Lawford's decades away from dubious involvement with the Mob, the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, the "Salt and Pepper" movies, and a ton of health problems from smoking and drinking.

Turner is still soft, and a few years away from dubious involvement with the Mob, which hardened her looks to the point where I can't watch anything she's in after "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952).

RKO Radio Pictures still from "The Princess and the Pirate" (1944).

(Warner Bros. studio still.)

I'm thinkin' Katy Perry would kill for those shoes.

August 8, 1949 was a warm, sunny day in Los Angeles.

I doubt if anyone remembers that, however, since it probably was a sunny day like the 300 hundred or so the city basks in annually.

But maybe they do remember movie star Marie Wilson being hoisted "thigh-high" in a bosun's chair that day, to get a closeup view of a 35-foot-tall leg modeled after one of her own silky gams.

In true Hollywood bigger-is-better style, the two-ton faux getaway stick, complete with a garter, was conceived of by the DuPont Corporation to advertise Nylon hosiery to the women of Earth, starting with Southern California.

Nylon had been created in 1937 to replace the silk used in the manufacture of ladies' stockings. Silk had become very expensive and increasingly susceptible to supply problems caused by turmoil in Asia.

The first Nylon stockings were introduced at the 1939 New York World's Fair to enormous acclaim. By 1941, almost all of DuPont's production of the fiber was going towards the war effort (parachutes, towlines, rope, etc.). Stockings themselves were very expensive and hard to come by, even on the black market, and that went for both the silk and Nylon varieties. Women who couldn't afford or find the real things painted lines down the back of their legs with eyebrow pencils to mimic the look.

As fate would have it, Wallace Hume Carothers, the organic chemist at DuPont who synthesized the profitable polymer, had killed himself in 1937 after descending into depression over what he felt was his lack of success. Nylon went on to make more money for DuPont than any other product. And thus Carothers gets the "Sorry Sonofabitch" and "Impatient to A Fault" awards for 1937. Hands (and legs) down.

After the war, consumer demand rebounded as Nylon use in product concept and design increased, including lingerie and, in the 1950s, tire cord, rope, and carpets.

Nylon heaven in Eisenhower-time had to be throwing your girl, clad only in a Nylon nightie, onto a Nylon carpet, and playing "Sinbad's Prisoner" by binding her hands with Nylon rope.

So, here were are four years after the end of double-ya, double-ya-two and some other kind of genius (a man probably) has decided to erect a huge plaster leg across from LA's famous May Company department store on the corner of Broadway and Eighth Streets — to celebrate the new postwar availability and affordability of Nylon.

And what better way to draw EVEN MORE attention to good ole (-NH-CO-(CH2)4-CO-NH-(CH2)6-) stockings than to put a dizzy blonde babe in a short skirt, a pair of those stockings, and fly her to the top of a giant female leg so she can salaciously tug at a giant garter to the delight of hundreds of men and boys oogling her from below?

All photos by Allan Grant, LIFE Magazine.

How 'bout a few colleens from the lost world ...

The limited-edition Barbie version of Cora is accurate down to the turban headpiece and stud earrings.

GI Joe wants out of storage!

John Garfield and Lana Turner photographed on location at Laguna Beach, California by LIFE photographer Walter Sanders. It's August 1945, and the pair is shooting the steamy beach sequence for Tay Garnett's film of James M. Cain's novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946).

Garnett wanted to shoot in as many actual locations as possible, a rarity for MGM at the time. For the seaside love scenes, he chose Laguna, only heavy fog made shooting impossible.

After waiting around several days (what a great setting for a play), the cast and crew picked up and headed south to San Clemente in search of clearer skies, only to have find that fog was lingering there as well.

Word soon reached Garnett that the fog had lifted back at Laguna, but by the time they returned, it had beaten them back.

The stress of waiting for the fog to lift caused Garnett, who had a history of drinking, to fall off the wagon. Garnett holed up in his hotel room and hit the sauce pretty hard. Concerned about rumors that he was going to be replaced, stars Garfield and Turner decided to intervene and get him back to work. Garfield could get nowhere with him, but Turner managed to convince him to go back to Los Angeles for treatment. When he returned a week later, the fog had lifted, and they all went back to work.

Another result of the location delays was a brief, time-killing affair between Garfield and Turner, according to Garfield's friend, Warner Bros. director Vincent Sherman.

There had been sparks between the two since the first day of shooting (when Garfield introduced himself by asking Turner for a quickie), and the delays had sparked a close friendship.

They finally had a moonlit tryst on the beach, but by all accounts that was their only night together. Regardless of what was happening on-screen, they had no sexual chemistry in real life.

Sheesh, you couldn't tell from these eight photos. That's good pretendin'!

Here's their first meeting in the film, which is pretty memorable.

In this still from "Star Spangled Rhythm" (1942), left to right, are Paulette Goddard (5' 4"), Dorothy Lamour (5' 5"), and Lake (4' 11").

The trio's big moment in the movie was the "Sweater, Sarong, and Peekaboo Bang Number," in which each star played themselves.

Lake was known as the "Peek-a-Boo Girl" during the Forties because of her famous hair-do, in which one eye, and almost half of her face, was hidden behind a large, falling wavy curl of hair (itself called a "peek-a-boo bang").
And, yes, knowing all of this makes me officially gay.

And it's really Dona, not Donna.

And this could be filed under Stars n' Dogs too.