Made in Hollywood

The late Frank Vincent, a talented jazz combo musician, nightclub comedian, and actor who played a variety of mobsters and tough guys in such films as "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas," and "Casino," was on-location for a film shoot in Rhode Island when a 12-year-old boy approached him for an autograph. "You know who I am?" Vincent inquired. He was surprised when the kid replied, "You're a made man."

As the namesake behind Frank Vincent and His Aristocats (which included a young Joe Pesci on guitar), he often played music in bars and lounges that catered to mob clientele. "You got to see them at their best and their worst," Vincent once told The Washington Post. "The best is that they have social grace, and they're accommodating and humorous and polite...And they make you think they care about what you're feeling. And the worst is that they can turn on a dime. They're very sensitive to insult. Or if you said the wrong thing to them, you could get into a little bit of trouble."

For some time, there has been an attraction between made men and moviemakers, and we're not just speaking of motion pictures about gangsters. Some actors have been so convincing in their portrayals, in movies and on television, that audiences suspect they are genuinely connected to the mob. What we intend to do, however, is take a look at the interesting interplay between some real-life mobsters and Hollywood. Before we get to that, though, here's a thumbnail sketch of the genesis of the Mafia.

Among the various etymologies for "Mafia" is a translation for a form of "mafioso" from a Sicilian dialect meaning "swagger." The organization began in 19th-century Sicily, from seeds planted in the island's emergence from a feudal state in 1812 and its annexation by mainland Italy in 1860.
Communities responded to local bandits by recruiting young men into "companies-at-arms" to track down thieves and negotiate the return of stolen goods in exchange for a pardon for the robbers and a recovery fee from the victims.

Allegedly, this photograph shows a group of Sicilian Mafia bosses.

Inevitably, the Mafia spread across oceans to the United States, Canada, and Australia. The American Mafia began as an offshoot of the Sicilian organization but eventually encompassed other Italian-Americans and criminal gangs of non-Sicilian origin. It first appeared in impoverished neighborhoods and ghettos in New York City's East Harlem (also known as Italian Harlem), Lower East Side, and Brooklyn. The Mafia appeared in several other major metropolitan areas, such as Chicago and New Orleans during the late 19th century and early 20th century, ushered in by waves of immigrants, especially from Sicily and regions of southern Italy.

One of the first American movies about the Mafia was the 1912 silent era's "The Adventures of Lieutenant Petrosino," directed by Sidney M. Goldin, an American Jewish filmmaker with roots in Yiddish theater.

Historically, Joseph Petrosino (pictured above, far left), who was born in 1860, was a New York City police officer who pioneered the fight against organized crime. In 1909, he volunteered for a secret mission to Palermo, Sicily, to obtain evidence about the larcenous pasts of Italian criminals who had emigrated to America. While in Sicily, Petrosino was duped into a rendezvous with a supposed informant when he was murdered. Stateside, he was mourned and honored as a hero of law enforcement.

In the film (pictured above), American Mafiosi are depicted as members of the Black Hand, a euphemistic phrase concocted by newspaper writers for the gangs of Italian immigrants. Portrayed as vaudevillian, mustachioed ruffians, they identify each other with a secret signal of a salute, followed by a throat-slitting gesture.

Joseph Petrosino's story and fate were utilized in the 1950 film "Black Hand," which gave Hollywood song-and-dance man Gene Kelly the first of his rare dramatic roles as Giovanni Colombo, a young Italian-American seeking revenge for the gangland murder of his attorney father. Petrosino was fictionalized onscreen as police detective Lorelli.

Detective Lorelli and Giovanni Colombo lead the police
in squaring off against the Mafia in "Black Hand."

Detective Lorelli, who, like his historic counterpart, meets an untimely demise in Italy, was portrayed by J. Carroll Naish, a versatile Irish-American character actor who is best known for such roles as the weaselly Russian Legionnaire Rasinoff in 1939's "Beau Geste," the sympathetic Italian prisoner-of-war Giuseppe in Humphrey Bogart's "Sahara" (for which he was Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor), and as Boris Karloff's hunchbacked henchman in "House of Frankenstein."

In 1960, Ernest Borgnine starred as the crusading Petrosino in "Pay or Die" (pictured below), directed by Richard Wilson, who had just made the successful biographical picture "Al Capone," with Rod Steiger.

Lionel Stander, endeared to TV fans in the early 1980s as the burly, gravelly voiced butler Max on "Hart to Hart," starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, played Lieutenant Giuseppe Petrosino in a 1973 Italian production, "The Black Hand" (pictured below).

In 2017, Paramount Pictures announced it had acquired the film rights to mystery author Stephan Talty's upcoming novel The Black Hand, to be released in 2018, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Joseph Petrosino.

Up to the release of "The Godfather," movies about the Mafia were few and far between. Notable among the rare screen treatments was 1960's "Murder, Inc.", which gave Stuart Whitman an early leading role and featured Peter Falk in an Academy Award-nominated performance as real-life Mafia hitman Abe "Kid Twist" Reles.

In his autobiography, Peter Falk, pictured here with May Britt and
Stuart Whitman, noted that "Murder, Inc." launched his career.

In 1961's "Underworld, U.S.A.", a latter-day film noir written, produced, and directed by no-nonsense Samuel Fuller, Cliff Robertson starred as a young man who purposely becomes a criminal to avenge the death of his father at the hands of gangsters who have risen to the top of the syndicate.

Dolores Dorn costars as Cuddles with Cliff Robertson in
"Underworld, U.S.A.", a "clever revenge story" the A.V. Club's
Noel Murray referred to as "a proto-'Goodfellas.'"

An obscure European production, 1965's "Hail, Mafia," written and directed by Raoul Levy, a French filmmaker best known for producing a number of movies starring Brigitte Bardot, including "Babette Goes to War" and "And God Created Woman," is worthy of mention for its casting of Henry Silva and Jack Klugman as Mafia hitmen (pictured below).

British director John Boorman departed from established stereotypes by envisioning the crime syndicate as a collection of paper-shuffling, white shirt-clad WASP executives in ties in 1967's "Point Blank," starring Lee Marvin as a double-crossed mob courier who systematically engineers a domino-effect revenge scheme that results in the white-collar mobsters eliminating each other.

Lee Marvin strong-arms button-down mobster
Lloyd Bochner in "Point Blank."

Kirk Douglas, Alex Cord, and Irene Pappas starred in the Sicily-based 1968 crime melodrama "The Brotherhood," directed by Martin Ritt, the venerable director of such socially conscious dramas as "Hud," "The Great White Hope," "Sounder," and "Norma Rae."

Kirk Douglas gives brother Alex Cord il bacio della morte
in "The Brotherhood."

The complex 1971 techno-caper film "The Anderson Tapes," from New York City's favorite filmmaker, Sidney Lumet ("Serpico," "Dog Day Afternoon," "Prince of the City"), featured a surprisingly toupé-less Sean Connery, adopting an awkward Bronx dialect - this coming from an actor who consistently scrapped any attempt at international accents (a Moroccan chieftain in "The Wind and the Lion," a Spanish swordsmen in "Highlander," a Russian sub commander in "The Hunt for Red October") simply because he was goddamned-f***ing Sean Connery from Scotland - as an ex-con who masterminds a heist of a high-class high-rise New York City apartment complex to repay a debt to a Mafia boss (played with subtle perfection by comedian Alan King).

Christopher Walken makes an auspicious screen debut in "The
Anderson Tapes" as a lock-savvy ex-con referred to as "The Kid."

Maybe as a hurried preemptive maneuver to beat 1972's "The Godfather" to the box office, Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, co-producers of the previously mentioned "Point Blank," latched onto New York journalist Jimmy Breslin's best seller The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, a seriocomic roman à clef based on real-life furniture salesman and enforcer for the Colombo crime family, "Crazy Joe" Gallo. The resulting motion picture, which Roger Ebert dubiously dubbed "an uncertain comedy," featured an eclectic cast including Jerry Orbach, Leigh Taylor-Young, Jo Van Fleet (an Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actress for 1955's "East of Eden"), Lionel Stander, a young Robert De Niro, Hervé Villechaize, Burt Young, comedian Jackie Vernon, and Michael V. Gazzo (best known as Frank "Frankie Five Angels" Pentangeli in "The Godfather Part II").

Leigh Taylor-Young, Robert De Niro, and Jo Van Fleet serve up
the abbondanza in "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight."

A violent, fictionalized account of Crazy Joe Gallo, who was gunned down in a clam house in Manhattan's Little Italy in 1972, was dished up by producer Dino De Laurentiis and Italian director Carlo Lizzani (utilizing New York locations) in 1974's "Crazy Joe," starring Peter Boyle (pictured below) in a cast that included Paula Prentiss, Fred Williamson, Eli Wallach, Rip Torn, Henry Winkler, and Michael V. Gazzo.

On the evening of his gangland slaying, Joe Gallo and his party attended a performance by Don Rickles at the famed Copacabana. Gallo had invited Rickles to join his birthday celebration at Umberto's Clam House, but the comedian found an excuse to back out of the invitation, which may have saved his life.

The holy grail of mob cinema, "The Godfather," had less than auspicious origins. You had an author, Mario Puzo, who readily agreed to an early movie rights agreement because he had a gambling debt of several thousands of dollars to pay off. Puzo himself never cared much for the book.

You had an Italian-American director who initially regarded the novel as sleazy sensationalism, describing it as "pretty cheap stuff" but needed a project to keep him on the filmmaking map. And, like Puzo, Coppola's studio was in debt. You also had a director with an unsure track record. Having worked under B-movie guru Roger Corman's tutelage, Coppola went on to make a couple of little, obscure pictures - "You're a Big Boy Now" (featuring Karen Black's breakout role) and "The Rain People" (with James Caan and Robert Duvall) - as well as a big-budgeted, big-disappointment musical, "Finian's Rainbow," starring an aging Fred Astaire and pop singer Petula Clark.

It might be interesting to note that the idea of a Mafia boss called "Godfather" was author Mario Puzo's invention. Perhaps more intriguing is that in its nearly three-hour running time, the word "Mafia" is never heard. When plans for the movie were first announced, the Italian-American Civil Rights League wasn't happy. The group, whose aim was to fight derogatory stereotypes, was headed by Joseph Colombo, the boss of one of New York's infamous "Five Families" of the Mafia. The League launched an aggressively intimidating campaign against producer Albert S. Ruddy, director Coppola, and Paramount Pictures executive Robert Evans. Actor Gianni Russo, who portrayed Carlo Rizzi, Connie Corleone's husband, recalled, "There were major threats, they were serious."

In a meeting with Ruddy, Colombo said he wanted the deletion of all mentions of "Mafia" in the screenplay. Ruddy also agreed to remove the phrase "Cosa Nostra." In fact, the word "Mafia" had only appeared once in the script. Ruddy promised to donate profits from the film's premiere to the Italian-American Civil Rights League's hospital building fund.

For his troubles, in 1971 as the movie was being filmed, Colombo was shot in the head and neck by a hitman. According to Gianni Russo, "Carlo Gambino and Frank Costello (head of the Luciano crime family) had warned him. He was bringing too much attention" to the organization. Paralyzed from the neck down, Colombo died seven years later of cardiac arrest.

Unforgettable in his role as a punching bag for James Caan's Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather" (pictured above), Gianni Russo himself attested to personal connections with the Mafia. Born Louis Giovanni Russo in Manhattan and raised in Little Italy, he averred that his uncle was a soldier in the Gambino crime family. Unsubstantiated sources claim the Gambinos persuaded Coppola to cast Russo in the movie.

In 2004, Gianni Russo released an album of songs
paying homage to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.

Russo once claimed he spent his adolescence in organized crime as an errand boy for the aforementioned Frank Costello, regarded as "The Prime Minister of the Underworld," but later abandoned the criminal lifestyle. It might be interesting to note that Russo also said he had been acquainted with three popes, five U.S. Presidents, and every Mafia boss in the country. He confessed to romantic trysts with Marilyn Monroe, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Liza Minnelli, as well as to being engaged at one time to Dionne Warwick (pictured below).

Russo allegedly beat almost two dozen criminal indictments stemming from his association with the Mafia. In 1988, he purportedly killed a man outside his Las Vegas club and casino. A member of Colombia's Medellín drug cartel was supposedly harassing a female patron when Russo intervened. The thug stabbed Russo with a broken wine bottle, and the latter pulled a gun and opened fire.

Gianni Russo and Talia Shire, who played his abused bride Connie,
were reunited at a 2008 premiere of a restored "The Godfather."

Gianni Russo wasn't the only actor in "The Godfather" with mob connections. Al Lettieri, who played the duplicitous drug-dealing Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, had a brother-in-law, Pasquale Eboli (aka Patsy or Patty Ryan), whose brother, Thomas Eboli (aka Tommy Ryan), was a Genovese crime family boss. Pasquale himself was a capo in the crime family.

Al Lettieri also claimed to be acquainted with
the previously mentioned "Crazy Joe" Gallo.

In the wee hours of July 16, 1972, Thomas Eboli was shot five times as he sat in his chauffeured Cadillac. Hit in the head and neck, he died instantly. In 1976, Pasquale Eboli disappeared, as in forever. His Cadillac was found at an airport parking lot with the keys in the glove compartment.

Pasquale Eboli (center) relaxes with Al Pacino and Al Lettieri.

During his brief career as one of the cinema's most effective heavies in the 1970s, Al Lettieri harassed Steve McQueen in "The Getaway," John Wayne in "McQ," and Charles Bronson in "Mr. Majestyk." Sadly, Lettieri died of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 47.

Early in the proceedings of "The Godfather," Lettieri's Sollozzo aids in the strangulation of Don Corleone's hulking enforcer, Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), pinning his hand to the bar with a knife and dispatching him to "sleep with the fishes."

Lenny Montana, born Leonardo Passafaro, had a successful run as a professional wrestler, as well as a real-life strong arm for the Colombo crime family. He started out wrestling as The Zebra Kid (pictured below) and later as Bull Montana, supplementing his career by working as a bouncer. He adopted the name Bull Montana after an Italian-born stuntman who had worked in Hollywood since the silent era.

The Zebra Kid once had a leg broken in a match
with Minneapolis, Minnesota's Verne Gagne.

Montana became involved with the Colombo crime family in the late 1960s, utilized as an enforcer and an arsonist. Eventually, he served jail time at Rikers Island. After his release, he was employed as a bodyguard for a senior member of the Colombo family when he met Francis Ford Coppola and Albert S. Ruddy, who immediately cast the 6' 6" 320-pound man as Luca Brasi.

The first-time actor was so nervous about sharing a scene with Marlon Brando that he sat off by himself and practiced his lines over and over from a handheld cheat sheet. This image so endeared itself to Coppola that he used it in the movie.

Lenny Montana's last screen role was in 1982's "Blood Song," a modest slasher film that is noteworthy for two reasons. For one thing, it starred former teen idol and beach party movie staple Frankie Avalon as an escaped psychopathic killer, and for another, the picture was co-written and co-produced by Montana. The movie featured Donna Wilkes (pictured below), who did all right in the late 1970s and early '80s as a scream queen in "Jaws 2," "Schizoid," and "Grotesque," as a crippled teen with a psychic connection with the murderer, having once received a blood transfusion from him.

Lenny Montana retired from acting after "Blood Song." He succumbed to a heart attack in 1992 at the age of 66.

Not surprisingly, a number of real-life mobsters felt that "The Godfather" was a portrayal of how they were  supposed to act and carry themselves. As Don Corleone, Marlon Brando's line "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse" was adopted by several gangsters.

Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a made man-turned-informant (pictured above), said, "I left the movie stunned...I mean I floated out of the theater. Maybe it was fiction, but for me, then, that was our life. It was incredible. I remember talking to a multitude...of made guys, who felt exactly the same way." According to Anthony Flato, a hitman for a Los Angeles crime family who likewise became an informant and government witness, Patriarca family members Paulie Intiso and Nicky Giso modeled their speech after Brando's. Intiso, in particular, had been known for his poor grammar laced with profanities, but after the film came out, he started to articulate more expressively and even philosophize.

James Caan became so closely identified with his characterization of the hotheaded Sonny Corleone that for years afterward, in his words, "They called me a wise guy. I won Italian of the Year twice in New York, and I'm Jewish...I was denied in a country club once. Oh yeah, the guy sat in front of the board, and he says, 'No, no, he's a wise guy, been downtown. He's a made guy.' I thought, 'What? Are you out of your mind?'"

An equally handsome actor from an earlier generation who was, as well, often mistaken for a genuine underworld figure was George Raft, a dashing leading man whose breakthrough role was as the sharp-dressed, coin-flipping hoodlum Guino Rinaldo in 1932's "Scarface," a fictionalized look at the rise and fall of Al Capone (depicted as Tony Camonte by chameleon-esque actor Paul Muni) produced by Howard Hughes and director Howard Hawks.

George Raft had been a boyhood friend of Owney "The Killer" Madden, an underworld figure in Manhattan who later ran the famous Cotton Clun nightclub in Harlem. (Madden was played by Bob Hoskins in Francis Ford Coppola's 1984 film "The Cotton Club.") There was talk that Raft had been a wheelman for the mob.

In 1927, Raft, whom Madden had encouraged to go into the movies, relocated to Hollywood, where, in the late 1930s, he befriended Jewish-American gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. Siegel had been dispatched to California to establish syndicate-based gambling rackets and to initiate a drug trade route from the U.S. to Mexico. For tax purposes, Siegel claimed he earned a living via legal gambling at Santa Anita Park near Los Angeles.

George Raft (right) pals it up with Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

It didn't take Siegel to become a fixture in Hollywood's social scene. His movie star look and tough persona was irresistible to celebrities as he rubbed elbows with the likes of Raft, Cary Grant, and blonde bombshell Jean Harlow, who became the godmother of Siegel's eldest daughter, Millicent.

A couple of decades before Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood's favorite
"Platinum Blonde" was Jean Harlow, seen here - er, briefly - in the
Laurel and Hardy short "Double Whoopee." Her reign as one of
the biggest movie stars of the 1930s was cut short when she died
from kidney failure in 1937 at the age of 26. 

As a rival of sorts of Jean Harlow, Thelma Todd was a vivacious blonde starlet who likewise appeared alongside Laurel and Hardy. Producer Hal Roach cast her in her own series of comedy shorts, in an attempt to create a female version of Laurel and Hardy. She also was featured in a pair of Marx Brothers comedies, "Monkey Business" and "Horse Feathers."

In 1932, Todd married Pat DiCicco, an agent and movie producer who allegedly was also a mobster who worked for "Lucky" Luciano. DiCicco was a cousin of 007 producer Albert R. Broccoli, and it was DiCicco who gave Broccoli his lifelong nickname "Cubby." The two-year marriage was tumultuous, marked by frequent drunken brawls, one of which ended with a broken nose for DiCicco and another that resulted in an emergency appendectomy for Todd.

Thelma Todd poses with Pat DiCicco in happier times.

With her boyfriend, director Roland West, she opened a nightclub called Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe, which catered to show business people while attracting a number of shady underworld figures, who were seemingly interested in taking over the establishment as a gambling house to fleece the wealthy clientele. Todd and West refused to sell the club, and on December 16, 1935, Thelma was found dead in her car inside her garage. Her death was ruled a suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She was 29 years old.

Returning to Benjamin Siegel, friends said he harbored a secret desire to be a Hollywood actor. He was a frequent visitor to movie sets and even arranged a screen test for himself, the footage of which was unfortunately destroyed.

When James Cagney became president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1942, he assumed an active role in the union's stance against the Mafia, which had taken a visibly active interest in the film industry. According to show business lore, George Raft, after learning of a planned mob hit on Cagney, made a phone call, and the hit was called off.

In 1944, George Raft gave evidence when Benjamin Siegel was on trial for bookmaking. Six years earlier, Raft was interviewed by the FBI regarding his association with Murder, Inc. boss Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and his partner, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro. Raft attended the December 26, 1946 opening of Siegel's Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

In the book This Is Orson Welles, Welles explained to author and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich that as George Raft's film career gained steam, he became not only a screen idol but a role model for real-life mobsters in terms of class, dress, and attitude.

George Raft (center) stars as an ex-con unable to go straight in 1939's
"Invisible Stripes," with William Holden and Humphrey Bogart.

In 1947, the crime families ordered the murder of "Bugsy" Siegel due to his mismanagement of the Flamingo Hotel, which was seemingly the result of Siegel and his mistress, Virginia Hill, or Hill alone, skimming money from the enterprise. Lounging inside Hill's Beverly Hills home, Siegel was shot several times, including twice in the head. A total of nine rifle shots were fired from outside the house.

Siegel's friend and associate, gangster Mickey Cohen, purportedly became so enraged over the killing that he showed up at a Hollywood Boulevard hotel where he believed the killers were staying and fired several rounds from his pair of .45 semi-automatic pistols into the ceiling of the lobby. He demanded the hitmen meet him outside the hotel in ten minutes. He hightailed it before the police arrived.

In the 1991 movie "Bugsy," starring Warren Beatty and future wife Annette Bening, Mickey Cohen was portrayed in an Oscar-nominated performance by Harvey Keitel, who, coincidentally, played "Bugsy" Siegel nearly two decades earlier in the TV movie "Virginia Hill."

(Above) Harvey Keitel as Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel in "Virginia
Hill," with Dyan Cannon in the title role; (below) Keitel as Mickey
Cohen, between Warren Beatty and Joe Mantegna in "Bugsy" 

Incidentally, George Raft was played in Warren Beatty's "Bugsy" by Joe Mantegna (pictured above, far right).

Speaking of Mickey Cohen, one of his underlings, a bodyguard and enforcer for the Cohen crime family named Johnny Stompanato Jr., began an abusive relationship in the mid-1950s with Lana Turner, yet another bleach blonde starlet who had become one of Hollywood's most glamorous leading ladies of the 1940s.

Johnny Stompanato Jr. steps out with Lana Turner.

In 1958, Lana Turner was in London, filming a romantic weeper called "Another Time, Another Place" with Sean Connery, when Stompanato heard rumors of an affair between the two stars. The thug showed up in England and threatened Connery with a gun, only to have Sean snatch the heater away and cuff him around.

Lana Turner and Sean Connery share a toast
behind the scenes of "Another Time, Another Place."

In 1958, Johnny Stompanato was stabbed to death by Lana Turner's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane, who claimed she was defending her mother from a vicious beating by the hood.

Lana Turner is pictured in happier times with Johnny Stompanato
and Lana's adolescent daughter (and Johnny's future killer), Cheryl.

Stompanato's death was ultimately ruled justifiable homicide. Mickey Cohen purchased a cheap casket for Johnny, then sold Lana's love letters to Stompanato to the press.

When George Raft's acting career waned in the 1950s, he found himself working in mob-dominated Havana as a greeter at the Capri Casino, a club of which he was part owner. It was around this time that he befriended twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray, notoriously sadistic English gangsters who dominated organized crime in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s.

George Raft is flanked by the Kray twins, along
with former heavyweight boxer Rocky Marciano.

The Krays' organization, called the Firm, was involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, and murder. The twins were nightclub owners in the West End, where they hobnobbed with prominent politicians and entertainers the likes of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

The Kray twins pose with Judy Garland.

The brothers were arrested in 1968 and sentenced the following year to life imprisonment. Ronnie Kray was certified insane in 1979 and lived the remainder of his life in a high-security psychiatric hospital, where he died of a heart attack in 1995. Reggie Kray, who became a born-again Christian, served 31 years before he was freed on compassionate grounds, suffering from inoperable bladder cancer, to which he succumbed in 2000.

In 1990, brothers (but not twins) Gary Kemp and Martin Kemp, musicians in the synth-pop band Spandau Ballet, played the twins in "The Krays," directed by Peter Medak (best known for the 1972 dark comedy "The Ruling Class," starring Peter O'Toole). Distinguished British actress Billie Whitelaw was featured as the boys' doting mother.

Martin and Gary Kemp flank Billie Whitelaw in "The Krays."

English actor Tom Hardy, whose performance as the treacherous trapper John Fitzgerald in "The Revenant" garnered him an Oscar nomination, portrayed both Krays in 2015's "Legend" (pictured below), written and directed by Brian Helgeland, who wrote the screenplay for 1997's "L.A. Confidential."

Probably the entertainer most often associated with the Mafia was Frank Sinatra. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrant parents, he embodied the stereotypical image of the tough, self-made working class Italian-American. Willie Moretti, an underboss in the Genovese crime family, was Sinatra's godfather. Moretti allegedly intervened in persuading big band leader Tommy Dorsey to release Frank from his contract.

Frank Sinatra rubs elbows with Joe Fischetti and his
brother Rocco Fischetti in Havana, Cuba, in 1946.

Accompanied by Chicago mobster Rocco Fischetti, Sinatra was present at "Lucky" Luciano's "Havana Summit" in 1946. Observers noted that Frank and Rocco acted like "Sicilian brothers." Most noticeably, Sinatra was a good friend of Chicago boss Sam Giancana. The two were often seen golfing together.

Frank Sinatra schmoozes with Sam Giancana.

Allegedly, Sinatra adored "Bugsy" Siegel and reveled in relating how many men he had killed. According to Kitty Kelley, author of the controversial, unauthorized biography of Sinatra titled His Way, Frank and his manager, Hank Sanicola, were financial partners with Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen for the gossip magazine Hollywood Night Life.

Not surprisingly, the FBI kept Sinatra under surveillance for decades, beginning in the 1940s. The Bureau noted that Sinatra was losing esteem with the Mafia as his friendship grew with President John F. Kennedy, whose brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was leading a crackdown on organized crime.

Ironically, there were unsubstantiated accounts that had Sam Gianca being associated with Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, in an illegal bootlegging enterprise during Prohibition. Frank's daughter, Tina Sinatra, alleged on "60 Minutes" that, acting on Sinatra's request, Giancana used mob muscle to pressure union members to vote for JFK in the 1960 West Virginia primary. Giancana was also purportedly approached by the CIA in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

On the one hand, Frank Sinatra would vehemently deny any connection with the Mafia, declaring, "Any report that I fraternized with goons or racketeers is a vicious lie." On the other, he was noted as once remarking that if not for his interest in music, he probably "would have ended in a life of crime."

The only flak Frank would accept regarding his dubious relationships were jokes from his lifelong friend, Don Rickles, whom Sinatra nicknamed "bullet-head." Early in his career, while entertaining at a Miami Beach nightclub, Rickles first endeared himself to Sinatra when he spotted the singer in the audience and said, "Make yourself at home, Frank, hit somebody!"

Don Rickles: "Marco Mangananzo was hurt...
Bambino Bambatzo - two bullets to the head, Thursday."

Oh, one last thought: As to whatever became of Frank Sinatra's beloved godfather, Willie Moretti, on a late morning in October of 1951, he was enjoying lunch with four other men at Joe's Elbow Room in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. The staff heard shots fired and found Moretti on the floor with bullet wounds in the face and head. Originally, Moretti was to have lunch with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but Lewis was ill. It was considered a "mercy killing" by Mafia insiders, since Moretti was "going off his rocker" and babbling too much.

What - no checkered tablecloths?

Next up: The Gangs of New York, Las Vegas, and New Jersey