Despite retiring a decade before our story begins, Lana’s fame endured—and no doubt long after I am dead and forgotten, as though I never existed, Lana Farrar will be remembered; and rightly so. As Shakespeare wrote about Cleopatra, she has earned her “place i’ the story.”
Lana was discovered at the age of nineteen, by the fabled Oscar-winning Hollywood producer Otto Krantz—whom she later married. Until his untimely death, Otto dedicated his considerable energy and clout to furthering Lana’s career—designing entire movies as showcases for her talents. But Lana was destined to be a star, with or without Otto.
It wasn’t just her flawless face, the sheer luminous beauty of a Botticelli angel—those eyes of endless blue—or the way she held herself, or spoke; or her famous smile. No, there was some other quality about Lana—something intangible, the trace of a demigoddess; something mythical, magical—it made her endlessly, compulsively watchable. In the presence of such beauty, all you wanted to do was gaze.
Lana made a lot of movies when she was young—and there was, to be honest, a slight sense of mud being slung at a wall, to see what would stick. And while her romantic comedies were hit-or-miss, in my opinion, and her thrillers came and went, gold was finally struck when Lana played her first tragedy. She was Ophelia in a modern-day adaptation of Hamlet and received her first Oscar nomination. From then on, suffering nobly became Lana’s speciality. Call them tearjerkers or weepies, Lana excelled as every doomed romantic heroine from Anna Karenina to Joan of Arc. She never got the guy; she rarely made it out alive—and we loved her for it.
As you can imagine, Lana made an enormous amount of money for a lot of people. When she was thirty-five, during an otherwise financially catastrophic couple of years for Paramount, the profits from one of her biggest successes kept the studio afloat. Which is why there was a sizable ripple of shock within the industry when Lana suddenly announced her retirement—at the height of her fame and beauty, at the tender age of forty.
It was a mystery why she had decided to quit—and was destined to remain one, for Lana offered no explanation—not then, nor in the years to come. She never spoke about it publicly.
She told me, though—one wintry night in London, as we drank whiskey by the fire, watching snowflakes drift past the window. She told me the whole story, and I told her about the—
Damn. There I go again—already worming my way back into the narrative. It seems that, despite my best intentions, I’m failing to keep myself out of Lana’s story. Perhaps I should admit defeat—accept we are inseparably intertwined, she and I, knotted up like a ball of matted string, impossible to tell apart or disentangle.
Even if that’s true, however, our friendship came later. At this point in the story, we hadn’t met. In those days, I was living with Barbara West in London. And Lana, of course, was in Los Angeles.
Lana was a Californian, born and bred. She lived there, worked there, made the majority of her movies there. However, once Otto died and she had retired, Lana decided to leave Los Angeles for a fresh start.
But where to go?
Tennessee Williams famously said there is nowhere to go when you retire from the movies—unless you go to the moon.
But Lana didn’t go to the moon. She went to England, instead.
She moved to London with her young son, Leo. She bought them a massive house in Mayfair, six stories high. She didn’t intend to stay for long—certainly not forever; it was a temporary experiment in a new style of living while Lana worked out what to do with the rest of her life.
The problem was, without her all-consuming career to define her, Lana had the uncomfortable realization that she didn’t know who she was—nor what she wanted to do with herself. She felt lost, she told me.
It’s hard for those of us who remember Lana Farrar’s movies to picture her as being “lost.” On-screen, she suffered a great deal but did so with stoicism, inner fortitude, and tremendous guts. She would face her destiny without flinching and go down fighting. She was everything you want in a hero.
In real life, Lana couldn’t be more different from her screen persona. Once you got to know her intimately, you began to glimpse another person hidden behind the fa?ade: a more fragile and complicated self. Someone who was much less sure of herself. Most people never encountered this other person. But as this story unfolds, we must keep a lookout for her, you and I. For she holds all its secrets.
This discrepancy, for want of a better word, between Lana’s public and private selves was something I struggled with over the years. I know Lana struggled with it, too. Particularly when she first left Hollywood and moved to London.
Thankfully she didn’t have to struggle too long before fate intervened, and Lana fell in love—with an Englishman; a slightly younger, handsome businessman named Jason Miller.
Whether this falling in love was, in fact, fate, or just a convenient distraction—a way for Lana to postpone, perhaps indefinitely, all those tricky existential dilemmas about herself and her future—is open to question. In my mind, at least.
Anyway, Lana and Jason were married; and London became Lana’s permanent home.
* * *
Lana liked London. She liked it largely, I suspect, because of the English reserve—people there tended to leave her alone. It’s not in the English national character to accost ex–movie stars on the street, demanding selfies and autographs, no matter how famous they might be. So, for the most part, Lana could walk around the city undisturbed.
She walked a lot. Lana enjoyed walking—when the weather allowed it.
Ah, the weather. Like anyone else who spends any length of time in Britain, Lana developed an unhealthy preoccupation with the climate. As the years passed, it became a constant source of frustration for her. She liked London, but, after nearly ten years of living there, the city and its weather had become synonymous in her mind. They were inextricably linked: London equaled wet, equaled rain, equaled gray.
This year had been particularly gloomy. It was nearly Easter and, so far, not a hint of spring had materialized. Currently, it was threatening rain.
Lana glanced up at the blackening skies as she wandered through Soho.
Sure enough, she then felt a spot of rain on her face—and another on her hand. Damn. She had better turn back now, before it got worse.
Lana started retracing her steps—and her thoughts. She returned to the thorny problem she had been mulling over. Something was bothering her, but she didn’t know what it was. She had been feeling anxious for several days. She felt restless, uneasy, as if pursued by something and trying to give it the slip—keeping her head down in the narrow streets, evading what was tailing her. But what was it?
Think, she told herself. Work it out.
As she walked, Lana made an inventory of her life—searching for any glaring dissatisfactions or worries. Was it her marriage? Unlikely. Jason was stressed about work, but that was nothing new—their relationship was in a good place at the moment. The problem wasn’t there. Then where? Her son? Leo? Was it their conversation the other day? It was just an amicable chat about his future, wasn’t it?
Or was it far more complicated?
Another spot of rain distracted her. Lana glared resentfully at the clouds. No wonder she couldn’t think straight. If only she could see the sky … see the sun.
As she made her way home, her mind played on this idea of escaping the weather. Here, at least, something could be done.
How about a change of scene? It was Easter next weekend. What if they took a last-minute trip—in search of sunshine?
Why not go to Greece, for a few days? To the island?
Why not, indeed? It would do them good—Jason, Leo, and Lana in particular. She could invite Kate and Elliot, too, she thought.
Yes, that would be fun. Lana smiled. The promise of sunlight and blue skies instantly brightened her mood.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket.
She’d call Kate straightaway.
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