Boardwalk Gangster

by Tim Newark

  A Madrid newspaper quoted Gosch as saying that Luciano was poisoned. “He appeared as though he were drugged,” Gosch told the Spanish reporter. Arriving in New York, Gosch then announced that elements from the underworld had asked for the film on Luciano not to be made, but that he planned to go ahead anyway. The FBI were unimpressed by Gosch’s comments, saying, “It would appear from this that Gosch might be obtaining a good deal of free publicity for his proposed film.”

  A later FBI report alleged that Gosch met Pat Eboli on the day after Luciano died to talk to him about the film script. Eboli wanted to know what Luciano had said between his heart attack and his death. Gosch reassured him that he had said nothing. Eboli then asked for the script, but Gosch refused to give it to him.

  The most sensational tale accused Luciano of working with federal government agencies to disrupt narcotics smuggling from the Middle East to the United States. The story was based on an interview with Bill Mancuso, a former bodyguard for Luciano, which appeared in an Italian newspaper. It claimed also that Martin Gosch was, in fact, an FBI agent pretending to be a film producer. Mancuso told the Italian journalist that Luciano had long worked for the U.S. government, citing his help to them during the Allied invasion of Sicily in World War II. These claims were undercut somewhat by the article alternating the FBI with the FBN, as though there were no difference between the two organizations. The article ended by saying that Luciano was killed by narcotics gangsters who substituted poison for his heart medicine.

  The FBI was scathing in criticisms of these reports. “There is, of course, no substance whatsoever to these claims,” said a memorandum addressed to Hoover. “The Italian press will publish stories which have absolutely no basis on fact but which are drawn out by reporters in connection with sensational-type stories.”

  In the years following his death, newspaper stories linked Luciano to all kinds of crimes. In 1965, the Italian minister of the interior declared war on pinball tables and slot machines. They were leading the nation’s youth astray and pushing law-abiding citizens into debt. The importation of slot machines was blamed on exiled American gangsters. A parish priest from near Naples pointed the finger at Lucky Luciano as the man responsible for the business in his city. It was certainly possible, as Frank Costello was the king of slot machines back in America and could have supplied them to Luciano.

  At the beginning of the 1960s, gang warfare had piled up bodies on the streets of Palermo. One car bomb had killed seven policemen. When one of these gang leaders, Rosario Mancino, was finally put on trial in 1967, he was said to be a friend of Lucky Luciano. It was his death, it was claimed, that had been the catalyst behind this struggle for power among Sicilian mafiosi. As happened during his life, the power and influence ascribed to Luciano was way beyond his capacity as a largely semiretired American mobster in Naples.

  An FBI memorandum of September 1965 put Luciano’s role in a more proper perspective. “Over the years,” it said, “there have been many allegations that Luciano continued to be the ‘Mafia boss’ of the United States, directing criminal activities from his place in exile. Information developed during the past several years indicates that these allegations generally have been overstatements.”

  There was, however, “some indication that an association continued between Luciano and some of this country’s top hoodlums who, from time to time, visited Luciano in Italy.” That was about the strength of it.

  Martin Gosch stayed true to the promise he made the mobster and waited exactly ten years after Luciano’s death to publish his memoirs. Gosch hired former New York Times writer Richard Hammer to help write the book based on his notes from conversations with Luciano. But Gosch died shortly afterward from a heart attack in 1973, closing down the last direct link between Luciano and the writing project. The resulting book, The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, caused a tremendous publicity stir—not least because its publishers, Little, Brown & Co., falsely declared it was based on long-lost recordings of the gangster.

  When the Washington Post carried a full-page advertisement on September 25, 1974, heralding the forthcoming publication of The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, the FBI were intrigued, especially as the ad showed a pyramid of politicians and government department heads all linked to Luciano at the top of the picture—and that included Hoover. As the book was being serialized in Penthouse magazine before publication, FBI agents got hold of two installments and subjected it to an exhaustive analysis. Their conclusion was that “the book is a complete fraud.” The editors at Penthouse claimed the book was based on a year of tapes made by Gosch listening to the reminiscences of Luciano.

  “Obviously, if such a manuscript was valid,” said the FBI reviewer, “it would be of considerable value to law enforcement, but there are many instances of internal evidence to indicate that Gosch probably resurrected a few random quotes gathered during interviews with Luciano and then put them together with an old movie script of his and some recent research to produce a book that capitalized upon the current public interest in the subject of organized crime.”

  It quoted the FBI’s legal attaché in Madrid, who said that Gosch admitted that his movie script about Luciano had been largely “made up out of the whole cloth” and bore little resemblance to anything that actually happened. Apparently, Gosch had already approached the FBI in 1972 for their help in transforming his script into book form. He told them that he was being assisted by Hammer and they already had access to the files of the New York City police department. “As regards Hammer,” said the FBI, “Bureau files show only that he is a successful author and reporter who may, or may not, be aware of the fraudulent nature of Gosch’s manuscript.

  “An in-depth analysis of [the] book,” concluded the FBI, “indicates that the material contained therein consists of old information gleaned from the hearings of the McClellan Committee [investigating criminal infiltration of labor unions] and other Congressional groups, plus a number of unverified allegations to the effect that Luciano dabbled in the political campaigns of Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, paid $90,000 into Tom Dewey’s gubernatorial coffers, and once turned down a $5,000 offer from Director Hoover if he would tell the FBI where Louis Lepke Buchalter was hiding. For these reasons, and the description of how it came to be written in the first place, it is not believed that this book has any value to the FBI, or to anyone else for that matter.”

  The FBI review was made in secret in October 1974 and had little impact on the publicity for the book, which spiraled upward. Aside from its serialization in Penthouse, paperback rights were sold for $800,000 and it was chosen as the main selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Playboy Book Club. New York Times journalist Nicholas Gage was determined to prick this bubble. He took exception to the publisher’s main claim on the book jacket: “Dictated during the final months of his life to film producer Martin G. Gosch, this powerful inside chronicle is literally the ‘last testament’ of America’s most notorious gangster.”

  In a substantial article published in the New York Times on December 17, 1974, Gage declared that the tapes had never existed and most of the information published in the book had appeared elsewhere. He also pointed out that some of the events described would have been impossible for Luciano to witness as he was in prison at the time. The publisher struck back by saying they had two sworn affidavits and three signed letters from close friends and relatives of Luciano testifying to the truth of his interviews with Gosch. One of these was Rosario Vitaliti, then in his seventies, who declared that “everything [Mr. Gosch] says is true.” Five percent of the book’s royalties were said to be shared among members of Luciano’s family, Vitaliti, and former girlfriend Adriana Rizzo.

  Richard Hammer was very forthcoming about the faults of the book, telling Gage, “while there are some inaccuracies in it, the work is what it purports to be—the life story of Lucky Luciano as he told it.” Gosch’s widow said that her husband made tapes for Hammer in which he discussed the notes and sub
sequently didn’t think it was worth keeping the actual notes. Hammer said there would never have been a moment when Luciano would have consented to be recorded. “Luciano would have had to be out of his mind to sit with a tape recorder,” he said.

  Gage spoke to Peter Maas, the author of The Canary That Sang: The Valachi Papers, published in 1969, who said The Last Testament was “almost an exact compilation of all the available published material on organized crime in general and Luciano in particular.” He said it paralleled much of what Mafia informer Valachi had already said. Luciano’s former lawyer, Moses Polakoff, read a selection of the book featuring him and said “not 5 percent of the accounts bear any resemblance to reality.”

  As a direct result of Gage’s article, New American Library suspended its plans to publish the paperback, but Little, Brown was undaunted and proceeded with the publication of the hardcover in January 1975. The publisher was, however, forced to make a public statement in which it clarified its position, saying that the original interviews with Luciano were written down, but these handwritten notes were “not completely legible to anyone” and so Gosch read them out to his collaborator, Hammer. “The whole process was tape recorded,” asserted the publisher.

  It then explained that the bulk of the original notes was burned after his death—leaving only thirty-seven pages, which were in the possession of the publisher. Neither these nor the supposed dictated tapes have survived. In March, Gage revealed the existence of the FBI’s own damning comments on the book, telling its agents not to trust it. Little, Brown made no comment on the FBI memorandum. As one commentator wrote, Luciano must be “enjoying the last laugh from beyond the grave.”

  A year later came another major book on Lucky Luciano. Written by Tony Scaduto, a former New York Post journalist noted more for his show-business biographies, he did his best to puncture any myths about the mobster. Perhaps annoyed at The Last Testament stealing attention away from his work, Scaduto furiously denounced the book, devoting a twelve-page appendix to its demolition. Not only was the book a fraud, he declared, but Gosch was a hustler and con man. “[Gosch] did not even make notes of those so-called conversations with Luciano until long after the talks were supposed to have taken place,” alleged Scaduto. He said the original film script belonged to Barnett Glassman, who had sued the publishers when Gosch went ahead with the book based on Glassman’s conversations with Luciano. Glassman apparently received a substantial sum of money as a result and would have received a large percentage of the receipts of any movie made from the book.

  Hammer, in turn, is scathing in his criticism of Scaduto. “When I was approached to collaborate with Gosch,” says Hammer, “Glassman went on a search to have a book of his own written, begged several writers to do it, all of whom refused because he told them they would have to do the research because he had nothing. Finally, he found Scaduto and Scaduto was a gun for hire. Almost all of Scaduto’s claims and charges were refuted by people close to Luciano who were aware of the mobster’s feelings and relationship with Gosch.”

  A film was eventually made about Luciano, but it had nothing to do with Gosch, his script, or the book. It came from the Naples-born film director Francesco Rosi, who had made a name for himself with realistic portrayals of the Italian underworld, most notably his award-winning movie about the Sicilian bandit, Salvatore Giuliano, in 1962.

  Rosi’s Lucky Luciano (1973) was a good attempt at depicting the reality of Luciano’s life, concentrating mainly on his period in Italy. It showed vividly how Vito Genovese dominated the black market in stolen American goods at the end of the war and worked closely with corrupt American officers. Its great triumph of veracity was to have FBN agent Charles Siragusa play himself, some twenty years after the event, and some of the dialogue parrots the Narcotic Bureau’s view of events. Gian Maria Volonté played the part of Luciano well; his most famous roles before this were a leading villain in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. But because it was essentially an Italian movie that was dubbed and cut for the English-language market in 1975, Rosi’s film had limited impact.

  “Unfortunately one can only recommend the picture with reservations,” said London film critic Philip French. “I doubt if it ever was as good as Rosi’s other work, and Godfather II has stolen a lot of its thunder.” This was true, the Godfather movies have been the most successful versions of Mob activities in recent decades and still set the standard for such depictions. Their fictional characters, first created by Mario Puzo in his 1969 novel The Godfather, are based on elements of the most notorious real-life mobsters. The character of Michael Corleone is the closest to Luciano. Scenes are set on the Lower East Side in the 1910s and then in Las Vegas and Havana in the 1950s, all charting the history of the American Mafia as directed by Lansky, Costello, and Luciano.

  Luciano has been played by several notable actors over the years, including Telly Savalas in the 1960s TV series The Witness, Andy Warhol star Joe Dallesandro in The Cotton Club (1984), and Stanley Tucci in Billy Bathgate (1991). In 1981, thriller writer Jack Higgins published Luciano’s Luck, heavily elaborating on the mobster’s help during the Allied invasion of Sicily. In 1991, the film Mobsters portrayed the rise to power of Luciano and his criminal comrades, Lansky, Siegel, and Costello, in the 1920s. Christian Slater played Luciano, while F. Murray Abraham took on the role of Arnold Rothstein; Anthony Quinn was Joe Masseria, and Michael Gambon played a Maranzano character.

  Bugsy (1991) focused on Siegel and the founding of Las Vegas, with Warren Beatty well cast as the handsome hoodlum and Bill Graham playing Luciano. In the same year, a TV movie was made called White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd. In 1997, Hoodlum concentrated on the gang rivalry in Harlem between Dutch Schultz, played by Tim Roth, and Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, played by Laurence Fishburne. The story plays loose with history, having Johnson as the main author of Schultz’s murder and DA Thomas Dewey on the take from the Mob. Andy Garcia starred as Luciano.

  Recently, interest has been sparked in making a film based on The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. Joe Isgro, a music promoter sentenced to several months in jail for extortion and loansharking, claimed he had the rights to the book. “Rights to what?” said Richard Hammer. “There are no rights.” Since then, film producer Bob DeBrino said he had the movie option and was pressing ahead with the project and looking at George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, or Johnny Depp for the lead role. It seems the legend of Lucky Luciano is destined to carry on for many more years.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their help in the research and production of this book, I would like to thank the following:

  Leonora A. Gidlund, director of the Municipal Archives, and her helpful staff at Chambers Street, New York; Mary M. Huth of the Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, New York; Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty of the Herbert H. Lehman Suite and Papers, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York; Eric van Slander and Timothy K. Nenninger at the National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland; David M. Hardy and David P. Sobonya of FBI Records Management Division; Richard L. Baker of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Michael E. Gonzales of the 45th Infantry Division Museum; Edward Dojutrek and Carl Q. Topie of the 3rd Infantry Division Society; Charles T. Pinck of the OSS Society; Charles Radcliffe Haffenden Jr.; in London, the staff of the National Archives, Kew, and the British Library; in Sicily, Giada Platania, Salvatore Cabasino, Maia Mancuso, and the staff of the Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana; Charles McCall, for IRS advice; Peter Newark, for his extensive crime archive; Lucy Wildman, for research assistance; Robert Miller, for lunch at Patsy’s; Vicky Newark, for her good company on research trips; crime historians Richard Hammer, John Dickie, John Follain, James Morton, David Critchley, and Robert A. Rockaway, for their advice and help; and my excellent editor, Peter Joseph, and my first-class agent, Andrew Lownie.

  Also by Tim Newark


  Mafia Allies

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  My lunch with Richard Hammer on April 3, 2009. Quotes from T. Scaduto, Lucky Luciano, London: Sphere Books, 1976, and Lacey, R., Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, London: Century, 1991. For a thorough analysis of The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, see Rick Porello’s AmericanMafia.com, Web site article in two parts in issues 8-26-02 and 9-2-02, and the final chapter of this book

  CHAPTER 1: LUCKY IN NAZI GERMANY

  Diamond’s failed trip to Germany is covered extensively in contemporary newspapers. The reference to Lucania accompanying him is in “Ireland Will Refuse Landing to Diamond,” New York Times, August 30, 1930. The reference to Del Grazio appears in “Seized in Germany on Narcotic Charge,” New York Times, December 6, 1931. The Kefauver Del Grazio reference comes from E. Kefauver, Crime in America, London: Victor Gollancz, 1952. The FBI memorandum that quotes Federal Bureau of Narcotics information on Diamond and Luciano visiting Germany is dated August 28, 1935; and is kept in FBI files 39-2141 section 1.

  An early description of the dangers of drug addiction in New York appears in C. B. Towns, Habits that Handicap, New York: The Century Company, 1915. Luciano quote about smoking opium is from Scaduto. Brewster testimony is in “Hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives on HR7079, a Bill Prohibiting the Importation of Crude Opium for the Purpose of Manufacturing Heroin, April 3, 1924,” Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office. Russell Pasha’s report on the international drug trade appears in “Illicit Drug Trade–Poison Factories,” London Times, January 23, 1930. For “junkie” derivation see M. Booth, Opium: A History, London: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Booth also makes the point that opium was referred to as “junk” at the turn of the twentieth century and “hop,” derived from Chinese slang, in the late nineteenth century, hence