| Johnny Stompanato | |
|---|---|
Stompanato with Lana Turner |
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| Born | October 10, 1925 Woodstock, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | April 4, 1958 (aged 32) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
John "Johnny" Stompanato (October 10, 1925 - April 4, 1958), also known as "Handsome Harry", "Johnny Stomp", "John Steele", and "Oscar", was a former United States Marine who became a bodyguard/enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen. In 1958, after a tumultuous relationship with actress Lana Turner, he was stabbed and killed by Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane.
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John Stompanato, Jr. was born into an Italian-American family in Woodstock, Illinois, the youngest of four children. His father, John Sr., owned a barber shop. His mother, Carmela, died shortly after his birth, and his father remarried, to a woman named Verena Freitag.
In 1940, after Stompanato's freshman year at Woodstock High School, his father sent him to Kemper Military School for boys in Boonville, Missouri, from which he graduated at age 17. In 1943, Stompanato joined the U.S. Marines; he saw action in the South Pacific theater, in Peleliu and Okinawa, and then landed in China with the Marines, in 1945.
Stompanato's son, John Stompanato III, by his sole legal marriage, was born in Woodstock. Stompanato worked as a bread salesman for a few months before leaving for Hollywood, California.
In Los Angeles, Stompanato owned and managed "The Myrtlewood Gift Shop" in Westwood, California. He sold inexpensive pieces of crude pottery and wood carvings as fine art. The few shoppers who entered the store were either served by a part-time clerk or ignored altogether.
When he began dating Lana Turner, he wore a heavy gold-link bracelet on his wrist with "Lanita" inscribed inside. Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane described Stompanato in her autobiography, Detour: A Hollywood Story (1988):
| “ | ... B-picture good looks... thick set ... powerfully built and soft spoken ... and talked in short sentences to cover a poor grasp of grammar and spoke in a deep baritone voice. With friends, he seldom smiled or laughed out loud, but seemed always coiled, holding himself in ... had watchful hooded eyes that took in more than he wanted anyone to notice .... His wardrobe on a daily basis consisted of roomy, draped slacks, a silver buckled skinny leather belt and lizard shoes. | ” |
On one occasion, the jealous Stompanato stormed onto a movie set in the UK and pointed a gun at actor Sean Connery, her costar in Another Time, Another Place, only to have Connery take the gun from him and force him from the movie set. Stompanato was deported for this offense, as unlicensed handguns are illegal in the United Kingdom.[1][2]
Rumors flew after Stompanato's death that the mob held Connery responsible; the actor allegedly laid low until things blew over.[3][4][5][6]
On April 4, 1958, Stompanato was stabbed to death at Turner's Beverly Hills, California home. Turner's then teenage daughter Cheryl Crane claimed Stompanato had been attacking her mother and that she had stabbed Stompanato defending her mother. The courts agreed, ruling the death to be justifiable homicide. After the ruling, Stompanato's family sued Turner for $7 million. The case was eventually settled out of court for unknown terms.
Stompanato is interred at Oakland Cemetery, in Woodstock, McHenry County, Illinois. His grave is at . He is buried between his mother, Carmela (1890–1925), to the north, and his father John (1890–1952) and his step mother Verena (1901–1967) to the south. His brother, Carmine (1912–1961) is buried across a small road, to the west of Johnny.
Brad Lewis, Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster: The Incredible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen (New York: Enigma Books, 2007) ISBN 978-1-929631-65-0