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A review by mindsplinters
A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman
informative
sad
medium-paced
3.5
Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an Advanced Reader Copy - pub date 2/13/2024. Lana Turner was gorgeous and talented and rich and had the absolute worst taste in men. We're talking Go On Jerry Springer And Hang Your Head As The Audience Hoots taste. But she was scrappy and determined and has given us both one heck of a movie catalog and one of the Great Classic Hollywood Scandals... Involving a man, of course.
The author chose to approach the death of Johnny Stompanato from two sides, setting the format of this book as a sort of v, two lines converging to that fatal night and its fall-out. On one side, you have Lana Turner, formerly Julia Jean Turner, coming from poverty and a broken home and a father's unsolved murder to become the famous Sweater Girl, then the most glamourous actress, then, against all odds of the time, an independent woman with her own production company - paving the way for the likes of Marilyn Monroe (who, ironically, she gave advice to when Monroe was still young and new). On the other side, you have the mob and gangsters and the likes of Mickey Cohen, Johnny Stompanato's boss and buddy. Following this structure, the reader gets a really layered look at the various levels of Hollywood and how the worlds overlapped and interacted.
The book was well written and well researched and I really enjoyed the two prong approach. That said, every so often, there were points where it suddenly felt less like non-fiction and more like a would-be novel. Some of the rumor and hear-say presented as factual as the actual facts and some things handed to the reader as This Is What Happened. Plus a little redundancy in places but you can't fault the author for that when Lana's dating history is filled with a lot of abuse and cover-up. Blame the times and you understand why she avoided going to the police - even if every fiber of you screams at her to get a PFA immediately.
The author chose to approach the death of Johnny Stompanato from two sides, setting the format of this book as a sort of v, two lines converging to that fatal night and its fall-out. On one side, you have Lana Turner, formerly Julia Jean Turner, coming from poverty and a broken home and a father's unsolved murder to become the famous Sweater Girl, then the most glamourous actress, then, against all odds of the time, an independent woman with her own production company - paving the way for the likes of Marilyn Monroe (who, ironically, she gave advice to when Monroe was still young and new). On the other side, you have the mob and gangsters and the likes of Mickey Cohen, Johnny Stompanato's boss and buddy. Following this structure, the reader gets a really layered look at the various levels of Hollywood and how the worlds overlapped and interacted.
The book was well written and well researched and I really enjoyed the two prong approach. That said, every so often, there were points where it suddenly felt less like non-fiction and more like a would-be novel. Some of the rumor and hear-say presented as factual as the actual facts and some things handed to the reader as This Is What Happened. Plus a little redundancy in places but you can't fault the author for that when Lana's dating history is filled with a lot of abuse and cover-up. Blame the times and you understand why she avoided going to the police - even if every fiber of you screams at her to get a PFA immediately.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Bullying, and Sexual violence