Author: Bradley Lewis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
The first full-length biography of West Coast gangster Mickey Cohen, a man of many parts: boxer, bodyguard, blackmailer, pimp, gambler, haberdasher, restaurateur, racketeer, thief. A confidant of Hollywood legends, Cohen hung out with Rat Pack mega stars and hobnobbed with Jerry Lewis. In the world of crime, Mickey Cohen knew everyone--from underworld bosses to punks, from operator-enforcers to B-girls. A personal friend of professional gigolo Johnny Stompanato, Mickey had an association with Jack Ruby and acted as bodyguard for Bugsy Siegel. He did the bidding for Mafiosi bigwigs, including Meyer Lansky, Sam Giancana, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, and Lucky Luciano. At five feet five inches, Mickey still had a way with women. The fugitive Patty Hearst even played a role in the incredible life of this "celebrity gangster," right at home during Hollywood's Golden Age--and beyond.--From publisher description.
Author: Casey Sherman
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1728276519
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
USA TODAY BESTSELLER "A wild ride beneath the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood, proving once again that Casey Sherman is a master of the genre." —Ben Mezrich, New York Times bestselling author of Dumb Money, Bringing Down the House, and The Accidental Billionaires The dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all—a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate as Stompanato's intense jealousy took over. Eventually, the physical and emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted to break it off with Johnny—with disastrous consequences. The details of what happened that fateful night remain foggy, but it ended in a series of frantic phone calls and Stompanato dead on Lana's bedroom floor, with Cheryl claiming to have plunged a knife into his abdomen in an attempt to protect her mother. The subsequent murder trial made for the biggest headlines of the year, its drama eclipsing every Hollywood movie. New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman pulls back Tinseltown's velvet curtain to reveal the dark underbelly of celebrity, rife with toxic masculinity and casual violence against women, and tells the story of Lana Turner and her daughter, who finally stood up to the abuse that plagued their family for years. A Murder in Hollywood transports us back to the golden age of film and illuminates one of the 20th century's most notorious true crime tales.
Author: Jeffrey Sussman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538173573
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Like sharks to blood in the water, the mob arrived in Hollywood greedy and ready to tear away huge chunks of cash. Opportunistic mobsters saw labor unions as the means for muscling into the movie industry and extorting millions of dollars from studio bosses. Control the unions to which projectionists, art directors, cinematographers, electricians, scene designers, stagehands, extras belong, and you control the whole industry. Painting colorful portraits of numerous mobsters, producers, actors, and directors, Tinseltown Gangsters tells the gripping, fast-paced, true story of corruption and greed in Hollywood throughout much of the twentieth century.
Author: Ori Spado
Publisher: WildBlue Press
ISBN: 1948239450
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
The true story of a Hollywood fixer who wound up in the sights of the FBI. In this memoir, Orlando (Ori) Spado honestly recounts his humble beginnings from the small town of Rome in upstate New York, and his journey to becoming known as “The Mob Boss of Hollywood.” It is a candid account documenting his fall from a well-known Hollywood fixer mixing with A-list celebrities to serving 62 months in Federal prison, and ultimately making a determined comeback. “For nearly forty years Orlando ‘Ori’ Spado was a friend and associate of John ‘Sonny’ Franzese, underboss of the Colombo organized crime family. His relationship with Sonny brought him to the attention of the FBI, and eventually led to his being indicted with Sonny on federal RICO charges, and imprisoned. In The Accidental Gangster Ori provides the details of his time in ‘the life’ and his long battle with the FBI—whose overwhelming resources made it a fight that was impossible to win.”—Nick Pileggi, author of Wiseguy “Orlando ‘Ori’ Spado had been a thorn in the side of the Los Angeles field office of the FBI for almost two decades before they finally took him down. Accidentally or not, Ori was a quintessential Mob character, complete with a pinkie ring and a slow, steady deliberate voice whether speaking with friends or foes. But like so many other ‘Good Fellas,’ he was set up by a friend’s son. You will have to read the book to find out who set him up. Enjoy!”—John Connolly, New York Times-bestselling author of Filthy Rich
Author: Gianni Russo
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250181410
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo's over-the-top memoir of a real-life mobster-turned-actor who helped make The Godfather a reality, and his story of life on the edge between danger and glamour. Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set her brother Sonny—played by James Caan—up for a hit. Russo didn't have to act—he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger for New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club. Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra, who became his son's godfather, and Marlon Brando, who mentored his career as an actor after trying to get Francis Ford Coppola to fire him from The Godfather. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, and scores of other celebrities. He went on to become a producer and starred in The Godfather: Parts I and II, Seabiscuit, Any Given Sunday and Rush Hour 2, among many other films. Hollywood Godfather is a no-holds-barred account of a life filled with violence, glamour, sex—and fun.
Author: Jon Lewis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520959914
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
The tragic and mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Elizabeth Short, or the Black Dahlia, and Marilyn Monroe ripped open Hollywood’s glitzy façade, exposing the city's ugly underbelly of corruption, crime, and murder. These two spectacular dead bodies, one found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947, the other found dead in her home in August 1962, bookend this new history of Hollywood. Short and Monroe are just two of the many left for dead after the collapse of the studio system, Hollywood’s awkward adolescence when the company town’s many competing subcultures—celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, industry wannabes, and desperate transients—came into frequent contact and conflict. Hard-Boiled Hollywood focuses on the lives lost at the crossroads between a dreamed-of Los Angeles and the real thing after the Second World War, where reality was anything but glamorous."
Author: Jonathan Marshall
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538142503
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
From Truman to Trump, the deep corruption of our political leaders unveiled. Many critiques of the Trump era contrast it with the latter half of the twentieth century, when the United States seemed governed more by statesmen than by special interests. Without denying the extraordinary vigor of President Trump’s assault on traditional ethical and legal norms, Jonathan Marshall challenges the myth of a golden age of American democracy. Drawing on a host of original archival sources, he tells a shocking story of how well-protected criminals systematically organized the corruption of American national politics after World War II. Marshall begins by tracing the extraordinary scandals of President Truman, whose political career was launched by the murderous Pendergast machine in Missouri. He goes on to highlight the role of organized crime in the rise of McCarthyism during the Cold War, the near-derailment of Vice President Johnson’s political career by two mob-related scandals, and Nixon’s career-long association with underworld figures. The book culminates with a discussion of Donald Trump’s unique history of relations with the traditional American Mafia and newer transnational gangs like the Russian mafiya—and how the latter led to his historic impeachment by the House of Representatives.
Author: Barry Thomas Thomas
Publisher: Schiffer + ORM
ISBN: 1507300190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
64 true crime cases in California from the early 1950s into the 1980s Inside look at serial killers, assassins, sadistic rapists, bank robbers, kidnappers, Satan worshippers, and more Provides crime overview, parties involved, evidence gathered, and theories for solutions
Author: Jerry Carrier
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628941790
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
In America, even the left is right of center; just how far right is subject to debate. There really is no longer an American left, as it has been systematically destroyed. This rightward drift is seen in historic events like the Red Scare of the 1920s where thousands of innocent Russian and Jewish-Americans were imprisoned and deported by J. Edgar Hoover under President Wilson. There were plots like the secret financing of Hitler’s rise to power by the Rockefeller, Harriman and Bush-Walker families managed by the Dulles Brothers. There was the Businessmen and Banker’s Plot to overthrow Roosevelt and install a fascist government in the United States just before WWII. There was the OSS/CIA cooperation with the Catholic Church in the Ratlines to hide and bring Nazi war criminals into the United States. American phobias against communism, socialism and the left have allowed those on the right to suppress and eliminate the left and to harass, imprison or assassinate its leaders since 1848. The US government has eliminated and assassinated the left, and with no counterbalance the country veers further and further to the right. In this book Jerry Carrier seeks to define "Left" as it applies in the United States. He traces some of the original influences and provides a succinct history of the American left, including the McCarthy witch hunts and the xenophobia of the China Lobby. That history includes illegal CIA and FBI operations to stop the left, civil rights, anti-war, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay and women’s movements. It includes the US intelligence service’s long ties to the Mafia and the Unione Corse, the French Mafia, and their illegal drug activities. It includes the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. It includes the treasonous acts of Nixon and Kissinger to win in 1968, by Reagan and Bush in 1980, and the buying of elections by the Koch Brothers. From Rousseau to Obama, this book gives the rise and fall of the American left. Victims includes Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Gus Hall, and Angela Davis. It includes the assassinations of foreign leaders like Patrice Lumumba and even UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and attempts on Sukarno and Castro as well as dozens of US inspired coups.
Author: John Buntin
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307352080
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
Now the TNT Original Series MOB CITY Midcentury Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America," a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world’s most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men—one L.A.’ s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief—each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.
