Crime Weekly - S3 Ep294: Johnny Stompanato: The Troubled Life of Lana Turner (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Hollywood, 1958. Glamour. Fame. Scandal. But behind the velvet curtains of silver screen royalty, a violent storm was brewing. Johnny Stompanato- charming, dangerous, and deeply entangled with one of Hollywood’s biggest stars- would soon be found dead on the floor of a Beverly Hills mansion. Was it an accident based on a misunderstanding, a mother's desperate act, or something far more sinister? Today, we unravel the sensational murder that rocked Tinseltown, and left the world wondering what really happened behind Lana Turner’s closed doors. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.SimpliSafe.com/CrimeWeekly - Claim 50% off a new system with a Professional Monitoring Plan and get your first month FREE! 2. https://www.OneSkin.co - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 15% off your order! After you purchase, please support our show and tell them we sent you! 3. https://www.SKIMS.com - Shop the SKIMS Ultimate Bra Collection and more at SKIMS.com and SKIMS New York Flagship on Fifth Ave! After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you! 4. https://www.StartPhotobooth.com/Crime - Curious how much you could make by running you own photo booth business? Check out their FREE Profit Calculator and for a limited time, Photobooth Supply Co. will give you their Quick Start Program, for FREE! 5. https://www.FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50Off - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY50OFF to get 50% off plus FREE shipping on your first box!

Hollywood, 1958. Glamour. Fame. Scandal. But behind the velvet curtains of silver screen royalty, a violent storm was brewing. Johnny Stompanato, charming, dangerous, and deeply entangled with one of Hollywood's biggest stars, would soon be found dead on the floor of a Beverly Hills mansion. Was it an accident based on a misunderstanding, a mother's desperate act, or something far more sinister? Today, we unravel the sensational murder that rocked Tinseltown and left the world wondering what really happened behind Lana Turner's closed doors. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I am Derek Levasseur. So I'm very excited for our new series because this is one that I don't know.

Everybody who knows me will know I'm a big history buff. And I love the golden age of Hollywood. There's so much scandal and drama, so many crimes covered up. The extent of what went down during that time and in that place, the things we'll never know about and the things we found out about since are endless. But this one has always attracted me because it's got the whole celebrity aspect, golden age of Hollywood, the mafia, the mob, you know, all the things that I really enjoy. So I've had a lot of fun researching this case.

I had a lot of fun writing the script. We should be able to get this done in about three parts, fingers crossed, but I think you guys are really, really going to enjoy this one. And I'm going to set the stage for you. As always, this first episode is going to be very much exposition, world building, kind of setting the backdrop of, you know, how we even got to where we ended up. And, yeah, I'm excited to tell you guys the story.

I'm excited to tell it to Derek, see what he thinks about it, see what you all think about it. So what do you think, Derek? I'm ready to go. It kind of reminds me already of like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I'm sure you love that movie. I love that movie. I'm shocked. Yeah, because the Manson family

gets killed at the end, which... That ending is... It's great, you know? It's great. If you're going to rewrite history, that's how you do it, yeah. Yeah, it's great. Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio

did great in that, by the way. I mean... I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but Brad Pitt's an amazing actor. Is that an unpopular opinion? Why would that be an unpopular... He's a beautiful's an amazing actor. Is that an unpopular opinion? Why would that be an unpopular? He's a beautiful man as well.

Well, I mean, he's gorgeous. Yes. But I'm talking like he's got acting. Like he's a really good actor. Great actor. So is Leo, man. I mean, obviously he's one of the goats. Right?

I mean. He's up there. You don't know the extent that I loved Leonardo DiCaprio. Like when I was a kid, Tiger Beat Magazine, I cut out all the pictures of him. Two walls of my room were completely wallpapered with Leonardo DiCaprio. But that was when I was a kid. And then I grew up and watched him and realized like, you know, that he dates 20 year olds for five months.

And then we're not. Yeah. His personal. I don't know who the kid is as a person. So I was like, you're kind of gross. I don't find you to be a romantic idol anymore. But you are a badass actor. Wolf of Wall Street.

What's eating Gilbert Grape? Like the way that he can really take on the people he's playing and do all of these different roles, dramatic, comedy, whatever. Yeah, he kills it. No, I'm excited about the series. I'm excited to be back. I feel like I'm on the mend. And so. Yeah, Derek's been sick for, I'm excited about the series. I'm excited to be back. I feel like I'm on the mend. And so- Yeah, Derek's been sick for quite a while.

Yeah, yeah. But we're on the mend. We're on the mend. And I do apologize if I still sound a little stuffy, but compared to what it was, this is great. This is great. So- Oh, we also, before we dive in,

want to give everybody a reminder. CrimeCon is coming up in Denver. We've already sold over 200 tickets. We're so, so, so excited to see everybody hang out with you guys. It's going to be a great time. But if you have not gotten your tickets yet, they are going fast. So head over to the CrimeCon website. You can use our code and get a discount.

What's the code? Just Crime Weekly, right? It's just Crime Weekly. And that's 200 that have just signed up using our code. They've sold thousands of tickets. I think all the VIPs are gone. But frankly, you don't need the VIP. You can get the general admission. And based on how CrimeCon is set up, you're going to meet us anyways. It's not like you need that for like this special meet and greet. We're out there all day. Anybody who's ever been to the event knows that we're right there. You can come and hang out with us. There's merch, there's coffee. For like three days straight, we are not out there. And I'm not trying to toot our own horn, but it's been said by a lot of people. We are there probably more than anybody. We're there all day, almost until the end. We were there the last time I was literally getting ready to hop on a plane to go to Scotland. And we were there downstairs, breaking down the booth, still taking photos with people. So we're there the whole time.

We really enjoy it. We think you would as well. And I don't know what's in store for us. We're talking with CrimeCon about what we're going to do while we're there. There's obviously different speaking things and stuff like that, but they also were talking about something to do with like a trader style game that you, that you would, that'd be cool. But, um, we'll see if you want to be there, Denver, it's a great location, great place to go. And if you're into the true crime thing and you watch a lot of true crime or listen to a lot of true crime, it's not just us. There's a lot of your favorite content creators that are going to be there. Yeah. We have a great time. It's a great community. We all hang out. We all just,

you know, we talk to crime. We talk life. Sometimes we don't talk at all. We just sing. So we met some great friends there. We have, we aren't even know if I told you this,

but Joe and Kathy, who I love Joe before, uh, they're friends of ours now, but we met him at crime con and I was just down in Fort Lauderdale and I was at the hard rock hotel and I, my brother was gambling and it's like three o'clock in the morning. I'm not a huge gambler. I was like, I'm hungry.

So I'm walking to the, I'm trying to find this one restaurant, the whole casino that's open. And I walk in and who's sitting there? Is it Joe? Joe and Kathy. Joe and Kathy. They're getting ready to go on a cruise the next morning. I had no clue they were going to be there. They bought me breakfast. They are awesome ready to go on a cruise the next morning. I had no clue they were going to be there. They bought me breakfast. They are awesome. We love them so much. Like

lifelong forever friends. And it's from CrimeCon. Wouldn't have met them without CrimeCon. So great time. Hope to see you guys there. All right. So should we dive in? Yes, let's do it. All right. So I'm going to kind of start laying out what we're kind of dealing with here. So the golden age of Hollywood, often glamorized as a time of elegance and star power, had a dark underbelly. One that exploited, controlled, and ultimately Harlow were molded into perfect on-screen goddesses, but endured unimaginable struggles behind the scenes. The studio system, ruled by powerful executives like Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Daryl F. Zanuck, treated these women as commodities rather than human beings, dictating every aspect of their lives, from their appearances and relationships to their personal tragedies. Many of these young women were discovered at an early age, often coming from troubled backgrounds, and were swept into a world

where they were expected to be perfect, beautiful, desirable, and obedient. Studios controlled their weight, hairstyles, public images, even their personal lives. If a starlet became pregnant at an inconvenient time, the studios would arrange secret abortions, as they allegedly did for Judy Garland and Jean Harlow. If they had relationships that didn't fit their carefully curated personas, they were forced into fake marriages or forbidden to see certain lovers. And this actually happened with male actors as well. If a male actor was gay, basically, the studios would be like, absolutely not. During this time, the 1930s, 40s, 50s, you're not gay. You are straight as far as anybody's concerned. And they would set them up with fake girlfriends. Natalie Wood went through that. Yeah, pretty much all of these manufactured relationships.

And their suffering was hidden beneath layers of makeup and dazzling gowns. But behind the scenes, many turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the immense pressures. Marilyn Monroe, arguably the most famous tragic figure of this era, was manipulated, abused, and discarded by the industry that made her a star. She was over-sexualized from a young age, fed drugs to keep her working long hours, and repeatedly dismissed as difficult when she began to exert herself. leading lady was rumored to have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of powerful Hollywood men, and her mysterious death in 1981 remains a haunting example of how vulnerable these women were. And then we have Lana Turner, whose life was filled with scandal and tragedy, including the murder of her mobster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, allegedly at the hands of her teenage daughter, an event reportedly fueled by the abusive relationship she was trapped in. The glamour of old Hollywood came at a terrible cost. Many of these starlets

died young, alone, or under suspicious circumstances. The golden age of Hollywood produced some of the most iconic actresses in history, but beneath their glamorous personas, many of them actually shared strikingly similar backgrounds and motivations. And this is important. Their lives were often shaped by traumatic childhoods, a desperate need for love and validation, and a desire to escape poverty and personal hardships. These commonalities created a cycle where young women were drawn to Hollywood in hopes of achieving fame and fortune, only to be manipulated and exploited by the very system

they idolized. For many golden age actresses, acting wasn't just a passion, it was a way out of poverty and struggle. Most of them grew up with little money, and Hollywood promised them a life of luxury and fame. A common thread among these actresses was their deep need for love and validation. Many had absent or abusive fathers, leading them to seek approval from men in Hollywood, whether it was studio executives, powerful producers, or dangerous lovers. Hollywood made these women feel adored on screen, but left them empty and alone in their personal lives.

Marilyn Monroe famously said, quote, Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you $1,000 for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer enough and held out for the 50 cents. And Judy Garland, whose life is notoriously tragic, once sadly recalled, quote, And Lana Turner, the woman we are here to discuss today, said, My life has been a series of emergencies. Lana Turner found herself in a passionate and often volatile relationship with Johnny Stompanato, a gangster, after eight failed marriages.

But her new boyfriend was not like the other men that she had fallen for. He was the right-hand man of mob boss Mickey Cohen, and he had a tumultuous past of his own. As always, to understand what happened at the end, we have to go back to the beginning. To understand how Lana ended up in a volatile relationship with Johnny Stompanato, we have to first understand who she was, where she came from, and the decisions,

both personal and professional, that led her there. And you said eight marriages before Johnny Stompanato? So I believe she was married to seven men, but she was married to one of them twice. Okay. Yeah. And how old was she? When this happened? Yeah, when this all went down. So it looks like she was kind of, I think, around 37, 38, you know, heading toward 40. Still eight. I mean, seven marriages. That's a lot.

Eight marriages. I mean, she's definitely struggled to find her other person. Well, that's the thing, right? That's why I'm kind of posing it this way is a lot of actresses in Hollywood at this time went through the same thing. And even if you look now, a lot of them still do. They'll get married. This is the love of their life. Two years later, they're divorced.

And within six months, they've moved on to someone else. It's this constant feeling when you grow up living off of external validation from the fans and the studios and the newspapers. You realize that's not really what's important, and you just want that one person who will see you for who you are, the good, the bad, the ugly, not what everyone sees on screen, which is this perfect goddess, but you want them to see you for who you truly are and love you anyways. I think a lot of the time, especially in these early years of Hollywood, these women would become famous and have money and things by the time they're like 17, 18. They're being treated like grown-ass women, but they're technically not, and they have all of this notoriety and attention, And they don't really know who they

are yet. They don't have an identity. So their identity becomes wrapped up in what other people think of them. And this leads to a lot of psychological issues. It leads to you feeling your value is what you can do for others. And then by the time you are kind of old enough to realize you want something deeper and something more, you're a famous actress who's rich. So you don't know if men are coming on to you and wanting to get married to you because of your money, because of your fame, because of your connections, or because they genuinely like you. So it's this horrible cycle that you're caught in where you just never really know and you never really feel like anyone loves you. And every time you think you've found somebody who does, that turns out to not work out.

But you still have this hope, this romantic hope that you will find your person. And I think that's what a lot of them went through and Lana Turner certainly did. She definitely did. So Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Turner on February 8th, 1928 in Wallace, Idaho. My birthday. Shout out Aquarius. Her parents had a love story, I guess, of their own, if you could call it that, even if it was misguided. So Lana's mother, Mildred Frances Cohen, she'd been raised by her father and her father's sister after her mother died during childbirth.

And since her father was a mining engineer, Mildred would often travel with him to different places on mine inspection trips. One of these places was Pitcher, Oklahoma, where she met a dashingly handsome, ridiculously charming, and much older man named John Virgil Turner. John was 24 years old, a full nine years older than 15-year-old Mildred, and he was just out of the Army when he attended a rooftop dance in Pitcher and met his future wife. The two spent the entire night dancing, the stars in the sky above them, no match for the stars in each other's eyes, and by the end of the evening, they were in love, I guess, even though I don't know how a 24-year-old man falls in love with a 15-year-old girl, but that's what happened allegedly. By the way, just because it sounds familiar, Mildred Cohen, in case anyone's asking, it's pronounced similar to Mickey Cohen, but it's spelled completely different. There's no

relationship there. Yeah, Cohen, C-O-W-A-N. Correct. Lana's mother's maiden name. Yep. So obviously Mildred's father, because he's got a head on his shoulders, he felt his daughter was too young for the older army man, and he tried to put a stop to it. So the couple eloped on January 5th, 1920, and Lana would be born just a little over a year later. Now, Lana's father, John, was often described as a charming but troubled man. He was very handsome. I think that's kind of a part of his problem. He was incredibly handsome but incredibly emotionally immature. So this is a bad combination.

Talk about nothing but good-looking men tonight. I'm feeling a little intimidated. I mean, let's go easy. He was kind of known to be somebody that took shortcuts in life. He worked as a traveling minor, but he would supplement his family's meager income through gambling, constantly on the move, chasing opportunities and fortune, which brought instability to his daughter's early life. In Wallace, John attempted to settle down and even opened a dry cleaning business, but the business failed and he returned to the mines and the cards. Now, based on Lana's biography, which I'm going to refer to a lot, you can tell that she loved

her father deeply in spite of his shortcomings. And things were not always stressful in the Turner home, especially in the early days. Lana wrote, quote, One of my earliest memories is of him arriving home grimy and weary. Though life wasn't easy for either my mother or my father, we still had good times. At night, my father would turn on the record player and laugh and dance around the room with my mother and me. Many times right after dinner, my father would scoop me off my chair and dance with me alone. I was thrilled. He taught me a few simple steps and was generous with compliments as I picked up a few. Maybe that's where my love of music and sense of rhythm got its start. End quote. And Lana would often

talk lovingly about her father. She said he was very talented. Besides being a great dancer, he had a lovely singing voice, and he was actually an excellent card player, even though his luck would sometimes run out. Lana also remembered that her mother Mildred always called her husband Mr. Turner or Turner, never John or Virgil, as he was known to others, and she treated him with a great amount of respect, even though he was something of a cad. Although she and her mother would be close for her entire life, their early relationship was complicated. Lana had an early memory from when she was around three, and her mother brought her to some railroad tracks near their home, and as a train passed, Mildred told little Lana, you know, wave, wave at the train.

Specifically, Mildred told Lana to wave at this woman passenger who was very elegant, wearing long white gloves. And Lana did this. But then she asked her mother, you know, why am I waving at this woman? And Mildred told her, that woman is your real mother. And obviously, I don't know if it was a joke or she was just messing around. But I mean, that's cruel. Right.

But I mean, this is a different time. Like if you ever heard about how Natalie, what was her name? Natalie, I mentioned her earlier. Wood. Yeah, Natalie Wood. Her mother was horrendous to her, like would intentionally scare her because Natalie Wood was a child actress, would intentionally scare her on set and tell her like her dog had died to get an emotional reaction out of her. So, yeah, I think and I shouldn't go too hard here because I'm only reading the piece of

paper and hearing what you're saying. I've joked with my kids, too, obviously in a very lighthearted way where I'm like, oh, you know, keep it up. I'm going to see that family over there. You're going to go home with them. You know, you think like, especially because you and I have the same type of sense of humor. Yeah. We kind of like, you know, jab and mess around. When I was young, my sister, who's seven years younger than me, was such a pain in the ass that one day I told her like, oh, your real family's coming to pick you up later.

You probably rolled with it too. She wasn't three. Okay. Oh, I did the whole day. You're vile. She still remembers it. We laugh about it now. But she wasn't three.

She was around like seven or eight. But still, yeah. Like what the hell's wrong with us? You're probably like packing her bags and stuff. You're like, don't worry. It was nice while you were here. Yeah. I was like, they love you.

You're going to have a whole new life. It was bad. Sicko. Yeah. Well, she kind of deserved it. I don't want to get into the whole story, but I went to the neighbor's house to get peanut butter to make her peanut butter cookies. And then she locked me out of the house and laughed as I ran around trying to find a way

in. So we gave it to each other. And now we're best friends. So Lana remembers this, even though she was only three, obviously, it was traumatic, because she still remembers this. And she said, quote, I screamed and kicked and pushed her away until she dragged me into the house. There she rocked me and petted me and told me she'd only been teasing. But what fright and anguish that little episode caused me. I felt so lost, so insecure, end quote. And I think it's just because, listen, now we know so much more about child development and how, I guess, monumental and impactful these little things can be to a child and how they remember them.

And it kind of shapes their personality and their attachment style. They didn't know that then. OK, they didn't know that. Right. Just like I'm messing with this kid. What's wrong with, she's so sensitive. But I mean, and maybe, maybe Lana's just being a little overdramatic or maybe her mom really went with it. Maybe she was, you know, messing with her and she took it too far. Yeah. I'm sure she was just like, oh, wave at these people on the train. And then Lana's like,

why are we doing this? She's like, that's your real mom. You know, like, I didn't know what else to say. It was a joke. But still, ouch. All right. So let's take our first break and we'll be right back. Okay, we're back. So when Lana was six, the Turner family packed up everything they had, which wasn't much, and they moved to San Francisco. Money was tight, but eventually they found a little house in Stockton, 90 minutes east of San Francisco. And Lana remembered that in Stockton, she and her father shared a secret. It was 1927 and prohibition was in full effect, legally preventing the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. So one day, Lana found out that her father had a still in the basement. A still is a piece of equipment used in distillation.

It makes alcohol. And during Prohibition, they became a symbol of illicit alcohol production. So Lana's in the basement. She's like, what are you doing, daddy? What's up with this? And he's like, this is our little secret, right? He made his daughter promise to never breathe a word of it to anyone. And for a while, she kept her promise. But then one day while she was playing outside with some of her friends, Lana accidentally let it slip. She said later that the other kids were bragging about what their parents did for work and she wanted to one-up them. But this innocent act brought government men to the Turner home. The still was destroyed and Virgil was arrested. So not long after this, Virgil Turner left and Lana was told by her mother that he was

traveling to quote unquote sell insurance. But what Lana didn't know is that her parents had basically split up. They hadn't divorced or anything. And obviously Mildred, I think, still loved Virgil Turner very much and still had respect for him. And he still tried to financially provide for them as much as he could. But they just decided to live separate lives. Mildred Turner began working at a beauty parlor in San Francisco. And she and her daughter later moved to Sacramento where Lana attended a Catholic school. With only one income, money was tighter than ever. So Mildred and Lana actually

returned to San Francisco, and they shared an apartment with two other women. Now, were these women, understand, once again, we're talking about prohibition, we're talking about the cusp of the Great Depression, money is tight for everyone. It's the roaring 20s, there's a lot of fun things happening, et cetera, et cetera. But nobody's like really doing that well, except for, you know, the, the main families of the gilded age who had all the money and everyone else was kind of just like trying to get by. So tough times for a lot of families. Very, very tough. Everyone was struggling at this point. And I don't know all the details about why John left, but I'm sure it wasn't just this incident where he was caught for the distillery. There was probably more to it where he was supplementing his income through it.

With illegal means. With illegal means. And who even knows if the reason they caught him was because of Lana telling her friends. It could have been someone he had given or sold liquor to. But overall, that supplemental income is now gone it's it strains the relationship and now he goes on the road to try to make ends meet so i would also say there was a maybe a whole aspect of kind of having shame right as the man you have a wife you have a daughter provide for your family you can't provide for them so you're you feel ashamed

yeah you feel ashamed. Yeah. You feel ashamed. I don't know if leaving them really helps that, but maybe. No, but that's what I'm saying. There might, it might've been a situation where obviously the relationship strained or you would make it work or they'd go with you. But economically it's like, Hey, you have something here. There's no work for me here. I have to go to try to make money and I'll send it home when I can. I don't think that was the most uncommon thing back then where the man left the house to go find work in another state because there wasn't anything there for them locally. It was not uncommon, honestly. And there's going to be a lot of things we talk about where in modern day society, we're like,

what? Why would you do? But back then, you did what you could, and you didn't have a lot of choices. You didn't have a lot of opportunities ahead of you. So Lana and her mother, money's tight, so they share an apartment with two other women. And I'm not going to say that these women were sex workers, but it seemed like they kind of were. And it seemed like a lot of women had to eventually turn to that in those days when they didn't have another income, when they didn't have anybody taking care of them, or when their husband just left to go play cards somewhere. You kind of had to do what you had to do. Did you just say when their husband went to go play cards somewhere?

Yeah, like Virgil Turner. That's what he's doing, basically. He's out there gambling. He's like joining craps games and poker games. He's not really like out there trying to find legitimate workers selling insurance. Okay. So you're saying that he was out there doing his thing, having some fun. He was out there, yeah, like trying to make money. But we all know if you're really trying to make money and you really need an income, gambling's probably not the best way. Like you might get a windfall, you might get a good, have a good game, but then

you're going to lose everything in the next, right? So it's not the most responsible way if you really want stability for your family. Like I said, he's kind of a cat. He's emotionally immature. Obviously, he was a 20-something-year-old man marrying a 15-year-old girl. So he kind of maybe felt that she was more on his level mentally. And yeah, that's what happened. And Mildred is a young woman. She's working as a hairdresser, and they have to share an apartment with these other two women. And Lana remembered this, and she said, quote, there wasn't much space. When their men friends came to visit, the woman would bed me down on the floor of a large closet to get me out of the way. My mother wasn't happy with that, and she finally found a home for me with a family in Stockton, the Hislops. I could share a room

with the daughter, Beverly, who was close to my age, and I could play in the large backyard. She would come visit every other week, end quote. All right, so there are a couple things here. Lana, as a young girl, is being sort of exposed to sexual activity. And then we wonder, you know, well, what happened? Why is she kind of going out into Hollywood and she's marrying all these men and she's searching for love in all the wrong places? Well, she was kind of exposed to that from an early age. She didn't really have a ton of experience or examples of what good and healthy love looked like. And so she kind of saw what she saw and based in her head, what a relationship with a man would look like from those things that she saw. Which is unfortunate because we see this a lot in other situations as well with children where we talk about the brain formulation

and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable and how those children will eventually view relationships with the opposite sex and the same sex. And we see it even in the drug game too, right? Where children will see their parents making money through certain means and they end up growing up to do the same thing because that's what they know. That's what they know. Yeah. So it's an unfortunate and it's kind of this cyclical cycle where it can just continue to be passed down from generation to generation. And

unfortunately in this case, not even generation generation just from random people that Lana happened to be living with at the time. And this is hard to unlearn in adulthood when it's been programmed and ingrained in your brain, which is when your brain is supposed to be making these connections in childhood. It's been programmed in there from childhood. And then even as an adult, if you logically and intellectually know this isn't the best way, instinctually you really don't feel like you have much choice because your brain has been programmed since childhood to think that things are this way. And it's hard to change your behavior and your programming when it's been that way since, you know, childhood. It's even on a more surface level where you have women who find themselves now in situations where there's

domestic abuse involved. And in a lot of those cases, they had seen something similar when they were children, happened between their mother and father or mother and boyfriend or whatever. And so they view it differently than others would because in their household during their childhood, it was socially acceptable. It was something that they witnessed and they experienced and it didn't kill them. So they figure, hey, this is just this is just the way it goes. Exactly. So like they know it feels bad, but they're also thinking this is what this is. This is how it is. It's just how it feels bad. But this is just how it was bad for my mom, too.

But, you know, she she's fine. She got through it. Yeah. So it's hard to break that cycle. It really is. And here's another weird thing from this kind of like prohibition depression era that I think people today have a hard time grappling with is Lana Turner's mother was like, well, I can't really afford to support you and give you a home where you don't have to be shoved into a closet every time one of my roommates wants to have a male caller over. So I'm going to basically pay a family to board you. And I'm going to visit you every other week. And to many of us, we'd be like, that's insane. Like, I'm not going to just send my kid off to somebody's house. I don't know who these people are, if they're going to take care of them, if they're going to be kind. But it was a very common practice. And Lana said, you know, this is what she was told,

like, oh, their daughters are on the same age. You guys can play together. It's going to be great. But there was more work than play in Lana's new home with the Hislops. And she said that she and the Hislop daughter, Beverly, were often kept busy with chores, essentially doing all the housework. And the mother, Julia Hislop, was kind of free with her hands, you know, a little abusive. So Lana's father, Virgil, also visited his daughter at the Hislops every so often. He'd bring her out shopping when she needed new shoes or stockings. And in December of 1930, during her last visit with her father, Lana told Virgil that she would really love a new bicycle. This was the early years of the Great Depression.

A bicycle would be hard to come by, especially for somebody like Virgil. But Virgil promised that he would try to make it happen. And maybe that's why Virgil Turner found himself at an illegal craps game on December 14, 1930. The game was held out of a warehouse on the corner of Mariposa and Minnesota streets. And at that time, Virgil was using different names and aliases while living out of a small hotel room on the corner of Mariposa and Minnesota streets. And at that time, Virgil was using different names and aliases while living out of a small hotel room on the corner of 4th and Mission. Using the alias Ernie Tex Johnson, Virgil ended up winning the game. And he would have had enough money to buy Lana her new bike and then some.

But sadly, as he exited the warehouse, Virgil Turner was mugged. He was struck once over his left eyebrow with a heavy object. The force of that single blow had been enough to trigger a cerebral hemorrhage. So just after 7 a.m., his body was spotted in a seated position propped against the side of the warehouse. His coat was pulled partially over his head, and his hat and left shoe were found next to his body. No money was found on Virgil, and his prized diamond

stick pin was also missing along with his left sock. Now, Mildred Turner would tell the police that her husband had a habit of stashing his money in his left sock, and police felt he had been targeted for his gambling winnings, and somebody had staged his body to make it look as if he is just passed out drunk on the street, which once again, not uncommon in those days. Allow the offenders to get away, allow them some time where even if law enforcement's walking by there, they may just pass it up to, hey, you know what? He's some drunk, he's sleeping it off. He'll be up in a few hours. Exactly. Even pastor Byers would think the same thing, right? Like his left socks off, his shoes next to his body. He looks like just some drunk guy passed out. And I really do believe that it was somebody from the game

that he was involved in. Of course. They're the ones who would know he had the money. Or someone who was at the game who calls a buddy. Yeah. Somebody at that game knows exactly what happened to Virgil. Like this guy just made off with a ton of money. He's alone.

He's walking out. This is where we're at. Yeah. It was a setup. But the murder of John Virgil Turner was never solved. And it hit Lana very hard with her saying, quote, although I was only nine, I could imagine what death meant. I knew he was gone forever, end quote. So it's often said that Lana's life with men just never really settled down. Like her father, kind of like I said, not a super good father or husband, but she loves him. And then he leaves and abandons her. And then he dies

and abandons her in the most worst and long lasting way. And then she goes through a series of men who sort of use her, abuse her, never treat her the way she wants to be treated, what she was missing from having her father love her. And then her eventual boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, he gets murdered, right? So when she says my life was just a string of emergencies, she means it. So after this, Lana Turner stayed with the Hislops for probably another year, but her time there was not happy or peaceful. One day, Julia Hislop flew into a rage after some household work hadn't been completed in a timely manner, and she beat Lana with a stick of wood until the little girl was black and blue. And Julia

threatened Lana. She said, listen, you're going to get beat again if you ever tell anyone what happened here. Once again, Marilyn Monroe has a very similar story because Marilyn Monroe ended up in foster care and in orphanages a lot throughout her younger years. And every time she's in these places, she's either being beaten or sexually abused, just not treated well in general. So as soon as these young girls who have these very, very disruptive childhoods get to Hollywood and they're valued for their beauty, they're going to start to think like, this is who I am. I am a beautiful woman and this is what I'm valued for. And this is all I have to offer because nobody ever valued me for anything other than that before. And now this is what I'm being valued for now is very insidious. I think it also goes back to what

you just said five minutes ago, where she's seeing other beautiful women. I'm assuming they were pretty. I don't know. She's living with them and she's seeing these transactional relationships where the women are being utilized by men for certain reasons. Yeah. And that's it. And then they go, they grab their ass and they go. Yeah.

And I, and I also think there's something to be said for a child, a young girl seeing women use their looks and their body to get certain things, whether that's money or attention, whatever it might be. If you're seeing that constantly, then you are the company

you keep. And it's going to start to rub off on you where you realize, hey, I can use my looks and my appearance to garner certain attention or gain certain financial benefits. Like I said, Julia Hislop beat Lana and said, don't tell your mom. But then the following weekend, Mildred goes to get Lana and she's like, oh, hey, do you need some new underwear? How are you doing in the underwear department? Are they worn out? Do we need to get you into town and get you some new ones? And Lana, I guess, acted so weird when her mother tried pulling her pants up to sort of look at her underwear and see what condition they were in. Lana kind of held her clothes down and acted very suspicious.

So Mildred was like, hey, take your clothes off right now. What are you trying to hide? Saw all the bruising and obviously was not happy with it. Mildred told Lana to pack a bag. She then gave Julia Hislop a piece of her mind and took Lana back to San Francisco where they tried to start fresh. They rented a portion of an apartment from Mildred's boss at the beauty salon. Lana began attending Presidio Junior High School, and once back with her mother,

she was able to experience life as somewhat of a normal teenager. She very much admired her mother. She started to also admire other women. This is also a time where she's going to start going to the movie theaters. This was the time that Lana fell in love with all the things that would one day propel her towards a life of stardom. Saturday mornings were set aside for matinees at the local movie house. Lana said, quote, I'd save a nickel of my lunch money every day to raise the quarter to go. I loved the actresses and the beautiful clothes they wore, especially Kay Francis. Lana said, quote, I'd save a nickel of my lunch money every day to raise the quarter to go.

I loved the actresses and the beautiful clothes they wore, especially Kay Francis. I loved her because my mother looked exactly like her. She even wore her hair like Kay Francis and Norma Shearer. So beautiful, so glamorous. That was real entertainment, end quote. And you're going to see this generational thing because Lana, as we talked about sort of briefly, Lana's going to have one child out of seven marriages or eight marriages. She's going to have one child, a daughter named Cheryl. And Cheryl wrote a book that I have about her life with Lana and about the murder of Johnny Stompanato and about

dealing with all of Lana's husbands, this parade of men coming through her life. And Cheryl would remember sort of the same thing in childhood, just staring at her mother and thinking, oh my goodness, this woman is so beautiful and she's so glamorous and she's everything I want to be. And this was the cycle of, once again, as long as you're beautiful, as long as you dress nicely, as long as your hair looks good and and you smile, and you're a very easy person to be around, you will find love. People will be around you. But then once again, Lana, Marilyn Monroe, a lot of people realized people being around you and just being in your orbit does not actually equate to love, true love.

I mean, we're still seeing this today. I mean, we're talking here, what, 1930s, 1940s, whatever it might be, but you still see this happening in today's society, especially still in Hollywood. Even worse with social media. Oh man, I didn't even go there, but yes, with social media and- The Kardashians, right?

Certain websites you can sign up for where everything now is about, it's all transactional. External validation, yeah. It's all transactional, and now I guess people are taking advantage of it on both sides, right? Because for these women,

they're millionaires, multimillionaires now. Are you talking about OnlyFans? I am, I am. And there are men out there who brag about it. They have no problem spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to spoil these young women. That's weird that they brag about it. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can go on there and see guys talking about it like they like being the provider. They like just giving them money to go shop. That's so weird. They're not even, they're not the only ones doing that.

But they want to be the top one. They want to be the number one. This is so weird, dude. That's weird. So I feel the same way. And like, I hope no men are offended, but I feel the same way about men that go to strip clubs on a regular basis. I'm offended. And it's like, you know, these women are just, you're paying them to pretend that they like you and that they're attracted to you. Like these women see so many men come through. They're so sick of being groped and like ogled. And, and they're just like, yeah, whatever. Give me money. And I'll, you know, I'll pretend that you, that I'm as attracted to you as

you are to me, but it's all pretend. Like they don't care about you. She told me she loved me, Stephanie. Yeah, I'm in love with the stripper. All right. She told me she loved me. You don't know. You don't know. It's weird.

I mean, it was real. I'm sure it was. I'm sure you and Destiny had a very lurid love affair. Her name was Bubbles. I knew a very sweet stripper once who went by the name of Sailor Moon. And I talked to her at great length. And she told me all of these things. She's like, yeah, after like a couple months of doing this, all the men look the same.

And you just cringe inwardly when you know you have to like touch them or go near them. But you put on a smile and you take their money and you do it. And it's like, do these men and these only fan women, like, do they think they're actually special or that these women are thinking about them at all? They're not, but yes, it's the same kind of thing. Not all. Oh, you're the exception, not the rule. Same. Okay. I walk in there. Yeah. And they're like, Derek, you know, you get drunk and give us money. They give me the discount. Yeah. Okay.

Then I'm like, wait a second. You said it was a discount, but it's the same price on the board. Yeah. That's a discount. Listen, it's exactly kind of the same. Social media is even worse, right? Because it's so accessible. And now these young girls and even like my daughter, she's eight and she had to do a

dance competition and they required her to put on fake eyelashes. And I wrote an email and I said, I'm not putting fake eyelashes on my eight-year-old daughter. And they were like, well, why? And I said, well, because I use fake eyelashes now. And if I take them off, I feel ugly because I'm used to seeing myself with fake eyelashes on. So now when I take them off, I look at myself and I'm like, oh my God, with your bald eyes, you're hideous. I don't want my child to feel that, especially at eight. It's bad enough that

I got caught up in that. And now in my head mentally, I have to hopefully one day be able to break that. But I don't want you little girls to be feeling that way. Like they have to wear makeup and they have to have eyelashes on in order to get up on stage and have people watch them. It's just very uncomfortable for me. Yeah, no, it's as a man, I can't really relate to it, but I do have two daughters and I can, I do understand it from that point of view. Yeah, everyone is beautiful the way they are. That's what I'll say. much to your appearance. And this is why plastic surgery and Botox and fillers have also gotten out of control. When you start doing like fillers and putting them in your face and then they go away, because they do eventually go away, I guess. And then you're like, ah, I got to get that back

done because I got used to seeing myself this way. And now when I see myself without it, I feel less than. It's a really internal, personal thing. But what do you initially do it for? You do it for external validation. You do it so that other people find you attractive. And then you don't find yourself attractive without that stuff. It's a vicious cycle. And it's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah. I'm glad I just have my natural beauty. Yeah. Man, you don't know how easy you have it, man. Just throw a hat on and we're good to go. No. So back, so back to where we are in this story,

as far as Lana and starting to go to the movies and seeing women, one in particular that reminds her, Kay Francis, that reminds her of her mother. She started to see them on screen. She's seeing how beautiful they are. That's. She's seeing how everyone in the audience too is like in awe. Admiring them,

looking up to them. And so she's obviously gravitating toward this and she has this admiration for these women. So you can kind of already see where this is gonna go. She's gonna wanna go down that path. And she's gorgeous, okay? Like maybe she doesn't realize that yet because she's a young teenager.

She's a drop-dead gorgeous young girl and other people are noticing it and other people are going to soon notice it. And she's going to get propelled into this life that you'd only get if you were this drop-dead gorgeous that you're going to walk into like a soda shop and somebody is going to be like, hey, you're the next Hollywood actress. Let's do this, right? It doesn't happen anymore. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Okay, we're back. So Lana's going to the movies. She's loving seeing all these actresses.

She's in awe of them. And she also developed a love affair with fashion. She was obsessed with clothes and shoes. And her first adolescent crush had actually been on her homeroom teacher, Miss Patch, because Lana said she admired the way her teacher dressed, saying, quote, I still remember my favorite outfit. She wore a tailored gray flannel skirt, a blue and white blouse with a bow at the neck, and a gray cashmere sweater, end quote. Even Lana's mother, Mildred, was a woman to be admired for her physical appearance. Lana said that even if they didn't have a lot of money, her mother always made sure to dress well and they made an impression on Lana. Like, hey, as long as you look good and you put forward become an actress, she would have gone into fashion design. Now, in 1936, Lana and her mother moved again, this time to Los Angeles, where Lana began attending classes at Hollywood High School. Now, the story of how Lana got discovered in L.A. has become Hollywood folklore.

It was January 1937, and a 15-year-old Lana decided to cut out of school early to get a Coke at the soda counter at Schwab's Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard. While there, she was spotted by director Mervyn Leroy, and the rest is history. Now here's Lana in a 1984 interview talking about that fateful day in 1937 when she was transformed from a pretty high school student into a budding starlet. I would like to set the record straight on a few things that we've all read about and heard about and wondered about over the years. Schwab's. Were you really found there? Were you wearing a sweater? Were you playing hooky? What's the scoop? Alan, for what I hope is the last time on TV, radio, books. Newspapers? Anything printed or heard or seen. No, it is not true. Number one, I don't care if it's their 5,000th anniversary.

I've had nothing to do with Schwab's. So, this is the last time I'm going to say it. Okay. And the real story you would share with the folks was that you were actually playing hooky from school for a bit. For one class, the typing class. Sure, because it's the one you got caught in. That's the one that... I still don't know how to type.

Not with these days, I don't. Wow. Rest in peace, Alan Thicke. I know it's weird seeing Alan Thicke this young, you know, because you remember. Another good looking guy. I mean, we're just surrounded by good looking people tonight. Well, remember he was in the Wonder Years. Was that the show he was in?

He played the dad. Yeah. Was it Wonder Years? Yeah. I think it was Wonder Years. That's how I remember him as like an older man. So to see him like this and he kind of looks like his son, you know, Robin Thicke, right? Like they look very similar at this young age. But it's just funny how like at this point,

Alan Thicke is probably in his like early 20s. And because of the way they did their hair and the way they dressed, they look like they're 40-something-year-old men. Like when I watched Seinfeld, Elaine and Jerry and George and Kramer are supposedly in their like early 20s. But to me, they look like they're in their 40s because of their hairstyles and the way they dress. But it's just a fun thing. FYI, it wasn't Wonder Years. It was Growing Pains. Growing Pains. Yes. Wow. Wow. That's crazy. And I think at some point, wasn't the great Leo DiCaprio on that show? He was. Yeah. There you go. Look at that. See this? It's all full circle. It's all connected. So yeah, basically, Schwab somehow spread the rumor that Lana was discovered there. And they kind of used this for decades. And even in 1984,

she said that she heard about the, I think, 50th anniversary of Schwab's and she was invited. And she's like, I don't care if it's the 50th anniversary or the 500th anniversary. Like I didn't, I wasn't there. I wasn't discovered there. Like I don't even know where this came from. And it wasn't even Mervyn LeRoy that discovered her. It was a completely different story. So in her book, Lana said that she hadn't gone all the way to Sunset Boulevard for a soda.

She'd skipped class. It was typing class. And she'd gone right across Highland Street to the Top Hat Cafe, and the reason she bought a Coke was because Cokes cost a nickel, and that was all the money she had. Lana said, quote, as I sipped the Coke, a man at the fountain kept staring at me. He was well-dressed and in his mid-40s with sharp features, a mustache, and dark hair. I heard him talking to the counterman who leaned over toward me and said, there's a gentleman who wants to meet you. He's all right. He works down the street and eats here all the time. Do you mind if he speaks to you? I said, okay, and the counterman introduced him

as Mr. Wilkerson. In turn, I gave my nickname, Judy Turner. He didn't seem to want to pick me up because he didn't make idle chatter. He came straight to the point. Would you like to be in the movies? End quote. So it hadn't been some big shot Hollywood director who had noticed Lana that day. Billy Wilkerson was, however, a major behind the scenes power player in early Hollywood. A man who wore many hats and left a legacy that's equal parts glitzy, influential, and controversial.

Billy Wilkerson, super interesting life. Okay, not only was he instrumental in what was going on in LA, but he helped build Vegas. He was one of the people who kind of shut down, I don't know if you're aware in Hollywood, when communism was a big thing, the whole Red Scare. They started blacklisting actors and directors and people that they thought were communists. He really spearheaded that. So like I said, he's got a very interesting life. We could make an entire series about him alone, but he's best known as the founder and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, which he founded in 1930. And the publication would become known as the first daily trade paper covering the growing film industry. The paper quickly became essential reading for studio heads,

producers, and gossip lovers alike, and Wilkerson used it not only to report the news, but to push personal agendas, settle scores, and influence careers. His columns and editorials were so highly influential that he became known as a kingmaker of the golden age. He wasn't just a journalist, he had deep connections with studio execs, agents, and even mob-backed financiers. Like I said, we could talk about Billy Wilkerson for hours, not just the mark he left on Hollywood, Vegas as well, all of the different people. It's crazy. I read a book that his son wrote, and it's just very interesting. So Lana and her mother met with Wilkerson at the Hollywood

Reporter offices where he told her that she was a very pretty girl, but she would need an agent. So he set her up with his friend, Zeppo Marks, who had opened his new talent agency after leaving the Marks brothers. And it was Zeppo Mark Marx who told Lana that she was no longer 15. Okay, as far as anyone was concerned, she was 18. And Lana would soon find herself in the office of Mervyn Leroy, a prolific, influential Hollywood film director, producer, occasional actor, and part of the studio elite at Warner Brothers. Leroy, recalling his first meeting

with the then-unknown actress, said, quote, She was so nervous, her hands were shaking, she wasn't wearing any makeup, and she was so shy she could hardly look me in the face. Yet there was something so endearing about her that I knew she was the right girl. She had tremendous appeal, which I knew the audience would feel. Four days after she turned 16, Lana signed a contract for a small appearance in the film They Won't Forget. In this movie, her screen time was short, but one scene became iconic and earned her a nickname that would forever last. In the scene, Lana was dressed in a tight form-fitting sweater and no bra, which at that time was very scandalous. The camera did a slow, almost sensual pan up Lana's body and lingered on her figure,

and this electrified audiences and studio executives, making her a sex symbol practically overnight. After the film's release, gossip columnists and fan magazines began referring to Lana Turner as the Sweater Girl. And this nickname, which was partly praise and partly branding, it stuck and it emphasized her curves and photogenic allure in a seemingly innocent yet provocative outfit. Lana became a wartime pinup favorite with soldiers plastering her sweater clad photos in their lockers and the studios really leaned into it using the nickname to help sell photos in their lockers, and the studios really leaned

into it, using the nickname to help sell her image, her movies, and the dream of Hollywood glamour. Now, how did Lana feel about it? Quote, it was the bane of my existence. I wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, not remembered for a tight sweater, end quote. But we get what we get, right? It's such a hard conversation for me to have as a father with two daughters. It's probably a hard conversation for you to have as a man and a father with two daughters. Because as a man, you're like, yeah, I can see how this would be appealing. But as a father, you're like, but I would not want my daughters to be seen like this or remembered like this. Yeah. And we have to remember, how old is she at this point?

16. She's 16. Yeah. That's the truth. But as far as anybody knew, she was 18. Remember? That's fine. And so you have men who are looking at her in that light. They're thinking, hey, 18. And obviously even back then, 16, I hate to say this, but it was a little bit more gray area.

Oh, yeah. Than it is now. I mean, look at her parents, right? Right, exactly. And so even if she's 18, which she's not. Still. It's tough for me as a father with two young girls, one's 12 years old, not too far off from 16,

to think about men looking her in that way. It's hard for me to... It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. That's a good way to describe it. Yeah. I understand where she's at, where you even see, and I know this is a leap and people are going to probably come for me on this one, but like with Dance Moms, my kids got

me into Dance Moms, even though the show is long, you know, it's been over for a long time. They're still watching it now. It's all on Netflix and stuff. And I see the way they sexualize these young girls. I know. I know. In these dance routines and the outfits they're wearing. I know. It makes me very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. I agree. And my daughter does dance. And every time I'm proud of her because she's great. And she loves

it. And she loves it. That's the conundrum. And she practices. But when I see her up on stage and there's people around me, I'm looking in the crowd and I see men and I'm like, why are you here? Like, do you have a daughter here? And even if you do, like, are you a creep? Because the way that they dress these girls and the moves they have them do, like, I remember just for the last competition, they had to do a special booty shaking class to teach these eight-year-old girls how to shake their butts and feathers on the butt. And it's just – it's really difficult for me to know that it's something that Bella loves and is really good at. And it's healthy and team building and camaraderie and all that.

But I'm uncomfy. I'm happy this year my kids are doing The Greatest Showman. Oh, that, but I'm uncomfy. I'm happy this year. My kids are doing the greatest showman a lot more, a lot more. You have to love that. Cause you love that movie. Love that movie. But I also like that some of the songs they've done, we're not going to spend too much time on this, but they're both in dance and you're just like Bella. And some of the songs they do, I'm sitting there and I'm looking at everyone and I'm like, I don't love this. But they're so proud. Yes. Because they don't even see it in that light.

And they work so hard. But my head automatically goes to which dude is watching this right now. Exactly. Me too. Yes. I don't love it. The girls don't see it like that. But the outside perspectives, the people watching might.

Like we don't know. I'm sitting there watching people's eyes like. Me too. Keep them where they need to be. I'm like, is this guy like for real? Is he like a pedophile? You know, like I'm, I'm like, and I hate to do that, but I will, you and I both know how, how common it is. And so you want to support your kids. And I'm sure in this moment, Lana's loving what she's doing. She's probably loving the attention. And yet you're also weary because it's not necessarily the attention you

will want, although it's going to accomplish what she's ultimately going for. I mean, she's, she's going to be become an actress and she's going to be someone who's famous. And that was her dreams when she started watching the movie. So on one hand, I'm happy for her. On the other hand, it's almost, it's sad because the route she had to go to, to kind of get there. And once again, she said, I really wanted to be viewed as a serious actress. I'm being viewed as a sex symbol. Correct. And now this is-

Which is still being done to this day. Yeah, and this is in your head. This is my worth. This is my value. This is where it lies. In my physical appearance that everybody knows will fade and everybody knows will change. And that's a very hard pill to swallow

when you don't take the time and the introspection to love yourself. You might grow up and spend your whole life. And then I think this is why women struggle when they get older if they've only based their worth on their physical appearance, which like I said, changes and fades over time. And they start to feel like, what is even my point? Nobody's looking at me. Nobody's asking me out anymore, what's going on? And it really, it's a hard life to live when you don't take the time to love yourself.

But either way, Lana's sweater girl now. And later that year, Mervyn LeRoy, he was hired as an executive at MGM. So he left Warner Brothers and he would eventually bring Lana with him to MGM. She signed a contract for $100 a week. And her success in the 1938 film Love Finds Andy Hardy convinced MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, once again, a man we could talk about for hours, Louis B. Mayer, but it convinced

Mayer that Lana had what it took to be the next Jean Harlow. Now, Harlow was one of the most iconic stars of early Hollywood, a trailblazing sex symbol and box office powerhouse who was known for her platinum blonde hair and magnetic screen presence. But sadly, like so many others in her position, Jean Harlow's life was filled with personal heartbreak and loss. Six months before Lana Turner popped up on Hollywood's radar, Jean Harlow died at the age

of 26, shocking the film industry and the public. But studio heads like Louis B. Mayer didn't have time to mourn for long because the show must go on and someone else would have to step into the role of screen siren. So MGM had Lana bleach her hair and go blonde in 1939, and she carried on Jean Harlow's torch and never looked back. Now off screen, Lana developed a reputation for being a bit boy crazy. At the age of 17, with no experience with physical intimacy, Lana met 30-year-old lawyer Greg Bolzer. Bolzer was a notorious playboy and attorney to the stars, handling the high-profile divorces of figures such as Rock Hudson and Nancy Sinatra. Robert Wagner, who was married to Natalie Wood, and I still to this day believe that Robert Wagner is the reason Natalie Wood is dead today. I think he pushed her off that boat.

I will stand on both legs firmly on this. There's no way she just accidentally fell in the water and drowned. It was Robert Wagner. But anyways, I think we need to cover that case as well, by the way. I did. I did. I'm saying we got to cover it on crime weekly. I've, I've, I've seen it. Obviously there was some other famous actor that was on there too. Who else was it? Oh, fricking. Um, oh my my gosh that's the one that the name i would know he's um i he's in the new severance show that's right right walking christopher walken christopher walken christopher walken was on the boat yeah so i we need to cover that i don't know if it's enough for is that a multiple part series probably right yeah yeah for sure i mean let us know in the

comments real quick if you'd like to obviously step, Stephanie's already covered it on her channel, but I don't know all the specifics of it. I've seen some documentaries on it specifically with Christopher Watkin, but I would love to go take a deep dive into that one. Christopher Watkin's an amazing actor, by the way. We keep going off on little tangents here, but I think it needs to be said, Severance is so good. Like Stephanie said, I've been sick, so I think it needs to be said. Severance is so good. I've been like, like Stephanie said, I've been sick, so I had nothing but time to watch.

I couldn't get off my couch and I binged it. So good. So good. It's ridiculous. If you haven't watched Severance, go watch Severance on Apple TV. So Robert Wagner once said

of Greg Botzer, quote, he was the only person I ever knew in Hollywood who was a star without being in a movie. End quote. Lana was down bad for the handsome charmer whom it seemed all the women wanted. She said, quote, he was tall and husky with soulful dark eyes, a tanned complexion, and a flashing smile that showed a lot of white teeth. He was so smooth and self-assured

that all the other boys I knew seemed like children, end quote. Well, that's because he wasn't a boy. He was a 30-year-old man. So the two quickly became the It couple in Hollywood, being seen out at all the right places together, and Lana lost her virginity to the much older man. He gave her like a promise ring. He seemed to not have eyes for anyone else, but Lana was busy with work. She was the new It girl. She was on her way to becoming the screen siren and her schedule prevented them from spending a lot of time together. So one day, Joan Crawford, you know Joan Crawford, okay? I don't know if you do, but Joan Crawford, she calls Lana over to her house and she's like, oh, didn't you know that Greg

doesn't love you anymore? He loves me now and we're together. And like, he wasn't going to tell you, but I have to be the one to like break it to you. I'm so sorry. You know, like she actually gave a shit, which, you know, this was just catty. Joan Crawford is so catty. But yeah, she was like, listen, he doesn't love you anymore. He loves me. So get on little girl. And Greg bouts her. He denied it. But Lana knew in her gut that he had not been faithful. And her heartbreak and anger at the betrayal of her first love would lead her into her first failed marriage with bandleader Artie Shaw in 1940. Lana had met Artie when she was filming a movie in 1939. And he was interested in her. But at that time, she only had eyes for Greg Bautzer.

And actually, she found Artie to be arrogant and just an overall negative person. She had told the press that he was the most egotistical person she had ever met. She did not like this guy. However, the following year, Bautzer canceled plans on Lana last minute, which ended up being the final straw. And that same night, Artie Shaw called her up and asked her out. And Lana accepted, you know, kind of to get back at Greg Bouncer or to sort of distract her. And apparently that night on their first date, Shaw said all the things that Lana had been dying to hear from Greg, that he wanted to marry her and have children and make a happy home. And Lana said that she would have given up her steadily climbing career in a second if it meant becoming a wife and a mother. That's really all she wanted

was to be loved, to be taken care of, and to be able to have children and be someone's wife and someone's mother. So before dinner was over, Artie had convinced Lana to get on a plane, fly to Vegas, and become his wife that same night. Now I think I was trying to get even with somebody else because I didn't even know the man. I didn't like him. I certainly wasn't in love with him. But he painted a picture of a little white cottage with a picket fence, getting out of the business. I wasn't that heavily into the business, you know. You were what, 19? I just turned 19. So I said that that's what I want he said are you kidding I said no he said him you mean if I ask you right now would you say yes and I said try me and he said

will you marry me and I said yes drove up to his house up in the mountains and called Paul Mance and hired a plane we flew to Las Vegas first time we kissed was in the plane taking off. After you'd agreed to get married? Yes. We didn't even kiss in the car when I said yes. It was in the plane taking off. And then a gentle little kiss like that. And that was it.

I knew the third day that it was not a marriage, but I tried to keep it going for three months and it was impossible. That doesn't sound too romantic to me. No, but she's 19, right? She's 19 years old. And you could see here she's obviously much older. Oh, yeah.

You could tell she's reflecting on a lot of her decisions and understanding them. And I'm glad that she's able to see that, you know? And I think every woman eventually reaches that point of like self-love and being like, why did I give so much of myself to these worthless people? You know, but sometimes it's just later in life. And I do think based on reading her book that Lana did eventually get there, but not until very much later in life. So, but anyways, they're married and she says she tried to keep it going for months. Six months after they got married,

her ex, Greg Bolzer, represented Lana in her divorce to Artie Shaw. So the marriage had ended for several reasons. They argued all the time. His way of communicating was by putting her down, trying to make her feel stupid. He was controlling. He'd become upset with Lana

if he felt she was paying more attention to her job than to him. And two months into their marriage, Lana found out that Artie had already been married twice before her, a detail she hadn't known before, which like, how could you have known that? You didn't know this person. You didn't even have a courtship period. You had a first date and he was like, let's get married, kid. And you were like, okay, why not? What the hell else am I doing? Like, how would you have known that? But he definitely did hide that fact from her for several months. And after the divorce proceeding started, Lana found out that she was pregnant.

And when she called Artie to tell him, he was like, well, I don't even know if that baby's mine. And then he ghosted. He flew off somewhere, wouldn't answer her calls. Now the thing was Hollywood Studios inserted something called morality clauses into their contracts. And these clauses were strict, invasive, and deeply controlling, especially when it came to pregnancy outside of marriage. So we're going to take a quick break and when we get back, I'm going to explain what these clauses were and why they were so detrimental.

Okay, we're back. So these clauses gave studios the legal right to dictate and discipline stars for their personal behavior, particularly anything that could be seen as immoral, scandalous, or damaging to their markability. For actresses, that often meant policing their sexuality and reproductive choices to an extreme degree. Studio heads pressured or outright forced actresses to get abortions, which were not legal at the time. And the studios had people in place to arrange these things that they called fixers. Now, MGM's fixer was a man named Howard Strickling. Once again, a person we could talk about for hours. Now, his official title was head of publicity, and he did everything from arranging illegal and secret abortions to covering up scandals, silencing the press, hiding crimes, and protecting the studio's

image at all costs. When Judy Garland became pregnant as a teenager while under contract with MGM, it was Strickling who made that problem go away. Alana's first pregnancy would be terminated this way, in complete secrecy. And it was very traumatic and a very painful experience to her, not just physically, but emotionally. I guess she did go in initially to have the procedure done, and it wasn't done properly or it wasn't completed properly. She started to feel sick.

She had to go back in. And then that was a very painful, physically painful experience for her. And it took a little while for her to recover from that physically. Mentally and emotionally, I don't believe she ever recovered from it. But after she had physically recovered, Lana returned to Hollywood and business as usual, acting in Zegfield Girl, which she remembers was her best part up to that point in her career. So in 1941, Lana starred across from the legendary Clark Gable in the film Honky Tonk. And despite their 20-year age difference, it is alleged that the two had a kind of a flirtation and possibly that they had started an affair. Now, at that time, Gable was married to Carol Lombard, his third

wife, and allegedly the love of his life. Clark Gable was known for having a roving eye. I mean, he's married to Carol at this point. It's his third wife. But the chemistry on screen between himself and Lana was undeniable. And this caused rumors to swirl that, of course, inevitably reached his wife, Carol, who at that point was on a war bond tour in India. So Carol wanted to get home and confront her husband on set as soon as possible about this alleged affair with Lana Turner. So she flew from India back to the States. And then instead of taking a train from where she had flown to in the States to LA, she

wanted to get there fast. So she boarded a TWA flight and that plane crashed into Petoskey Mountain near Las Vegas, killing all 22 passengers and crew. So obviously, this is tragic, right? Because this woman, the reason she was even on that plane was because she thought her husband was having an affair and she wanted to get there and kind of catch him and Lana in the act or observe them on set.

And because of that, she was on this plane and it crashed and she died. Now, there's no direct evidence that Clark and Lana were actually having an affair. Lana denies it. But there is certainly evidence that Carol thought they were and that she decided to change her travel plans at the last minute so that she could address it. In her book, Lana wrote, quote, afterward, I heard a dreadful rumor that she had been scheduled to take the train but decided to fly instead. The reason the story had it was her uneasiness over my working with Clark, end quote. Once again, a series of emergencies, Lana's life, right? It's just tragedy after tragedy. It's honestly fascinating. Everyone has a story. But man, I'm sitting here and I'm writing all this down and I'm like, everything that this young woman has witnessed and experienced, it's amazing that

she's able to go on and do as much as she's done in life in spite of all the things she's endured or she's witnessed or been part of. It's pretty crazy. Well, I think it is a testament to a lot of these women who went through the golden age of Hollywood that like, yeah, they did all go through horrible things and they were treated horribly and they were treated as commodities. And they somehow, a lot of them managed to make it out and were able to reflect on that in the future. And I think became stronger for it. Maybe more hard, maybe more cold, but stronger. You've got to be to get through this stuff. I mean, they're badasses when you really think about it, the shit they experienced and how they just kept pushing on.

They're able to compartmentalize these things and stay focused, which isn't super healthy by the way. But yeah, they're bad ass though. I mean, not yet. Definitely not healthy. Wouldn't recommend, but different breed man. Back in the day, I hate to be that person back in the day, people were built differently, men and women included. I think that it just wasn't seen as a desirable thing to be a victim at that time, right? So you would never come out and tell your story and be like, this is what's happened to me. And I've been treated horribly. And I've just had tragedy after tragedy. You didn't want that vulnerability. You wanted to be seen as this perfect glittering, you know, example of what Hollywood was. You wanted to be admired. You

wanted people to look up to you and want to be you. You didn't want them to think, oh, she's had such a hard life. Like that was an embarrassment. At least that's what they felt at that time. Being vulnerable was an embarrassment. Yeah. I think it's even still that stigma is still true to this day to a certain degree. I feel that way, yeah. But back then it was, like you said, a whole different level.

If you were weak-minded or you were a trouble or a problem or tough to work, you're gone. Or it got out that someone had taken advantage of you. It wouldn't be like,

oh, someone took advantage of her. Poor girl. It'd be like, oh, how stupid was she? Right. I mean, it's still not, I'm not comparing the two. I'm not in Hollywood, but being in the TV space, that's why I enjoy podcasts so much. You and I have talked about

it a lot off record. I enjoy podcasting and doing the YouTube thing because we're our own bosses and we can be ourselves and we can make decisions and speak up when we don't like things because we have a partnership. But when you work for these bigger organizations, your representation of them. And I mean, any pushback is any pushback with what the structure of the show. I'm even talking more on a production level. Oh, you know, listen, we're going to cover this case. I think we should cover it this way. They're almost offended.

And then you get classified as difficult because you have an opinion that might differ from the party line. Yep. Yep. It's, it's still alive and well to this day. Oh, of course it is. Of course it is. Especially to this day when social media, once again, is so rampant and you see even things like, like Rachel Zegler, right. With everything that happened with snow white. That's the snow white thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like she's, she's out there like talking about her personal opinions and her personal viewpoints. And because of that, they, they do believe that, you know, the movie suffered and, and we got the studio heads flying out to her to like lecture her. Like, don't talk about your personal stuff. Like you're a representation of us. Just go out there and

smile, be Snow White, take your paycheck and go home. I'm pretty sure she said something like the first Snow White was like basically a guy stalking Snow White. Didn't she say something like that? I know. It's so weird. That to me, I mean, forget all the political stuff. She was like, it's not going to be a love story. You know, we don't care about the prince. Yeah, it's just.

That didn't go over well with a lot of people who are diehard like Disney fans. Well, Snow White was Disney's first like huge movie. It's like a very symbolic and emblematic thing for Disney. So yeah, it wasn't right. It wasn't nice to hear her come out and like be like, if that's Snow White was stupid, my Snow White's going to be better. Probably not good if you're promoting the movie.

Yeah. But you know, she's also 22, I think. So it's like, what do we really expect? She's basically a kid, especially 2025, 22 is like. Now, this is interesting because we're bringing it up for different reasons. But you kind of you kind of hit on something there, because although we don't necessarily agree with the idea, we just said we don't agree with the fact that she was saying the original movie was like she poo pooed on the original movie, but it is interesting with everything we're talking about tonight, because here is a young woman, 22 years old. So older than Lana, who has an opinion and decided to express that opinion. And because of it, now she's being viewed

as difficult. Now I'm not talking about what she actually said. This may not be the best example, but we do see it time and time again, specifically with women, where they decide to speak up and voice their opinion on a certain topic or issue and they're viewed as difficult to work with. No, they're often eviscerated for it. Well, what do they say? Freedom of speech, not freedom from the consequences of the speech. You're allowed

to say whatever you want but if you're you know you get canceled as a result of it or if people are like ew I don't want to hear you talking badly about Snow White like we're not going to go see your movie now there's also issues with them a lot of other issues there's so many more layers to Rachel like I said not the best example but we've seen other examples I can't think of anything off the top of my head right now, where again, predominantly it happens with a lot of women who are in this space, a male driven industry where when they don't do what they're told, or they decide to voice an opinion or dissent from what everyone else is saying, they may not get the next gig. They may not get the next job.

It's very much sit still, look pretty kind of thing. Yeah. See, this is my dad. This is the girl dad coming out of me again. That's why this case is tough for me. I guess we're talking about the context of Lana. We're not getting into the murder yet, but just the backstory I don't love. Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, I understand, especially in the time, the 1930s, the 1940s, being like, no, we cannot have our 21-year-old star who's on the rise getting pregnant out of wedlock. That's not, as far as what society deems as acceptable, that's not what we want to see. And the public will discard her for that, and they probably would have, right? So it's just the methods that they used to enforce these morality clauses, the methods they used to make these women fall in line were abusive and horrible. So I don't

think that that happens so much today where it's just like, okay, if you speak out on your social media and you say something and the public at large cancels you for it, it is what it is, but these studios aren't like forcing you to fly off and get an abortion. They're not like, you know. Yeah, it's not that extreme. Yeah, it's not that extreme. That we know of. Who knows?

Honestly, Hollywood. Maybe 20 years when we're doing Crime Weekly again, we'll be like, well, guess what? Yeah. Honestly, nothing surprised me with Hollywood. It's just a horrible place. So in July of 1942, Lana met her second husband, Joseph Stephen Crane. Crane was an actor and allegedly a businessman. And Lana said his looks and manner charmed her instantly. She wrote, quote, We chatted for hours. And by the

time he took me home, I was ready to fall in love with my weakness for a certain kind of good looks coupled with witty charm. I took him at face value. In no time we were a pair. Only three weeks later, he asked me to marry him. I did vaguely wonder why he was in such a rush. Like me, he had been married before, but when he proposed eloping to Las Vegas, though my inner voices were telling me to delay, I didn't want to listen. An amazing man, handsome and cultivated and clever, loved me, and I passionately wanted him too." So for several months, everything between Lana and Joseph Crane was butterflies and rainbows. Lana said that although she didn't know exactly what her new husband did for work, he never seemed to worry about money, and they were happy and he was lovely. And so when she found out that she was pregnant again, it was news that was received joyfully by them both. But then, five months into the marriage, Stephen Crane sat her down and gave her the news that he was technically and illegally still married to his first wife, making his marriage to Lana null and void, not a legal marriage.

So Lana became depressed and sick. She almost lost the baby that she was carrying. And the doctors, they suggested a therapeutic abortion because they were afraid that she would not be able to carry her child to term. Lana refused, writing in her book, quote, I loved that child before it was even formed. Every small sensation, every tiny spasm thrilled me as I imagined the cells coming together. A tiny hand, a tiny ear, an arm, a heart, a tiny perfect human being, end quote. This is important because the child that Lana was carrying would turn out to be her daughter, Cheryl Crane,

the daughter who would allegedly stab Johnny Stampanato to death when she was only 15 years old. Cheryl would be the only child Lana ever gave birth to, which has led to the famous Lana Turner statement, quote, I started off wanting one husband and seven children, but it ended up the other way around, end quote. So Lana and Stephen Crane would end up working things out. They waited until the divorce from his first wife was final, and then they got married again in February of 1943, this time legally. The following July, Cheryl was born. Even this could not be a completely happy experience for Lana because Cheryl was born with something called ethroblastosis. It's a very serious blood disorder in newborns that occurs when there is an incompatibility between the baby and the mother's blood type.

Lana had Rh negative blood. Cheryl was Rh positive. And this caused Lana's body to recognize her fetus as foreign and produce antibodies to attack and destroy it. This is why we have genetic testing today. So like every time I've been pregnant, you get tested to make sure that your blood type and the blood type of your fetus are compatible or you are going to have issues like this. And they have medication and things you can take now to prevent this from happening. They basically lower your immune system so it doesn't attack your baby. But there's ways to fix it now, but back then there was not. So honestly, the fact that Cheryl survived this

is actually pretty impressive. That is, yeah. Miracle. Your body's rejecting it the whole time and yet. Well, Cheryl was born with some health issues. She had to stay in the hospital for months until she was strong enough to be sent home with her mother. And the relationship between Lana and Cheryl would be ever evolving and complicated. We're going to talk more about that in another episode. But eventually, Lana had found out that her husband, Stephen Crane, Cheryl's father, he had misrepresented himself in more ways than one. Initially, he told Lana that he was a businessman. He was in the tobacco business. He had family money. But then Lana kind of realized, hey, I'm paying for everything. I'm always the one paying for things. If he's got all this tobacco family money, where's it at? And after they got married

for the second time and after they already had Cheryl, Stephen took Lana to his hometown of Crawfordsville, Indiana, and Lana found out that his family did have a business. It was the Stephenson Crane Cigar Store. So basically, they just owned like a tobacco store and they weren't in the tobacco business. They did not have money. And Crane had married his first wife while he managed that store. But then he and his younger brother, Billy, went on a trip to Mexico City and they stopped over in L.A. And I guess Crane was like, oh, I love L love LA. All the women are beautiful. Everyone has money. I'm going to be a famous actor. So two years later, he abandoned his new wife and he

went back to Hollywood to try to be an actor in 1931. And he got some small parts in B movies, but his best acting job was pretending to be some tobacco heir so that he could snag Lana Turner as his wife. Crane had no money. He had no job. And on top of that, he had a gambling problem. He would often go out at night and not return until the next morning. He had no interest in contributing to his household or his family in any substantial way. And Lana was getting fed up. In her book, she wrote, quote, when I came home tired from the set, I would usually find him slouched in an armchair wearing elegant silk pajamas drinking coffee. He was really rubbing it in. My respect for him declined daily, and love was dwindling with it.

I guess it's not easy for an unemployed man to be married to a star. End quote. Damn, those dynamics are very difficult, and maybe it was kind of like that with Lana's parents and maybe that's why Virgil ended up leaving his wife and his daughter because he was like how can this my wife respect me you know eventually she's just gonna kind of see me as like a scrub and and I can't be around when that happens well clearly it was something that Steven was self-conscious about I guess I mean obviously not if she's coming home from set and he's like sitting there in silk pajamas, drinking coffee, not doing shit. At that point. But he was putting on this, this basically creating this mirage that he was something he wasn't for a while.

So he could get her to marry him and have access to her money. Right. And then after he kind of said, oh, well, no need to keep that. That's thing going. I'm locked in. You're mine now. I am who I am, man. What a diabolical move. I know locked in. You're mine now. I am who I am, man. What a diabolical move.

I know, dude. Oh, I know. I know. And it happens a lot, by the way. I'm in the... I'm in the tobacco business. I'm in the finance industry. I feel like a teller at a bank.

My family works at a credit union. Yeah. Yeah. So he wasn't the worst of her husbands. Okay. And later, with Lana's help, Stephen Crane would become a very famous and successful restaurateur. He'd opened up his own restaurant. And I think that Lana really had an interest in seeing him do that because she cared about him and because they had a child together. And she wanted, I guess, to be able to be proud of the man that she shared a

child with. And she wanted her daughter, Cheryl, to be able to look at her father as a self-made man who ran his own business and was able to take care of himself and of his daughter. So Lana helped Stephen Crane start a very successful restaurant later, which I give her a lot of respect for. Yeah. I mean, she's impressive. Like I said, I've been saying a couple of times this episode, what she's been through, how she utilized what she had to get where she wanted to be. You talked about the very beginning of this episode early on, her dream was to be an actress and, and, and she was, she was seeing a lot of the actresses and wanting to emulate them. And she found her own path. And not only that, she's clearly got some good business sense.

She's done the right moves. She's made the right connections and got it to where she wanted to be. And yes, she was a pretty face for sure. But there was a lot of pretty faces out there that didn't make it. So it's more than just looking a certain way. Yeah, she had presence.

Presence, obviously talent, but also just from a business sense, like understanding the people around you and how to use them or manipulate them, if you will, to get what you want. Because yes, they were using her, but she was using them as well. Yeah, exactly. And I think at that point, as a young woman, you kind of figure it out. Who do I have to be and what do I have to do to get these people who have the power to let me in, to let me get some of that. Right. And, and what other choice did you have at that point? Let me get some of that. Let me get some of that. Let me

get some of this money. Let me get some of this fame. Yeah. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Right. All right. So Lana asked Stephen Crane for a divorce. Crane got upset. He basically refused. He was like, no, we're not getting divorced. They argued. He told her to think of their child. And he was like, listen, I'm not going to let you go. Like, I'm just not going to let you do this. And this went on for months. And she's like, what the hell? She's like, I don't understand how you can stand in front of somebody and be like, I don't want to be with you. And they're like, I don't care. You're going to be with me. So eventually, Lana was like, I just made up a lie. And I told

him I was in love with someone else. And he was pissed. And he threw things. And it didn't go very well. But at least that got him to leave the house. That pride, that ego death got him to kind of move on. So the divorce happened in April of 1944. And like I said, as tumultuous and full of lies the marriage had been, Lana and Stephen Crane remained on good terms. They raised their child together. Eventually, she'd help him open his first restaurant where he would go on to find success in his own right. The following year, after her divorce, Lana became one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood. And her relationship options began to widen from fake tobacco heirs to real ones. So between her second and third marriage, Lana actually fell in love with a man

named Tyrone Power. Now, her relationship with Tyrone was one of the most tender and genuinely romantic chapters of her tumultuous life. They met in the early 1940s when they were both in their prime. Tyrone was already a widely popular star at 20th Century Fox, known for his dashing good looks and brooding charm. The two were instantly drawn to each other, not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. Unlike many of Lana's lovers, Powers treated her with deep affection and gentle protectiveness, and for a time she believed that he was the one. They were frequently seen out together, often dining, dancing, even double dating with close friends like Cesar Romero. But despite their chemistry and true feelings for one another,

their relationship was complicated by studio politics, public pressure, and timing. Powers was constantly working, and he was still entangled emotionally with French actress Annabelle Power. So studio heads reportedly discouraged the match, and both stars had demanding careers pulling them in different directions. Lana later recalled that while they had never made any official commitment, she loved Tyrone deeply and carried the pain of their parting for many years. Although Tyrone told Lana he did not want to get married, she held out hope that their strong connection would eventually change his mind. And during their relationship, Lana fell

pregnant again, and she desperately wanted to have this baby because of how much she loved him. But Tyrone told her it was not the right time, and she had another abortion. He was sent overseas during World War I for two months, and the night before he left, Lana threw him a $10,000 going away party. She genuinely thought, like, okay, he'll take some time, he'll do this tour, he'll come back, we'll pick up where we left off. But during their time apart, their communication faded, and then Lana received news that the man she loved more than anything in the world had wanted to get married. Just not to her. He had married another actress who he had a run-in with while they were both in Europe, and Lana never recovered from this genuine heartbreak. But she also never said a bad word about him publicly. Like, she never spoke

badly about him. And this has to hurt, right? You're with somebody, you feel like this is a great genuine connection, physical, mental, emotional, everything's vibing, and he's like, listen, I love you, I'm with you, I just don't want to get married. And she's like, all right, he doesn't want to get married. I do, but I accept this as long as I can have him in any capacity. And then he goes away for two months and comes back married. Like what? What? That's a hit to your self-esteem unlike anything else. It reminds me of, you've probably never seen it, but like Sex and the City, Carrie and Beg, and how Carrie and Beg had this like situationship for years and he was always like oh i'm not a committed man like i don't want to get married and then he goes away and comes back with like a 24 year old wife you know and carrie's like what the hell so it's very it's a

huge blow it's a huge blow because and it's going to tell somebody like, Lana, it doesn't matter how rich you are, how successful you are, how famous you are. Your picture could be on the locker of every single soldier in America. This man didn't want you. And it wasn't because he just didn't want anybody. He didn't want you. And that has to hurt. It has to hurt. I mean, I don't care who you are.

Yeah, that hurts. That stinks. So Lana, but she never really, she never talked about him poorly. She never had a bad word to say about him. And then in 1958, Lana found out that Tyrone Power had died from a heart attack and she was absolutely devastated. Like it was the same day that she had known him and that they were still together. She was heartbroken.

She wrote in her book, quote, in my life, I loved other men, but Tyrone was special. He was the one who broke my heart, end quote. So we are getting through Lana's list of romantic partners. We have a few more to go, but before we move on, let's have our last break. Lana was heartbroken about Tyrone Power, but she's also a woman who knows how to compartmentalize, I want to know what's going on. She has fans. She has a career. She's got to pick herself up. So within 48 hours of her breakup from Tyrone Powers, Lana flew to New York in order to distract herself and escape from her pain. And she found this distraction in a man named Henry Topping Jr., tin plates, steel, tobacco, banks, and railroads. And $140 million back then is like, I don't even know, a ridiculous, stupid amount of money. So Topping had been pursuing Lana for a while. He would send her flowers and candy to her dressing room. He showered her with expensive gifts. And this is when she's enthralled with

Tyrone Power, right? So to her, Henry Topping is just this guy and he likes her like so many others, but she's in love. So she doesn't even seem to notice. But then she goes to New York and the two connected and they met for the first time. And it seemed that after such a heart-wrenching experience with loving Tyrone Power, Topping was a safe bet. Lana wrote in her book, quote, when he picked me up at the plaza, he didn't exactly bowl me over. He was ordinary looking and slightly overweight. He had the easy, friendly manner, though, of one born to wealth, and he seemed pleasant enough company for one evening. By the time the limousine came, I hadn't learned much about him except that he was called Bob instead of Henry, end quote. Maybe Lana also saw someone who, like herself,

was looking for love in all the wrong places. Henry, or Bob, had been married four times. His last wife, Arlene Judge, had previously been married to Bob's brother, Dan, who owned the New York Yankees. And as Bob embarked on his first date with Lana, he was still married to Arlene. Lana, having been in this position before,

didn't want to get too involved with another married man, but Bob assured her it was over, the divorce was imminent. So Lana said by the time Bob asked her to marry him, she was growing fond of him and his elegant lifestyle, but she plainly told him that she didn't love him, to which he replied, quote, you will, end quote. One night, Lana fished a 15-carat marquee diamond ring out of the bottom of her martini glass. It was Bob proposing to her, and Lana said yes. One thing that her relationship with Bob gave Lana was some empowerment to sort of stand up for herself with MGM when it came to the types of roles they were giving her. She said she didn't feel as pressured to say yes to everything because she'd be financially stable as Bob's wife.

And so she refused to take anything less than a starring role or a role that she passionately and genuinely wanted to do. Her fiance, Bob, was always on set supporting her and cheering her on. But this brought the attention of his soon-to-be ex-wife, Arlene Judge, who told the tabloids, quote, he won't get a divorce from me for any money. I'll ruin him first. End quote. Damn, Arlene. Ar't get a divorce from me for any money. I'll ruin him first, end quote. Damn, Arlene. Arlene, you were married to his brother before.

Like, don't you have enough money from divorce settlements? Crazy that his brother was the owner of the Yankees. That's insane. Now, Arlene eventually caved and the divorce was finalized. And it did appear that there was a sum of money that she was willing to take. And they got divorced in April of 1948. This opened the path for Lana and Bob to tie the knot. And because Lana had already had her share of shotgun weddings, she wanted to

do it right this time. She said, quote, this time I wanted a traditional wedding gown, flowers, a reception, and a perfect honeymoon, a beautiful celebration with our good friends present, end quote. The wedding was beautiful. The honeymoon was beautiful. And Lana was soon pregnant. They would spend time at Bob's family estate, Round Hill. They made trips to New York for Yankees game, which they would view from the owner's private box. They took expensive vacations. They yachted around the Mediterranean. Bob Topping may have loved Lana, but surprise, surprise, he had his own issues.

And one of those was he was a big-time alcoholic. The phrase, the honeymoon was over, really applied here because once they returned to real life, Bob began drinking heavily. And Lana said, quote, Bob moved into another world. Among people, a breed apart. They all had money, only it hadn't come from working but from inheritances and family fortunes. They had no obligations and spent most of their time in idleness or in the pursuit of pleasure. Not that I envied them, I simply found them hard to understand, end quote. So Lana becomes pregnant with Bob's child, and when she was six months pregnant, she went into

preterm labor. The baby was stillborn, and this obviously affected Lana heavily, as did the growing realization that the lavish lifestyle she and Bob were leading would eventually become too much, even in the light of his inheritance. I guess Bob was spending money like it was literally water, right? And then Lana kind of realized,

hey, he used to pay for everything, but now I'm going over like my books and it feels like I'm paying for a lot of stuff. Yeah, why does it feel like my bank account's going down? Yeah, she's like, what's going on? And it was lavish. And even her mom, because Lana's mom, Mildred, would end up moving in with her and helping her take care of Cheryl and stuff. And Lana's mom was like, what the hell, man?

This is insane, the amount of money this guy's spending on your dime. And Lana was like, well, we're married. But at the same time, he's an heir to a huge multi-million, which today would be like billions of dollars. Where's it all going? Well, the inheritance was split between himself and his other brothers, and he never actually did anything with it. He never invested it. He didn't try to start his own business. He just spent it, spent it, spent it. Of course, it's going to run out. And then he was like, well, my wife has money. Let me spend some of that. So Lana eventually talked to Bob about his drinking and spending, and he would become

very defensive. And so they would start having violent arguments. He would storm out of the house. And Lana said that at that point, she had come to love Bob Topping, just like he promised her. But she also realized that she was in love with an alcoholic. So that sucks. And Lana eventually hired a private investigator, found out that her husband had been pretty much routinely unfaithful. Bob Topping would storm out one night. She'd get word from his attorney that he wanted a divorce. So she took a bunch of pills and slit her wrists. She had cut a tendon, and the doctor had to stretch her veins in order to sew them back

together because they had retreated so much. And she said, as Dr. McDonald, who lived close to her, this guy, I guess, lived in the same neighborhood, so they didn't bring her to the hospital. Of course not. That would have looked bad, right? If you have doctors and nurses at the hospital, Lana Turner tried to kill herself. Oh, no. Now the papers know. The tabloids know. So they called this guy, Dr. McDonald, who lived in the neighborhood. He came to the house because her family had found her in a pool of blood in her bathroom. And Dr. McDonald kind of, I don't know, I guess gave her a little wake-up call. Lana wrote, quote, I listened as he scolded me,

telling me how much I had to live for, how many people loved me, how my sufferings were terrible, yes, but other people suffered too. I was lucky to have a beautiful daughter. I was blessed with talents and the means to support myself well. Slowly, I began to feel ashamed.

I cried quietly for what seemed like hours. And when I exhausted my tears, I felt a sense of hope, a stiffening of the spirit, end quote. And Lana's had to stiffen her spirit multiple times before. So she mourned and she was sad for another failure, another tragedy, another loss of what she thought was love. And then she moved on. But sadly, Lana's next husband would deal the darkest blow yet, not just to her, but to her daughter, Cheryl. Lex Barker stood at six foot four, the epitome of a Hollywood leading man known best for his

recurring role of Tarzan. Not only was he an actor who was like literally, I think it was like five or six Tarzan movies because he was the Tarzan for a while. But he also had, you know, apparently good, good roots. He came from a good family. He had been educated at Princeton. He was a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Rhode Island. Hey, shout out. Right. Shout out to Roger Williams. Well, not Lex sucks, but he had already been married once. He had two children. You know, it seemed like they were kind of on the same level already been married once. He had two children. You know, it seemed like they were kind of on the same level. He was smart.

He had a good background. He wasn't just some like kind of nobody who came to Hollywood and made it. He had the breeding. He had the everything that she wanted. And they began their courtship. And once again, Lana eventually felt safe enough to fall in love again. In her book, she wrote, quote, I began seeing Lex often. I discovered that this huge, handsome man had a fine mind and the kind of sense of humor

that I appreciated. Our tastes in books and music seemed to match. He was in excellent physical shape, a fine golfer and an expert swimmer. Soon he began occupying most of my free time. I fell in love again, slowly at first, but surely. End quote. So Lana decided to marry him because she said in those days you just didn't have long-term relationships without marriage. And they tied the knot in Italy on September 8th, 1953.

Now Lex's first wife was also getting married again. So she asked him if he would take their two children for a year. And so Lana had another wing added to her house on Mapleton Drive in California to accommodate their growing family. They would even get a German shepherd puppy named Polko, who in a crazy weird side story, would attack a young Liza Minnelli. So Liza lived with her mother, Judy Garland, in the same neighborhood as Lana. And this dog attacked little Liza and kind of just like went at her and took her down. Liza ended up needing 21 stitches on her leg. And apparently, it just did not really make things very super warm between Lana and Judy Garland, which is sad

because these two women should have been very close friends. They went through a lot of the same things. But anyways, Lana would become pregnant again with Lex's child. And again, seven months in, she gave birth to a stillborn child. This, along with rumors that Lex was having flirtations with other women, caused more emotional turmoil in Lana. And in her book, Lana claims this is why they would get a divorce. But Cheryl Crane tells a different story. We've quoted from Lana Turner's biography many times so far, but in adulthood, Cheryl wrote her own book. I have it right here. It's called Detour, A Hollywood Story. All right, right here. It's a very good read.

So Cheryl writes her own book, and in it, she claims that her stepfather, Lex Barker, repeatedly molested and raped her during the three years that he was married to her mother. The abuse began when she was just 10 years old. And according to Cheryl, she had told her mother about what had been happening when she was 13. Were you raped and sexually abused by Lex Barker, the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan replacement? Yes. Who was married to your mother. Yes, that's correct.

At the pool. Well, it started there, yes, when I was 10 and a half. And how long did this go on? Almost three years. So we have a legacy here. I mean, how much therapy have you been in? I've been in no therapy. You've done this all by yourself?

Yes. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. You know, we've talked a lot about Lana in a positive light for the most part. I've kind of given her credit for... Being strong? Growing up in an industry and overcoming a lot of adversities to get where she was and to have as much success as she did.

But as much as I am going to give her credit, I'm also going to knock her a little bit here. I know we still have a couple more sentences to go, but before we get there, we've seen some things here, a pattern of behavior. And I do think that Lana is probably a product of her environment, the way she grew up, what she experienced, what she witnessed, definitely contributed to maybe some of the decisions she made down the road. And maybe because of the conditions she was under, she felt this need to have the love and affection from a man in order to feel some type of worth. Seven times she was married, eight times she was married, seven different men. Seven different men, eight times married. She was married to Stephen Crane twice. Yeah. And on top of that, you have multiple pregnancies. You had a suicide attempt. So clearly, although I've given Lana a lot of credit, she's not without her own demons.

And this is such a slippery slope to cover because you have someone here who's an adult in this clip saying, yeah, not only was I molested, but according to the book, not necessarily in this clip, her mother knew about it. And if that's true, and you've listened to our channel for any period of time, then you know our opinions on Lana and her decision to keep that quiet and not do something about it.

Well, she didn't not do anything about it. I just think that Lana- Okay, maybe I shouldn't get too far ahead. Lana never, well, no, you're absolutely right. And we're going to get more into this in the second episode when we talk about Cheryl and Lana's relationship. And this is going to have a lot to do with how Johnny Stompanato ended up. But according to Cheryl, Cheryl says that Lana confronted Lex with this information. She held a gun to his head.

She told him to get out, right? In Lana's book, there's no mention of this. It's just like, ah, things didn't work out. So yes, this is probably not something Lana wanted to be public knowledge. Correct. And Cheryl doesn't come out and talk about this until after her mother's dead. I believe her 100 million percent, okay? There's no incentive not to.

There's no incentive. She loved her mother. I believe her 100 million percent. Okay. There's no incentive not to. There's no incentive. She loved her mother. She admired her mother to the point where allegedly she stabbed a man because she thought her mother was in danger when she was just 15. So you go through the sexual abuse at the age of 10 and a half for three years. Yep. Up till about 13 years old. Then at 15, you kill your mother's other boyfriend.

Allegedly. No therapy. No therapy. Okay. Not because after what happened with the sexual abuse, basically, and we're going to get into this more, but basically Lana and Mildred, so Cheryl's mother and grandmother were just like, listen, this is something that happens. Like you just got to, you don't talk about it. You just got to get over it. You just got to get over it. And obviously, no, that's not going to happen. You're not going to just get over it. It's going to become insidious and it's going to cause problems just like Lana, which we've all both given her flowers for compartmentalizing and being able to get through these things and continue

working. But compartmentalizing is not processing. So that's why Lana continued to make the same mistakes over and over again, because she was getting through it, but she wasn't processing it. So she was going to find herself in a Groundhog Day situation over and over and over again with the same type of man wearing a different face, right? Kind of a man like her father. So this is obviously where in that time, you didn't get therapy. You didn't talk about your problems. You grinned and bared it. You gritted your teeth. You got through it.

But then we have these actresses like Judy Garland, like Lana Turner, turning to alcohol, drugs, all of these things to cope with all these mental health issues that they did not process because they had to smile for the camera and the show had to go on. And it's very, very sad. It is. It's sad. And I'll reserve judgment. I was going to go on. And it's very, very sad. It is. It's sad. And I'll reserve judgment. I was going to go off on a tangent there.

I am glad that I let you kind of finish that little paragraph out there because it does change it slightly where, according to Cheryl, Lana did confront Lex, which is great. But then also told her daughter like, hey, you just got to get over this. Yeah. I mean, listen, without being there, I'm not saying that's right, obviously. I'm not condoning it. But I think it might have been the way Lana was brought up where she went through a lot of things and it's more of like tough love.

I don't know. I don't want to sit here and defend Lana. I don't know if she was doing it because of her own self-serving reasons, because of the optics of it and the imagery it could present to her and any future businesses that she would be involved in, or if she was doing it because that's the way she was raised. I think it's probably a little bit of both. And once again, how could we expect anything different from Lana? Like her father dies. She's completely traumatized by this. Nobody's like, how do you feel about this? You's talk about it. Your feelings matter. She's at this person's house, Julia Hislop, getting beat within an inch of her life. Hey, we're just going to leave. We're not going to do anything. We're going to tell

Julia off and then we're going to leave. We're going to move on. You forget about it, right? Like things are constantly happening to her and then she has to just move on and forget it. So how would she instruct her daughter to do anything else? In her head, she's like, okay, you're going to become a young woman. And like me, you're just going to have to accept that this is how it is. People do bad things to you, but you can't let it get to you and you can't let it stop you. Yeah, because Lana's definitely had some bad things done to her. There's no doubt about it.

So fascinating story. Fascinating story so far. Man, that's a lot of exposition just to get to where we're going to get to, which is obviously the murder of Stompanato. So you, and you did say that, that Cheryl stabbed Stompanato, but that's alleged, right? We don't know for certain. There was a trial. She said she did. Lana said she did. But, but, but the first calls out of that house were not to the police, okay? The first call in the crime scene was moved around

and maybe positioned in a sort of way to make it look a sort of way, so. So we don't know if she did or not. There's questions as to whether or not she did. Interesting, interesting. No, I'm looking forward to diving into it. Obviously, we gotta go through it. We have to, we're talking about these figures, when it comes in the context of a crime,

the best way to understand their motives, their agendas, what they're capable of is to understand their past. So this is very important and critical information because when we think about the relationship between Cheryl and Lana, that could be a contributing factor to what eventually happens, especially with what you're laying out here. So I think it's important that we went this route to understand who these individuals are as people to potentially understand what they're capable of and what they would do to protect someone they love. Yeah. And I do think there was this feeling between Lana and Cheryl as in like, you know, people come and go, men come and go. Right. We protect each other. We have each other's backs. I agree with that. I think that, yeah, I agree with it. I think, as I said earlier,

yes, there were a lot of men using Lana throughout her life for whatever reason. The real joke was she was also using them she was also using them to get where she wanted to get to she knew what they were doing i don't think she was using them i think she wanted to be in love and so i'm not talking about the men she married oh i'm talking about industry oh yeah i'm talking about knowing that they were sexualizing her doing whatever they're doing and them thinking that she's just an object to be kind of pushed around and utilized in a way that suits their needs. She was aware of what was going on. She was allowing it to happen because she had a goal too. So it was a, it was, I think obviously she probably would have liked it to be another way,

but she knew what she had to do to get to where she wanted to be. So as much as they thought they were in the driver's seat, ultimately Lana accomplished her goal professionally, at least now, emotionally, romantically. I do think that goes back to her childhood where you can be very successful in a professional manner, but still struggle emotionally because of your upbringing and what you experienced and maybe not getting what you needed as a child to have that area of your life in a place you want it to be. But like you said, it did seem like she was looking for it. She just never found it. She never did. Well, she, yeah, she thought she did, but thought she did multiple times.

It's very sad. Yes. Well, that's where we're going to end today. That's where we're going to end today. Well, let us know what you guys think so far going into part two. What do you think about this dynamic? What do you think about this relationship? We covered a lot of things, not necessarily related to the crime, but the dynamics of not only Hollywood, but the industry as it sits today, entertainment in general, specifically as it relates to women. What are your thoughts on all this? I think it's a really interesting conversation to have. We'd love to hear your opinions on it. We will be back next week with part two. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. Talk to you soon. Bye.