Where Love Has Gone
With such a high profile relationship and subsequent murder it wasn't long before Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato's relationship soon became the topic for a handful of Hollywood movies.
Where Love Has Gone
In 1962, four years after the case of Johnny Stompanato's death was closed, Harold Robbins published the novel Where Love Has Gone which drew parallels between events surrounding the Mob enforcer and the Hollywood queen.
Just two years later the novel was adapted for the big screen by John Michael Hayes and directed by Edward Dmytryk. The film stared Susan Hayward and Bette Davis.
Susan Hayward plays Valerie Miller, an old-moneyed nymphomaniac sculptress whose marriage to alcoholic husband Luke (Michael Connors) has crumbled, leaving their daughter, Danielle (Joey Heatherton), traumatised.
When one of Valerie's string of lovers (Anthony Caruso) becomes abusive, Danielle kills him, and the resulting murder trial/custody battle becomes the sensation of San Francisco. Bette Davis stars as the stern, manipulative matriarch of the clan who does whatever it takes to save the family name.
September
Woody Allen was the next to incorporate the story into his movie in 1987 when he released September starring Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest.
In a serene Vermont country house, six people share their dreams, their fears, and their desires, as secrets are revealed and trusts broken. The cast is led by Mia Farrow, who plays Lane, a woman who has never fully dealt with a long-ago shooting.
Elaine Stritch plays Diane, Lane's mother, who never stops talking about her wild past spent with movie stars and gangsters; she is married to Lloyd (Jack Warden), a physicist with a gloomy view of the future of the universe. Sam Waterston plays Peter, a divorced writer wanna-be who loves Stephanie (Dianne Wiest),
The film suggested that the Lana Turner/Cheryl Crane story was all a fabrication to the police with the line by Lane
"You're the one who pulled the trigger! I just said what the lawyers told me to say!"
Thus revealing that Diane was actually the one who shot her abusive lover. Presumably, Diane's lawyers thought it would be better if Lane took the fall, as she would be treated leniently.
Johnny Stompanato
The title speaks for itself the 2008 indie movie didn't really see the light of day but it did tell the story of the violent relationship between the pair that resulted in Stompanato's death.
Starring Zambuto and Maureen Lavette the film looks at Cheryl Crane, who was acquitted of murdering Stompanato in defence of her mother, suggesting that it was actually Turner who wielded the knife with Cheryl taking the fall.
Despite another project based on the infamous stogy with Keanu Reeves and Catherine Zeta Jones in the main roles but the project seems to have been shelved.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw