Barbara Turner (actress)
| Barbara Turner | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Gloria Rose Turner July 14, 1936 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | April 5, 2016 (aged 79) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Screenwriter, actress |
| Years active | 1957–2016 |
| Known for | Petulia |
| Notable work |
Georgia Pollack |
| Spouse(s) |
Vic Morrow (m. 1957; div. 1964) Reza Badiyi (m. 1968; div. 1985) |
| Children | 3 |
Gloria Rose "Barbara" Turner (July 14, 1936 – April 5, 2016) was an American screenwriter and actress. She was notable for the intensive amount of research she conducted during the screenplay writing process. One of her daughters is the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Turner was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Pearl Pauline (née Zises) and Alexander Turner. Her father was an Austrian Jewish immigrant, and her mother was born in New York, to Austrian Jewish parents. Her parents were both from Austrian Jewish families (her father was an immigrant, as were her maternal grandparents).
Turner attended University of Texas at Austin, where she studied acting. After a year of college, Turner moved back to New York, studying at Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop and then with acting coach Paul Mann, where she met fellow actor, Vic Morrow.
Turner moved to Los Angeles after Morrow was cast in the 1955 film, Blackboard Jungle. During the 1950s and 1960s, Turner acted in many film and television productions, some of which included Playhouse 90, Mike Hammer, Ben Casey and The Breaking Point. Turner said that she began writing to fund her work as an actor. She and Morrow wrote a TV movie called Willie Loved Everybody that turned into a musical that they tried pitching with Elmer Bernstein, but were not successful in selling the concept and the two ended up separating and getting a divorce in 1964.
During the early 1960s, Turner met and became friends with director Robert Altman, first meeting while working on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and then on his 1964 TV show, Nightmare in Chicago. During filming of Nightmare in Chicago, Turner met her second husband, producer and prolific director, Reza Badiyi, who encouraged her to write an adaptation of a Mira Michal short story from The New Yorker called "At Lake Laguna", which she brought to Altman to possibly make, but that fell apart right before production was scheduled to begin. Altman thought of Turner when he read John Haase's book, Me and the Arch Kook Petulia. Turner wrote the original adaptation, which became the Richard Lester film, Petulia.
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