Word: stompanato
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...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...
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...
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...
...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...