On this night (19 February 1982) at 9 pm on CBS, fiercely glamorous veteran Old Hollywood diva Lana made her debut guest star appearance on nighttime soap opera Falcon Crest. As the ads heralded, “February Fireworks: Lana Turner as Chase’s proud, defiant mother! Why has she come? Why is Angie frightened?” After Turner’s film career petered out by the 1970s, she mainly focused on theatre, and this was Turner’s first TV role since her short-lived flop series The Survivors in 1969. And boy, was she ready for her close-up! “She plays the wealthy Jacqueline Perrault, mother of Robert Foxworth, who stages a mysterious return to the California wine country for a confrontation with the imperious Angie Channing – Jane Wyman,” Bob Thomas explained in the profile “Lana Turner: She’s Still a Beauty at Age 61” in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. (I suspect Turner approved of that headline! Note that her precise age was seemingly in dispute. A week earlier the Colorado Spring Gazette ran a piece entitled “Sweater Girl Bounces Back: At age 62, Lana Turner tries TV series again”). As Turner herself told Thomas, “I would like it to prove that I am not a recluse, that I am not retired, that I still look good and that I am an active woman.” Turner would ultimately portray Jacqueline in seven episodes in total. In conclusion, “Jacqueline Perrault” is such a great soap opera name! It surely ranks alongside “Dominique Deveraux”. On a related note: three years later, Turner’s friend and MGM contemporary Ava Gardner would guest star on a rival soap, Knot’s Landing. And Turner’s final screen appearance would be a guest spot on a 1985 episode of The Love Boat.
