Tura Satana, 1935-2011

In his 1981 book Shock Value, John Waters wrote:

After nearly twenty years of being the top fan of Faster, Pussycat, I tried to loc­ate the star, Tura Satana, to find out what her life is like today and how she felt about being involved in such a mas­ter­piece. I finally got her tele­phone num­ber in Los Angeles and decided to give her a call. A little girl answered the phone and when I asked for Tura, I was startled to hear the child say “Hold on,” and yell “Mommy!” After so many years of fan­tas­iz­ing about the real life of the mean­est pussy­cat of all, it was a shock to real­ize that Tura Satana was, after all, just an act­ress. Our inter­view was short but sweet.

Tura explained that today she is work­ing as a nurse and runs a doc­tor’s office. Noticing my sur­prise at her career switch, she laughed and added, “My patients don’t give me any trouble though.” She claims that Tura Satana is her real name, and I try to ima­gine the bux­om beauty in a nurse’s out­fit with a little badge say­ing “Nurse Satana.” She used to be a pop­u­lar bur­lesque star and remin­isces, “It kept me in good shape.” She got the part in Pussycat because her agent sug­ges­ted her to Russ, feel­ing she was “right for the part,” with the added attrac­tion of “know­ing kar­ate.” Tura has nev­er seen any of Russ’s films except “the one I’m in” and shrugs that the film “neither helped nor hurt my career.” She was also in Irma La Douce, Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed, Astro Zombies, and The Doll Squad.

Tura seems to have fond memor­ies of Pussycat and its two oth­er cine­mat­ic sis­ters in crime, but did­n’t seem to care for the act­ress who played her vic­tim. “She was a typ­ic­al Hollywood brat. She was nev­er in time for any­thing. I’d get so mad at her that I’d turn away and smash a rail­road tie with a kar­ate chop.” Her lead­ing man evoked even harsh­er memories—“Ha! Those love scenes were real act­ing. The guy was a health-food nut and had bad breath!”

Miss Satana’s opin­ion of cult star­dom might give pause to any aspir­ing act­ress of today—“When the film came out, every­body who saw it wanted to punch me. I got a lot of let­ters from guys who wanted me to beat the crap out of them.”

Soon after Waters’ book (which, incid­ent­ally, I con­sider a mas­ter­piece of American humor on a par with the work of Twain, Perelman, those kinds of guys) was pub­lished, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film and Re/Search’s Incredibly Strange Films com­pil­a­tion saw print. A new aes­thet­ic of cult film came into being, and soon, char­ac­ter­iz­ing a film such as Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! as a “mas­ter­piece” did not seem quite so pro­voc­at­ive, or per­verse, a pronouncement…or act…or ges­ture. The sub­sequent rise of fan con­ven­tions and such plucked Satana out of the rel­at­ively con­ten­ted obscur­ity where Waters had re-discovered her, and she became a beloved fix­ture in that world. I think I met her at at least one such wing­ding, and recall her being as nice as pie.

Anyway, like the man said, it’s a strange world. And it will miss Tura Satana.

The image at top is from the afore­men­tioned Irma La Douce, with Jack Lemmon. Because even though I can­’t ima­gine any­one’s sick of see­ing shots from Faster, Pussycat, I still have to do some­thing different.

UPDATE: My old friend Joseph Failla has more detailed memor­ies of meet­ings with Ms. Satana: ”