Barbara Turner obit

Barbara Turner, ‘Georgia’ Screenwriter and Mother of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dies at 79

 

She was not on the list.

Barbara Turner, the screenwriter of “Petulia,” “Georgia” and “Pollock,” among numerous other features for film and television, died on Tuesday, April 5, in Los Angeles. Among Turner’s children was actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. She was 79.

After high school, Turner attended the University of Texas for a year, then returned to New York to study acting first at the Dramatic Workshop and later with Paul Mann, where she met Vic Morrow, who became her first  husband. In the late ’50s, Turner and Morrow moved to Hollywood, where she began acting in theater and on television series such as “Playhouse 90” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” Turner’s first screenplay was an adaptation of the Jean Genet play “Deathwatch,” directed by Morrow in 1966.

Turner received a Writers’ Guild of America nomination for her adaptation of “Petulia” (directed by Richard Lester in 1968), an Emmy nomination for TV movie “The War Between the Tates” (1977), Emmy and Writers Guild nominations for HBO movie “Hemingway & Gelhorn” (2012), and the Christopher Award for “Eye of the Sparrow” (1987); she was also a Humanitas Award finalist for the TV movies “Widow” and “Out of Darkness” (1994).

In 1994, Turner produced her screenplay “Georgia” with her daughter Leigh and the film’s director Ulu Grosbard. The film won the 1995 Montreal Film Festival’s Grand Prix of the Americas and a best actress award for Leigh. Leigh was also honored for her performance by the New York Film Critics Circle, and co-star Mare Winningham received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

Turner’s other feature screenplay credits include “Pollock” (2000), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga,” by Steven Naifehand Gregory White Smith, and directed by and starring Ed Harris. Harris was nominated for a best actor Oscar and his co-star, Marcia Gay Harden, received the Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Lee Krasner in the film.

Turner also wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman’s film “The Company” (2003), starring Neve Campbell, Malcolm McDowell and James Franco.

Turner’s unproduced screenplays include the adaptations “Headlong,” based on the Michael Frayn novel of the same name; “Knowledge of Angels,” based on Jill Paton Walsh’s novel; and “Barn Blind,” based on Jane Smiley’s novel. Among her original screenplays are “Beautiful View,” “Under Heaven” and “Once Again for Zelda.”

In a 1995 interview in Scenario magazine, which published her screenplay for “Georgia,” Turner discussed her intensive creative process: “I do a lot of research… so everything is sunk in a kind of truth. People are wonderful, they’re extraordinary. They do and say and create extraordinary things. And that’s the joy of writing for me: just going out there for each screenplay and listening to people, and learning how they view the world, how they experience life and each other. My thought is, why make anything up when it’s so wonderful as it is?”

Gloria Rose Turner was born in New York. She was married twice: from 1957-64 to actor Vic Morrow, with whom she had two daughters, Carrie Ann Morrow and Leigh, and from 1968-1979 to television director Reza Badiyi, with whom she had another daughter, Mina Badiyi Chassler.

Turner is survived by her three daughters, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren

 

Selected filmography

 

Screenwriter

1966: Deathwatch (adaptation)

1968: Petulia (adaptation)

1973: The Affair (TV movie)

1976: The Dark Side of Innocence (also known as The Hancocks) (NBC pilot)

1976: Widow (TV movie)

1976: The Dark Side of Innocence (TV movie)

1977: The War Between the Tates (TV movie) (adaptation)

1981: Freedom (TV movie)

1983: Sessions (TV movie), also producer

1983: Cujo (credited as Lauren Currier)

1987: Eye on the Sparrow (TV movie), also producer

1992: Somebody's Daughter (TV movie)

1994: Out of Darkness (TV movie)

1995: Georgia, also producer

2000: Pollock (adaptation)

2003: The Company

2012: Hemingway & Gellhorn (HBO) (TV movie), also executive producer

Unknown: Knock Wood: Charlie McCarthy Project

Actor

1955: Two-Gun Lady as Jenny Ivers

1956: Medic (TV series) as Joyce in "The Glorious Red Gallagher"

1957: Monster from Green Hell as Lorna Lorentz

1957: M Squad (TV series) as Alice Snyder in "Street of Fear"

1957: Suspicion (TV series) as Emily in "Heartbeat"

1957: Mike Hammer (TV series) as Madeline Pope in "Now Die in It"

1958: Schlitz Playhouse (TV series) as Rose Genilli in "Heroes Never Group Up"

1958: Playhouse 90 (TV series) as Sandra in "Portrait of a Murderer"

1958: The Frank Sinatra Show (TV series) as Shirley in "The Brownstone Incident"

1958: Wink of an Eye as Judy Carlton

1958: Mike Hammer (TV series) as Doris in "My Son and Heir"

1960: The Lineup (TV series) as Eleanor Larsen in "Seven Sinners"

1961: Operation Eichmann as Sara

1961: Outlaws (TV series) as Mary Sawyer in "No Luck on Friday"

1962: Ben Casey (TV series) as Rose Hill in "I Hear America Singing"

1963: Alcoa Premiere (TV series) as Emma in "Lollipop Louie"

1963: Channing (TV series) as Renate Thielman in "A Hall Full of Strangers"

1963: Breaking Point (TV series) as Dorothy Oringer in "A Pelican in the Wilderness"

1964: Kraft Suspense Theatre (TV series) as Bernadette in "Once Upon a Savage Night" aka Nightmare in Chicago

1965: Ben Casey (TV series) as Fanny Birnbaum in "A Nightingale Named Nathan"

1966: The Virginian as Louise Devers in "Harvest of Strangers"

1967: La vuelta del Mexicano

1969: The Desperate Mission (TV movie) as The Farmer's Wife

1970: Soldier Blue as Mrs. Long (uncredited)

1974: En busca de un muro

2007: Margot at the Wedding