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  • A Murder in Hollywood

  • The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime
  • By: Casey Sherman
  • Narrated by: Casey Sherman
  • Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (4 ratings)

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A Murder in Hollywood

By: Casey Sherman
Narrated by: Casey Sherman
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Summary

The dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown

From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all—a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over. Eventually, the physical and emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted to break it off with Johnny—with disastrous consequences. The details of what happened that fateful night remain foggy, but it ended in a series of frantic phone calls and Stompanato dead on Lana's bedroom floor, with Cheryl claiming to have plunged a knife into his abdomen in an attempt to protect her mother. The subsequent murder trial made for the biggest headlines of the year, its drama eclipsing every Hollywood movie.

New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman pulls back Tinseltown's velvet curtain to reveal the dark underbelly of celebrity, rife with toxic masculinity and casual violence against women, and tells the story of Lana Turner and her daughter, who finally stood up to the abuse that plagued their family for years. A Murder in Hollywood transports us back to the golden age of film and illuminates one of the 20th century's most notorious true crime tales.

“A must-read for fans of true crime and Hollywood history, A Murder in Hollywood never disappoints! Casey Sherman deftly serves just the right mix of glamour, glitz, and grit to keep the reader turning pages. It’s a stunner from start to finish.”—Kristin Dilley, cohost of the Mind over Murder podcast

©2024 Casey Sherman (P)2024 Recorded Books
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Fascinating book

I love books on old movie stars. This was well narrated and the content did not disappoint me. Really enjoyed the book and would highly reccommend

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Imitation of Life

There seems to be a lot of padding in this book, mostly about the lives of criminals on the periphery of this story, such as Bugsy Siegel and Micky Cohen. Stompanato doesn't even meet Lana until chapter 20. It's an interesting story when we finally get there, but if I'm honest, it's been told better elsewhere. The retelling of the relationship between Lana and Stompanato seems almost pantomime in its determination to paint Stompanato as a mustache-twirling villain, complete with cringeworthy dialogue between the two that reads like 50s pulp fiction, and comes across as inauthentic as something rehearsed by Lana's lawyers. Nobody is claiming that Stompantato was a saint, but history is written by the victors, and as such, nobody but Cheryl will ever know what really happened that night of April 4, 1958. Entertaining story, but this book just reads like fan fiction.

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