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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.

Biography [link]

Early years [link]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Wartime service [link]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Son [link]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Los Angeles [link]

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.^{[citation needed]}

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):

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]

Death [link]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Lana Turner's former home in Beverly Hills where Stompanato was killed in 1958.

Stompanato is interred at Oakland Cemetery, in Woodstock, McHenry County, Illinois. His grave is at 42°19′5.66″N 88°27′44.59″W / 42.3182389°N 88.4623861°W / 42.3182389; -88.4623861. 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.

Biography portal

Sources [link]

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

In popular culture [link]

• Stompanato makes an appearance in the 2011 video game L.A. Noire as an associate of gangster Mickey Cohen.
• In James Ellroy's novels, The Big Nowhere, Stompanato is a minor character, and in L.A. Confidential, Stompanato plays a key role in the conspiracy at the center of the story. At the novel's conclusion, Ellroy weaves many of the real-life details of Stompanato's death into the otherwise largely fictional plot.
• In 1979 Rene Ricard wrote one of his most well known poems, The Death of Johnny Stompanato, published in Italian translation in 1981 and republished in Rene Ricard, Love Poems, CUZ Editions, 1999.
• In November 2009 a BBC Radio 4 original play, A Night with Johnny Stompanato, was first broadcast.

References [link]

Further reading [link]

• Detour: A Hollywood Story by Cheryl Crane with Cliff Jahr (Arbor House/William Morrow, 1988)