama "Green Dolphin Street" (1947), a role for which she darkened her hair and lost 15 pounds. The film was produced by Carey Wilson, who insisted on casting Turner based on her performance in "The Postman Always Rings Twice". In the film, she portrayed the daughter of a wealthy patriarch who pursues a relationship with a man in love with her sister. Turner later recalled she was surprised about replacing Hepburn, saying: "I'm about the most un-Hepburnish actress on the lot. But it was just what I wanted to do." It was her first starring role that did not center on her looks. In an interview, Turner said: "I even go running around in the jungles of New Zealand in a dress that's filthy and ragged. I don't wear any make-up and my hair's a mess." Nevertheless, she insisted she would not give up her glamorous image. In the midst of filming "Green Dolphin Street", Turner began an affair with actor Tyrone Power, whom she considered to be the love of her life. She discovered she was pregnant with Power's child in the fall of 1947, but chose to have an abortion. During this time, she also had romantic affairs with Frank Sinatra and Howard Hughes, the latter of which lasted for 12 weeks in late 1946.


title: Lana Turner

text: Turner's next film was the romantic drama "Cass Timberlane", in which she played a young woman in love with an older judge, a role for which Jennifer Jones, Vivien Leigh and Virginia Grey had also been considered. As of early 1946, Turner was set for the role, but schedules with "Green Dolphin Street" almost prohibited her from taking it, and by late 1946, she was nearly recast. Production of "Cass Timberlane" was exhausting for Turner, because it was shot in between retakes of "Green Dolphin Street". "Cass Timberlane" earned Turner favorable reviews, with "Variety" noting: "Turner is the surprise of the picture via her top performance thespically. In a role that allows her the gamut from tomboy to the pangs of childbirth and from being another man's woman to remorseful wife, she seldom fails to acquit herself creditably."


title: Lana Turner

text: In August 1947, immediately upon completion of "Cass Timberlane", Turner agreed to appear as the female lead in the World War II-set romantic drama "Homecoming" (1948), in which she was again paired with Clark Gable, portraying a female army lieutenant who falls in love with an American surgeon (Gable). She was the studio's first choice for the role, but it was reluctant to offer her the part, considering her overbooked schedule. "Homecoming" was well received by audiences, and Turner and Gable were nicknamed "the team that generates steam". By this period, Turner was at the zenith of her film career, and was not only MGM's most popular star, but also one of the ten highest-paid women in the United States, with annual earnings of $226,000.


title: Lana Turner

text: In late 1947, Turner was cast as Lady de Winter in "The Three Musketeers", her first Technicolor film. Around this time, she began dating Henry J. "Bob" Topping Jr., a millionaire socialite and brother of New York Yankees owner Dan Topping, and a grandson of tin-plate magnate Daniel G. Reid. Topping proposed to her at the 21 Club in New York City by dropping a diamond ring into her martini, and they married shortly after in April 1948 at the Topping family mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Turner's wedding celebrations interfered with her filming schedule for "The Three Musketeers", and she arrived to the set three days late. Studio head Louis B. Mayer threatened to suspend her contract, but Turner managed to leverage her box-office draw with MGM to negotiate an expansion of her role in the film, as well as a salary increase amounting to $5,000 per week ($ in dollars ). "The Three Musketeers" went on to become a box-office success, earning $4.5 million ($ in dollars ), but Turner's contract was put on temporary suspension by Mayer after production finished. After the release of "The Three Musketeers", Turner discovered she was pregnant; in early 1949, she went into premature labor and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy in New York City.


title: Lana Turner

text: In 1949, Turner was to star in "A Life of Her Own" (1950), a George Cukor-directed drama about a woman who aspires to be a model in New York City. The project was shelved for several months, and Turner told journalists in December 1949: "Everybody agrees that the script is still a pile of junk. I'm anxious to get started. By the time this one comes out, it will be almost three years since I was last on the screen, in "The Three Musketeers". I don't think it's healthy to stay off the screen that long." Although unenthusiastic about the screenplay, Turner agreed to appear in the film after executives promised her suspension would be lifted upon doing so. "A Life of Her Own" was among the least successful of Cukor's films, receiving unfavorable reviews and low box-office sales. On May 24, 1950, Turner left her handprints and footprints in cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.


title: Lana Turner

text: In response to the poor reception for "A Life of Her Own", MGM attempted to rebrand Turner by casting her in musicals. The first, "Mr. Imperium", released in March 1951, was a box-office flop, and had Turner starring as an American woman who is wooed by a European prince. "The script was stupid," she recalled. "I fought against doing the picture, but I lost." It earned her unfavorable reviews, with one critic from the "St. Petersburg Times" writing: "Without Lana Turner, "Mr. Imperium" ... would be a better picture."


title: Lana Turner

text: During this period, Turner's personal finances were in disarray, and she was facing bankruptcy. Suffering from depression over her career and financial problems, she attempted suicide in September 1951 by slitting her wrists in a locked bathroom. She was saved by her business manager, Benton Cole, who broke down the bathroom door and called emergency medical services. The following year, she began filming her second musical, "The Merry Widow". During the shoot, Turner began an affair with her co-star Fernando Lamas, which ended after Lamas physically assaulted her; the incident also caused Lamas to lose his MGM contract upon the production's completion. "The Merry Widow" proved more commercially successful than Turner's previous musical, "Mr. Imperium", despite receiving unfavorable critical reviews.


title: Lana Turner

text: Turner's next project was opposite Kirk Douglas in Vincente Minnelli's "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), a drama focusing on the rise and fall of a Hollywood film mogul, in which Turner portrayed an alcoholic movie star. "The Bad and the Beautiful" was both a critical and commercial success, and earned her favorable reviews. A little over a week before the film's release in December 1952, Turner divorced her third husband, Bob Topping. She later claimed Topping's drinking problem and excessive gambling as her impetus for the divorce. Her next film project was "Latin Lovers" (1953), a romantic musical in which Lamas had originally been cast. He was replaced by Ricardo Montalbán.


title: Lana Turner

text: In the spring of 1953, Turner relocated to Europe for 18 months to make two films under a tax credit for American productions shot abroad. The films were "Flame and the Flesh", in which she portrayed a manipulative woman who takes advantage of a musician, and "Betrayed", an espionage thriller set in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands; the latter marked Turner's fourth and final film appearance opposite Clark Gable. In "The New York Times", Bosley Crowther wrote of "Betrayed": "By the time this picture gets around to figuring out whether the betrayer is Miss Turner or Mr. Mature, it has taken the audience through such a lengthy and tedious amount of detail that it has not only frayed all possible tension but it has aggravated patience as well." Upon returning to the United States in September 1953, Turner married actor Lex Barker, whom she had been dating since their first meeting at a party held by Marion Davies in the summer of 1952.


title: Lana Turner

text: In 1955, MGM's new studio head Dore Schary had Turner star as a pagan temptress in the Biblical epic "The Prodigal" (1955), her first CinemaScope feature. She was reluctant to appear in the film because of the character's scanty, "atrocious" costumes and "stupid" lines, and during the shoot struggled to get along with co-star Edmund Purdom, whom she later described as "a young man with a remarkably high opinion of himself". "Variety" deemed the film "a big-scale spectacle ...End result of all this flamboyant polish, however, is only fair entertainment." Turner was next cast in John Farrow's "The Sea Chase" (1955), an adventure film starring John Wayne, in which she portrayed a femme fatale spy aboard a ship. The film, released one month after "The Prodigal", was a commercial success.


title: Lana Turner

text: MGM then gave Turner the titular role of Diane de Poitiers in the period drama "Diane" (1956), which had originally been optioned by the studio in the 1930s for Greta Garbo. After completing "Diane", Turner was loaned to 20th Century-Fox to headline "The Rains of Ranchipur" (1955), a remake of "The Rains Came" (1939), playing the wife of an aristocrat in the British Raj opposite Richard Burton. The production was rushed to accommodate a Christmas release and was completed in only three months, but it received unfavorable reviews from critics. Meanwhile, "Diane" was given a test screening in late December 1955, and was met with poor response from audiences. Though an elaborate marketing campaign was crafted to promote the film, it was a box-office flop, and MGM announced in February 1956 that it was opting not to renew Turner's contract. Turner gleefully told a reporter at the time that she was "walking around in a daze. I've been sprung. After 18 years at MGM, I'm a free agent ...I used to go on a bended knee to the front office and say, please give me a decent story. I'll work for nothing, just give me a good story. So what happened? The last time I begged for a good story they gave me "The Prodigal"." At the time of her contract termination, Turner's films had earned the studio more than $50 million.


title: Lana Turner

text: In 1956, Turner discovered she was pregnant with Barker's child, but gave birth to a stillborn baby girl seven months into the pregnancy. In July 1957, she filed for divorce from Barker after her daughter Cheryl alleged that he had regularly molested and raped her over the course of their marriage. According to Cheryl, Turner confronted Barker before forcing him out of their home at gunpoint. Weeks after her divorce, Turner began filming 20th Century-Fox's "Peyton Place", in which she had been cast in the lead role of Constance MacKenzie, a New England mother struggling to maintain a relationship with her teenage daughter. The film, directed by Mark Robson, was adapted from Grace Metalious' best-selling novel of the same name. Released in December 1957, "Peyton Place" was a major blockbuster success, which worked in Turner's favor as she had agreed to take a percentage of the film's overall earnings instead of a salary. She also received critical acclaim, with "Variety" noting that "Turner looks elegant" and "registers strongly", and, for the first and only time, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Though grateful for the nomination, Turner would later state that she felt it was not "one of my better roles".


title: Lana Turner

text: In January 1958, Paramount Pictures released "The Lady Takes a Flyer", a romantic comedy in which Turner portrayed a female pilot. While shooting the film the previous spring, she had begun receiving phone calls and flowers on the set from mobster Johnny Stompanato, using the name "John Steele". Stompanato had close ties to the Los Angeles underworld and gangster Mickey Cohen, which he feared would dissuade her from dating him. He pursued Turner aggressively, sending her various gifts. Turner was "thoroughly intrigued" and began casually dating him. After a friend informed her of who Stompanato actually was, she confronted him and tried to break off the affair. Stompanato was not easily deterred, and over the course of the following year, they carried on a relationship filled with violent arguments, physical abuse and repeated reconciliations. Turner would also claim that on one occasion he drugged her and took nude photographs of her while unconscious, potentially to use as blackmail.


title: Lana Turner

text: In September 1957, Stompanato visited Turner in London, where she was filming "Another Time, Another Place", co-starring Sean Connery. Their meeting was initially happy, but they soon began fighting. Stompanato became suspicious when Turner would not allow him to visit the set and, during one fight, he violently choked her. To avoid further confrontation, Turner and her makeup artist, Del Armstrong, called Scotland Yard in order to have Stompanato deported. Stompanato got wind of the plan and showed up on the set with a gun, threatening her and Connery. Connery answered by grabbing the gun out of Stompanato's hand and twisting his wrist, causing him to run off the set. Turner and Armstrong later returned with two Scotland Yard detectives to the rented house where she and Stompanato were staying. The detectives advised Stompanato to leave and escorted him out of the house and to the airport, where he boarded a plane back to the U.S.


title: Lana Turner

text: On the evening of March 26, 1958, Turner attended the Academy Awards to observe her nomination for "Peyton Place" and present the award for Best Supporting Actor. Stompanato, angered that he did not attend with her, awaited her return home that evening, whereupon he physically assaulted her. Around 8:00 p.m. on Friday, April 4, Stompanato arrived at Turner's rented home at 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. The two began arguing heatedly in the bedroom, during which Stompanato threatened to kill Turner, her daughter Cheryl and her mother. Fearing that her mother's life was in danger, Cheryl – who had been watching television in an adjacent room – grabbed a kitchen knife and ran to Turner's defense.


title: Lana Turner

text: According to testimony provided by Turner, Stompanato died at the scene when Cheryl, who had been listening to the couple's fight behind the closed door, stabbed Stompanato in the stomach when Turner attempted to usher him out of the bedroom. Turner testified that she initially believed Cheryl had punched him, but realized Stompanato had been stabbed when he collapsed and she saw blood on his shirt.


title: Lana Turner

text: Because of Turner's fame and the fact that the killing involved her teenage daughter, the case quickly became a media sensation. More than 100 reporters and journalists attended the April 12, 1958 inquest, described by attendees as "near-riotous". After four hours of testimony and approximately 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury deemed the killing a justifiable homicide. Cheryl remained a temporary ward of the court until April 24, when a juvenile court hearing was held, during which the judge expressed concerns over her receiving "proper parental supervision". She was ultimately released to the care of her grandmother, and was ordered to regularly visit a psychiatrist alongside her parents.


title: Lana Turner

text: Though Turner and her daughter were exonerated of any wrongdoing, public opinion on the event was varied, with numerous publications intimating that Turner's testimony at the inquest was a performance; "Life" magazine published a photo of Turner testifying in court along with stills of her in courtroom scenes from three of her films. The scandal also coincided with the release of "Another Time, Another Place", and the film was met with poor box-office receipts and a lackluster critical response. Stompanato's family sought a wrongful death suit of $750,000 in damages against both Turner and her ex-husband, Steve Crane. In the suit, Stompanato's son alleged that Turner had been responsible for his death, and that her daughter had taken the blame. The suit was settled out of court for a reported $20,000 in May 1962. A 1962 novel by Harold Robbins entitled "Where Love Has Gone" and its subsequent film adaptation were inspired by the event.


title: Lana Turner

text: In the wake of negative publicity related to Stompanato's death, Turner accepted the lead role in Ross Hunter's remake of "Imitation of Life" (1959) under the direction of Douglas Sirk. She portrayed a struggling stage actress who makes personal sacrifices to further her career. The production was difficult for Turner given the recent events of her personal life, and she suffered a panic attack on the first day of filming. Her co-star Juanita Moore recalled that Turner cried for three days after filming a scene in which Moore's character dies. When she returned to the set, "her face was so swollen, she couldn't work", Moore said.


title: Lana Turner

text: Released in the spring of 1959, "Imitation of Life" was among the year's biggest successes, and the biggest of Turner's career; by opting to receive 50% of the film's earnings rather than receiving a salary, she earned more than two million dollars. "Imitation of Life" made more than $50 million in box office receipts. Reviews were mixed, although "Variety" praised her performance, writing: "Turner plays a character of changing moods, and her changes are remarkably effective, as she blends love and understanding, sincerity and ambition. The growth of maturity is reflected neatly in her distinguished portrayal." Critics and audiences could not help noticing that the plots of "Peyton Place" and "Imitation of Life" both seemed to mirror certain parts of Turner's private life, resulting in comparisons she found painful. Both films depicted the troubled, complicated relationship between a single mother and her teenage daughter. During this time, Turner's daughter Cheryl privately came out as a lesbian to her parents, who were both supportive of her. Despite this, Cheryl ran away from home multiple times and the press wrote about her rebelliousness. Worried she was still suffering from the trauma of Stompanato's death, Turner sent Cheryl to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut.


title: Lana Turner

text: Shortly before the release of "Imitation of Life" in the spring of 1959, Turner was cast in a lead role in Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder", but walked off the set over a wardrobe disagreement, effectively dropping out of the production. She was replaced by Lee Remick. Instead, Turner took a lead role as a disturbed socialite in the film noir "Portrait in Black" (1960) opposite Anthony Quinn and Sandra Dee, which was a box-office success despite bad reviews. Ray Duncan of the "Independent Star-News" wrote that Turner "suffers prettily through it all, like a fashion model with a tight-fitting shoe".