Lana Turner, who built a successful movie career on her first screen appearance as a teen-age "sweater girl," died yesterday. She was 75 and lived in Los Angeles.

"She just took a breath and she was gone," her daughter, Cheryl Crane, was quoted as saying in Daily Variety, a trade newspaper. Miss Turner, who had been treated for throat cancer, apparently died of natural causes, a police spokeswoman, Ramona Baety, confirmed to The Associated Press.

Miss Turner was discovered in 1937 by a reporter as she sipped a soda in a Hollywood ice cream parlor while cutting a secretarial class at her high school. The encounter led to her first film role, in "They Won't Forget." Wearing a skintight sweater and skirt, she sauntered along a street, spoke not one line, was murdered in the first reel and began a quick climb to stardom.

Her best performance was that of an unfulfilled wife who persuades a drifter to kill her husband, in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946). Other major roles were a rebellious student in "These Glamour Girls" (1939), a shallow performer in "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941) and an alcoholic actress in "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952).

Recalling "The Bad and the Beautiful," John Houseman, the producer, said he and Vincente Minnelli, the director, had agreed Miss Turner "was capable of brilliant individual scenes, but seemed to lack the temperament or the training to sustain a full-length performance."

"This made our episodic film just right for her," Mr. Houseman said.

Mr. Minnelli recalled using "many ruses and subterfuges" to extract a major performance from Miss Turner, adding, "As she got more into the picture her nervousness disappeared, and she effectively made the character's transition from tramp to glamour queen."

The actress, a star at MGM for 17 years, was a quintessential product of the Hollywood studio system. She recalled in 1969: "It was all beauty and it was all power. Once you had it made, they protected you; they gave you stardom. The ones who kept forging ahead became higher and higher and brighter and brighter and they were stars. And they were treated like stars. We had the best."

Her stormy personal life, peppered by many marriages and publicized romances, was as lurid as many of her films, but her identity as a sex symbol served to insulate her career from scandal's consequences. The most sensational incident occurred in 1958 when her lover, Johnny Stompanato, threatened to disfigure her and was stabbed to death with a carving knife by her 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. A jury exonerated her daughter with a finding of justifiable homicide.

Miss Turner was born on Feb. 8, 1920 in Wallace, Idaho, and was named Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner. Her father, John, was a miner. The family soon moved to San Francisco, where her parents separated and her father was mugged and murdered. Her mother, Mildred, became a beautician and moved to Los Angeles, where the girl lived for a while in a foster home before returning to her mother.

Her discovery in a soda shop led to an interview with Mervyn LeRoy, the director and producer, who advised her to chose a catchy first name and began guiding her career. She chose Lana and began appearing in films, including "Love Finds Andy Hardy" (1938), "Calling Dr. Kildare" (1939) and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." She studied with a dramatic coach and soon co-starred successfully with such leading M-G-M actors as Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Robert Taylor.

Her acting was often barely passable, but she was convincing in love scenes and in some melodramas. Her films included "Green Dolphin Street" (1947), "Cass Timberlane" (1947), "The Three Musketeers" (1948), "The Merry Widow" (1952), "The Rains of Ranchipur" (1955) and "Diane" (1956).

Miss Turner was nominated for an Academy Award in 1957 for her portrayal of a neurotic mother in the film adaptation of Grace Metalious's novel "Peyton Place." In many later movies, including remakes of "Imitation of Life" (1959) and "Madame X" (1966), she played heroines racked by sacrifice and suffering.

On television, her most ambitious effort was "The Survivors," a lavish, prime-time soap opera based on the Harold Robbins novel about a sordid banking family. Later, she toured in several plays, including the comedy "Forty Carats."

Miss Turner's 1982 memoir, "Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth," focused on her eight marriages and many romances. The memoir also recalled a suicide attempt, two abortions, three stillbirths, alcoholism and her religious awakening in 1980.

Miss Turner was married to and divorced from Artie Shaw, the band leader; Stephen Crane, a restaurateur (they were married and divorced twice); Bob Topping, a sportsman; Lex Barker, an actor whose roles included Tarzan; Fred May, a businessman and rancher; Robert P. Eaton, a businessman, and Ronald Dante, a nightclub hypnotist.

She is survived by her daughter.