Detour: A Hollywood Story

Description for DETOUR: A HOLLYWOOD STORY by Cheryl Crane with Cliff Jahr:

It was one of Hollywood's most shocking and scandalous tragedies---the Good Friday 1958 slaying of screen goddess Lana Turner's mobster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, by Turner's fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. Now, thirty years later, Cheryl finally tells what really happened that terrible night, offering a searing, moving, and always gripping account, not just of the Stompanato stabbing, but of what led up to it and what came after. It is, as she puts it, the story of how a "young life of promise and privilege made a detour through hell".

In DETOUR: A HOLLYWOOD STORY, Cheryl Crane vividly recalls the phenomenal pleasures and brutal pains of growing up as a Hollywood "star baby" in the 1940s and 1950s---a time when the glamour factories were at their peak. She remembers playing in the backyard with Liza Minnelli and being serenaded by Frank Sinatra. But she also recalls a movie-star mother willing to give everything but her time, and a series of "uncles" and stepfathers, some of whom ignored her, others of whom lied to her---and one of whom repeatedly raped her.

Cheryl's unhappy young life really began to unravel the night of April 5, 1958. Though a coroner's jury ruled the Stompanato killing justifiable homicide and Cheryl was never charged with any crime, the tragedy sent her spinning on a downward spiral of headline-grabbing custody fights, desperate runaway attempts, reform-school incarcerations, and mind-numbing drugs. But the time Cheryl was seventeen, she was institutionalized, straight-jacketed in a padded cell.

But though she was brutally victimized, Cheryl Crane refused to remain a victim. A determined young woman, she fought and ultimately overcame the anguish and notoriety of her horrific childhood, going on to a brilliant business career and, more important, eventually achieving a loving reconciliation with her famous mother.

The dictionary defines a detour as "a roundabout way temporarily replacing part of a route." That's how Cheryl looks at the horrors of her past---as a temporary interruption that love and determination finally overcame. In DETOUR, she summons up a vanished world of elegant nightclubs, wild parties, and unrivaled luxury---a world where manufactured dreams too often turned into inescapable nightmares--to tell an intensely personal story that is both compelling and ultimately inspiring.