Cosa Nostra News

Allen Smiley worked for around 10 years of his life with Cecil B. DeMille, "a founding father of the Hollywood film industry, and the most commercially successful producer-director in cinema history," as noted in The Art of the Hollywood Epic  biography. But Smiley decided it was more worthwhile to join with Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, who'd installed himself in Los Angeles to get pieces of various action for his New York friends (and himself). Despite what one high-profile biography says about Smiley growing up in Manhattan with Siegel and Meyer Lanksy, his daughter told us otherwise. Allen Smiley on left; Luellen on right; unidentified woman in middle. Allen Smiley was born Aaron Smehoff in Kiev. His family immigrated to Canada and settled in Winnipeg when Allen was five years old, his daughter writes in her memoir, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter's Tribute . "Dad met Ben in 1937," Ms. Smiley told us. "Dad spent one year in New York af...

Meyer Lansky had a dream that rivaled the one widely ( and inaccurately ) attributed to Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel regarding transforming a sizeable stretch of the Nevada desert into a gambling mecca. Lansky wanted to create an empire of Mafia-owned casinos that stretched across the Caribbean. He'd use Havana, Cuba, as his base of operations, where he and childhood friend/chief criminal cohort  Charlie (Lucky) Luciano could work together. Charlie Luciano in Rome after he was kicked out of Cuba.... Fate in the form of Fidel Castro didn't allow things to develop the way Lansky and Luciano hoped. Lansky lost out on a major opportunity to build another fortune.  Luciano, however, had it worse.  He was returned to Italy, a country he despised. The  Sicilian Mafia was robbing him blind.

Exclusive material about  Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel 's  life and crimes and murder  will be the focus of my pending monthly newsletter, debuting next week. ( You will note a style change: from now on I am going to use parentheses instead of quotations around nicknames, on first reference only. This is for reasons too complicated and boring to explain .) Sign up now; it's going out by the end of next week. If you'd like to advertise in the newsletter, I'm offering very competitive rates, so here's your chance to get your book or product or service in front of thousands of people interested in the Mafia.  Specific readership data is available to those interested in purchasing advertising. Rates are not expensive, believe me.  Authors who need to promote a book should definitely contact me (publishers aren't as active and effective in this area, I know).   Contact me to discuss at Cosanostranews @ gmail dot-com... ...

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was killed on June 20, 1947, at 10:45 pm West Coast time. [Watch film footage below, the man wearing the maroon jacket is said to be Bugsy. I don't know... but first see the rare footage that is Bugsy Siegel ....) The gangster often identified as the visionary of Las Vegas was 41 years old. As recounted (here) , he was killed around three months after The Flamingo reopened in March 1947, once construction was completed. This IS rare footage of Bugsy Siegel..... At least one gunman crept up to a French window with a 30-30 carbine, resting the rifle on the lattice work of a trellis outside the Moorish‐style mansion Siegel shared with Virginia Hill at 810 North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, California. Siegel sat on a couch, his back facing the gunman, who was only about 15 feet away, separated by glass. Siegel flipped through a copy of the Los Angeles Times he had picked up after dining at Jack’s on the Beach, when the gunmen squeez...

In 2003, New York-based Bonanno crime family members called Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto and told him the worst possible news. The Bonanno crime family's boss, Joseph Massino , had flipped, they told Rizzuto. Rizzuto faced serious trouble. Massino could implicate him in a triple homicide in New York City, in 1981. Massino had actually orchestrated the hit on three dissident Bonanno capos. Alerted to a pending arrest for three homicides, Rizzuto and his wife promptly flew to Cuba, taking a flight the very next day to the Melia Las Americas, a resort in Varadero, Cuba. There, the Rizzutos bided time in the five-star resort's tropical-style rooms, each of which offers a beach-side view via a balcony; they could dine in any one of its seven restaurants (ranging from casual, poolside snacks to fine dining), as well as pay a visit to the hotel's three bars and one nightclub. Meyer Lansky represented the mob in Cuba . Santo Trafficante Jr. hated him. "...

"I’m going to run all those fascist mobsters, all those American gangsters out of Cuba." Meyer Lansky supposedly was the first to realize the possibilities Cuba afforded the mob. Santo Trafficante Junior  was close behind him. The offshore tropical island was the perfect platform for smuggling, among other things. Cuba also made an excellent vacation destination, where a gambling industry to match Las Vegas could thrive -- minus the attention U.S. operators tended to attract from certain federal agencies, like the FBI. Unlike in Vegas, the mob could invest its gambling proceeds into entities like corporations and financial institutions, thus laundering it and profiteering from what wouldn't be classified as illicit earnings.

Tony Sokol, the admitted "Gangster Geek" at Den of Geek , wrote an excellent story about The Godfather that he allowed Cosa Nostra News to republish. Now, he's lent us another gem. From January 2015, an interview with Anatol Yusef, who played Meyer Lanksy. Meyer Lansky as portrayed by Anatol Yusef. Tony also writes for a host of interesting sites, among them, The Chiseler , KpopStarz.com , and hypnocloud.com . Previously, he wrote for Altvariety, Coed.com , Daily Offbeat, Dark Media Press, Wicked Mystic and other magazines. Tony also is a musician and is a playwright who has had more than 20 plays produced in NYC, including Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera “AssassiNation: We Killed JFK.” He also appeared on the Joan Rivers (TV) Show, Strange Universe and Britain’s “The Girlie Show.” The real Tony Sokol, in his 20s...  In the beginning, Boardwalk Empire had vast potential to fill the great void created when The Sopranos ended. The show was filled ...

Excerpted from I Pity the Poor Immigrant: A Novel  by Zachary Lazar (Fiction; April 8, 2014). The Bomb magazine published this first proof. Lazar is the author of three books, most recently the novel Sway , about the Rolling Stones' early days, and the memoir Evening’s Empire: The Story of My Father’s Murder , which may be of interest to regular readers.  When he was just six years old, Zachary Lazar's father, Edward, was shot dead by hit men in a Phoenix, Arizona parking garage. The year was 1975, a time when, according to the Arizona Republic, "land-fraud artists roamed the state in sharp suits, gouging money from buyers and investors." How did his father fit into this world and how could his son ever truly understand the man, his time and place, and his motivations? In Evening's Empire, Zachary Lazar brilliantly attempts to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to his father's murder. Lazar's writing has appeared in t...

Meyer Lansky spent the final years of his life in sun-baked Miami Beach, Florida, which was not his first choice. Lansky was a legitimately tough bastard, as one Miami cop learned. He had fought like hell to stay in Israel, believing it to be the one place where he could live out the rest of his life and die in peace. But following two years of legal battles, he was tossed out. How sincere was Lansky about wanting to live in Israel? Probably very sincere. After all, Lansky himself had played something of a role in Israel's very founding. He had smuggled arms (rifles, specifically) there in 1948 to assist Menachem Begin and his guerrillas as they helped to violently forge the Jewish state's foundation. In fact, years after he was kicked out, Lansky tried to return. When Begin and his hard-line Likud party rose to power in May of 1977, ending the 30-year-reign of the Israeli Labor party, to which David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir had belonged, Lansky called a key co...

The rise of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and other notorious gangsters. As noted in January , AMC announced today that “The Making of The Mob: New York” will premiere on Monday, June 15th at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT, and be narrated by Emmy Award-winning actor Ray Liotta. Kicking off “Mob Mondays,” the eight-part series begins in 1905 and spans over 50 years to trace the rise of Charles “Lucky” Luciano , Meyer Lansky , Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and other notorious gangsters from their beginnings as a neighborhood gang of teenagers to murderous entrepreneurs and bootleggers who organized the criminal underworld,  turning the Mafia into an American institution.

AMC announced Saturday that it will unwrap an eight-episode miniseries, “Making of the Mob: New York,” in which it traces the of roots of each of the five crime families that make up the American Mafia . The series, each episode of which is an hour long, blends dramatic scenes with interviews, archival footage and VFX and spans back to 1905. It traces the rise of Charles “Lucky”Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, along with other notorious gangsters, who went from street hoods and neighborhood gang members to multi millionaire entrepreneurs and bootleggers following Prohibition. The project hails from Stephen David's production company, which previously produced History's The Men Who Built America.

"Reds" Cohan, a bookmaker of a bygone era. I am proud and pleased to present this excerpt from Hillary Cohan's published memoir, titled " Growing Up Jewish in the Mob ." [This is a revised version of a story originally posted prior to the book's publication.] Hillary's father was Nathan "Reds" Cohan, a top mob bookie who operated in the Washington, D.C., area for much of Hillary's early life. Reds passed away on December 2, 1988, in Savannah, Georgia. Hillary does not "name names" in her book, admitting her father was connected to one of New York's five families as a top bookie. He was of the Jewish faith; many don't understand the extent of the contribution made by the "Jewish mafia" to the establishment of Cosa Nostra; before the Italians, Jews and other ethnic groups had together formed an outfit called "The Combination," which developed and implemented many of the racketeers that the Mafi...

Meyer Lansky and his wife, Teddy; photo taken in  Havana, Cuba.  Meyer Lansky kept a written record of some events -- he kept a diary, as  Rick Porrello's AmericanMafia.com  reported. Lanksy, who was there at the dawn of organized crime in America and was known for his razor-sharp business and street acumen, was the one most likely to have kept such a document. Throughout his life, he spoke of the importance of a good education, not something that Lanky friends and partners such as  Lucky Luciano or Bugsy Siegel  are known to have proclaimed. Nicknamed the "Mob's Accountant" by the press, Lansky was instrumental in the development of the mob's gambling rackets in Las Vegas and Cuba, when the island off Florida's coast seemed to be a potential new frontier for the Mafia, a place where it thought it could operate with impunity under the auspices of a friendly government. The goal was to operate where it had the freedom to develop its business r...

Lansky's daughter breaks silence - Sun Sentinel : "Growing up as the daughter of Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky seemed to be glitz and glamour for Sandra Lansky . Sandra was a wild child of the late 50s and 60s who was raised with a privileged life in upper class Jewish splendor in New York City. She was silent on many of her father's secrets until now. "Sandra, who resides in Plantation, has broken her 50-year-silence with a tell-all memoir, Daughter of the King: Growing Up in Gangland , where she recounts her life as a Mafia princess and of organized crime's purported influence at the highest reaches of government and world affairs. She co-wrote this book with author William Stadiem and they will both share its highlights on March 30 at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Museum of Florida-Florida International University, 301 Washington Ave. in Miami Beach, during a free event organized by FIU's Jewish Studies Initiatives. "Through writing a book about herself, S...

Sandra Lansky March 30, 2014  from  YouTube : " Q&A with Sandra Lansky at Jewish Museum of South Florida. Read our story:  Daughter's Memoir Offers New Portrait of Enigmatic Lansky

Sandra with the "Mob's Accountant"; Lansky's pinches were all gambling related. REVISED, EXPANDED: Sandra Lansky has written a 229-page memoir, Daughter of the King: Growing Up in Gangland , which she describes as an expression of the deep love she held for her father, Meyer Lansky. Born Meyer Suchowljansky (July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), Lansky was a major organized crime figure who worked closely with associates such as "Joe Adonis" and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, though he was closest to Charles "Lucky" Luciano, both as a friend and business partner. It can be categorically stated that Lansky stayed true to his dear friend until the end, which came much earlier for Luciano. Nicknamed the "Mob's Accountant" by the press, Lansky was instrumental in the development of the mob's gambling rackets across the country, most notably in Las Vegas, as well as in Cuba, which had been poised to serve as the mob's new...

"Nobody here can take a joke." "What's that? A gun? I got a gun. He got a gun. He got a gun... Everybody got guns!" "Nothing's personal? What the fck is life, if it's not personal?!" "You smug kike midget, creeping around like a fcking dentist with the ether." -- Gyp Rosetti, Boardwalk Empire's villainous savior. You talkin to me? Boardwalk Empire was getting pretty boring. Fortunately, the show creators seemingly realized this -- and adjusted course accordingly, killing off a major character at the end of season two and introducing a new one in the current season. This effectively administered a jolt of much-needed vitality into the HBO series, based (loosely, very loosely) on a true crime story about fortune, power, and greed centered on 1920s Atlantic City, but also in Chicago, New York, and tertiary locals. Somewhere in the second season, it seemed increasingly apparent that despite all the great character actors, s...

Julius Bernstein  was a relic of a different era: Raised in the Depression, a genuine World War II hero — and the last of New York’s great Jewish gangsters. Julius Bernstein, dubbed the last Jewish Mobster.  While the Brooklyn native connived for decades in anonymity, his once-secret FBI file — obtained by the Daily News — exposes for the first time a life devoted to earning crooked cash with the Genovese family. Pages of confidential documents provided via the Freedom of Information Law detail Bernstein’s extraordinary mob life and times: Shaking down the Sbarro restaurant chain for cash payoffs across four decades. Seizing control of a bus drivers’ union to amass an illegal fortune. Working side-by-side with legendary Gambino family capo Matthew Ianniello . When he finally flipped and became a federal informant shortly before his October 2007 death, no one was more surprised than the gangster known as Spike. “Wiseguys trust me,” he said on his ...