Tura Satana topless in Tura! (2024)

This is a documentary about the life of Tura Satana, an iconic 1950s burlesque performer, and the star of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! It focuses on a brutal childhood incident, her burlesque career, her famous lovers (Billy Wilder, Marty Allen, Tony Bennett and Elvis, to name a few) and her eventual cult movie stardom.

I learned something from this film: Tura had neither Japanese nor Native American components in her DNA. Tura was born in Japan, her father had a Japanese last name, and her family spent some time in one of the infamous Japanese-American internment camps, so she spent her entire career as a “Japanese-American icon,” and also claimed some Cheyenne ancestry through her mother. One of Tura’s daughters got her DNA tested. The Japanese percentage shown in that test was zero percent, as was the Native American! Based on that test, it is possible to extrapolate that Tura’s dad was 92% Chinese and 8% Filipino, while Tura’s mom was entirely Northern European, mostly Scottish. Like many people with some Filipino ancestors, her real name included some Spanish elements: Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi. “Satana” is her married name, taken from a boy she married when she was 13, he 17.

By the way, you may be wondering about the “50% European Jewish” in the ancestry of Tura’s daughter. Tura had told her daughter that her father was singer Tony Bennett, but it turned out that her father was actually Jewish comedian Marty Allen, who opened for Bennett. (She does indeed look a lot like Marty Allen!)

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