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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (April 7, 1958)
Turner Case Gives Geisler Challenge Hollywood v The case jf Lana Turner's 14-year-old Jaughter provided a new chal lenge to Jerry Giesler, Holly wood's most famous attorney snd regarded by many as one of its finest courtroom per formers. The portly, balding Giesler will represent Cheryl Turner, who killed her mother's form er gangland boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, Friday night in Beverly Hills. Giesler, who has figured in many of the most spectacular court cases in filmland his tory, had little to, say about Flights of Fancy Wherever your flight of fancy takes you, you'll never be bet ter dressed than you are when your feet are cradled in dalsan Flights. Ask for a test flight, very soon. Available Only at Johnston & Stewart Main & Central Medford the Turner case, except that he regarded it as "justifiable homicide" and "there is no justification for a trial." Giesler's career as one of the West's leading criminal attorney has spanned nearly half a century. During that time he has gone to court and won cases for such clients as comedian Charlie Chaplin, director Busby Berkeley, and actor Errol Flynn. The attorney also has rep resented such prominent act resses as Marilyn Monroe and Bette Davis in divorce cases. But he once was quoted on the subject of divorce as saying divorces were too easy to ob tain. Word Is Law Giesler's word was law for the stars he represented, even to the point of having them remain silent. When he gave that advice to actress Shelley Winters, she paid him the tri bute "He can out-act any actor in town." Giesler has a standing rule "never to refuse an anony mous phone call. I never per mit my switchboard to ask who's calling while I'm on a big case.Sometimes you learn information that is extremely valuable. "It's the breaks you get that have a lot to do with a law suit." Giesler's list of clients reads like a who's who in Holly wood. But he also has rep resented such notorious char acters as the late Bugsy Siegel when he was charged with Huntington Youth Dies From Injuries Boise HP) Lloyd Eugene Faircloth, 18, Huntington, Ore., died in a Boise hospital Sunday of injuries suffered Saturday afternoon when a Jeep in which he was a pas senger left Fox creek road 15 miles east of Huntington and overturned. Three other teen agers in the Jeep, one of them the vic tim's sister, Elizabeth, es caped serious injury. State police said the vehi cle went over a 20-foot embankment. murder and the late great attorney Clarence Darrow when he was charged with taking a bribe while defend ing accused saboteurs of a Los Angeles newspaper building. There have been accasions when Giesler decided against court trials, including the case of producer Walter Wanger, when the latter was charged with shooting agent Jennings Lang. Wanger went to jail. As he said of other cases, Giesler said one reason the Wanger matter didn't come to trial was that "no good could have come of a sensational trial over a small sentence." In other cases, however, Giesler used all his courtroom techniques to win cases for Berkeley accused of man slaughter after a 1935 auto accident and Chaplin, who faced a morals charge. In the Chaplin case, feel ing was high against the comedian before the trial. But when the jury returned a ver dict acquitting Chaplin, the crowd in the courtroom cheered. DISTRAUGHT Actress Lana Turner sobs as she arrives at police station in Beverly Hills, Calif., where her daughter, Cheryl, 14, was booked for murder of Lana's underworld boy friend. 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THE CALIFORNIA OREGON POWER COMPANY A Western Cempaey earned oM operated ky Western People OTP Bad Luck Dogs Star, Throughout Career Hollywood OP) Lana Turner, moviedom's original sweater girl who was billed for years as "the most flaming siar since Clara Bow." has been dogged by personal mis fortune during her 21 years in the Hollywood limelight. At 38, Miss Turner has been married five times, to four husbands. She has had sev eral broken romances. She lost several children through miscarriages during two of her marriages. Her only child, Cheryl, who stab bed Johnny Stompanato to death last night, ran away last year and then a few months later suffered a broken back in a fall from a horse. Miss Turner was a Holly wood high school girl of 17 when a friend of producer Mervyn Le Roy saw her sit ting on a drugstore stool sip ping an ice cream soda. She was taken to a studio, given her first part and soon bally hooed by Hollywood press agents, as a "sweater, girl." Born In Idaho Born Julia Jean Turner on Feb. 8, 1920, in the little mining town of Wallace, Ida., Miss Turner changed her first name to Lana for her movie career. Her father, Virgil Turner, was a mining man. He died when she was 9, and her mother, Mildred reared her alone. While still a school girl, Lana made her first public ap pearances, as a high school cheer leader. She wore a tight sweater and her hair was red. She showed the same cheer leader sparkle in her film ap pearances in her first movies, "They won't forget," "The Ad ventures of Marco Polo," Loves Finds Andy Hardy," and "Two Girls On Broad way. Early in 1940, she appeared in a moive with band leader Artie Shaw. "He is the most egotistical man I ever met," she said. "I hate him!" "Within a few - weeks, she had eloped with Shaw. "Love is similar to hate," she explained at the time. "Ask any doctor." The marriage lasted until September, 1940, when she won a divorce from Shaw after testifying in court: "It was fight, fight, fight, fight, all the time. And often he wouldn't even talk to me." Two years later, Miss Turn er married Stephen Crane, then a tobacconist, after an evening of dancing. Soon after, the newlyweds discover ed his divorce from Carol Kurtz of Indianapolis was not final. Lana got an annulment. Reweds Crane Crane pleaded for her to re marry him. When she re fused, he took an overdose of sleeping pills. He recovered and they were remarried on March 14, 1943. Their daugh ter, Cheryl, was born July 25, 1943, and she divorced Crane on Aug. 21, 1944. Four years later, Lana was married again, to the thrice divorced millionaire sports man Henry J. (Bob) Topping. This time she did not elope. The wedding ceremony took place at the home of publisher, William Wilkerson, the man who had discovered her on the drugstore stool 11 years earlier. The marriage lasted only four years, during which Miss Turner suffered several miscarriages. A year after she divorced Topping, she married actor Lex Barker in Italy, in 1953. They were divorced last June. Miss Turner charged Barker, a former screen Tarzan, with extreme cruelty," which in cluded using profane language and once strikng her in the face at the breakfast table. MAIL TRIBUNE, Mtdford, Oregon, Monday, April 7, 1958 7 Curious Flock To Lana Turner's Home Hollywood OP) The curious flocked to actress Lana Turner's home in Bev erly Hills Sunday to stare at the front of the fashionable home where the film star's boyfriend was killed. Amateur photographers snapped pictures of the house while others sat in parked cars discussing the stabbing of Johnny Stompanato, 32, by Lana's 14-year-old daugh ter, Cheryl. A boy on a bicycle yelled to another, "what are all those cars doing here?" The other answered, in a voice loud enough to be heard inside the house, "Lana Tur ner lives there. Her little girl stabbed a man. A car carrying a couple and two children pulled up. The man looked at a news paper and said, "Yeah, this is the house." Brakes screeched as motor ists rounded a curve and were confronted by the parked cars and idling people. There were several near collisions. Stompanato Rated High With Wealthy Women Hollywood HP) Johnny Stompanato, handsome man-about-Hollywood, "had a way with wealthy women," a po lice intelligence officer said. A one-time bodyguard for mobster Mickey Cohen, the 32-year-old Stompanato had been arrested only once and that time he won his case on appeal. A judge once re ferred to him as. a member of Cohen's "Band of 40 Thieves." Police intelligence said they never had any com plaints that Stompanato had borrowed sums of money from wealthy women and failed to return them, but "he had a way of advancing from a Ford to a Cadillac without work ing." The Cohen associate was arrested in 1949 on a va grancy charge when he was found on Hollywood's Sunset Strip sitting in a parked Cad illac. It was the same area where ' Cohen had been wounded and one of his henchmen killed a few days previously. He was sentenced to 60 days and fined $250, but an appeal in 1950 freed him on grounds of insufficient evi dence. Stompanato was the son of a Chicago jeweler. He gradu ated from school in Wood stock, 111., where a brother, Carmine, still lives. His par ents are dead. Police in Wood stock said Stompanato, who had no record in their com munity, had been back to visit his father several times before he died. Indonesian Rebels Man Machine Guns Singapore (IPI Indonesian rebels manned machine guns overlooking the beaches of Padang today in expectation of a Jakarta government in vasion aimed at wiping out their shrinking position in centarl Sumatra. United Press Correspond ent Robert Udick reported from the rebel capital at Bu kittinggi that rebel troops ful ly expected at least four gov-rebel-held port. He said revolutionaries ciad in green jungle uniforms were -melting into the forests along the coast to try to de fend against an invasion which could crush the whole rebellion against the Jakarta government. Murder Charge Due In 'Thrill Slaying' North Hollywood Formal murder charges were expected to be issued today against an 18-year-old drama student who confessed to the "thrill-slaying" of his teen, age girl friend. Cary Jon Johannesson, a theatrical arts major at Val ley Junior college, was jailed Friday after he directed po lice to the nude body of 15-year-old Phyllis Meltzer of Reseda in the seat of his dis abled hot-rod. 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