Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  Once they entered the apartment, the cops and Carmine found that the apartment had already been broken into and looted. There was nothing of value left. However, they did discover a key to a locker at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.

  The key was given to Anderson, who received a court order that the contents of that locker should be turned over to the police.

  Carmine had to leave town, but Anderson told him he would forward the contents of that locker to him after a thorough investigation of its contents.

  In 1961, the suit against Lana was settled out of court, some $20,000 going directly to Johnny Stompanato’s son, who lived in Hammond, Indiana, with his mother.

  ***

  In the locker at Union Station, Johnny had stored a wooden box, which was retrieved and brought back to Anderson’s headquarters. A ticket inside led to four cardboard boxes stashed in a warehouse in West Hollywood. Their contents—discarded clothing, kitchenware, cowboy boots, and a lot of documents—were also sent to Anderson. Included in the documents were statements for a bank account maintained jointly by Stompanato and the wife of a prominent Los Angeles attorney, and several unpaid promissory notes to women for heavy debts he would never repay.

  Police also found an unregistered .32 caliber revolver, eight cheap wedding rings, and some token gifts from “Lanita.”

  But even more than the documents, what intrigued Anderson the most was the large wooden box. It was stuffed with photos and some undeveloped negatives. Anderson examined each photo carefully. Many of the men and women depicted in compromising positions were well-known; others were not. Anderson was particularly interested in whatever photos, compromising or not, there might have been of Lana and/or Cheryl, but found none. Then he ordered his henchmen at the police lab to process the negatives.

  In his own memoirs, Anderson did not reveal the names of the movie stars who were “clients” of Johnny’s. However, he did cite them to his editors, and word leaked out. His publisher was reluctant to publish the identities of Johnny’s conquests based on fear of libel.

  It was later revealed that the women in these sexually compromising photos included Barbara Payton, Mary Astor, Lucille Ball, Marion Davies, Yvonne De Carlo, and Ava Gardner. Among the male stars were photos of Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire (a surprise to Anderson), Jack Benny, Sammy Davis, Jr., Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Cole Porter, Liberace, George Cukor, and Alan Ladd.

  Most of these men were already known to Anderson as gay or bisexual. The appearance of George Raft among the photos provided another surprise, even though his former lover, Betty Grable, had once said, “George is probably a latent homosexual.” Perhaps he wasn’t that latent.

  In her own memoirs, Lana wrote that Johnny’s black book left within her house after his body was hauled off contained “dozens of phone numbers of Hollywood women—Anita Ekberg, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and June Allyson, among them—and some prominent male personalities as well.”

  When the negatives were processed, Anderson discovered several nudes taken of Lana when she was sleeping on top of the covers of her bed.

  Two days later, his assistant, Louis Blau, arrived—after setting up a meeting—at Lana’s newly rented house on Canon Drive. She described this private meeting in her memoirs, asserting that Blau had arrived with “a pool of exposed film.”

  She was horrified at the nude pictures of herself. As she recalled, Johnny once gave her a glass of vodka after she’d announced that she wanted to get some rest. “I must have passed out for six or seven hours. The drink was probably drugged. That’s when he took those pictures.”

  She wrote, “Another sequence showed a blonde woman I didn’t recognize performing fellatio on John.”

  The police later ascertained that the blonde was actually the part-time actress and prostitute, Liz Renay, Mickey Cohen’s sometimes mistress who may have been hired as a participant in a set-up.

  Blau speculated that Johnny might have been planning to do some trick photography, wherein the original image of the other woman’s body might be retained, with the understanding that Lana’s face might be substituted for the blonde’s, giving the impression that it was Lana who had been performing the fellatio.

  “He was always threatening to ruin my career,” she said, “and this was how he might have plotted to do it.”

  She claimed that “the negatives were cut into tiny pieces and burned.” She didn’t mention the photographs which had been printed in the police lab. Blau assured her that each of the prints of her nudes would be destroyed.

  Throughout the rest of her life, she wondered if someone had made copies for a private collection.

  ***

  Days after her appearance in court, the Associated Press received a call from an informant within the Beverly Hills Police Department. At least he identified himself as such. Reporters were accustomed to receiving tips from informants who did not want to be identified out of fear of losing their jobs.

  The AP was told that two policemen had been summoned to Lana’s new address on Canon Drive where they found Lana’s nude body sprawled out on her bathroom floor with an empty bottle of sleeping pills nearby.

  The reporter who’d received the call immediately alerted his editor. Within minutes, alarm bells—each of them a warning to hold the press for a fast-developing story—were ringing in newsrooms across the country.

  Unexpectedly, within ten minutes, the AP sent out an urgent message to newspaper editors that the report was unconfirmed. That was followed, two minutes later, by another urgent message. “Police find Lana Turner alive at her home.”

  It had become obvious, by now, that whomever had reported the incident had intended it as a hoax.

  Constantly surrounded with security guards, Lana continued to receive death threats at regular intervals for a period of at least three months. The anonymous callers always managed to procure her frequently changing unlisted phone numbers. “Johnny had a lot of friends who were loyal to him—and not just Mickey Cohen,” she said. “They wanted revenge and held me responsible for his death. I had become a target. At times, I was afraid to leave the house. Thanks to Howard Hughes, I had security. Otherwise, I would have been afraid to go to bed at night, thinking some mob members might break in and kill me.”

  The next time Frank Sinatra phoned Lana to find out how she was holding up, he found her a bit delusional, as he later reported to Sammy Davis, Jr. and to Peter Lawford.

  She believed in reincarnation and seemed convinced that in an ancient life, she was Cleopatra herself, Queen of Egypt. To escape from the post-murder trauma, she seemed to wander into some remote past that had never existed for her.

  She’d been drinking heavily,” Sinatra said, “and this made her think that she was Cleopatra incarnate, and that her long-lost lover, Tyrone Power, was alive and well playing the part of Marc Antony.” At one point, Sinatra asked her, “So who am I in this drama on the Nile? Julius Caesar?”

  On looking back on those horrible weeks, Lana said, “I shake my head every now and then, puzzling over how things had gone so wrong. I can never forget what happened that night, or even why it happened. I was weak, I’ll admit, lonely and vulnerable when Johnny came along. He moved in and seized the advantage, trying to get the upper hand. I never meant to harm anyone—God is my witness to the truth of that.”

  As 1958 came to an end, Lana defined it as, “The worst year of my life. What’s past is past. I can’t let it destroy me. I must go on.”

  Years later, on looking back, she said, “When two human beings go through tremendous emotional experiences, as Cheryl and I did, it either cracks them apart or brings them closer together. Cheryl and I became closer.”

  ***

  Years later at a dinner party hosted by TV talk show host, Merv Griffin and his co-hostess, Eva Gabor, Eva’s sister Zsa Zsa entertained their guests with her witty conversation. At one point Zsa Zsa discussed Lana and Cheryl.

  Zsa Zsa had long suspected Lana of having conducted an affair wit
h her former husband, Conrad Hilton, and a separate affair with his son, Nicky.

  According to Zsa Zsa, “I got involved with Johnny Stompanato when he was shopping around for a wealthy woman in Beverly Hills to live with. He’d already had affairs with Elizabeth Taylor (who hasn’t, dah-link), Ava Gardner, Janet Leigh, and Marilyn Monroe.”

  “He asked me if I thought he should continue with Lana because she was increasingly difficult and really didn’t have a lot of money for a movie queen,” Zsa Zsa said.

  “I gave him the wrong advice and told him to stay with Lana, who might put him in charge of her new film company, Lanturn. My reasoning was that he couldn’t last forever as Hollywood’s young stallion—and he’d need some other profession. I also told him, ‘of course, if you turn her down, I’d understand. Frankly, I can take Lana Turner or leave her.’”

  The Budapest bombshell also claimed that she was one of the few women who’d had affairs with both Johnny Stompanato and Lex Barker.

  “As everybody knows, dah-link, all the international studs such as Porfirio Rubirosa have passed in and out of my boudoir. If it’s true that both Lex and Johnny raped young Cheryl, it must have caused her great pain because of their huge size. Those two men would be a challenge for the most experienced prostitute. I’m not surprised that getting assaulted by darling Lex and darling Johnny would turn her off men for life.”

  ***

  In his book, The Bad and the Beautiful—Hollywood in the Fifties, Sam Kushneer wrote: “Like many other celebrity children, Cheryl Crane rarely saw her mother. The girl would reach out to hug and kiss her flawlessly styled mother, and Turner would gently push her away, ‘Sweetheart, the hair,’ she’d say.”

  “Cheryl would lie in bed at night looking up at the phosphorescent stars stuck to the ceiling. On a shelf stood a three-foot-high, life-sized Lana Turner doll a fan had sent her, but the real Lana Turner almost never made an appearance to tuck her daughter in.”

  “Mother and daughter,” Kushner continued, “would soon find themselves forever bonded by one horrific moment, and forever at the heart of one of Hollywood’s most enduring scandals.”

  ***

  In her later years, Lana lived with Eric Root, one of the leading hairdressers of Hollywood, familiar with the “crowning glory” of Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Veronica Lake, and—lest we forget—Richard Burton and Frank Sinatra.

  Root also developed a deep-rooted friendship with Karen Kondazian, an award-winning actress who was Lex Barker’s last lover—in fact, the former Tarzanwas walking along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, on his way to meet her, when he collapsed and died of a heart attack.

  Kondazian had become known for her skill at portraying characters from the plays of Tennessee Williams—The Rose Tattoo, Sweet Bird of Youth, Vieux Carré, Baby Doll, The Night of the Iguana, and The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.

  She told Root that Barker had spoken to Lana just days after the Stompanato murder. “She admitted to Lex that in the panic and hysteria to save her career, she allowed Cheryl to take the blame for her own misdeed.”

  Then, Kondazian disputed Cheryl’s claim that Barker had repeatedly raped her during the course of his marriage to Lana. “Lex was the perfect gentleman. He was kind and gentle in every aspect of our relationship.”

  “Never did he force or insinuate himself in any improper way, although there was nearly a thirty-year difference in our ages.”

  Based on what Barker had told her, Kondazian believed that “Cheryl was very jealous of her mother. Lex said she flaunted her body in front of him. He always predicted that the girl would cause Lana a lot of trouble. She sure did!”

  Lana also addressed the rape issue directly with Root, telling him, “When Cheryl made allegations against Lex, I had no choice but to believe her. I couldn’t take a chance. Had it been true, and the world found out, my career would have been finished for allowing her to stay under the same roof with him. I’ve always had my doubts about her accusations against Lex.”

  In 1996, a year after Lana’s death, Root published his memoirs, The Private Life of Lana. In it, he recalled the night both of them were living in a suite at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. “We were watching TV and a documentary came on about Hollywood scandals. When pictures were flashed about the Johnny Stompanato murder case, I asked her, ‘Do you want me to turn it off?’”

  She insisted he keep the television on, as she sat through all the lurid scenes. Finally, when it was over, she said, “Turn the damn thing off!”

  Then, after reaching for a cigarette, she confessed: “I killed the son of a bitch, and I’d do it again.”

  Eric Root, hairdresser, companion, friend, and confidant to Lana, claimed that she confessed to him that she stabbed Johnny Stompanato.

  She also told Root that after she was dead, she wanted the world to know the truth. “You should not let my Baby take the rap all of her life for my mistake. Someday, when I’m gone, tell it all. I was the one.”

  In an interview with reporter Diesmond Lee, Root claimed, “When my book was published, I was called a liar and even threatened with death. If convicted, Lana would probably have been given the death penalty. Faced with that, it was obvious that the only real recourse would be to let Cheryl take the fall. There was also speculation that Stompanato was frequently having sex with Cheryl.”

  After her tumultuous childhood, which had included rape and murder, Cheryl bonded with her mother in later life.

  “We became closer, having shared so many tragedies together, Lana said.

  Biographer Patricia Bosworth, in a feature story for Vanity Fair published in 1999, asked Cheryl about Root’s claim that Lana murdered Stompanato.

  Cheryl answered, “The idea that Root had in his book is far-fetched. You know, everybody has something to sell. I guess it was the only way he could get his book published.”

  Yet Cheryl herself at one point backed up her mother’s confession. In her own memoir, Detour, she told her new lover, Joyce (Josh) LeRoy, “You know, I didn’t do it. I love you so much more than anyone before in my life, Josh, that I don’t want you to think I could do a terrible thing like that.”

  Josh responded, “I think it was a very brave and noble thing to go to your mother’s defense. You have to live with that the rest of your life. Now you have someone to share it with.”

  Joyce (“Josh”) LeRoy, pictured on the left, became Cheryl’s lifelong companion.

  She offered love, understanding, and stability after Cheryl’s survival as Lana Turner’s daughter.

  As Cheryl wrote, “In that moment, while sitting in a candlelit booth in a Sunset Strip restaurant, my life changed.”

  ***

  In Root’s memoir, he also claimed that Lana was devastated when Cheryl published her own memoirs, Detour, in 1988.

  “Who in the fuck does she think she is?” Lana asked. “How could she do this to me?”

  He may have exaggerated, but Root claimed that after the publication of Detour, Lana took to her bed for six months. She was horrified by the revelations, especially Cheryl’s charges of rape by Lex Barker.

  However, when Lana appeared in public and was asked about the book, she said, “I think it took guts for Cheryl to write it.”

  ***

  In 2007, it was announced that a new film, entitled Stompanato, was in pre-production. The script, according to a press release, would retell the scandalous murder of “the thug and wannabe actor,” the notorious hustler, Johnny Stompanato.

  Lana would be played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, the wife of Michael Douglas. The role of Johnny Stompanato would be cast with Keanu Reeves. Adrian Lyne, a respected director known for such movies as Jacob’s Ladder (1990) with Tim Robbins, and Indecent Proposal (1993) with Robert Redford, was set to direct.

  The screenwriters, so it was reported, were going to nail Lana, not Cheryl, as the culprit.

  Writing about the proposed film, Mark Umbach said: “Rumors have surrounded the death, including that
Crane and Stompanato had been lovers, and that Lana Turner actually killed Stompanato and her 14-year-old daughter took the rap.”

  The actress who’d portray Cheryl was never announced, but the script called for love scenes between the underaged teenager and the hardened hustler. It was recommended that an 18-year-old be used, an actress could at least give the illusion that she was 14.

  One scene called for the character playing Lana to walk in on Stompanato and Cheryl making passionate love on her own pink satin sheets in her own bedroom.

  Zeta-Jones told the press that her father-in-law, Kirk Douglas, the rumored lover of Lana during the making of The Bad and the Beautiful, would be her “research engine” on the blonde love goddess.

  “It’s a great role for me,” she said. “I have always wanted to play Lana Turner, but I’m nervous about it.”

  News of the casting provoked outrage across the internet. One fan protested the casting choice for Johnny. “Reeves just doesn’t cut it as the handsome, macho stud, Johnny Stompanato.”

  One fan lodged yet another complaint. “Zeta-Jones is totally wrong for the part of Lana. There is no way this actress can duplicate the star, who was stunningly beautiful, one of the most desirable women in the world at the time.”

  The person who was the most disappointed about the casting was Sharon Stone, who, for years, had wanted to bring Lana to the screen. Reporters asked, “Is Sharon Stone getting the ice pick?”

  That was a reference, of course, to Stone’s role as the vagina-flashing ice-pick murderer in Basic Instinct (1992).

  Stone claimed, “I met with Lana herself, and she told me I was the only actress in Hollywood who could bring her image to the screen.”

  The film was never made, as Cheryl refused to give her permission for her image to be depicted on screen.

  Actually, in 2001, there had been another, earlier attempt, The Goddess and the Gangster, to adapt a movie from the Stompanato murder case. A news item claimed that Antonio Banderas had been tapped to play Johnny, with Sharon Stone as Lana. This film, too, was never made.