The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 30

Weekend birthdays NOW there's a birthday present Lana Turner always the star, with John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice and (far right) Kirk Douglas in The Bad And The Beautiful Lana Turner Queen and knaves fore the stabbing: "You don't have to take that, mother." Another factor damaging to the defence was that someone broke into Stompanato's apartment and stole Lana's love letters to him. A dozen of them were printed in newspapers all over America and so were letters from Cheryl to Stompanato which hinted that her motive could have been jealousy and that, as with Lex Barker, there might have been sexual contact between them. Another Time, Another Place was released early to take advantage of the whole affair but it failed at the box-office, possibly because the real-life case was much more dramatic than the film's tear-jerking story about a woman's affair with a married man (Connery) and her eventual conciliation with his wife and daughter after he dies in an air crash. At the Stompanato inquest, it took the jury only 25 minutes to reach a verdict of justifiable homicide and there was the extraordinary revelation that Stompanato had a serious liver-ailment that would have killed him within a year or two. At the juvenile court hearing later, the district attorney decided not to prosecute Cheryl and the judge asked Cheryl which parent she would prefer to live with.

"I want to live with my grandmother," was her revealing comment. Lana was shocked by that and more so when the Los Angeles Times wrote: "In the Turner case Cheryl isn't the juvenile deliquent. Lana is." But her appeal was still strong and the famous columnist Walter Winchell wrote in his syndicated column: "She is made of rays of the sun, woven of blue eyes, honey-coloured hair and flowing curves. She is Lana Turner, goddess of the screen Give your heart to the girl with the broken heart." Perhaps he understood that senses. Her dazzling white wardrobe was a feature of the film.

And to compensate for the bad publicity she might have got for playing a slut, the studio emphasised her happy home life and devotion to Cheryl. Actually at the time she was dating Tyrone Power, who, it was said, "loved men and married She was equally good as the movie star in Minnelli's The Bad And The Beautiful (1952) but then appeared in too many workaday costume films to capitalise on any newly found acting ability. Three other notable Darts fol on the fact that a large number of men wanted to indulge in it with her. Her sad, and brave, end was first hinted at in June 1992 when she allowed it to be reported that she was having treatment for throat cancer, which was spreading to her jaw and lungs. It was said by the gossip writers that, even during radiation therapy, she "retained her royal status" by wearing, instead of a hospital gown, an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse.

But by then she had become a virtual recluse, though at the end of 1993 she emerged from her home to attend the premiere of Sunset Boulevard in a black sequinned gown. She could hardly talk but still looked a treat Taylor Pero, her former secretary and another of her lovers, wrote in his book Always, Lana that it was "image before truth, facade rather than fact, pride over all that was Louis Mayer's and Hollywood's legacy to Lana Bette Davis agreed, saying that she, above all, perpetuated the glamour thing, endlessly preoccupied with her appearance and determined to "give the American people their kings and Yet no one could say that, like Davis, she was a great screen actress. Director Vincent Min-nelli said she was well capable of fine individual scenes but lacked the temperament or training to sustain a full-length performance. Others have pointed out how she consis- SHE was called the SweaterGirland.it used to be said, in those politically incorrect days of the late 1930s, that her bosom moved deliciously in tune with Dixie whenever it was played. Lana Turner, who has died aged 75, was one of those Hollywood stars whose physical attributes made it unlikely that she could ever be taken seriously as an actress.

Not that it mattered. She was one of studio head Louis Mayer's favourite contract girls in the era when MGM was wont to be described as the best finishing school in the world. And when he gave up his studio, she continued to be a star, hooked to the system and insistent that she never left home without looking like the icon she was. Hers was a long career punctured, however well finished she always appeared, by love affairs, abortions, marriages, divorces and sundry scandals the worst of which was the murder by her daughter, Cheryl, of Johnny Stompanato, the small-time gangster who was Turner's lover and with whom she was obsessed in spite of his violence towards her. If she always looked like a star, and had lived to be one ever since she was discovered in a Los Angeles drugstore, it could be said that she also behaved like we always suppose stars behave in their private lives.

For someone who once said she never enjoyed sex very much, she certainly capitalised Ray Pet ch Happened to Baby Jane? She played a deranged mother who gets revenge oh her son for drowning her favourite cat, Sheba. The title was eventually changed to The Terror Of Sheba and then released as Persecution It was not well received but, much to her surprise after the notices, she won the Best Actress award at the Sitges Horror Festival. The truth was that Turner, like so many Others of her generation, depended upon her scripts and directors rather than her own ability. But she was at least always glorious to look at, even after several facelifts, a drinking problem and an emotional life that was usually in turmoil. The Stompanato affair seemed to come straight out of oneof her not too good movies and it transfixed America.

He had courted her as John Steele but later admitted his real name and his connections with Mickey Cohen, a notorious mobster. He was at first kind to Cheryl, her only daughter, who at the age of 10 had been sexually abused by Lex Barker, of Tarzan fame another of her mother's husbands. for the Princess of Wales, 34 today, from Andrew Morton, published this week in an Ozzie mag. Morton the moralist has written this tract about Diana the near-divorcee, alone now in Kensington Palace but for the visits of the hairdresser, the specialists in allergy treatments and work-outs. When she is sad, she' is very, very sad, barring the Prozac.

And when she is mad with the staff, she shouts at them. When she goes out, sne snops all day, and perhaps later calls in, sequinned, at the wrong kind of right kind of do (say, a dinner sponsored by Vanity Fair). When she comes home, she robs to bed by 8pm, probably, as Noel Coward used to say "with a little some thing eggy on a In the drear weekends when the sons are away with father, she won't speak on the phone to Leggy Tiggywinkle, or whatever is the name of that young woman In the Prince of Wales's entourage who heir-sits. They communicate only through butlers. Hang on: that's so stiffly funny in a -British way that maybe Morton is less a Victorian sermoniser than a comic writer in the tradition which scripted Hancock and John Cleese.

Frustration, loneliness, rathness with the hired help: if she could play it for laughs, beat up a limo's bonnet with a branch, Fawlty Palace would sell worldwide. Today's other birthdays: Claude Berri, film director, 61; Genevieve Bujold, actress, 53; Leslie Caron, actress, 64; Olivia Ac Havilland, actress, 79; Trevor Eve, actor. 44; Lady Faulkner, member, Opsahl Commission on Northern Ire land, 70: Sir Colin Figures, far mer uniet cu secret Intelligence Service, 70; Deborah Harry, rock singer, actress, 50; Hans Werner Henze, composer, 69; Carl Lewis, athlete, 34; Prof Stephen Neidle, cancer researcher, 49; Cavan O'Connor, music-hall artiste, 96; Gen Sir Thomas Pearson, former commander-in-chief, Northern Europe, 81: Sydney Pollack, film director, 61; Prof Anne Showstack Sassoon, political theorist, biographer of Gramsci, 51; Twyla Tharp, dancer and choreographer, 54. Tomorrow's birthdays: Basil Bean, chief executive, National House-Building Council, 64; Lord Beloff, historian; 82; Dr Hans Bethe, physicist, 89; Kenneth Clarke MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 55; Mary Craig, writer and broadcaster, 67; Lady Crawshay, chair, Local Government Boundary Commission, Wales. 68; Sir Hugh Cubitt, conservationist, 67; Jerry Hall, model, 39; Lord Home of the Hlrsel, former prime minister, 92; Rene La-coste.

former Wimbledon men's champion, 90; Eva Lambert, artist, 60; Lord Mackay of Clashfern, Lord Chancellor, 68; Dennis Marks, general director, ENO, 47; Lord (David) Owen, politician, 57; Sir Kie-ran Prendergast, ambassador to Turkey, 53; Lord Sieffof Brimpton, president, Marks Spencer, 82; George Simpson, chief executive, Lucas Industries, 43; Ann Taylor MP, shadow Leader of the Commons, 48; John Timpson, Another Day July 1934. Berlin: I learn from various sources that Hitler and Goebbels journeyed yesterday morning at 2 o'clock to Munich and there ordered the execution of two officials of the famous SA troops. At six he was at Wiessee, some 40 miles away, where he went into Stabschef Roehm's sleeping-room and ordered his arrest and execution He also ordered the death of several other chiefs oftheSA and returned to Berlin where Goe-ring had already caused General Schleicher to be killed. Although the streets of Berlin gave no sign of disorder, there were constant rumours of summary executions. Vice-Chancellor von Papen and his family were imprisoned in their house and his staff were reported to be killed or imprisoned It was a strange day, with only ordinary news in the papers.

Ambassador Dodd's Diary 1933-1938. Gol-lana Left Book Club. 1941. parent antidote to fear, frustration, and folly? The answer lies in the divisiveness of the three major world religions. In this they need to learn from their eastern counterparts'.

Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism speaks notof Godbut of Brahman, the ground of being, with which, by experiencing sam-adhi, the final stage of yoga, the individual can be united. Buddhism offers meditation as the way to achieve Nirvana, tile stage beyond desire. Taoism, the supreme wisdom of China, offers through Its concept of yin and yanga sure path towards sensing one's union with the Way, or Tao. Here is the universal basis of religion: it is secular spirituality; Ray BlUington Is principal lecturer in philosophy at the University of the West of England, Bristol lowed In between the dross in Jean Negulesco's The Rains Of Ranchipur (1955)', Mark Rob-son's Peyton Place (1957), for which she was nominated for an Oscar but didn't get it, and Douglas Slrk'8 classic Imitation Of Life (1959). Thereafter, there wasn't much to note about her work or the films in which she appeared.

Oneof her last was, filmed in London. It was called I Hate You, Cat (1974), and was clearly trying for the same 'success as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis had in Whatever Lana undoubtedly fell in love with him but she was ashamed of his criminal connections, which did not measure up to her official image, and his knowledge of that in the end caused the tragedy. He wanted to be her business partner and she refused. Making Another Time, An- other Place with Sean Connery in Britain in 1957, Lana invited Stompanato to join her but regretted it when he appeared on the set with a gun in his hand in a jealouB rage connected with rumours about Lana and the actor. Connery knocked him down and he was escorted out He was finally taken by two policeman to the airport, after having half-smothered Lana with a pillow during an ensuing argument.

The Connery incident caused an invitation to the palace to be cancelled, much to Lana's disappointment. Stom-' panato, much as she loved him, was a grave disadvantage. Later, after her Oscar nomination for Peyton Place, and the following celebrations, to which Stompanato was not in-vite'd, he beat her up and threatened to kill Cheryl, then 14. Finally, on Good Friday, 1958, Johnny and Lana quarrelled about her drinking at their new home in Beverly Hills and Cheryl heard Johnny shouting: "You'll never get rid ofme. I'll cut you up first" As the threats and quarrelling continued, Cheryl ran downstairs into the kitchen, saw an eight-inch meat knife on the table and took it upstairs to her mother's bedroom, where Lana was crying hysterically and Stompanato was shouting: "You're dead, bitch." Cheryl pounded on the danr.

Lana opened it as Stompanato raised his arm to hit her. Cheryl says that he ran on to the blade. When Lana spoke to the police, she tried to take the blame but the chief officer told her that Cheryl had already admitted she had done it, whether by accident or design. The next day Cheryl was booked on suspicion of murder and bail was denied. Threats from Stompan-ato's gangland friends and brother meant that Lana was given police protection round the clock.

The defence was "justifiable But the case was not improved by the fact that an hour had passed after the stab bing before the police and a doc tor were called, and that Cheryl had told her mother shortly be- PHOTOGRAPH: KENNETH SAUNDERS He lost to the BBC, though he planned to appeaL He realised that the two government departments felt they could not afford to set a precedent that they' were financially responsible for the illness caused by his stress-. ities are rules of conduct which are believed to have been sanctioned by the deity. If Moses had presented the Ten Commandments as his own Ideas of what was morally desirable, one feels he would have received short shrift from the Jewish elders: by handing them over as God's laws he created a situation in which, in the Immortal words of Eric Morecambe, "there's no answer to All these characteristics seem basic, and comprehensive in their effects on believers. Many find that their religion affects maybe controls their entire view of the world and of their place and purpose in it. Their whole lives may well be organised around this world view, in the sense not only that they meet regularly with others who sharetheir visionbutalsothat it becomes a dominant factor in establishing priorities in the The trials of a plaintiff tently triumphed over disastrous notices.

"The public has-been warm," she once' said. "I've been blessed. But they don't really know that I'm just Auntie Mame." If they didn't it was because she hid the fact extremely well, clinging to the all-important "clean" image of a well-scrubbed star despite seven divorces and the Stompanato affair. She moved to MGM just before the war after appearing for Warners in films by directors as capable as Mervyn LeRoy, James Whale and Michael Cur-tiz and it was there, after programmers like Love Finds Andy Hardy, that she was promoted as the Sweater Girl in such films as Ziegfeld Girl (in which she appeared with Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr), Honky Tonk, Slightly Dangerous and Somewhere I'll Find You. But her first really notable role was as the murdering adulteress in Tay Garnett's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), opposite John Garfield.

She accomplished it with, if not style, at least formidable energy and a basic appeal to the revenue. As a heavy smoker, Petch was suspected by the health promotion campaigners, though he successfully negotiated tighter controls on cigarette advertising and stronger health However, it was a difficult balancing act and an accusation made on television on a Panorama programme that he had sold out to the tobacco lobby hurt him deeply, not least because he was sure it was based on a draft paper leaked by a malicious colleague. That incident was followed, in 1984, by a recurrence of clinical depression and in 1985 his employment was terminated. Since his small Civil Service pension took him just above the limit for legal aid, he himself then conducted, over nearly 10 years, a series of cases in the High Court against the BBC and the two government departments which had employed him. He was seeking what he hoped would be adequate compensation for the collapse of his health and the end of his career at the age of 46.

Petch won many hearings, often against QCs and always The social order envisaged by these religions varies from one to the other, and within any single one of them'. We may be about to be led in this country by a Christian Socialist but most American Christians prefer to believe that God is on the side of the financially success- ful. So" which vision is right? For many people; the escape route from this dilemma is to" abandon religion altogether; but that 'would mean throwing out the gold with the garbage. The way lies in discovering what among world religions is" gold, and what is superfluous to requirements; The essential she had just played the best part inner me. Curiously, her best part in movies came directly after the Stompanato scandal.

It was In Imitation Of Life, the story of an actress wno gives up the man she loves, and her daughter, for her career. Lana at first- thought it was too close to home far comfort but eventually was persuaded to do it The film was a box-office smash. Derek Malcolm I aryB. 1920, died June 29, 1995. I ana Turner nplracc hnm Cahni.

ful work. However, he thought that he must continue to fight what he felt was the derisory settlement offered by both departments. Petch waB confident that he had won his last case in autumn 1994 against the Department of Health, before Mr Justice Dyson. The judge found against him on all counts and, after some days of disbelief, Petch's depression returned. One suicide attempt was fallowed by a voluntary spell in a Cambridge hospital, from where he went out and drowned himself in the river Cam.

A tall and rangy, ginger-bearded figure, Petch waB known for his striking sense of colour in nis dress. His laugn was large, his talent for friendship undiminished by his trials. His own guiding light was music, with Wagner's Parsifal, which he considered a sung Mass for complex modern mankind, a particular favourite. His second wife, Rhiannon, stood by him as far as she could but he found settling down diffi cult, especially in nis last years, Where his talent flowered was as an erratic but loving and inspiring father to their two children, Larry and Evelyn. Alaatalr Service Raymond John Petch, civil servant, born March 23, 1939; died April 26, 1995 use of time and money, guidelines for deploying their abilities, and patterns for personal and social relationships.

Millions of people who follow a particular religious path would, if nushed. arena that on this journey they find all their needs are met Worship and prayer answers' their spiritual need; the moral guidelines are sufficient for facing ethical dilemmas; the world view equips them with a purpose for living, an arena for the application of the'e wills; the hint of a life continuing after death offers hope for the future; and the religious congregations provide groups of fellow' travellers with whom they can congenially socialise along the way. An attractive picture and one which should have a universal appeal: so Where's the catch? Why the'whole of humankind eagevty embrace this ap RAYPETCH.whohas died aged 56, was a distinguished civil servant who, after being discharged in 1985 from the Department of Health spent moBt of the remaining decade of his life making legal history as a "plaintiff in person" pursuing compensation claims from the Government and the Civil Service. He represented himself on more than 90 occasions, appearing before more than 15 different High Court judges. He had cases found in his favour at least four times but continual uncertainty led to his suicide.

Born the son of a Cambridgeshire smallholder, Petch joined the Civil Service in 1959. His intellect and analytical powers ensured a speedy rise through the ranks in HM Customs and Excise to the post of assistant secretary. In this position he undertook a major review leading to a new strategy in combating drug smuggling into this country. Before that strategy was implemented, the prolonged strain of his workload and his claim that he was asked to lie on be Face to Faith Petch making another appearance at the High Court half of the Government and conceal information on ministers affected his health and he was diagnosed as suffering from manic depression. Fetch was a deeply musical man with a fine tenor voice.

As a talented amateur, he sang in opera including Don Jose in Carmen lunchtime lieder recitals for his Civil Service colleagues and in the Phil-, harmonia Chorus. Music helped his recovery from that first mental illness and after a period of study he started work again, now in the Department of Health. In the 1970s he played a leading part in introducing personnel management into the National Health Service. It was unfortunate for him that Fetch's talents, and skills in negotiation, led to his appointment first as assistant secretary with responsibility for family planning in 1980 and then for health education and relations with the tobacco industry. He became caught between the crusading anti-smoking lobby and the tobacco industry, which, as politicians pointed out, gave jobs to many and contributed much to the tax lief in Allah and his prophet Mohammed.

Look, for Instance, at the moral guidelines said to be sanctioned by these deities: Despite comprehensive condemnations of killing, all condone killing in war and support capital punishment Each of these religions proclaims that all people are equal in the eyes of God, yet the Old Testament attributes the evils of the world to a woman's disobedience, in the New Testament women are forbidden to speak, let alone teach, in church; arid in the Koran men 1 are instructed to beat recalci- Way to unity on different paths after lengthy proceedings. A government minister and retired permanent secretaries were among those who appeared to give evidence at his request Several judges complimented him on his masterly feature of religion must be that it unites us all: by introducing ethics, social systems, forms of worship, systems of theology, creeds, dogmas', or vision's of a perfect world, into the religious dimension. We create division whereby 'we" are right and "they" are wrong; The problems' begin with belief In a god or gods. The mo-'! menf we speak ln'personal tends about such a being, we begin to tread separate paths. But what makes a religion a religion? Why would one without hesitation designate' Judaism, Christianiry br Islam by Oils term but be mdrellkely to char handling of his case.

But through appeals and tactical inactivity by the defendants, Petch brought none of these cases to a conclusion that clinched an award on the scale he felt just acterise, say, Voodoo or Scientology or the Unification Church (the Moonles) as a cult, or even a superstition? Granted, the first three number their followers in hundreds of millions, but surely it can't be a matter purely of numbers, otherwise we'd have had to describe Marxism at its peak, or football, or even nudism, as a religion. The main characteristics normally described as indicative of. a religion have as their focal point a belief in a god or gods although this immediately excludes many expressions of Hinduism and Buddhism and the whole of Taoism, Confucianism and Zen. From this foundation spring communal ritual acts in which the deity is invoked and' worshipped, and private acts of -prayer, in which a personal relationship is sought between the deity find the believer. 1 Added to these devotional activ Ray BlUington WHY can't we capture the essence of all the faiths, getting the best of them without having to fight over conflicting dogmas: a world view accepted hy all? The problem is that there Is a universe of difference betweeh a world controlled bybeUef In the Jewish' Jahwehor Jehovah, who reveals himself fully only through his chosen people, one dominated by the God of the New Testament to whom no man comes except through, Jesus, and one controlled by be.