The Investment Blog

Just a little tribute video I made for Lana Turner and her daughter, Cheryl Crane. Their tumultous lives in what seemed to be a charmed existence fascinated 1950s Hollywood when the then 14-year-old Cheryl accidently killed her mother’s mobster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato, trying to protect her mom from his abusive rage. Forever after, whenever either mother or daughter were mentioned in any article, be it for a magazine or newspaper, there had to be an inclusion of the infamous 1958 Good Friday scandal. As a star baby, Cheryl lived a life of material privilege but did not get to see her parents as much as she would have liked. Her mother and her father, Steve Crane, divorced when she was still an infant and she watched as many men came in and out of her mother’s life, and suffered from terrible insecurities and some abuses that plagued her into adulthood. Cheryl told her story in her 1988 autobiography, “Detour: A Hollywood Story”, concluding it with the sense that she had come to peace with herself, as well as having a better relationship with Lana than she ever had. In her latest book, “Lana: The Memories, The Myths and The Movies”, she summed up her relationship with her mom this way – “Like her relationship with Gran, the relationship between Mother and me was strained many times over the years but never broken. I never stopped loving her. We lived through harrowing times together, beginning with my birth.” Cheryl was an RH baby and had to have blood transfusions every four hours for weeks after she was born to save her life. After the Stompanato incident (which was ruled justifiable homicide), Cheryl’s life continued to spin out of control, landing her in minor scrapes with the law and resulting in time spent in reform schools and a mental institution. But she bounced back, definately showing an instinct for survival inherited from her famous mama, who also managed to endure scandals and shine even brighter. “My life turned around when I went to work for my father at the age of twenty one. He was by then one of the country’s largest resturanters. As I matured into a young adult, Mother made me feel her pride in me always – proud that I went to business school at Cornell, had a head for numbers, went into real estate, wrote a book. She would express herself in a way that said she was downright astonished that someone who could do those things came from her.” As an admirer of both Lana and Cheryl, I threw together these photos and effects to Billie Holiday’s “God Bless The Child”. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: All photos and music are copyrighted to their respective owners. No infringement intended.

Duration : 0:3:7

(more…)