Movie Star & the Mobster

It was a rainy evening on April 4, 1958. Inside the master bedroom of a rented home at 730 North Bedford Drive a couple argued violently while a young 14-year-old listened in fear at the door. Fearing for her mother’s safety and armed with a knife, as the door opened she rushed in, stabbing her mother’s boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, to death. It was Good Friday. Movie Star & the Mobster goes behind the dark and stormy relationship of movie goddess Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato, would-be bodyguard and go-to guy for Los Angeles mob king Micky Cohen. Taken from court transcripts, police reports, and autopsy findings, Movie Star and the Mobster at long last pieces together the details behind the volatile romance between Lana and Johnny and the circumstances of that fateful evening. From the night of the killing to the frantic attempts to save Johnny’s life, the trip to the police station, the inquest and media circus, the story goes beyond the tragedy to explain how Lana Turner’s life and career recovered from the tragedy, but would forever be linked to the scandal. With rare photographs and new details on the chronology of events one of Hollywood’s most fascinating and enduring scandals is uncovered. The book won both the New York and Hollywood Book Festivals in 2016 for Best General Non Fiction book of the year.