‍Connery and Turner in Another Time, Another Place

‍

‍SEAN CONNERY had a gun at his head on the film set as one of the world’s biggest and sexiest Hollywood stars Lana Turner looked on in shock. Her lover was threatening his life. But this was no movie scene. It was for real.

‍

‍American gangster Johnny Stompanato, eaten up with jealous rage, stormed on to the set of an MGM movie being filmed in Boreham Wood, Hertfordshire, the Express reported, to warn Connery to stay away from his girlfriend.

‍

‍But tough guy Stompanato hadn’t reckoned with the courage of the man who was to become James Bond on screen. As Lana screamed and people on the set fled, body builder and Karate Black Belt Connery grabbed the gun and twisted Stompanato’s wrist until he dropped it. He then knocked the gangster out.

‍

‍As the gangster lay on the floor ‘coming to’, Connery stood over him and said: “Lesson One: Never bring a gun to a fist fight!”

‍

‍But things didn’t end there for Connery who was having an affair with Lana. MGM, the film studio making the movie Another Time, Another Place, took him into hiding fearing Stompanato’s gangster friends would be after him.

‍

‍However, that moment on set led to Connery’s background being followed up by Fleet Street and the Sunday Express in particular and it quickly emerged what a hard man he was. More than a match for Stompanato.

‍

‍It was 1957 and Lana, who had been divorced twice, was one of the world’s biggest stars. Husbands and lovers were besotted with her. Sex was never very far away in Lana’s world. One of her husbands, actor Lex Barker, repeatedly molested and violently raped her 10-year-old daughter Sheryl Crane. When Lana found out she divorced him.

‍

‍She played opposite leading actors such as Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, and Spencer Tracy and MGM adored her. Her affairs were legendary.

‍

‍But Lana and Stompanato had a tempestuous relationship which was to end in tears. He continuously beat her, and they split many times, but she kept going back for more, as she did after the Connery affair, according to the American Press.

‍

‍Stompanato was a handsome and mucular U.S. Marine who saw combat all over the Pacific. Other mobsters feared him. After the war, he moved to Los Angeles and, became a bodyguard and enforcer for local crime boss Mickey Cohen, becoming well known in the star community.

‍

‍Cohen was something of celebrity gangster with links to the mafia. He left a trail of killings and crime wherever he went and was known for partying with the stars.

‍

‍Frank Sinatra once asked him to tell Stompanato to keep away from his lover Ava Gardner, but the mob boss told the iconic star to go back to his wife and children, because he never got between men and their ‘broads.’

‍

‍Stompanato flew to London when he heard rumours that Connery and Lana were sleeping together. First, he threatened to “mess up” Lana’s face with a cutthroat razor, then he barged into the studio.

‍

‍After the scuffle with Connery, he was arrested and deported. But Lana wasn’t finished with him. She followed him back to LA and they moved in together again.

‍

‍On the evening of April 4, 1958, her daughter Cheryl, now 14, heard her mother rowing with the gangster, and she feared he would beat her yet again. She took a bread knife from the kitchen and burst in on them. As Stompanato dragged Lana to the door, Cheryl stabbed him in the stomach and he died.

‍

‍A coroner’s inquest on April 11 ruled the murder was justifiable and she was cleared of wrongdoing. The case was reported worldwide.

‍

‍Following the film set attack, Express newspapers had carried fascinating facts about his days on the back streets of Edinburgh, where he was known as ‘Big Tammy’.

‍

‍This was a time when territorial gangs wreaked havoc on neighbourhoods. The most violent in the city was the Valdor gang. Connery’s brother Neil told the Sunday Express: “There were about 15 of them … and boy were they tough, and vicious too!”

‍

‍One night, three of the Valdor gang were at an Edinburgh billiards hall  standing by a bench with Connery’s jacket draped over it, he said. They were about to steal something from it, but he stopped them. From then on, he became their enemy. They felt humiliated. 

‍

‍A few days later, the gang was out in force when they spotted him at the local dance hall, Palais de Danse.

‍

‍Six of them, including the three from the billiard hall, followed him to the first-floor balcony which had a 20-foot drop. They were all ‘tooled up’ with chains and razors. But instead of trying to get away, Connery turned on them and took on all six.

‍

‍It was like a scene from a Wild West movie as fists flied and he grabbed the two ringleaders, repeatedly banging their heads together until they fell to the floor. The others fled. From that day, Big Tammy was respected and left alone.

‍

‍A heavy smoker, Lana died from throat cancer, aged 74, on June 29, 1995, in Los Angeles. She had eight husbands.

‍

‍THE ILL WIND THAT CHILLED DOWNING ST

‍VIPs WHEN THE DEAD END KIDS ARRIVED

‍The Dead End Kids in the Blitz

‍WHEN the children of London were evacuated to the countryside in 1939, everyone — the Government, the public and the Press — thought that would safeguard them from Hitler’s bombers. Far from it, instead some of them were to find fame in the flames.

‍

‍They came back and called themselves The Dead End Kids risking their lives night after night saving others. They were hailed as heroes by the Press and even invited to Downing Street by the Prime Minister. But their lack of politeness and crude ways were too distasteful for the Establishment 

‍and they soon faded from the public publicity arena.

‍

‍The Dead End Kids were the brainchild of 27-year-old Patsie Duggan, son of a Poplar bin man. The gang of scruffy urchins, including Patsie’s 13-year-old sister Maureen, and recruits as young as ten, equipped themselves with an assortment of tools, buckets of sand, rope and axes, taken from bombed properties.

‍

‍Night after night, raid after raid, they scoured the streets around the docks; in Whitechapel, Limehouse, Shadwell, Poplar, and Wapping as the bombs fell. They had no adult supervision.

‍

‍During the Blitz they were responsible for a series of life saving missions. On one bad night the London Fire Journal reported: “They rushed up the stairs, ready it seemed to eat fires! When they emerged from the building their tatty clothes were smouldering.”

‍

‍Two of the gang were killed and Patsy was badly injured as they tried to put our fires from incendiary bombs. One night as more bombs, fell and a wall came down on top of them.

‍

‍A Stepney pensioner told the Press: “One of the boys carried me from my burning home all the way to the nearest shelter in my armchair.” Some gang members specialised. One 10-year-old boy could climb faster than the others and so he went up ladders first as a lookout.

‍

‍On another occasion the gang saved 30 horses from a burning building. And one night they rescued 230 people from a damaged shelter and led them through the falling bombs, to safety.

‍

‍The gang finally came to the attention of the Prime Minister, and were invited to a VIP reception at Downing Street. One of the youngsters broke wind loudly in front of the assembled dignitaries as a speech was being made. The dignitaries were embarrassed and an official reprimanded him, as his mates giggled.

‍

‍The boy replied loudly: “Why don’t you just shut your ears mister?”

‍

‍Their public thank you at No.10 was quickly cut and the little Press coverage they had started to receive dried up and then stopped completely.

‍

‍CARRY ON STAR FINDS A STAND-IN
MUM TO COOK HIS CORNISH PASTIES

‍I CAME across a wonderful little article in the Cornish Guardian, written by local journalist Mathew Banks about the early career of Carry-On star Kenneth Williams more than 70 years ago.

‍

‍Kenneth, who suffered from depression and mental torment all his life because of his bullying father, found comfort with his domineering mother Louisa who was obsessed with him. That much we knew.

‍

‍But there was another woman too, who became like a second mother to him, Matthew adds.

‍

‍In 1948, long before fame touched his life, Kenneth already wanted to get away from all his memories of growing up and wrote to a string of repertory companies as far away from his home in London’s Islington as he could find.

‍

‍One target was Newquay which had two theatres, The Cosy Nook and The Repertory Theatre. He joined the latter and found digs in a flat above a butcher at Bank Street run by Mrs G Merryfield in the seaside town.

‍

‍“When the first meal was laid out in the dining room, Kenneth picked up his plate and took it into the kitchen where he joined Mrs Merryfield at the table,” says Matthew. “He made her laugh so much that she nearly fell off her chair.” From then on, they always had dinner together.

‍

‍“Ken spent most of his free time on breaks from The Repertory Theatre with her. Even walking the Headlands together as she taught him his lines. And he loved her Cornish pasties she cooked especially for him.”

‍

‍He even told audiences about them. He became so obsessed with her that he took her to the theatre and went shopping with her.

‍

‍His first play was The First Mrs Fraser and he received knock out reviews. Local newspaper critics said “he was destined for stardom.” Mrs Merryfield told everyone how proud she was of him.

‍

‍When the theatre closed Kenneth moved on along the road to fame but every time he had to go to Newquay, he stayed with his second mother, Mrs Merryfield. From then on, he sent her a birthday card every year on the dot without fail until 1957, when it is believed she died. He was heartbroken.

‍

‍Kenneth himself died on April 15, 1988, of a drugs overdose. He lived next door to his real mother Louisa, who outlived him by three years. She found his body in his flat next door.

‍

‍Footnote: In his diaries and private notes, Kenneth Williams often referred to his mother as Mrs Merryfield. He said it was a fictional name. No one knew why.

‍

‍WHY LOVE-CHEAT DICKENS TRIED TO DUMP HIS

‍‘MAD’ WIFE CATHARINE IN A MENTAL ASYLUM

‍

‍DID YOU KNOW?

‍That author and icon of the poor and suffering, Charles Dickens tried to have his wife Cathrine declared insane and locked in a mental asylum after he took a lover?

‍

‍The claim comes in letters locked away in Harvard University. Written by his neighbour and journalist Edward Cook, The Times revealed.

‍

‍“Catherine had borne him 10 children and had lost many of her good looks, was growing old, in fact,” wrote Cook.

‍

‍“He even tried to shut her up in a lunatic asylum, poor thing! But bad as the law is in regard to proof of madness, he could not quite wrest it to his purpose.” The manager of the place diagnosed her sane.

‍

‍

‍TERRY MANNERS 

‍27 October 2025