07/11/2022
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ADDENDUM: Was made aware of a documentary about Tura Satana by the producers who asked me to pass along this information: www.turamovie.com
Walking home from school just before her 10th birthday, Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi (Tura Satana) was reportedly gang r***d by five men. According to Tura, her attackers were never prosecuted, and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off. She reports that this prompted her to learn martial arts, such as aikido and karate. Over the next 15 years, Satana tracked down each ra**st 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, Satana 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.
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.
"I started out as an interpretive dancer, but I was offered more money if I took my clothes off, so I did. I started dancing at the age of 13 years old. I became a professional dancer at the age of 15 years old. If the owners of the clubs I had worked in ever knew that I was only 15, I think that they would have had a heart attack."
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 (though she reportedly kept the ring). 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.'"
Satana's acting debut role was a cameo as Suzette Wong, a Parisian pr******te in the film "Irma la Douce" (1963), 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; Soon after, Satana appeared in the television shows "Burke's Law" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." Satana then starred as Varla in the 1965 Russ Meyer 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 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 f*ck with her! And if you have to f*ck 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 the 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.
"I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside of me for many years and let it loose. I helped to create the character Varla and helped to make her someone that many women would love to be like."
Santana legally owned her likeness and image. So, whenever Russ Meyer wanted to change the artwork or rerelease "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!," he had to get her permission and sometimes pay her all over again. (Wikipedia/IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Tura Satana!
