The Gazette-Enterprise

SEGUIN — Enjoy mobster movies?

Like double-crosses so fast and furious it’s difficult to keep track of who’s done what to who?

Or maybe big-dollar dope deals, gangster babes and girlfriends galore?

Then you might check out “Harvey’s Place,” a kitschy and campy, locally-produced low-budget gangster movie that chronicles the zoot-suited fast life and times of drug kingpin Harvey Bono, as portrayed by Jess Turner, who also produced, directed and wrote the movie.

The movie, which runs more than three hours long, is a sparse production that includes all the quintessential mob movie touches from big dope deals and dope dealers to hookers, hitmen and hucksters.

There’s a catfight over Turner’s character, there’s the de rigueur mob council where the traitor is found out and executed and enough bodies strewn around to keep the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office going for at least a week.

But what might be most interesting to local folks is the movie is locally shot and produced with local, non-professional actors and actresses from Seguin and San Antonio.

Turner, whose previous self-produced flicks include “Nightmare on Beacon Street” and “Zombies Invade Pittsburg,” has a television talk show on Time Warner’s public access channel that runs 9:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

He is the husband of Nancy Turner, executive director of Precious Life Services here in Seguin, who also has a role in the movie, playing a television anchorwoman who investigates and confronts Bono, who among many other scams, conducts a golf camp for disadvantaged children he uses as a front for drug dealing.

One doesn’t have to talk to Jess Turner long to realize he’s walked both sides of the street during his life — the law-abiding one and the other one.

“This movie is based on a lot of things I’ve seen in California,” Turner said. “Harvey Bono came out of prison and he wanted to take over everything. He didn’t just want to take over the city. He wanted to take over the world.”

The movie, like Turner’s life, has a motto: “Crime doesn’t pay.”

“These kids turn out good in the end,” Turner said.

The same can’t quite be said for his character, but to say more would be to give away the ending.

A couple decades ago, Turner left the low life with his wife’s help and has never looked back — except to help others to escape, too.

“I lived in San Francisco after I got out of the military,” Turner said. “I wouldn’t be sitting here today if it wasn’t for this little lady right here.”

The lady is his wife who, some 20 or so years ago, demanded that he come home instead of help a friend pick up a package at the airport.

So that night, he was watching the 10 p.m. news with his wife when he saw his friend arrested with the “package” in what Turner said was one of the largest drug busts in San Francisco history.

“She got me into more positive things, and I left the street alone,” Turner said. “The police in San Francisco know me, they know what I stand for and they know what I used to stand for.”

Now, Turner, who has been writing screenplays since 1988, is hoping for the break that will bring him to the big time — and enable him to pay the actors, actresses and others who have made “Harvey’s Place” happen.

“If we make any money, I told them they can take the money,” Turner said. “I’ll take the fame.”

For San Antonio actresses Rosie Daley and Irene Pompa, it wasn’t about the money.

Pompa, a retired educator with no previous acting experience, had a friend in Turner’s production who asked her to attend an audition.

“I read for him and I got the role,” Pompa said.

The role is Bono’s nemesis, “FBI Woman,” who stalks him throughout the movie.

“She looked kind of like Angela Lansbury,” Turner recalled of their meeting. “It clicked right there.”

Daley, a retired adjudicator with the state board of appeals, went into acting before she met Turner. She heard about “Harvey’s Place” from her agent while doing a show in Las Vegas.

“I do a Las Vegas show. I do impersonations of Dolly Parton and I’ve done Marilyn Monroe,” she said. “I’ve been called ‘Dolly’ all my life.”

The agent suggested Daley broaden her portfolio.

“She said, ‘Forget the comedy. You need to do something like this!’”

So Daley read for and got a part as a madam who, throughout the film, keeps Bono in cash — and girls.

It was a challenge, but it was also a lot of fun, Daley said.

“I loved it. It’s just so different from what I used to do,” Daley said. “I never had sexy clothes until this. Now, I’m used to them.”

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