Scene: Interior, bedroom, Beverly Hills mansion. April 4, 1958.
Cast: Lana Turner, a screen goddess who is almost 40 years old. Academy Award-nominated actress (“Peyton Place”). She has bad taste in men. Johnny Stompanato, a former gangster bodyguard and conman whose violence is wider than a Los Angeles freeway. Cheryl Crane, Turner’s 14-year-old daughter.
Action: There will be an argument and then a struggle. The knife shines. Stompanato lies on the floor, mortally wounded.
Who?
The lives of Turner and Stompanato leading up to that fatal confrontation are covered in the latest book by Marshfield true crime author Casey Sherman, Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown’s Most Shocking Crimes. It is the subject matter. Published by Sourcebooks, it is currently available in bookstores and online retailers.
The Patriot Ledger spoke with Sherman in a telephone interview.
ledger: What attracted you to this story?
Sherman: I love old Hollywood stories and L.A. noire stories. I’m a big fan of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and “LA Confidential.” I thought this would be a good addition to LA crime literature.
ledger: In this book, he spends a lot of time tracking not only the growth of Lana Turner’s career, but also the growth of organized crime in Los Angeles, Bugsy Siegel, and Johnny’s mentor, Mickey Cohen. . How much did these two worlds overlap?
Sherman: I think they overlap quite a bit. The Hollywood economy and organized crime supported each other and were often interdependent.
ledger: Stompanato appears at a particularly vulnerable time in Lana Turner’s life, when her studio, MGM, drops her and her fifth marriage (eight in total, two to the same man) is a fiasco. It ended in
Sherman: I think it was cause and effect. Lana Turner was at a crossroads in her career, and Mickey Cohen wanted to move away from the violence of organized crime. Cohen used Stompanato as a decoy to reverse engineer the honey trap. Lana Turner was always attracted to dark and dangerous characters, which made her an easy target for them.
ledger: I’ve written about murderers before. Why do they write about the victims (stompanato) so mercilessly?
Sherman: It felt different in a way. I empathized with her and all the men in her life who had taken advantage of her financially, physically, and emotionally.
ledger: How do you think this incident would be viewed differently now than in 1958?
Sherman: This was the biggest scandal of the 1950s. Now, there will be journalists and bloggers who will deny the official report that Cheryl Crane did it. I don’t buy the story at all. What surprised me was how beautiful the crime scene photos were. He had been stabbed in the abdomen with an 8-inch knife.
ledger: You’ve written that you consider Lana Turner to be a feminist icon. why?
Sherman: I believe Johnny Stompanato beat and abused her both physically and financially, but Lana was able to accept it. But when he threatened her mother and daughter, Lana had to do everything she could to get her own life back. I think that’s why she killed him. I give her a lot of credit for implementing the studio system and starting her own production company.
ledger: What impresses you most about Lana Turner?
Sherman: You could say she was a survivor. Somehow, no matter what, she got up off the floor and moved forward.
ledger: What is Lana Turner’s favorite movie?
Sherman: “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” This is her most popular film and her best performance. I hope this book helps readers reconsider her career.
ledger: What’s next for Casey Sherman?
Sherman: I just finished reading my 18th book, Deadly Depths. This is about the Nathan Carman case. In 2016, she went on a fishing trip on a boat with her mother. He was rescued, but she did not return to her home. It will be out by this time next year.
Sherman will be signing copies of “Hollywood Murders” at Barnes & Noble at Darby Street Shops in Hingham on Saturday at 1 p.m.
Contact Fred Hanson at fhanson@patriotledger.com..
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