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Lana on THE LOVE BOAT - with Ricky Martin!!

posted 13 years ago by HarlowMGM
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I just watched one of the most deliriously endearing episodes ever of THE LOVE BOAT from 1985 with a truly once-in-a-lifetime cast which included Lana Turner, Stewart Granger, Hayley Mills, Anne Baxter, and the Puerto Rican teen pop group Menudo, the littlest member of which was a tiny 12-year-old Ricky Martin.

What a hoot it was to see Lana and Ricky in many of the same scenes as they were part of the same story in which widowed grandmother Lana sets her trap for Menudo's drill sargeant of supervisor (Granger). Lana has never been a top favorite of mine but I loved her in this - wonderful to see her so down to earth here albeit always a movie star to her fingertips, even kicking a soccer ball around with the Menudo boys! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0636611/

THE LOVE BOAT wasn't a particularly good show but it was really cool how often they had movie legends on as guest stars and they had some very big ones indeed including Greer Garson, Lillian Gish, Olivia DeHavilland, Dorothy Lamour, June Allyson, Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Van Johnson, and scores of others including pulling Janet Gaynor and Luise Rainer out of decades of retirement. I'd love to see a DVD collection of just the classic movie stars guest episodes on the show.

[–] markedjuan 9 years ago

My response may be four years too late but I just saw that episode last week and I'm glad you created this thread, HarlowMGM! As I said on the Love Boat board just a while ago, it was just fitting that the writers wrote a scene with Lana Turner and Anne Baxter, even if they were in different storylines. They just had to have a scene together, two legends from the 1940s and they were wonderful in it. It was a brief but memorable event.

This was probably Lana Turner's final acting job and she looked terrific and was fun and energetic with the boys of Menudo. It's a final appearance she could be proud of.

Ditto with Anne Baxter, who passed away suddenly just shortly after that episode aired. (I'm not sure, however, if this was her final acting gig since she was also starring in Hotel at the same time.)