Lana Turner

by Darwin Porter

  Prior to his gig with Lana in Another Time, Another Place, Connery’s film work was so insignificant that Lana decided to bill his appearance as “introducing Sean Connery.”

  Her hunch about his sex appeal proved Lana right. He would go on to become the movie’s first “Bond…James Bond” in the highly successful Dr. No (1962). Not only that, he would become one of the biggest screen sex symbols in the world, accessorized by guns and a bevy of glamorous women lusting after him.

  During the making of the film, Connery and Lana were seen everywhere together. She even rode on the back seat of his motorcycle. Rumors of an affair reached Hollywood, especially the ears of Johnny Stompanato, who became enraged. Even at this early stage of his career, Connery had a reputation as a superb lover.

  Cheryl wrote that “people working on the picture were persuaded that mother and Sean were really having a secret fling. They had a certain familiarity with each other.”

  In spite of (or perhaps in part because of) his bushy, caterpillar eyebrows—in contrast to Lana, who had none—she viewed Sean Connery as “very handsome, sexy, and virile.” She was drawn to that glint in his eye and admired his rugged charm and physicality.

  “Lana was Sean’s type,” said journalist Peter Noble. “How far did it go? With all that red-hot chemistry, one would imagine all the way. He certainly entertained Lana at his flat, and he accompanied her on a number of outings.”

  There was a ten-year difference in their ages, but Connery didn’t see that as an obstacle. At one point, a London reporter asked him, “How does it feel to make love on the screen to an old woman?”

  He later said, “I should have punched the bloke.”

  Years later, in 1992, all that Connery would say was, “Who can forget Lana Turner? She was a lovely lady. I adored her.”

  He didn’t confess to an affair, but Lana did. “I’ve had them all,” she told Virginia Grey, “and Sean ranks up there near the top.”

  Her name now appears on Connery’s list of actress lovers, alongside Ursula Andress, co-star in Dr. No (1962); Claudine Auger, co-star in Thunderball (1965); Brigitte Bardot, co-star in Shalako (1968); Jill St. John, co-star of Diamonds Are Forever (1971); and Kim Basinger, co-star of Never Say Never Again (1983).

  Biographer Michael Feeny Callan, wrote: “Friends of Sean Connery broadly hinted that the friendship between the Scot and Lana eventually bloomed into an impassioned affair.

  ‘Big Tam’ (his nickname) had Hollywood Incarnate in his arms, and he did with it what he did most effortlessly—he made love.”

  Others of Connery’s seductions included Zsa Zsa Gabor (who had sustained intimacies with both Johnny Stompanato and Lex Barker); Shelley Winters; Lana Wood (sister of Natalie Wood); British actress Sue Lloyd; another British actress, Carol Sopen; Polish actress Magda Knopka, English photographer Julie Hamilton; and singer Lyndsey de Paul.

  As he confessed, “There was never any trouble getting girls, but it’s big trouble getting rid of them.”

  ***

  Lana with her nemesis, the very charming Glynis Johns. Lana was “the other woman.”

  Although Lana claimed that her original intention involved staying in England alone as a means of dumping Johnny, her love letters to him (which were later published) indicate otherwise. From London, a typical one read: “Sweetheart, please keep well because I need you so—and so you will always be strong and able to caress me, hold me, tenderly at first, and crush me into your very own being.”

  In another letter to him, in which she addressed him as “My Beloved Love,” she wrote: “Every line of your precious, exciting letter warms me and makes me miss you each tiny moment—and it’s true—it’s beautiful, yet terrible. But, so is deep love. Hold me, dear lover. I’m your woman and I need you, my man! To love and be loved—don’t ever doubt or forget that!”

  Sean Connery at the debut of his career, as a contestant in a Mr. Universe bodybuilding competition.

  She often received transatlantic phone calls from him, and he, too, wrote her, declaring his undying love.

  However, while all this was going on, he had rented a $125-a-month motel room at the Malibu Sands Motel on the Pacific Coast Highway, where he became a resident for one month. Outside his door, he’d park two ostentatiously expensive cars: a white 1957 Thunderbird and a late model black Lincoln Continental.

  Jeffrey Woods, the night manager there, spoke to the tabloid press after Johnny’s murder.

  “I may have missed a few, but I counted at least eighteen men—never a woman—who came and went from his apartment during the night hours when I was on duty. Some of them stopped and asked me the number of his motel room. I was convinced he was a male prostitute, since these guys were out of shape. No self-respecting homosexual would take them on unless they were paid.”

  Johnny continued to implore Lana to invite him to London, and she finally acquiesced. Many sources claim that Mickey Cohen supplied him with the airfare, but the mobster denied it. “He asked me for it, but I told him to make her send him a ticket. And she did. A one-way ticket.”

  He joined her at her rented house in Hampstead Heath.

  In the beginning, “He was the most loving and kind I’d ever seen him,” she said. “He couldn’t get enough love making. But after a week or two, things changed.”

  He was angry that she refused to let him accompany her every day to the studio. He was growing increasingly bored, wandering around Central London, mostly near Piccadilly Circus. In Del Armstrong’s view, “I think Johnny turned a trick or two there, since it was a gathering place for homosexuals in the Underground’s men’s toilets.”

  The arguments began when he accused her of having an affair with Connery. She denied it, telling him, “We’re just good friends.”

  Once again, he revived his long-standing ambition to become an actor. He wanted her to produce and star in two screenplays he had read but not optioned, since he didn’t have the money.

  A homosexual friend of his, Philip Coburn, had written a script entitled By Love Betrayed. Ironically, the title evoked a former movie of Lana’s, Betrayed, and a future one, By Love Possessed.

  By Love Betrayed was about two A-list movie stars—one blonde, the other brunette—who not only vied for an Oscar, but for the same man, a world-famous aviator (i.e., Howard Hughes). The plot seemed to dip into the biography of those sisters and stars, Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland. Johnny wanted Lana and Ava Gardner as the two stars, with himself cast as the aviator.

  He showed Lana another script, The Bartered Bride, available for option for $1,000. The story by Robert Carson had already been publicized in Louella Parsons’ column. She wrote that it might be a starring vehicle for Lana and Frank Sinatra. Johnny wanted to produce it, with the understanding that financing would be provided by Lanturn.

  Lana rejected any involvement with the script, and refused to indulge the acting ambitions of the wannabe star (Stompanato), even if some producer could be found with the money. Every night when she arrived home, tired and exhausted from the strain of production, he increased his pressure and his demands.

  One night, she could take it no more, and she screamed at him, “Get out of my house. Pack you god damn bags and get the fuck out of England. Go back to your gangsters!”

  Defiantly, he refused to leave the house, but retreated instead to the living room, where he sulked until around 2AM. At that point, he barged into her bedroom. She was asleep, but he woke her up, shouting, “Like hell I’m going to leave!”

  Although she feared a scandal, she threatened to call the police. “They’ll kick you out of the country, especially when I tell them you’re traveling under a fake passport with the name of John Steele.”

  Finally, he could no longer control his temper. She later wrote: “After he choked me and threw me on the floor, he then barged into the bathroom and came back with a razor. He came over to me and grabbed my head, all the time screeching violent things at me. Then he claimed that he was going to use
the razor to make only a small incision at first, but soon, he would carve bigger scars. He said he’d scar my face for all time. I pleaded and pleaded with him to let me alone. I said I’d do whatever he wanted if he wouldn’t destroy my face.”

  “If you claim you love me, why can you hurt me?” she asked. “PLEASE DON’T!”

  She desperately reached for her phone. As she did, he lurched toward her, ripping the phone from her hands. Then his strong fingers tightened around her delicate throat. She screamed for help before he cut off her vocal chords.

  Her maid, Annie, was asleep in a small room upstairs, and she heard the commotion. In her night gown, she came galloping down the steps and into the bedroom. A strong, bulky woman, she headed straight for Johnny.

  She managed to yank him off Lana. For a while, they wrestled together on the floor. He could have overpowered her, even killed her, but sanity prevailed, and he did not use his full force upon her.

  Jumping up from the floor, Annie covered Lana with her own bulk. “Get out of this room, or I’ll kill you!” she shouted at him.

  At that, he seemed to bring his rage under control, storming out of the bedroom and out of the house. He slammed the front door behind him.

  Annie spent the rest of the night with Lana, promising to protect her should he return.

  Johnny stayed away from the house for several days. It was not known at the time where he went. Years later, Diana Dors, Britain’s sex symbol of the 1950s, revealed that he had stayed with her. She had been called “Britain’s answer to Lana Turner” and later, “Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe.”

  It is not known how Johnny met Dors. However, this highly sexed star was known for staging orgies, and no doubt, he managed to come by an invitation to one of these sex parties, where he intrigued Dors with his sexual prowess.

  Lana woke up that Monday morning with laryngitis, and Annie called Del Armstrong to alert the studio that she was too sick to report that day to work.

  She’d lost her speaking voice. She had been flirting with a cold all weekend, and Dr. Stanwood Williams, who had once treated Laurence Olivier, was summoned. After examining her, he told her that her cold had developed into influenza.

  She had to remain in bed for a week, shutting down production on the film and even threatening the existence of Lanturn, which was severely underfinanced.

  Finally, Johnny returned to Lana’s home, and she was too weak to indulge in any more fights with him. He apologized for attacking her, claiming, “It’s because I love you so much.”

  She demanded that he exit at once, but he made his most serious threat again. “If you kick me out, I’ll see that one of Cohen’s henchmen takes care of Mildred and Cheryl.”

  That week, Lana returned to the set, but still could not speak in a normal voice. It would be another three weeks before “I sounded like myself. Otherwise, my voice recorded like a victim choking on a tough piece of steak.”

  The director shot scenes where she had no dialogue, including shots of her walking, sometimes unsteadily, on high heels and in mink, across the uneven cobblestones of Polperro.

  Alone again at Hampstead Heath during the day, Johnny grew bored and impatient. Rumors still persisted about the affair that Connery was having with Lana, Finally, one afternoon, Johnny bribed Lana’s driver to take him to the studio where they were filming. He wore a suit which contained a revolver in his breast pocket.

  If necessary, he planned not to kill Connery, but to use the gun to threaten him.

  He arrived just in time to stand in the background and watch Connery and Lana perform a love scene on camera. He whispered to a grip, “Those two obviously had a lot of practice off screen.”

  Connery came off the set with an arm around Lana. Suddenly, Johnny shouted at him. “You keep away from her!” As he did, she let out a little scream.

  Johnny took out his revolver and pointed it at Connery’s chest. As if in rehearsal for a future scene from a James Bond movie, the actor sprang into action before Johnny could pull the trigger. He twisted Johnny’s wrist until he dropped the gun, then he delivered a right hook to Johnny’s nose, causing him to bleed all over his tasteless lime-green suit.

  Stunned by the blow, he did not rise at once. He reached for his handkerchief to cover his bleeding nose. By the time he rose to his feet, security guards had been summoned, and they forcibly escorted him out of the studio.

  “You’ll get yours, you mother fucker!” he shouted back at Connery, as Lana stood looking on in stunned and horrified disbelief.

  Raging and swearing, Johnny was deposited into the back seat of Lana’s chauffeur-driven limousine and driven back to her rented home.

  Del Armstrong rushed to the scene and urged her to call Scotland Yard, explaining that he had a contact there who would hustle Johnny out of the country, based on, among other factors, his previous entry into Britain using a fake passport.

  Two detectives from Scotland Yard agreed to go to Lana’s home to force Johnny to pack his luggage before escorting him to the airport for the next plane leaving for Los Angeles. Each of the detectives promised Lana that they would not leave the airport until his plane was airborne.

  Days later, Lana awoke with the fear that Johnny might carry through with his threat to harm Cheryl and Mildred. “I decided to test the waters.”

  Although she had vowed never to speak to him again, she wrote him two conciliatory letters, each of which she later described as “too sentimental.”

  Perhaps they were, because what she wrote in them was so loving that it convinced him that he still had a chance with her, in spite of his previous violence.

  ***

  After Johnny was murdered, Paramount advanced the release date of Another Time, Another Place by three months to take advantage of all the notorious publicity Lana was getting. Even so, that didn’t help the box office for this film. [It did, however, greatly beef up the audiences for Peyton Place, a movie she had made previously, which was currently playing in theaters across America.]

  Nearly all the major reviews of Another Time, Another Place were unfavorable. The film historian, Leslie Halliwell, wrote: “Drippy romance unsympathetically played and artificially set in a Cornish village. Lana Turner unsympathetically played an American newspaperwoman who has an affair with a British war correspondent, unsympathetically played by Sean Connery.”

  The New York Times ripped into the picture. “Another Place, Another Time is a long way from making any contact with any interests that might serve to entertain. This one was made in England, evidently as part of the current ‘Go Home, Yank’ plan.”

  The New York Post noted that Connery was being introduced to American movie audiences. “The BBC commentator is played by a newcomer, Sean Connery, who will not, I guess, grow old in the industry.”

  How wrong could one critic be?

  REVEALED IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE TRIAL. WHO DID STOMPANATO HUSTLE? LANA WAS NOT ALONE!

  Pay and Play: A Rogue’s List of Hollywood’s Horniest

  Mary Astor

  June Allyson

  Fred Astaire

  Lucille Ball

  Jack Benny

  George Cukor

  Marion Davies

  Sammy Davis, Jr.

  Yvonne De Carlo

  SO THEY WERE DEPRESSED & LONELY ON A BAD NIGHT

  Recipients of Stud Services from Stompanato (page 2 of 3)

  Anita Ekburg

  Errol Flynn

  Zsa Zsa Gabor

  Ava Gardner

  Cary Grant

  Merv Griffin

  Rock Hudson

  Alan Ladd

  Janet Leigh

  JOHNNY’S GOT A GUN, A MAFIA CONNECTION, AND A REPUTATION AS THE MOST STYLISH GIGOLO IN HOLLYWOOD.

  Here are more of his clients (page 3 of 3)

  Liberace

  Marilyn Maxwell

  Marilyn Monroe

  Barbara Payton

  Cole Porter

  George Raft

  Spencer T
racy

  Clifton Webb

  Lovely Lana Turner

  ***

  Lana decided, after her ordeal in London, that she desperately needed a vacation at her favorite retreat in Acapulco. She’d go there even before returning to Los Angeles.

  In those days, there was no direct air link to the resort in Mexico except from Copenhagen. She remembered it as a gray, rainy day when she left England, telling Connery goodbye.

  “I don’t like English weather. You should move to California where it is always bright and sunny.”

  En route to Denmark, she recalled that she was overcome with an ominous feeling that her life was about to come apart.

  After the plane landed in Copenhagen, she remained aboard until the other passengers had disembarked. Then, a young male flight attendant approached her: “Miss Turner, there is a gentleman waiting for you at the end of the ramp.”

  Startled as to who that might be, she followed him off the plane. From her position at the top of the ramp, she noted a tall man in a trench coat standing at its bottom. Slowly she descended until she came face to face with him. She would later remember his smile. “It was more of a smirk. It was Johnny Stompanato.”