The Bad & the Beautiful

Can a simple girl from a mining town in Idaho find happiness as a glamorous movie queen? To popeyed newspaper readers sated vicariously with this tired story line, the answer struck last week with the finality of a chord of doom: no --in the case of one queen in particular. The chord rumbled for Lana Turner, the Sweater Girl whose feckless pursuit of happiness became men's-room talk from Sunset Boulevard to Fleet Street, and for her shaken, 14-year-old daughter Cheryl, who stabbed Lana's paramour, Johnny Stompanato (TIME. April 14). Last week a coroner's inquest declared Cheryl's act justifiable homicide, but this decision hardly lessened the sociological impact of a news story that began 22 years ago.

The Star. Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner was a pressagent's dream ready-made for stardom by Hollywood standards. Her father was killed in a gambling scrape when she was ten; her mother struggled to keep her alive. In Hollywood one day, when she was a well-stacked 16, she was "discovered" as she sat at a drugstore fountain. Hollywood gave her the big buildup. Renamed Lana, she made movies with the biggest of the box-office giants--Gable, Taylor, Cooper--and nobody, least of all the customers, cared if she was not a second Sarah Bernhardt.

As a high-priced commodity, Lana found herself surrounded by people whose paychecks depended on how sincerely they could convince her that she was talented, beautiful and successful. Her enormous salary seemed to be ample proof. Lana scarcely needed to make a decision of her own; the studio did it for her.

The Crowd. Like many other show folk in Hollywood, Lana liked to run with the hoodlum crowd that sprouted into semi-respectability in moviedom after World War II. High up in the crowd was a runty gambler named Mickey Cohen. To the movie folk, gum-chomping Mick typified a real-life heavy out of their own films; for the Mick to invite a star to his table in a swank joint seemed as thrilling for the guest as it would be if a rubberneck tourist were asked to drink with Lana Turner. The Mick and his crowd just loved it.

And wanton Lana just loved one of the Mick's boys, olive-skinned, handsome Johnny Stompanato. A small-town boy with big ideas, Johnny was a preening gigolo, brushed his black hair thick and wavy, wore his shiny silk shirts open all the way down to his navel. He was also the fast-buck type, who, police well knew, built his bankroll by making time with thrill-seeking wealthy women, borrowed their money, rarely paid it back. Lana took Johnny in tow, paid his bills, flashed around the town on his muscular arm. When she flew to London last September to make a new picture, she and Johnny exchanged impassioned love letters.

My beloved love (she wrote), just this morning your precious exciting letter arrived. Every line warms me and makes me ache and miss you each tiny moment. It's beautiful--yet terrible . . . I'm your woman and I need you, my man! To love and be loved by--don't ever, ever doubt or forget that! My romance, hah! It's a hell of a lot more than that! That's for sure. I need to touch you, feel your tenderness and your strength. To hold you in my arms, so, so close--to cuddle you sweetly--and then to be completely smothered in your arms, and kisses, oh, so many kisses!

Johnny-Come-Lately. Back in Hollywood, Johnny cannily saved the letters. His own notes were fourth-grader's work; many of them, laboriously scratched in copy books, were never sent, e.g.: You know Baby, I'm so lonesome for the touch of you I could die. I try to think back of when you were here and those precious minutes I wasted when my lips were not on yours.

Johnny wasted no time. One day he turned up in London to keep Lana company. But by then, Lana Turner was wearying of Johnny, and Johnny was too tough to let himself be discarded. They fought. Once he nearly strangled her, grabbed a razor and threatened to cut her face. Lana's studio friends heard about it, got Scotland Yard to get Johnny out of the country.

Lana's fear was clear, and it led to Johnny Stompanato's death a month later. When it happened, all Hollywood broke loose. Newspapers all over the U.S. poured on the black ink and the big type, scrambled wildly for the kind of news that would keep the public buying. They found it. Two-fisted Aggie Underwood, 55, city editor of Hearst's Herald-Express (and only woman city editor of a U.S. metropolitan paper), decided that there must have been some love letters. She called Mickey Cohen, who took Johnny Stompanato's death as a personal affront. Cohen's hoods raided Johnny's expensive Los Angeles apartment, found the letters. The Mick turned them over to Aggie. In a few more hours, Lana and Johnny were splashed on the world's front pages for a second performance.

The Showdown. Lana still had one more performance to give. At the Los Angeles Hall of Records, onlookers crowded the corridors to get a glimpse of the drama, ohed and ahed as the principals threaded into the courtroom. Cheryl, detained in juvenile prison, testified by deposition that the last fight between Johnny and her mother arose after Lana learned that Johnny had lied about his age: he was really 32, not 42, as he had said.

Lana, 38. was now determined this time to give him the air.

Taking the stand, in the final scene, Lana told the rest: "He was verbally very violent . . . and I walked into my daughter's room . . . Mr. Stompanato was behind me all the time saying some very bad things ... I said, 'I told you I don't want to argue in front of the baby.' [Back in my bedroom] Mr. Stompanato grabbed my arm, shook me ... said, as he told me before, no matter what I did or how I tried to get away he would never let me. If he said 'jump' I would jump, and if he said 'hop' I would hop ... or he would cut my face or cripple me . . . that he would kill me and my daughter and my mother."

Frightened, Cheryl fled to the kitchen, headed for her mother's room with a knife. "I walked toward the bedroom door," said Lana. "He was right behind me. And I opened it and my daughter came in. I swear it was so fast, I truthfully thought she had hit him in the stomach ... I never saw a blade."

The End. Lana's desperation rang true, but even a Hollywood scenario might have missed the final touch that came when a man in the courtroom stood and shouted: "This whole thing's a pack of lies. Johnny Stompanato was my friend! The daughter was in love with him and he was killed because of jealousy between mother and daughter!" Then, as an afterthought before he wheeled and stomped out of the room, the man cried: "Johnny Stompanato was a gentleman!"

But Johnny was dead. Lana was still alive; a judge would decide soon whether she would lose custody of her only child. Julia Jean Turner had come a long way in the make-believe wonderland of Hollywood--where moviemen are confident that the Sweater Girl is now bigger box office than ever.

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