Tura Satana

Tura Satana legally owned her likeness and image. So, whenever Russ Meyer wanted to change the artwork or re-release the project Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), he had to get Satana's permission and sometimes pay her again.
Her first marriage, to a 17-year-old boy (she was only 13), lasted only nine months. The marriage was arranged by their families.
Born in Japan and raised in Chicago, where she attended James A. Riis Elementary School, Tura Satana had three sisters and one brother.
She was shot in the stomach in 1973 by a drug addict ex-boyfriend. She didn't return to acting for another 30 years.
She had abandoned her burlesque career when changes in California licensing laws led many club owners to require dancers to perform topless. Satana gave up acting to work in a hospital for four years, then managed a doctor's office in Hollywood for eight years. She later was a police radio operator for the LAPD. She was in a car accident that broke her back in 1981 and spent the next two years in and out of hospitals, having two major operations and approximately fifteen smaller ones.

When I was dancing burlesque was an art--classy and elegant and requiring talent. I got out of it when it started to become raunchy and lost the art. Now they call it nude dancing, but it's plain old pornography as far as I'm concerned. They do things on stage that I wouldn't have even thought of doing.
I started out as an interpretive dancer, but I was offered more money if I took my clothes off, so I did. I started dancing at the age of 13 years old. I became a professional dancer at the age of 15 years old. If the owners of the clubs I had worked in ever knew that I was only 1, I think that they would have had a heart attack.
I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside of me for many years and let it loose. I helped to create the character Varla [in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)] and helped to make her someone that many women would love to be like.
[asked what she feels is "the most important secret of all"] I've always told Ted [director Ted V. Mikels]) that you can't let anything get you down. Look at the positive side. Don't sweat the small stuff. Keep the negative side buried. I come and go as I please, so I can't get in trouble.