“Get your ass out of town”: the notorious gangster who chased Sean Connery out of Los Angeles
In what turned out to be both a positive and negative for Sean Connery in the short and long term, his hardman shtick was far from an act when the star fancied himself as a legitimate tough guy who could brawl his way out of trouble when the need arose.
The burly Scotsman nicknamed ‘Big Tam’ by his peers grew up fighting on the streets, and as a former bodybuilder who also practiced martial arts, he was fairly handy in terms of stature and proficiency. Unfortunately, that led to him being asked to vacate Los Angeles by one of the most feared gangsters in America.
Connery wasn’t even famous at the time, with his James Bond debut in Dr. No years away. He’d only made a handful of movies, and not many of them were very good, so he wasn’t in a position to have an assortment of bodyguards on hand in case any threats to his life genuinely materialised.
It was the late 1950s, and he was in Hollywood ahead of his maiden American production. Disney’s fantasy adventure Darby O’Gill and the Little People was the first time Connery had ever appeared in a Hollywood movie, but he was persona non grata in Los Angeles after his antics on a previous feature.
Co-starring with Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place, Connery gained first-hand exposure to the tempestuous relationship the leading lady shared with former soldier and mob enforcer Johnny Stompanato. Being the overbearing and jealous type that he was, the underworld figure found that the chemistry between the pair was a touch too convincing for his liking.
Stompanato grew so incensed that he barged into the set, ruined the shot and pulled a gun on Connery for daring to lay his hand on Turner. In response, he deployed his karate training to twist the wrist of his would-be assailant, calmly remove the firearm from his grasp, and diffuse the situation with consummate professionalism and the utmost ease.
It was a remarkably cool-headed way of dealing with a gun-toting gangster, but it wasn’t forgotten. Stompanato may have been killed the month before Another Time, Another Place was released after Turner’s own daughter stabbed him to death to safeguard her mother from physical violence, but his associates kept their ears to the ground regarding Connery’s whereabouts.
Staying in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard during his Disney-sponsored Stateside sabbatical, the actor received a phone call to his room instructing him to “get your ass out of town”. Who was on the other end? Only Mickey Cohen, the head of the city’s most powerful crime family, who had no issues ordering the deaths of anyone who dared get in his way while he was expanding his empire.
Following Stompanato’s death, it was his employer, Cohen, who paid for the funeral costs, while letters he’d exchanged with Turner during their relationship were leaked to the press to try and shift his public perception away from being a violent and abusive partner. One of the side effects was that it became known Connery had taken Turner and her daughter to theatre shows during their downtime, which didn’t sit well with the mob.
Connery may have been fairly new to America, but even he was fully aware of who Cohen was and what he could do, so he did the smart thing and packed his bags. “I didn’t know what I was dealing with,” he told Rolling Stone. “And I didn’t see any point in discussing it.” It was either fuck off or find out, and he had no interest in finding out what would happen if he discarded the threat.
Retreating to the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley, Connery decided it was best to be safe instead of very sorry and kept himself away from the hustle and bustle of central LA. He didn’t do anything wrong, but when one of the most notorious criminals in the nation suggests that it would be best for all parties if he removed himself from the city altogether, only an idiot would consider arguing.
