The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals

by Michelle Morgan

  Stephen and Lana actually married twice – the first in 1942 was annulled after he admitted to the actress that the divorce from his last wife was not yet final. This information did not sit well with Lana and she decided to call the whole thing off, which caused shockwaves in the studio and newspapers, especially when it was discovered that she was pregnant but still determined to annul the marriage. However, six months later the couple reunited and married for the sake of their baby daughter, though ultimately the partnership was not a happy one. Of particular concern were the arguments they had about the health of their baby daughter, who had been born with a hereditary condition called RH Incompatibility. The baby needed several blood transfusions and stayed in the hospital for two months while she was treated, during which time Stephen unfairly blamed his wife for giving the condition to the child. This proved to be a factor in the break-up of their marriage just a year later.

  Lana’s career and failed love life rattled on, but by 1956 her acting roles had been lacking in a certain something for quite some time and MGM decided to terminate her contract after they failed to see any more potential in their star. Turner was devastated, and things did not get much better when she miscarried a child in the seventh month of pregnancy. Shortly afterwards she discovered that her then husband, Lex Barker, was abusing her daughter Cheryl, and that marriage – quite understandably – ended in divorce. This in turn led to a rebellion by the teenage child, which saw the relationship between mother and daughter strained to the limits.

  In truth, the bond between the pair had always been less than perfect, with Lana often leaving for long periods of time to work and conduct her frequent romances. This had led the child to wonder if her mother really loved her, and after the debacle of the Barker marriage, Cheryl found herself not only acting up in front of Turner, but also running away after her mother ordered her back to boarding school. The story goes that on her way to her Flintridge school she jumped out of the taxi, bid a friend goodbye with the words, “I’m not going back to school”, and headed off into the streets of Los Angeles. She was found by a man while wandering around Skid Row, apparently being followed by some undesirables, and was taken to the local police station. The situation was eventually resolved and Cheryl returned to school, but not before the entire incident had made headlines around the world.

  Facing financial hardship and with her career in freefall, Lana threw herself into the search for a great role, which she ultimately found in the tremendously successful Peyton Place co-starring Lee Philips and Lloyd Nolan. This was a great moment for Turner, but while the film would ultimately win her an Academy Award nomination, it was once again her personal life that hit the headlines – this time in the most dramatic fashion she could ever have imagined.

  Johnny Stompanato was known as a hard man who had worked as a bodyguard for Mafia boss Mickey Cohen, but it was his good looks and reputation as a fine lover that first attracted Lana. Unfortunately, he was also extremely violent and during the course of their affair not only abused Turner on a number of occasions, but also found himself deported from the UK after beating his lover during the making of her movie, Another Time, Another Place. So bad was the beating, in fact, that the set had to be closed until she recovered, leading the British government to intervene and throw Stompanato out of the country.

  Later Lana told the coroner’s court that on one particular night in London, Stompanato allegedly got a razor from the bathroom and threatened to cut her face, declaring that he would start with a small cut to give her a taste of what it was like, before doing worse later on. In the end he didn’t slash his lover, but by this time Lana Turner was ready to say goodbye, though several attempts were ultimately unsuccessful. As much as he seemed to dislike the actress, Stompanato was in no hurry to leave her, and after the fiasco in London she met her lover in Amsterdam and together they flew to Acapulco for two months, where they spent time arguing instead of relaxing. In fact, it would seem that the actress had actually thought she would be going to Acapulco on her own, as she had written to the hotel a few months before, reserving her regular bungalow and making no mention of Stompanato. By the time they arrived together, it was rumoured that the two never shared a room, Lana preferring instead to have separate accommodation from her volatile lover.

  The manager of the hotel, Ted Stauffer, later told the Los Angeles Times that Lana’s lover had “stuck like glue” and nobody ever had a chance to speak more than a few words to the actress the entire time she was there. However, on one occasion when Stauffer was able to get her alone for a minute, Turner did apparently hint that she was worried about the situation with Stompanato and was desperately trying to jilt him. “Johnny acted as if he knew it,” the manager later told the press.

  When the couple returned to the States, they were met at the airport by Turner’s mother and daughter. The actress was in no hurry to declare any kind of love for Johnny and, in fact, during a short interview with waiting press, made the momentous decision to state that there was absolutely no romance between the couple at all. What Stompanato thought about this declaration is not known, but given his reputation it probably wasn’t positive.

  On the evening of the Academy Awards, where Lana was nominated for Best Actress, she celebrated with her daughter Cheryl, who was home from boarding school. The evening had been fun but darkness lay ahead when they returned to their Beverly Hills hotel and a tremendous fight broke out between Turner and Stompanato, who was furious that he had not been Lana’s date for the evening. For Cheryl, this was her first taste of the abuse being suffered by her mother and as Johnny was threatening and hitting her mother, she pulled the covers up over her head in an attempt to drown out the noise. “I’m not proud of that but I did,” she told KMIR 6 News many years later.

  Despite the violence, it seems that Stompanato had set his goal on marrying Lana Turner and on at least one occasion he apparently took Cheryl out for hamburgers in an effort to win her over. His intention was for her to persuade her mother to consent to a wedding, though given his treatment of the woman, along with her desire to get away, this would seem something of a pie-in-the-sky idea. Indeed, Lana was so terrified of Stompanato that she would shake terrifically every time a quarrel erupted between them. With that in mind, marriage was the very last thing she ever wanted with him.

  Several days after the Academy Awards, on 31 March 1958, more violence erupted when Lana and Cheryl were staying at the home of the actress’s mother, Mildred, where they were readying themselves to move into their new home. Johnny was with Lana that day and started an argument over nothing in particular, only this time it was different, as Cheryl decided to confront her mother about it after he had left. The actress admitted to her daughter that Stompanato had hurt her in the past, and when asked why she wouldn’t leave the violent man, Lana replied, “It isn’t that easy.” She then went on to explain how possessive he was, that she didn’t have a moment to herself without him wanting to know what she was doing and who she was with. Both Cheryl and Lana were beside themselves with worry and it looked at that point as if the actress was never going to get away from Johnny Stompanato.

  On 4 April 1958 – which also happened to be Good Friday – Lana was planning on spending Easter quietly with her daughter at their new home, 730 North Bedford Drive, where they had moved just three days before. Unfortunately, the arrival of Stompanato changed all that, and it was anything but a Good Friday for anyone involved. Lana had long since known the rumours of her boyfriend’s Mafia connections, but recently she had become aware that not only was he working for Mafia boss Mickey Cohen, but for some reason he was also lying to her about his age, saying he was forty-one when he was only thirty-two. She decided to address the issues that evening and told her daughter that she was going to end the relationship once and for all. She told Cheryl not to believe anything Johnny said and to pay no attention to him, which the child had no intention of doing anyway since she had by now decided that he was not the sort of person
with whom she wanted to spend time.

  Of course, while Lana was insistent that the relationship would end, Stompanato had proved time and time again that he was not the type to go quietly. It was not long, therefore, before things turned ugly and a violent argument broke out between the pair in Lana Turner’s bedroom. Cheryl was doing homework in her own room at the time and heard the man shouting, but it was when she heard him threaten to destroy not only her mother’s looks, but also her family (including the child herself) that Lana’s daughter decided something had to be done.

  Cheryl went to see if her mother was okay, but fearing for her safety, Lana told her daughter to go back to her room. Instead – and in a sudden burst of daring protectiveness for Lana – fourteen-year-old Cheryl ran down to the kitchen and picked up a knife from the counter. She then turned and dashed back upstairs and listened outside Lana’s bedroom. It was at that point that the door flew open and – according to Cheryl – Stompanato walked out of the room just as she was going in, and ran straight into the path of her knife. He looked her in the eyes; asked what on earth she had done; and then fell to the ground, lying on his back and making terrible gasping sounds as he lay dying.

  Seeing the severity of what she had done, a shocked Cheryl ran back to her bedroom while Lana Turner rushed over to see what was wrong with her lover. She had not seen the knife and it was not until she lifted his cardigan that she realized there was a wound. She ran into the bathroom to retrieve a towel in order to staunch the bleeding. She could not believe it. She had wished her lover to leave, wondering if she would ever escape his violent outbursts, but had never wanted him dead. And yet there he was, in the middle of the bedroom in her new home, looking like something from a horror movie.

  Lana’s first reaction was to call the doctor, but not being able to recall his name she then took the decision to phone her mother, who in turn telephoned the doctor herself. Cheryl then returned to the bedroom where she too tried to help staunch the bleeding, this time with her mother’s wash cloths that were found in the bathroom. “I didn’t mean to do it,” she told her mother to which Lana told her not to worry, that her grandmother was calling the doctor and everything would be okay.

  Running once again from the bedroom, Cheryl called her father Stephen who soon arrived at the house to be greeted by his daughter running down the path to meet him. She ushered him inside and he ran up the stairs to Lana’s bedroom where the actress was still with her lover. Declaring the scene “terrible”, he took one look at the dying man and asked what had happened. “I did it, Daddy,” came Cheryl’s reply, though she assured him that she didn’t mean to; that the man had been going to hurt her mother before she had come into the room.

  Crane then took his daughter back to her bedroom, trying desperately to calm her down and assure her that everything would be okay. Shortly after, Lana’s mother Mildred entered the house and first of all calmed down her granddaughter, before then taking matters into her own hands as she tried frantically to rouse the wounded man, rubbing his hands and calling his name. It was no good, however, and when she returned to Cheryl’s bedroom where she and Stephen were sitting, Stephen took one look at the face of his ex-mother-in-law and knew that all hope was fading.

  By the time the doctor eventually arrived, things were looking worse than ever; he demanded the actress call an ambulance and then gave Stompanato an injection of adrenalin. The entire house was in an uproar by then, with Lana trying to call for an ambulance but not being able to find the right words when the operator began asking questions. The doctor eventually took over and while he talked to the ambulance service and another physician, Lana and her mother took it upon themselves to try and get air into the dying man by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  While waiting for an ambulance to arrive, Stompanato’s heart finally stopped beating. The doctor continued to work on him, but everyone knew it was too late. By this time the house began to fill with people including Lana’s lawyer Jerry Giesler, several other doctors, the police and the ambulance crew. Everyone played a part in trying first of all to save the man, and second, when it was too late, to try to figure out exactly what had happened. It was not an easy task, however, as by this time Lana’s mind was a blur, but eventually a statement was taken and the body of Johnny Stompanato was taken away for an autopsy.

  The decision not to telephone the police straight away deeply upset Stompanato’s family, who later complained to the newspapers that if they had called the police and an ambulance as soon as it had happened, the man could have still been alive. This was immediately ruled out by the autopsy surgeon, however, who found that the knife had pierced the abdominal wall, liver and aorta, meaning that Stompanato would have been dead within a very short time of the stabbing.

  Cheryl Crane was taken from her Beverly Hills home and sent to juvenile hall for questioning, where the police did everything by the book. They were determined not to be told that they were letting the daughter of the great Lana Turner away with murder. “She will be treated no different than any other girl,” declared Deputy District Attorney Manley Bowler. “She will be booked like any other juvenile and will be kept in Beverly Hills Jail overnight.”

  Meanwhile, back at the house, Cheryl’s mother shocked everyone around her by declaring her intention to go to the morgue to see her ex-lover, a decision which was met by a locked door and the refusal by her publicist to let the actress anywhere near the body of Stompanato.

  In the days to come things only got worse, and by this time Turner’s ex-husband Stephen Crane had told her that he intended fighting for custody of their daughter. When a nurse was seen going into her Beverly Hills home, the actress was described as being on the verge of collapse, though this still did not stop the media interest in the story. In fact, it only made it worse and Lana was inundated with requests for interviews and press conferences – all of which she turned down, deeming them inappropriate.

  Instead, she instructed celebrity lawyer Jerry Giesler to protect her from the unwanted attention, and he immediately released a statement describing how Cheryl had acted out of extreme fear. He also said that on several occasions the young girl had been witness to the man threatening not only her mother’s face, but also revenge on her and Lana’s ex-husband, Stephen Crane. Shockingly, when the police began interviewing Turner as part of their investigations, she became so distraught that she apparently asked if it was possible for her to take the blame for the murder herself. “That is impossible,” came the reply.

  Stompanato’s brother Carmine arrived in California in the hope of meeting Lana, but was refused an audience. He left in disgust shortly afterwards, but not before he’d had the chance to air his grievances with the press, telling them that he believed there had been a lot of lies told about the death of his brother, and while he said he had no interest in prosecuting Cheryl himself, he just wanted the truth to come out. He also said it was “incredible” that a fourteen-year-old girl could stab a six-foot man to death, and added that in all the time they were together, it had been Turner who had chased his brother, not the other way around.

  His stepmother also got in on the act when she told reporters that she was appalled her son’s name was being dragged through the mud, especially as he had written to her from Acapulco, desperate for her to meet Lana when she was in California and hinting that they would soon marry. “We talk about you quite often, and she would like to know you, too,” he had written to his stepmother. Embarrassingly for Lana, these claims of love between the two were backed up by a bracelet supposed to have been found on the body, with a love note from the actress engraved inside. Then came a lock of blonde hair, said to be from Lana, accompanying a photograph found in his wallet with an inscription signed “Lanita” – Johnny’s pet name for his girlfriend.

  Before leaving Los Angeles, Carmine Stompanato visited the police to demand that they look into the killing of his brother thoroughly and completely. They said they would, though the Chief of Police later hi
nted that he believed most of the investigation demands were brought on by Stompanato’s boss, Mickey Cohen, who had sent two “close friends” to the police station with the man. Cohen himself had a lot to say when the press contacted him for a comment, backing up the family’s opinion of Turner and expressing his disgust at her refusal to speak with Carmine. He also added that he was in possession of some steamy love letters from the actress to her dead lover, and that he was bitterly angry with Turner, claiming that she had not offered to share any of the expenses for the burial, leaving Cohen to “borrow $2300 to pay the whole tab”.

  Just a week after the death of Johnny Stompanato came the inquest, during which Lana Turner gave testimony, which some say was the greatest performance of her life. Clutching a handkerchief and visibly upset by what was going on around her, Turner took to the stand and described how on the afternoon of the killing she had gone shopping with her lover and then returned to Bedford Drive where some friends were waiting to see her. She then told the court that the friends had asked if she would like to go out to dinner with them but she refused as she had no one to look after her daughter. However, Stompanato had taken offence at not being invited along in the first place, which had caused something of a disagreement between the pair.

  “Mr Stompanato was upset that I had even considered the idea of having dinner with friends, but I had not seen them for a long time,” she said. She then described how she had confronted the possessive man with the words, “Surely I have a right to be able to see some people without your always being there . . . It was friendships that were long ago that you didn’t even know about.” When the man returned to the home later in the evening, he asked what time the friends had left. “He objected that they had stayed even an hour after he had left and words started and he was verbally very violent,” Lana described.