To Know Him is to Loathe Him

"I think," LANA CLARKSON said at the start of 2003, "that I will act till I die! God willing, this is the year it will happen." It did...and now rock legend Phil Spector is on trial for her murder (photo).

Spector first found fame by borrowing the inscription on his father's tombstone to write "To Know Him Is To Love Him," the 1958 hit for his group The Teddy Bears. But ever since, he's been no picnic...and one of the trial's opening witnesses, Joan Rivers' former personal assistant Dorothy Melvin claimed that Spector smacked her in the head with a gun in 1993 and sneered, "Take your fucking clothes off."

At least Lana didn't need to be coerced in her acting days: After getting her Screen Actors Guild card at 18 for a bit part in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (photo), she showed a natural SAG a year later in Deathstalker (photo). No wonder Clarkson once angrily wrote to reviewer Joe Bob Briggs--after he noted that "she seemed to become more buxom in her later movies"--"wanting the public to know that she had never enhanced herself and was 100% natural."

Lana was 100% au naturel in 1985's Barbarian Queen (photo), but insisted: "The unrated scene is where I'm topless (photo). The R-rated version was all filmed above the bust, but I've never done full-frontal nudity anyway." Sounds like a challenge for Sleuth...who has managed to unearth this rare candid self-portrait Lana took in her dressing room mirror (photo) while an extra on the set of Brainstorm in late 1982. Though the flash obscures her face in the flash, the identical fringed belt of her costume (photo) proves the bottom line.

Spector hopes to prove his innocence by painting Lana as a "broke" actress who "picked him up that night at the bar" and "really wanted to go to bed with him and get some money." After her death, Vanity Fair quoted a source claiming that Clarkson "was a $1,000-an-hour call girl working under the name 'Alana' (photo) for notorious Jody 'Babydol' Gibson," who has just published her juicy tell-all autobio Secrets of a Hollywood Super Madam. Ironically, her final film--2000's aptly titled Vice Girls--perhaps was a preview of Lana getting pawed by the producer (photo) in her little black dress.

So what really happened in Spector's palatial mansion that night? From knowing Lana even slightly, I can report that she seemed happy and hopeful (photo might show how she looked in the legend's limo that night), so suicide is highly unlikely. Besides, who goes to a stranger's house to commit suicide...so she might borrow a gun for the night?! No, far more likely is that, as the prosecutor said in his opening statement: "There were candles lit, the lights were dimmed, he put on soft music. The evidence will show that Phillip Spector had romance in mind that night." Perhaps Lana even took a sensual bath to freshen up (like a dozen years before in The Haunting of Morella, photo) , but changed her mind when Spector grew menacing ("You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" was one of his greatest hits). And we all know what Phil's favorite method of carnal coercion was (photo, from Lana's last film, Vice Girls). So, our verdict? That the erstwhile rock producer finally found a way to once again be "Number One...with a bullet" (photo).