Hollywood Hellraisers

Charlie Sheen’s recent meltdown has created more headlines than it deserves, with every word of his hyperbolic ranting chronicled for posterity. However, this recent celebrity scandal is but one incident in a long-line of dreadful behavior and outrageous antics that have been part of the Hollywood scene since the 1920s. Today’s hellraisers are pursued by a barrage of media, including television commentators, Internet bloggers, and the less-than-professional social media scribes whose collective memories go back about 10 minutes—to their last Tweet. Though today’s level of coverage of scandals is far more relentless and uncontrolled than in previous eras, Sheen’s life and career are clearly within a darker Hollywood tradition that involves the downside of fame—the pressures of public scrutiny, the demands of an all-consuming industry, the way celebrity can turn to notoriety in a few tappings of a columnist’s keyboard, the fickleness of fans, and the deterioration of personal identity until the star can’t remember where image leaves off and reality begins.

With that in mind, I thought revisting a few hellraisers from Hollywood’s past might put a different perspective on the whole Sheen affair. After all, those of us who write about Sheen (or any celebrity in the hot seat) and those of you who read, text, or tweet about him are all rolling around in the same mud hole, so we might as well drag the coverage down a different path. You didn’t think you were above it all, did you?

FRANCES FARMER. The 23-year-old blonde actress became the breakout star of the 1936 comedy Come and Get It. However, Farmer never completely reconciled the glamour of stardom with the desire to be a real actress. By 1939, mental instability exacerbated by a drinking problem caused Farmer to act out, branding her “difficult” within the industry. Studio execs covered up drunken driving incidents in which she trashed police stations; they hushed up meltdowns on the set. In 1942, Farmer’s condition could no longer be covered up, and she was institutionalized. Over the next decade, she was committed to sanitariums against her will three times, and she suffered through hydro-therapy, shock treatments, untested drugs, and an alleged gang rape in one hospital where attendants wanted their “turn” with a movie star.

THE BUNDY DRIVE BOYS. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Bundy Drive Boys were a group of Hollywood actors, artists, and assorted bohemians who drank themselves into oblivion in search of peace of mind. The ringleader was artist John Decker, whose house on Bundy Drive gave the gang its name. Members included actors W.C. Fields, John Barrymore, Errol Flynn, Thomas Mitchell, writer Gene Fowler, and art critic-aesthete Sadakichi Hartmann. The gang’s activities included destructive practical jokes, epic drinking bouts, and late-night impromptu stagings of Shakespeare. Their biggest claim to fame was stealing Barrymore’s corpse from a funeral home and placing it in Flynn’s living room, scaring him into sobriety for a few days. Fowler romantically described them as “men [who] lived intensely, as do children and poets and jaguars,” while Fields more sarcastically mused, “Life's a funny thing. You're lucky if you can get out of it alive."

LANA TURNER. Modern movie fans know the name Lana Turner from the scene in L.A. Confidential where Turner is accused of being a prostitute who underwent plastic surgery to look like Turner. The joke on the over-eager detective is that she was Lana Turner. In the scene, she is out on the town with low-level gangster Johnny Stompanato. During the 1950s, Turner had taken up with the real-life Stompanato, whose hot temper caused him to beat the star on a regular basis. One night, Turner’s teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane, heard Johnny threaten Turner, and the young girl stabbed him to death. Turner took the rap for her child, but officials saw through the ruse. The case was ruled justifiable homicide. (See photo above. From left: Cheryl's father Stephen Crane, Turner, Stompanato, and Cheryl.) Believe it or not, Stompanato was an improvement over Turner’s previous relationship with her fourth husband, actor Lex Barker, who allegedly molested Crane from ages 10 to 13. When Turner found out, she tried to stab Barker in his sleep but couldn’t go through with it.

Turner’s trainwreck of a personal life in the 1950s coincided with a career decline resulting from poor choices. What was wrong with Turner that she couldn’t make smart decisions? Well, Turner was one of those young actresses who had been under the wing of MGM since adolescence, letting the studio “parent” her. The studio lied about her age not only to escape child-labor laws but also to create a glamorous, sophisticated image for her. They groomed her, educated her in how to act in public, arranged romances for her, covered up mistakes in her personal life, and guided her through major decisions. In the postwar era, when studios let go of their hold on the star system for financial reasons, they dropped many long-term contracts with little fanfare, including Turner’s. Left high and dry, Turner turned to various men to stabilize her life and career, making one regretful decision after another. MGM’s attitude toward Turner and its stars is revealed in this little-known anecdote: When she was underage, the studio makeup department plucked her eyebrows into narrow slits for a more mature, sophisticated look to match her screen image. They plucked them so often and at such a young age that at one point, they stopped growing back. Turner’s face was thus permanently “deformed” by her studio—a place the actress called “home” for over a decade.

Phil Morehart, another Facets employee, and I contributed to a book on Hollywood history and lore titled Armchair Reader Goes Hollywood. For more salacious scandals, infamous murders, and stars gone wild—among other articles—buy a copy here, or buy one through me at suzi@facets.org (free shipping).  Or, if anyone has any questions about famous scandals, outrageous hellraisers, or mysterious murders, feel free to write, and I will try to find the answer for you.   --Susan Doll