Mafia tidbits in non-mafia related books

[JoeNGallo]

I am currently reading Fascism: A warning by Madeleine Albright and Meyer Lanky's name has popped up regarding the German-American Nazi organisation (German American Bund (GAB)) before the start of the second World War.

"The GAB encountered stout opposition from mainstream German-American organizations, trade unions, Jewish activists, and at least a few gangsters. "The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler," recalled notorious mob boss Meyer Lansky of one Fascist rally.. "The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We threw some of them out the windows Most of the Nazis panicked and rant out. We chased them and beat them up. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults."

Over the years I have read quite a few non-fiction books that have mentioned such tidbits regarding the mafia, which ultimately got me interested.

Anyone come across similar tidbits when reading non-mafia related books?

[Southshore88]

I’d imagine every book about JFK/Kennedy family or about Rudy Giuliani must have some anecdotal info about the mafia in those books.

[Pogo The Clown]

In fiction.


There is a reference to the 5 families in Jaws. It is revealed in the novel that the reason Mayor Vaughn was so bent on keeping the beaches open despite the threat of the shark was because the 5 families of NY had invested into Amittyville (on Long Island) and we're putting pressure on him to keep them open so as not to hurt their businesses. Thought that was a neat little subplot when I read it.


Pogo

[Antiliar]

A lot of autobiographies from early entertainers have tidbits. Helen Hayes mentioned Al Capone calling her. Mae West talks about Ralph Capone. All kinds of info scattered here and there.

[Villain]

I keep this piece from years ago and it wasnt taken from some actual book regarding some specific subject, but instead its more like collection of interesting memoirs of one man regarding his personal life and trips around the world during the old days. Larry Ray of Gulfport, Mississippi spent some time in Naples many years ago and enjoyed sharing his memories and so this was one of his stories....

"Great story that brought me back to Napoli and 1959, as a barely nineteen-year-old who had arrived fresh from a year of US Navy electronic and instructor schools for a posting to Naval Air Facility Capodichino. I have told you about my instant fascination with Napoli and making the transition from speaking Spanish to Italian facilitated by my taking a tiny apartment on Cupa Carbone, a stone's throw literally across a wooden fence from the American base which in a fenced off area just down from the Italian civilian airport facilities.

A large gray Mercedes bus shuttled us between the Capodichino air base and Piazza Municipio which was a central hangout with the enlisted Bluebird Club, and all sorts of other bars and even a huge pizzaria on the second floor of a large building on the corner of Via Medina and Piazza Municipio above where the entrance to Monte Dei Paschi di Siena bank is today.

Across the piazza roughly around where via Verdi comes into the piazza from Via Santa Brigida there was the California Bar which attracted lots of American sailors as well as locals. I was having a great time trying to communicate, learning Italian and, unwittingly, mimicking the strong local Neapolitan accent and vernacular. I had developed a friendly repartee with a waiter in the California Bar and he found it a novelty that an American was trying so hard to learn to speak Italian.

One afternoon I stopped in the California Bar and there was just one other person, an older man sitting alone at a table. As I bantered with the barrista, the man at the table smiled and motioned me over. He was nicely dressed, very friendly and he complimented me on my Italian. Really a nice old guy. I asked him how he learned his English so well and he allowed as how he "had lived in the states" and that he always liked meeting "you young fellows stationed here." Sort of like talking to a favorite old uncle.

I saw him a couple of more times and wrote my parents that I had met the nicest interesting old man, an Italian who had lived in the USA, a Mr. Luciano, but everyone called him "Lucky." I got a stern almost screaming letter from my father who told me to stay away from the man and not to talk to him ever again because he was a notorious gangster.

I was sure father had bad information, but after mentioning this to one of the guys who had been stationed there a couple of years he told me that Lucky Luciano did indeed hang out at the California Bar and that he had been deported by the US government and that it was best not to even be seen with him. So I quit going to the California Bar and never saw my friend "Lucky" again.

A few months before I was was discharged, ready to return to Texas and enter the University of Texas, all the newspapers had a photo of a well dressed man sprawled on the pavement at the entrance to Capodichino airport where the US Naval Air Facility was located . . . and, incidentally, just across the fence from Cupa Carbone and not far from my little apartment. In the photo he was being lifted into a plain wooden coffin. Someone had taken what looked like a cushion from a chair inside the airport lobby and thoughtfully placed it under the head and shoulders of the man who had collapsed and died. He was sixty-five years old.

As a gangly kid from Aransas Pass, Texas who knew nothing at all about gangster mobs, or for that matter, not about much of anything at all outside South Texas, it was one of many real life history lessons I got while living in bella Napoli."

[felice]

jordan belfort, the wolf of wall street used to frequent anthony federici's restaurant, he recalls an episode about his partner asking to federici if he was a mafia boss

[SonnyBlackstein]

@Villan: great story

[Wiseguy]

"Organized crime experts say the Gambinos are less sophisticated than the Genovese family, and less eager to expand their operations outside the New York area." - Brad Dunn, Author - New York: The Unknown City (2004)

[aleksandrored]

The Life and Death of Thelma Todd mentions gangsters like Capone and Luciano.

[Grouchy Sinatra]

In fiction.


There is a reference to the 5 families in Jaws. It is revealed in the novel that the reason Mayor Vaughn was so bent on keeping the beaches open despite the threat of the shark was because the 5 families of NY had invested into Amittyville (on Long Island) and we're putting pressure on him to keep them open so as not to hurt their businesses. Thought that was a neat little subplot when I read it.


Pogo

I'm glad they cut that out of the movie because it was too period specific. The mob doesn't have that kind of power anymore but politicians corrupted by businesses certainly do, which is the backstory they went with in the movie, rendering this part of the story timeless.

Still want to read the book, however, mostly because of the mob angle. I mean the Jaws book is basically Jaws meets The Godfather. And I haven't read this yet. What the hell am I waiting for? Why isn't this book like next on my reading list?

[JCB1977]

This was a good one. Dean Martin’s youth with Steubenville gangsters, Rubbing elbows all over the country.

https://www.amazon.com/Dino-Living-Dirt ... 038533429X

[JCB1977]

Quite a few Sinatra books, lots of JFK books, Roaring 20’s Old Hollywood books will most likely carry some underlying mob story.

[JCB1977]

Check out a book called The Devil’s Pact regarding Jackie Presser.

[JoeNGallo]

Thanks for all your input guys. Some great nuggets of information. Will be checking out the books recommended!

[JVerilla]

Ill also check these out