Dark History of Hollywood: A Century of Greed, Corruption and Scandal behind the Movies (Dark Histories)

by Kieron Connolly

  Cohn had words with Johnny Rosselli and a gunman visited Davis backstage in Vegas, telling him that he’d be killed if he continued the affair. Davis was defiant. So Mob-connected Hollywood lawyer Sidney Korshak explained to him that he’d never work again, before confronting Novak with private sex films that Davis had made of his other well-known lovers. Dissuaded one way or another, Novak and Davis ended their relationship.

  That, however, wasn’t the end of problems for Davis. In 1960 he was ready to marry Swede May Britt (pictured with Davis) when, it was rumoured, John F. Kennedy persuaded him to delay the wedding until after the presidential election. (At that time, inter-racial marriages were still against the law in 31 US states.) Then, in January 1961, Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father, banned Davis from attending a gala arranged by Sinatra on the eve of Kennedy’s inauguration.

  Rumours spread that Turner’s on-screen romance with a young, pre-James Bond, Sean Connery was being continued off-screen.

  Turner then met Johnny Stompanato, who worked for Mickey Cohen – although she said she didn’t realize his Mob connections at the time. When she did find out, she was already involved with him and did try to distance herself, but he was violent and not easily deterred.

  While she was filming Another Time, Another Place in England in 1957, rumours spread that her on-screen romance with a young, pre-James Bond, Sean Connery was being continued off-screen. Word reached Stompanato, who flew to London. Turner managed to keep him away from the set and cooped up in her London home, but one day, Stompanato, consumed with jealousy, burst into the studios and waved a gun at Connery, warning him to stay away from his girlfriend. Connery wrestled the gun off him and knocked Stompanato out.

  Sean Connery and Lana Turner filming Another Time, Another Place in England in 1957. When Turner’s boyfriend Johnny Stompanato, waving a gun, confronted Connery and Turner over an alleged affair, Connery knocked him out.

  The following spring Turner was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Peyton Place, but she couldn’t face bringing Stompanato to the awards ceremony and instead took 14-year-old Cheryl, leaving Stompanato at home, watching the Oscars on TV, drinking. When Turner returned after an Oscar party, Stompanato gave her a beating, but in a professional way, she would later claim, where the bruises could be covered up. ‘He yanked me up and began hitting me with his fists,’ she wrote in her autobiography. ‘I went flying across the room into the bar, sending glasses shattering to the floor.’ Still, they went to bed together and a few days later moved to a grander house. ‘Underlying everything was my shame,’ Turner wrote. ‘I didn’t want anybody to know … how foolish I’d been, how I’d taken him at face value and had been completely duped.’

  A month after the Oscars, Stompanato was found dead at home from a knife wound and the only witnesses were Cheryl and Turner. According to mother and daughter, Turner and Stompanato were having a furious fight in their bedroom, with Stompanato screaming that Turner was going to die. Hearing the commotion, Cheryl picked up a 10-inch carving knife (bought by her mother that day) and rushed to intervene. Stompanato ran into the knife and bled to death. According to Turner, his final words were: ‘Cheryl, what have you done?’

  One theory is that Lana Turner stabbed Stompanato in the bed that they shared as, tellingly, by the time the police arrived the bedding had been removed.

  Rather than calling the police or an ambulance, Turner first rang her lawyer Jerry Giesler, who hurried over, followed by her publicist. Cheryl called her father. Only two hours later did Giesler telephone the police. When they arrived, the body had been moved and there was very little blood on it, with only smudged fingerprints on the knife. Giesler, although not present at the time of death, helped Turner and Cheryl tell their story.

  In April 1958, Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane, claimed that she’d hurried into her mother’s bedroom holding a kitchen knife and that Stompanato had run on to the blade.

  Mickey Cohen and others in Hollywood didn’t believe that Cheryl was strong enough to kill Stompanato, who could stand up for himself. ‘I think he was in bed by himself, sleeping,’ said Cohen. ‘Only way Cheryl or someone else could have done it is if he was asleep …’. One theory is that Lana Turner stabbed Stompanato in the bed that they shared as, tellingly, by the time the police arrived, the bedding had been removed. Giesler, many years later, was allegedly quoted as saying that the bed ‘looked like a hog had been butchered in it’, which it wouldn’t have done if Stompanato had been stabbed standing up and fallen to the floor.

  Giesler successfully argued that Cheryl was too traumatized to testify, leaving Turner the only witness to the incident to take the witness stand. A majority verdict found Stompanato’s death the result of justifiable homicide and Cheryl was released. ‘It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever seen a dead man convicted of his own murder,’ Mickey Cohen said.

  Lana Turner was the only witness to take the stand at her daughter’s trial. Stompanato’s death was deemed a ‘justifiable homicide’ and Cheryl was released. Later, Turner settled out of court in a civil suit brought by Stompanato’s family.

  After Stompanato’s death put Turner back in the headlines, Peyton Place received a 32 per cent box office boost, going on to become the second highest-grossing film of 1958. Mickey Cohen, meanwhile, helped Stompanato’s family bring a civil suit stating that Turner herself had killed Stompanato. The case was settled out of court for $20,000. Cohen kept himself in business, too. Shortly after Stompanato’s death, he sold some Turner–Stompanato love letters to the Press.

  While filming that year, Connery was staying at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel when he received a menacing call from one of Mickey Cohen’s associates. ‘Get out of town or a contract will be put on your life,’ was the message. On the advice of the studio, Connery moved to a small guesthouse outside Los Angeles for the rest of the shoot.

  While filming in Hollywood that year, Connery received a menacing call: ‘Get out of town or a contract will be put on your life.’

  Politics and the Mafia

  Frank Sinatra’s connections with the Mafia moved up a gear when Senator John F. Kennedy ran for President. In December 1959, Kennedy’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, invited Sinatra to the family home in Massachusetts to encourage him to support his son’s bid as the Democrat candidate for the presidency. However, according to Sinatra’s daughter Tina, more specifically, Joseph Kennedy asked Sinatra for help delivering the union vote in the 1960 West Virginia and Illinois primaries, ‘because [Kennedy] knew Dad had access to Sam Giancana’.

  Frank Sinatra campaigning with John F. Kennedy in 1960. That February Sinatra introduced Kennedy to Judith Exner, with whom the politician began a long affair. In March, Sinatra also introduced her to mobster Sam Giancana, and they too began a relationship.

  Sinatra with fellow member of the Rat Pack, Peter Lawford and Bobby Kennedy in July 1961. When JFK became President and Bobby Kennedy began investigating Sam Giancana, Sinatra’s Mob connections meant that he was kept at arm’s length by the White House.

  Kennedy wouldn’t have been the favourite Democrat candidate in Illinois, because his brother Bobby Kennedy, as chief counsel of the 1957–9 Senate Labor Rackets Committee, had been trying to clean up the unions controlled by the Chicago Mob. But according to Tina Sinatra, Giancana agreed to the favour, telling her father: ‘It’s a couple of phone calls.’ Kennedy won those primaries and later that year won a very close election. Journalist Seymour Hersch, among others, now says ‘Sam delivered the election’. The Mafia, they believe, helped put Kennedy in the White House. And Sinatra had played his role.

  The Mafia, they believe, helped put Kennedy in the White House. And Sinatra had played his role.

  Apart from politics, Sinatra would also be involved in Kennedy’s busy love life. In February 1960, during the presidential campaign, Kennedy stopped in Las Vegas, where Sinatra was filming Ocean’s 11. At the Rat Pack’s Sands Casino show, Sinatra introduced Kennedy to 27-year-
old Judith Exner, and the following day Kennedy invited her for lunch at the private patio of Sinatra’s suite. Exner, unlike Kennedy’s many one-night stands, would later begin a relationship that lasted more than 18 months.

  The following month, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami, Sinatra also introduced Exner to Sam Giancana and she began a relationship with him, too. According to crime writer Douglas Thompson, Sinatra was responsible for ‘planting Judith Exner on Kennedy on behalf of the Mafia’. Exner admitted that at first perhaps Giancana was using her to reach Kennedy, but, she said, ‘it became more than that.’ She also became friends with Johnny Rosselli.

  Old Blue Eyes Sees Red

  When Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy’s sister Pat, asked if the President could stay at Sinatra’s Palm Springs home during a West Coast fundraiser in 1962, Sinatra leapt into action. Sinatra had previously been kept at arm’s length, only ever going to the White House twice, both times when Jackie Kennedy was away (she couldn’t stand him), and always entering by the side door. He even had a helipad built and extra phone lines installed for the President.

  However, with brother Bobby Kennedy, now Attorney General, investigating Sam Giancana, and the President made aware by the FBI how closely Judith Exner and Sinatra brought him to Giancana and Johnny Rosselli, he had to distance himself from the singer. When Sinatra heard Kennedy wasn’t going to visit him after all, he was livid. ‘He called Bobby every name in the book,’ said Lawford. George Jacobs, Sinatra’s valet, remembered how Sinatra went outside with a sledgehammer and began hacking into the concrete helipad. Kennedy, meanwhile, went to stay at Bing Crosby’s Palm Spring house instead. After that, Lawford was frozen out of Sinatra’s Rat Pack. In fact, Sinatra even chose Bing Crosby to replace Lawford in their next film, Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).

  Sinatra introduced Kennedy to Judith Exner and shortly after to Sam Giancana. She began relationships with both of them.

  In 1960, Sinatra had bought into the Cal Neva lodge and casino, which straddles the border between California and Nevada, but in the summer of 1963, his relationship with the Mafia tipped in his disfavour. A story reached the newspapers that San Giancana had been staying at Cal Neva, although Giancana was one of 11 gangsters banned by Nevada’s Gaming Control Board from even setting foot in a Nevada casino. Sinatra was called before the board’s chairman, but under questioning began arguing and lost any chance he’d have of keeping his gambling licence. Although he maintained his interest in politics and campaigning, Sinatra’s Mafia connections had spoilt his relationship with the Kennedys.

  The Godfather

  Even if it wasn’t true that the Mafia had used their leverage to win Sinatra his role in From Here to Eternity, the story wasn’t going to be forgotten. By the late 1960s, Mario Puzo was the author of a few respected but poor-selling novels, had a large family and was broke with a $20,000 gambling debt. So, he decided to write something commercial and came up with the novel The Godfather. Paramount Pictures optioned the book, but as recent films about the Mob had failed they wanted an Italian-American director so that the audience would ‘be able to smell the spaghetti’. After top directors turned the project down, Italian-American Francis Ford Coppola was offered the job. He was in a similar position to Puzo: his earlier films were respected but hadn’t earned him much money, he was broke and this looked like a money-spinner. So, he signed up.

  The Mob had menaced the production of The Godfather, but on learning that they weren’t, in their eyes, being unfairly portrayed, they began to support the movie. The film-makers suddenly found New York’s previously obstructive Teamsters very co-operative.

  Invited to read The Godfather script, mobster Joe Colombo didn’t get beyond the first page before he made clear what concerned him most: he wanted the word ‘Mafia’ removed from the film.

  The Mafia, however, let it be known that they didn’t want the film made. The Los Angeles Police Department warned the film’s producer Al Ruddy that he was being followed. He swapped cars with his assistant Bettye McCartt and one night she heard gunfire outside her house – Ruddy’s car had been shot up and a note left on the dashboard telling him to shut down the film. In addition, the offices of Paramount’s parent company Gulf & Western had to be evacuated twice because of bomb threats.

  It was clearly time to talk, so mobster Joe Colombo went to Al Ruddy, who assured him the film wouldn’t demean the Italian-American community. Invited to read the script, Colombo didn’t get beyond the first page before he made clear what concerned him most: he wanted the word ‘Mafia’ removed from the film. In fact, it only appeared once in the script anyway and the change was easily made.

  Persuaded that they weren’t being unfairly portrayed, the Mafia now supported the film. Having until that point found the city of New York obstructive in filming The Godfather, now, according to Paramount’s head of production Robert Evans, ‘New York finally opened up like a World’s Fair – on our side were the garbagemen, the longshoremen, the Teamsters …’.

  ROSEMARY’S BABY

  FRANK SINATRA WAS known for only doing two takes of a shot before he’d insist on moving on. If that wasn’t enough for the director, that was the director’s problem. But in 1968, Sinatra’s young wife Mia Farrow – at 23 she was 30 years his junior – was cast as the lead in Rosemary’s Baby, and, to draw out the performance he wanted, the film’s director, Roman Polanski, was prepared to shoot 30 takes if necessary. Farrow didn’t complain but Peter Bart, the Paramount executive overseeing the production, was soon paid a visit by a Sinatra consigliere, who urged Bart to tell Polanski to limit the number of takes to under three, and, in return, his legs wouldn’t be broken. Unperturbed, Bart didn’t deliver the message – he knew that Polanski would ignore it – and his legs remained unbroken, while the film went on to be a big hit and Farrow was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

  Around that time, however, Bart did stop taking notes about his experiences in the movie industry. He had come to Paramount having been a reporter on the New York Times and had reassured himself that, should he lose his new job in the movie business, if he’d kept careful notes he could at least write a revealing book on the workings of a Hollywood studio. His experience with Sinatra hadn’t rattled him, but a conversation with Mob-connected Hollywood lawyer Sidney Korshak made him rethink his note-taking.

  Korshak, known as the best fixer in the business, asked Bart one day at the studio: ‘Peter, do you know the best insurance policy in the world that absolutely guarantees continued breathing?’ Bart shook his head. ‘It’s silence,’ said Korshak, peering at Bart. Taking on board the wisdom of Korshak’s words, Bart not only stopped taking notes, but went home and burnt all his existing notes.

  Al Martino (left) with Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Unwanted for the role, Martino said he had to use his own Mob connections to be cast. ‘There was no horse’s head,’ he commented, ‘but I had ammunition…I went to my godfather.’

  Puzo only included rumours about the Mob’s involvement in casting Sinatra in From Here to Eternity, but life might have imitated art in the casting of Al Martino in The Godfather.

  No Horse’s Head

  In The Godfather, Puzo included this thinly veiled repetition of the rumours about Sinatra’s casting in From Here to Eternity: when a Hollywood studio doesn’t want to cast Johnny Fontane, an Italian-American crooner whose career is fading, Fontane’s Mob connections put a horse’s head in the studio chief’s bed and he quickly changes his mind.

  It was fiction, but life might have imitated art in the casting of Al Martino in the Johnny Fontane role. A few years after Martino became a star in the early 1950s with his worldwide hit ‘Here In My Heart’, his management company was taken over by a Mafia-connected organization. Worried by this and ordered to pay a $75,000 upfront fee, Martino moved to England for a while, and though by the time of The Godfather, he was back in the US, working in Las Vegas, his career was past its best.

  Then Phyllis McGuire, Sam Giancana�
�s girlfriend, read the The Godfather. ‘Al,’ she said to Martino. ‘Johnny Fontane is you, and I know you can play it in the movie.’ Martino, who’d never acted before, approached Paramount, but, understandably, they weren’t interested in casting him. So, Martino used his own connections.

  ‘Coppola didn’t want me,’ Martino said. ‘There was no horse’s head, but I had ammunition… I had to step on some toes to get people to realize that I was in the effing movie. I went to my godfather, [Mafia boss] Russ Bufalino.’

  End of an Era

  By the mid-1970s, the Mob generation that had influenced Hollywood from the 1940s was dying off, although not necessarily as they might have hoped. In the summer of 1976, Johnny Rosselli talked to a Special Intelligence Committee (SIC) investigating the excesses of the CIA and told them how he and Sam Giancana had been recruited by the CIA in a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro. A few months later, Giancana was shot dead at home in Illinois. He, too, had been due to testify before the SIC about the CIA’s collusion with the Mafia to kill President Kennedy. Then a year later Rosselli was choked to death, his legs sawn off, and his body sealed in a 55-gallon oil drum before being dumped off the Florida Gold Coast. His end might never have been known if gases escaping from his decomposing body hadn’t made the barrel bob to the surface.

  In 1977, Johnny Rosselli was choked to death and his body sealed in a 55-gallon oil drum. His end might never have been known if gases escaping from his decomposing body hadn’t made the barrel bob to the surface.

  Frank Sinatra, meanwhile, in and out of retirement, tried to revive his gambling licence. In February 1981, he was questioned in front of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. President Reagan, along with Sinatra’s Hollywood friends Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas and Bob Hope, testified on his behalf that he wasn’t in business with organized crime. And when Sinatra admitted having known Sam Giancana socially, but denied any business with the Mafia, the board approved his licence as an entertainment consultant for Las Vegas’s Caesars Palace casino and hotel.