Tura Satana
- This article is a Biography
| Tura Satanan | ||
 Tura Satana at The Spider Pool | ||
| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi | |
| Born | Jul 10, 1935 Hokkaido, Japan | |
| Died | Feb 04, 2011 - age 76 Reno, Nevada, U.S. Heart failure | |
| Other name(s) | Miss Japan Beautiful | |
| Hair color | Black | |
| Eye Color | Brown | |
| Height | 5' 7" (1.7m) | |
| Weight | 143 lbs (65 kg) | |
| Vital stats | 40C-25-37 in (101C-63-93 cm) | |
| Occupation | Actress | |
| Nationality | Japanese/American | |
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Tura Satana was a burlesque performer of the 1950s and `60s. She was a strikingly tall and buxom brunette who would star in Russ Meyer's cult film classic Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!
Satana performed at several hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, including the Silver Slipper, and also appeared at numerous strip clubs across the nation--including Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas.
Mini Biography
Tura Satana (✦July 10, 1938 – †February 4, 2011) was a Japanese American actress, vedette[Note 1] and exotic dancer. From 13 film and television credits, some of her work includes the exploitation film [Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! (1965), and the science fiction horror film The Astro-Zombies (1968).
Satana was born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaidō, Japan. Her father was a Japanese silent movie actor of Filipino descent, and her mother was a circus performer of American Indian (Cheyenne) and Scots-Irish background. After the end of World War II and a stint in the Manzanar internment camp in Lone Pine, California, she and her family moved to Chicago.
Walking home from school just before her tenth birthday, she was reportedly gang raped by five men. According to Satana, her attackers were never prosecuted, and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off. She tells how this prompted her to learn martial arts, such as aikido and karate. Over the next 15 years, she tracked down each rapist and exacted revenge. "I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them," she said years later. "They never knew who I was until I told them." Around this time, she formed a gang, "the Angeles", with Italian, Jewish, and Polish girls from her neighborhood. In an interview with "Psychotronic Video", she said, "We had leather motorcycle jackets, jeans and boots...and we kicked butt." Because of frequent delinquency, she was sent to reform school. When she was 13, her parents arranged her marriage to 17-year-old John Satana in Hernando, Mississippi, which lasted nine months.
Tura started exotic dancing when she was only 13 years old. She integrated acrobatics, humor, and sensual beauty to her dancing art form.
Satana moved to Los Angeles and by age 15, using fake identification to hide the fact she was a minor, began burlesque dancing. She was hired to perform at the Trocadero nightclub on the Sunset Strip, and became a photographic model for, among others, silent screen comic Harold Lloyd, whose photos of her appear in Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D.
Satana returned to Chicago to live with her parents and started dancing at the Club Rendevouz in Calumet City, where she was known as Galatea, "the Statue that Came to Life." She was offered a raise to become a stripper. After singer Elvis Presley saw Satana perform at Chicago's Follies Theater, the two began a romantic relationship that some reports say ended in a marriage proposal she declined. Satana eventually became a successful exotic dancer, traveling from city to city. She credited Lloyd with giving her the confidence to pursue a career in show business: "I saw myself as an ugly child. Mr. Lloyd said, 'You have such a symmetrical face. The camera loves your face...You should be seen.'"
- Tura Santana at the Spider Pool
Acting career
Satana's acting debut role was a cameo as Suzette Wong, a Parisian prostitute in the film Irma la Douce, which starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Her next role was as a dancer in Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963), which starred Dean Martin and Elizabeth Montgomery. As a dancer, she started doing guest appearances in films such as Our Man Flint Soon after, Tura's skills as a martial artist landed her small roles in TV shows such as "Hawaiian Eye", "Man from U.N.C.L.E.", "Girl from U.N.C.L.E.", "The Greatest Show on Earth", and "Burke's Law" (1964).
Satana then starred as "Varla" in the 1965 film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! — a very aggressive and sexual female character for which she did all of her own stunts and fight scenes. Renowned film critic Richard Corliss called her performance "the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the Meyer canon and certainly the scariest". Originally titled The Leather Girls, the film is an ode to female violence, based on a concept created by Russ Meyer and screenwriter Jack Moran. Both felt at her first audition that Satana was "definitely Varla." The film was shot on location in the desert outside Los Angeles during days when the weather was more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit and freezing nights, with Satana clashing regularly with teenage co-star Susan Bernard due to Bernard's mother's reportedly disruptive behavior on the set. Meyer said Satana was "extremely capable. She knew how to handle herself. Don't fuck with her! And if you have to fuck her, do it well! She might turn on you!"
Satana was responsible for adding key elements to the visual style and energy of the production, including her costume, makeup, usage of martial arts, dialogue and the use of spinning tires in the death scene of the main male character. She came up with many of the film's best lines. At one point, a gas station attendant was ogling her extraordinary cleavage while confessing to a desire to see America. Varla replied "You won't find it down there, Columbus!" Meyer cited Satana as the primary reason for the film's lasting fame. "She and I made the movie", said Meyer. Meyer reportedly later regretted not using Satana in subsequent productions.
After Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, she primarily worked with film director Ted V. Mikels in such films as The Astro-Zombies (1968), and The Doll Squad (1973). After making Mikels' The Doll Squad in 1973, Satana was shot by a former lover. She later found employment in a hospital, a position she kept for four years. She had studied nursing at Firmin Desloge Hospital. She was then briefly employed as a dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department. In 1981, her back was broken in a car accident. She spent the next two years in and out of hospitals, having two major operations and approximately fifteen others.
In 2002, she returned to acting, reprising the role of Malvina Satana in Mark of the Astro Zombies (2002), the sequel to The Astro Zombies.
Personal life
Satana claims to have dated Elvis Presley but turned down his marriage proposal, although she did keep the ring. Satana married a retired Los Angeles police officer in 1981, and remained married until her husband died in October 2000. She had two daughters from a previous relationship.
Death
Satana died on February 4, 2011, in Reno, Nevada, and was survived by her daughters, Kalani and Jade, and her sisters, Pamela and Kim. Her long-time manager, Siouxzan Perry, gave the cause of death as heart failure.
- Spouse(s)
- John Satana (1951 - 1952) (divorced)
- Endel Jurman (1 November 1981 - 15 October 2000) (his death) 6 children ? (1961 - ?) (his death)
- Trade Mark
- Femme fatale
- Trivia
- Had a daughter, Kalani, at 19.
- Has three sisters and one brother.
- Went to James A. Riis Elementary School in Chicago.
- Her first marriage, to a 17-year-old boy (she was only 13), lasted only 9 months. The marriage was arranged by their families.
- Grew up in Chicago.
- Measurements
- At time of her exotic dancing career, 36D bust. In 1998, noted "Right now I'm about a 40FF." (Source:Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
She legally owns her likeness and image. So, whenever Russ Meyer wanted to change the artwork or rerelease the project Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), he had to get her permission and sometimes pay her all over again.
Personal Quotes
When I was dancing burlesque was an art - classy and elegant and requiring talent. I got out of it when it started to become raunchy and lost the art. Now they call it nude dancing, but its plain old pornography as far as I'm concerned. They do things on stage that I wouldn't have even thought of doing.
A Personal Note from Robin
The picture below is of Tura Satana. It was taken by Harold Lloyd (at the Spiderpool, part of the John McDermott estate) and is printed as a 3-D photo on p.100 of "Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D" < ISBN:1579126790 Buy it from Amazon.com > (This book is part of "The BackDrop Club Research Library")
The picture below was taken at the Spiderpool, part of the John McDermott estate.
Notes
- ↑ Film star
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