Gloria Rose "Barbara" Turner (July 14, 1936 – April 5, 2016) was an American screenwriter and actress.[1] The actress Jennifer Jason Leigh[2][3] is her daughter.
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.[4][5]
Turner moved to Los Angeles after Morrow was cast in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle.[7] 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.[6]: 54 She and Morrow wrote a TV movie called Willie Loved Everybody; they adapted it into a musical that they tried pitching with Elmer Bernstein, but were not successful in selling the concept. The two separated and divorced in 1964.[7]
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 Kraft Suspense Theatre episode "Once Upon a Savage Night", which was expanded and broadcast as the TV movie Nightmare in Chicago. During filming, Turner met her second husband, producer and 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 film Petulia.[7][8][9]
In 1973, she wrote the screenplay for the TV movie The Affair, starring Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. Her teleplay for the TV movie Freedom (1981) was based on her daughter Carrie's experiences in the 1970s as a teen runaway, played by family friend Mare Winningham.[9][11]
In 1995, she teamed up with daughter Jennifer Jason Leigh to write and produce the screenplay for Georgia, a film depicting the troubled relationship between two singing sisters played by Leigh and Mare Winningham, who both won praise for their performances.[15] The idea reportedly came from Leigh, who was on location shooting the 1991 film Rush, and pitched the idea of two sisters who have varying degrees of skill as singer-songwriters. Turner created the script from that idea.[9][16] It was financed by the French film production company Ciby 2000, and Turner's daughter, Morrow, served as a technical consultant.[16] Turner spent three years doing research, using the Seattle music scene as a source for the material.[9]
In 2000, Turner's screenplay adaption of the book Jackson Pollock: An American SagabySteven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith for the Jackson Pollock biopic Pollock, also written by Susan Emswiller,[6]: 61–62 became a successful film. She then collaborated with actress Neve Campbell on a screenplay titled The Company (2003) about the inner workings of the Joffrey Ballet, which was directed by Robert Altman.[17] In an interview with Jan Lisa Huttner, Turner states that "the company is the star of this movie" rather than just Campbell. It is an ensemble piece.[18]
In June 2010, it was announced that Turner and Jerry Stahl had written a screenplay for an HBO film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn. The film Hemingway & Gellhorn aired in 2012.[19]
At the time of her death, Turner had written the script to the not-yet-released Candice Bergen-produced film titled Knock Wood: Charlie McCarthy Project, a movie based on Bergen's 1983 memoir of the same name.[20] The story, produced by James Francis Trezza and Pam Widener (who Turner worked with on Pollack), unfolds from the perspective of Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen's famous and hugely popular wooden puppet.[21]
Other long-time adaptations that were not produced but had been active in Hollywood were scripts based on Jane Smiley’s book Barn Blind, Michael Frayn's Headlong, and Jill Paton Walsh's Knowledge of Angels. Additional screenplays based on original work included Beautiful View,Once Again for Zelda, and Under Heaven.[3]
Turner was married to actor and frequent collaborator Vic Morrow. Their daughter is actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Turner and Morrow separated when Leigh was two years old.[22]
^ abcdMcGilligan, Patrick (2010). "Chapter 12: Barbara Turner Free Spirit". Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s (June 2008). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-25105-2. OCLC426147374.
Turner, Barbara; Bartholomew, Caty (illustrations) (Spring 1996). "Georgia: Screenplay". Scenario. The Magazine of Screenwriting Art. 2 (1). New York, NY: 151–89. ISSN1079-6851. OCLC35737640.
McCreadie, Marsha (2006). "Chapter 4: Breakaway Queens and Genre Benders". Women Screenwriters Today: Their Lives and Words. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN978-0-275-98542-4. OCLC475146371.
McGilligan, Patrick (June 2008). "Chapter 12: Barbara Turner Free Spirit". Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-25105-2. OCLC426147374.
