The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (38 page)

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 hinted 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.

The actress’s testimony went on in that manner for some time, describing how Johnny was swearing in front of her daughter and following the actress around the house, all the time getting louder and more objectionable. At one point he apparently told her that she would never get away from him and that in the future, if he said jump, she would jump; if he said hop, she would hop. When it looked as though he was going to strike her again, the woman stood firm, telling the man that he must never touch her, that she was “absolutely finished” with the relationship and wanted him to get out. Describing the killing, the actress went on to say that her daughter had walked into the room as the door opened, and she believed that the girl had hit her lover in the stomach. “I swear it was so fast,” she told the court. “The best I can remember they came together and they parted. I still never saw a blade.”

After the jury heard witnesses that included Mickey Cohen, Lana’s mother Mildred, a doctor, police officers and ex-husband Stephen Crane, it took just twenty minutes for the jury to decide that the death of Johnny Stompanato was justifiable homicide. This should have been the end of the matter but, unfortunately for Lana, this still did not convince her ex-lover’s brother Carmine of her innocence and he went straight to the press. “You’ll never convince me [of the story of Johnny’s death]. She lied right from the beginning,” he declared before asking the police (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to make Turner take a lie detector test.

The other members of his family did not believe the outcome either and assured everyone that their relative was a quiet man who was very much in love with the actress. Not so, said the Beverly Hills Police Chief Clinton Anderson, who described him as a gigolo who had been involved with the police on various occasions in the past. Other sources claimed he had forwarded his European hotel bills to Lana Turner, while it was also said he owed thousands to at least one other woman and was also suspected of blackmail attempts. If anyone wanted Johnny Stompanato’s memory to be a positive one, it was becoming apparent very quickly that this was not to be the case.

On 24 April it was time for Cheryl to take part in proceedings at the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, which saw her being asked if she would like to take on a new persona in the hope of not being recognized as the killer of Stompanato. She declined the offer and instead decided to fight it out in the glare of the spotlight, which prompted the judge to say, “that’s courage”, before adding that he felt her to be a very bright girl who had a wonderful future ahead of her. “Don’t let this destroy your future,” he said. “Don’t let all this attention that has been devoted to you, your mother and father during this period disturb your balance.”

“I’ll try,” replied Cheryl.

After being released from juvenile hall, Cheryl went to live with her grandmother and later recalled that it was a terrible time for her as she had no idea what was going on and had limited access to her parents. Not only that, but the shutters on the house had to remain closed for fear that the ever-present paparazzi would take photographs through the window. “It was such a feeling of being entrapped,” she later said in the 2001 documentary,
Lana Turner:A Daughter’s Memoir
.

Meanwhile, threats began to come into the offices of celebrity lawyer Jerry Giesler, who had managed to secure Cheryl’s release from prison. In four days he was the victim of at least four threatening phone calls, which at first he dismissed as being from cranks, but when a stranger telephoned Giesler’s wife at home and threatened to kill not only him but Turner as well, it was time to sit up and take notice. Another call came several days later from a sobbing woman, demanding that the lawyer keep the curtains of his home shut because the gang were “coming to get him”. Thankfully the threats ultimately did not come to anything. The police began keeping a twenty-four-hour surveillance of both homes, but were keen to assure everyone that they were not “overly concerned”.

Away from the threats and the custody battle came a new worry, this time from Stompanato’s family, who filed a suit for damages worth $750,000 on behalf of the man’s ten-year-old son. Not only that, but the suit brought up new rumours that Lana’s lover did not die in the way first presented at all, but while he was lying flat on the bed, and that it could have been Lana who inflicted the fatal blow, not her daughter. There was further gossip that the death could have perhaps been a result of both Lana and Cheryl stabbing the man, all of which was vehemently denied by Turner and her representatives.

As if this weren’t enough, Cheryl later went through another teenage rebellion which led to various scrapes with the law and a spell in a reformatory for girls who had “gone off the rails”. This was a trying period for everyone involved, but eventually everything settled down; the paparazzi disappeared along with the lawsuits; and Lana and her daughter were left to get on with their lives.

However, while the Stompanato killing was shown by the court to be justified, this has not stopped rumours from spreading over the years, with some people still refusing to believe that it was Cheryl Crane who held the knife that evening. Instead, they prefer to think that it was Lana Turner herself, and that she put the blame on her daughter to protect her reputation. Just as it was back in the 1950s, these rumours are no more than unfounded gossip, and it would seem that if it really was Lana who had killed her lover then surely her daughter would have stepped forward by now in order to clear her own name.

She has never done this, however, and instead has always been steadfast in sticking by what she originally told the court. She has laughed off the conspiracy theories with the simple words: “Nobody wants to believe the truth.” It would appear that she is right.

It may be over fifty years since Marilyn Monroe passed away, but her star continues to shine as brightly as it did in the 1950s. Her life was full of ups and downs, with various scandals along the way, but nothing was bigger than the headlines created by her death one Saturday evening during the first week of August 1962.

Marilyn’s life had been a series of fabulous achievements and tragic let-downs. Her marriages to James Dougherty, Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller had failed; her attempts at motherhood had gone unfulfilled; and by 1962 she was alone and living in Los Angeles after a period of creative fulfilment in New York.

At first Marilyn had been perfectly happy to rent an apartment; in fact, she had moved back into the building in which she had once lived in the early 1950s. However, knowing that she had never owned a home by herself, buying a house became something of the highest importance, and the perfect property was found at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. It was a small, Spanish-style house on a very quiet cul-de-sac, nothing like what you would expect a worldwide star to live in, but it fitted Marilyn’s needs and she felt safe there, which was of the utmost importance.

Being raised as an orphan (though her parents were still alive) and in and out of foster homes for her entire childhood, the actual process of owning a home was a monumental achievement for Marilyn, and during 1962 she busied herself by making big plans for the home. She travelled to Mexico in order to buy furniture, and scoured the market on Hollywood’s Olvera Street for knick-knacks and ornaments. She loved nothing more than planning her home, and during times when she was not working, could often be seen pottering around in her garden, playing with her dog Maf and planting plants and herbs.