Biography
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- This article is about dancer and actress Tura Satana. For the band named after her, see Tura Satana (band).
Tura Satana, born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi July 10, 1935 in Hokkaido, Japan, is a Japanese-American actress and former exotic dancer. She is mostly remembered for her role as "Varla" in Russ Meyer's 1965 cult film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
Her father was from Japan and the Philippines, and her mother was American Indian and Scots-Irish. After the end of World War II, she and her family moved to Chicago where at the age of nine she was gang raped by five men. This prompted her to learn martial arts, in particular karate. She also studied Ikido in Hawaii and earned a gold belt. Tura soon became the leader of a gang of teenage girls. In an interview with Psychotronic magazine, she said, "We had leather motorcycle jackets, jeans and boots and we kicked butt." At 13 years of age she was married in Hernandos, Mississippi, a union arranged by her parents and the family of her 17-year-old groom. This marriage did not last long.
Tura became a successful exotic dancer in Los Angeles and ended up traveling from city to city, working with the likes of Rose Le Rose, Maxine Martin The Skyscraper Girl, Tempest Storm, Candy Barr and Stunning Smith the Purple Lady.
At 19, Tura became pregnant - but still danced for the next eight months with a typical week of work earning her around $15,000. During this time, Tura was romantically involved with Elvis Presley for a few months. She told Psychotronic magazine of the relationship; "I met Elvis when I was working in Louisiana, he came into New Orleans during Mardi Gras. He was a young singer and he liked my routine, or rather my gyrations, so I taught him how to do it. He dated me for six or seven months, but then he was on the road and so was I."
Her early acting career saw Tura take on a few television appearances on Hawaiian Eye, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Greatest Show On Earth with Jack Palance, Burke's Law, and others. She also began appearing in movies, including Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? where she played a dancer with Dean Martin and Elizabeth Montgomery. That same year, she had a cameo as a Paris prostitute in the musical Irma La Douce with Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine.
Tura's greatest screen role was as Varla in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - a very aggressive and sexual female character. She did all of her stunts and fight scenes herself.
After making Ted V. Mikels' The Doll Squad in 1973, Tura was shot by a possessive former lover. Following this, she found employment in a hospital, a position she kept for four years. She was then briefly employed as a dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department. In 1981, her back was broken in a car accident. She spent the next two years in and out of hospitals, having two major operations and approximately 15 other.
Tura was married to a retired L.A. cop and has two daughters. The older daughter had a cameo role in Mikels' Ten Violent Women, and the younger has three children. She currently lives in Reno, Nevada and occasionally visits cult film fairs.
Cult Australian indie band, Ratcat, released a single in 1990, on which the B-Side (penned by Simon Day) was "Tura Satana".
Argentine band Babasonicos wrote a song for her, Viva Satana ("Long Live Satana") on their 1994 album Dopadromo
Selected filmography
- Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2002)
- The Doll Squad (1974)
- The Astro-Zombies (1969)
- Our Man Flint (1966) (uncredited)
- Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
- Irma La Douce (1963)
External links
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