Two Real Life Gangster Tales Ripe For The Silver Screen

Veteran organized crime reporter and author George Anastasia (seen in the below photo), who wrote a book on gangster movies, offers a piece at jerseymanmagazine.com on two recent true crime books that might make good crime films.

I agree that one of the books, Lee Server’s Handsome Johnny, The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin, which I reviewed for the Washington Times, would make an interesting film or TV miniseries. (A young Johnny Rosselli appears in the above mugshot).

I’m not convinced that the second book, Gianni Russo’s Hollywood Godfather: My life in Movies and the Mob, can even be called true crime, as the stories written by the sometimes actor who played Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather are a bit too much to be believed. He should have called the book fiction.

In George Anastasia’s piece he writes about his gangster movie book and the two crime books.  

Several years ago, I wrote a book with Glenn Macnow, the radio sports commentator, about mob movies. It was called the Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies and it opened with these lines: “Walk into any bar where guys hang out and it’s a good bet they are discussing one of three topics—sports, women or movies. It’s also a good bet that most of those guys can speak with knowledge and intelligence about two of those topics. This is a book about one of them—movies. More specifically gangster movies.”

The book went on to list what we considered the 100 best mob movies of all time and included an essay on each film along with lots of trivia and other stories related to the real life and reel life of the gangster.

Two new books, one published late last year and one that was scheduled to be released last month, have refocused attention on the mob and the movies. The first, and better of the two, is HANDSOME JOHNNY, The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin. Written by Lee Server, the book is a fascinating account of the life and times of one of the more significant—yet least publicized—gangsters in American history.

… It’s American history from the underworld’s perspective and Server has done a great job researching and writing a story that revolves around the dapper, charismatic and soft-spoken wiseguy who could have stepped off one of the movie sets in which he had a hidden interest.

Equally entertaining is HOLLYWOOD GODFATHER, My Life in the Movies and the Mob written by Gianni Russo with Patrick Picciarelli. Russo played Don Corleone’s son-in-law Carlo Rizzi in the classic mob movie and frankly writes that he has used that connection to build a series of careers in both the entertainment industry and the underworld.

His memoir is both incredible and fantastic—incredible as in hard-to-believe and fantastic as in are you making this stuff up? Russo emerges as an underworld Forrest Gump, a character who happened to be on hand for virtually every major mob-linked historic event in the 20th century.


You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://jerseymanmagazine.com/two-real-life-gangster-tales-ripe-for-the-silver-screen/?fbclid=IwAR10VD9c8h6cmL8V3Z1Rv6RW8E-C8D68BMjil7JRB0-AfLGz3gqL2IF-bNE

And you can read my Washington Times review of Handsome Johnny via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2019/01/my-washington-times-review-of-handsome.html 

My Washington Times Review Of 'Handsome Johnny: The Life And Death Of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin'

The Washington Times published my review of Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin.

From the Prohibition era to the mid-1970s, Johnny Rosselli traveled first class through the nexus of Hollywood movies, Las Vegas gambling, shady business deals, secret government assassination plots and organized crime.

He always had money and tipped generously. He was always groomed perfectly. He was always with a beautiful actress. He was always seated at the best spot in a nightclub or restaurant. He was always in the company of wealthy and powerful men on the golf course and tennis court and at a card table. He was the intimate friend of movie studio bosses, casino bosses, major entertainers and notorious mobsters. He was called “Gentleman Johnny” or “Handsome Johnny.”

Johnny Rosselli lived a charmed life right up until he ended up dead in a 55-gallon oil drum floating in the Atlantic. 

Lee Server’s “Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin” offers a complete picture of a smooth operator who began life as Filippo Sacco in Frosinone, Italy, on July 4, 1905. Raised in Boston, his early travels took him across the country to Chicago, where he changed his name and then changed his life.

In the 1950s, the FBI noticed that Rosselli spelled his name differently at times. Sometimes with double “s” and sometimes with only one “s.” The FBI thought that when a man spells his name differently in different years, something is definitely wrong.

“He covered his tracks well — his origins, his early years. The FBI was sure he was not who he said he was. But who was he? What was he hiding?” Mr. Server writes. “For a guy whom everybody in law enforcement knew about for decades — one of Al Capone’s boy wonders, the Mob’s man in Hollywood, big wheel in Las Vegas, the hundreds of pages of police reports in which he figured, numerous arrests and trials, headline convictions — he was a mystery.”

You can read the rest of my review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/13/book-review-handsome-johnny-by-lee-server/ 

'Handsome Johnny: The Life And Death Of Johnny Rosselli - Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin'

Larry Getlen at the New York Post offers a piece on a new book about Cosa Nostra mobster Jimmy Rosselli, the CIA and Fidel Castro.

In the summer of 1960, a former FBI and sometime CIA man named Robert Maheu was handed an important mission by the latter agency — engaging the Mafia to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Maheu knew exactly whom to call. The new book “Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli — Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin,” by Lee Server (St. Martin’s Press), provides the most detailed description of the plot against Castro to date, and introduces Rosselli as the link between the mob, Hollywood and the CIA.

Rosselli had been friends and associates with the likes of Al Capone, Charlie Chaplin and Columbia Pictures co-founder and President Harry Cohn.

He was one of the most powerful gangsters in Los Angeles, and the right person for Maheu to enlist.

Still, it was an odd and risky request. Certainly, the mob hated Castro, as it had made Cuba its playground before Castro took over and confiscated its property. But the Mafia wasn’t a fan of the US federal government, either.

According to Server, Maheu offered $150,000, which Rosselli told him to keep. If he did the job, it would be for love of country, although getting the mob’s Cuban properties back was a not-insignificant benefit.

Before he could say yes, though, he had to clear it with the big boss in Chicago, Sam Giancana. (The mob there was known as the Outfit.)

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://nypost.com/2018/11/28/meet-the-mafia-gangster-the-cia-wanted-to-assassinate-fidel-castro/