Married to the Mob
The Mob was living, working and operating in Hollywood from the 1920s on so it should come as no surprise that beyond business they also formed close personal relationships with film stars. Rumours swirled around identities such as Debbie Reynolds, Cary Grant, and Marilyn Monroe, but at best their relationship with the Mob was little more than accidental or tangential.
Frank Sinatra was a different story. He had Mob written all over him, or at least that’s the way he wanted to be seen. At the peak of his fame it was rumored that “every woman wants to have him; every man wants to be him.” A rumour likely started by Frank.
Sinatra’s relationship with the mob was probably best portrayed on the big screen in The Godfather in the scene between Johnny Fontaine (Al Martino) and Don Corleone (Marlon Brando)
It went like this:
Johnny Fontane: I don't know what to do, Godfather. My voice is weak, it's weak. Anyway, if I had this part in the picture, it puts me right back on top, you know. But this... this man out there. He won't give it to me, the head of the studio.
Don Corleone: What's his name?
Johnny Fontaine: Woltz. He said there's no chance, no chance... A month ago he bought the rights to this book, a best seller. The main character is a guy just like me. I wouldn't even have to act, just be myself. Oh, Godfather, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do...
[All of a sudden, Don Corleone rises from his chair and shakes Fontane savagely]
Don Corleone: YOU CAN ACT LIKE A MAN!
[slaps Fontane]
Don Corleone: What's the matter with you? Is this what you've become, a Hollywood finocchio who cries like a woman? "Oh, what do I do? What do I do?" What is that nonsense? Ridiculous!
[the Don's mimicry makes Hagen and Fontane laugh; Sonny enters]
Don Corleone: Tell me, do you spend time with your family?
Johnny Fontane: Sure I do.
Don Corleone: Good. Because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
[glances at Sonny as he affectionately embraces Fontane]
Don Corleone: You look terrible. I want you to eat, I want you to rest well. And a month from now this Hollywood big shot's gonna give you what you want.
Johnny Fontane: Too late. They start shooting in a week.
Don Corleone: I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. Okay? I want you to leave it all to me. Go on, go back to the party.
Sinatra’s behaviour drew the attention of the FBI who tracked him for over 40 years, building a dossier of more than thousand of pages but never arresting him. They were more interested in his associates who included Sam Giancana (who Sinatra reportedly introduced to John F. Kennedy in an effort to get him elected), Chicago mobsters Joseph and Charles Fischetti, Philadelphia mobster Angelo Bruno, and Detroit mobsters Anthony and Vito Giacalone.
Sinatra knew the government was tracking him and in 1979 and 1980, he secured a copy of his FBI file through a Freedom of Information request. It was filled with references to his shady dealings and thuggish friends, as well as the occasions where he spoke out against racism and on behalf of democracy.
Sinatra was no saint, but he wasn’t much of a mobster either.
Gianni Russo was a mirror image of Sinatra, a minor mobster turned actor. Russo had never acted before appearing in the first two Godfather movies as Carlo Rizzi, a part he claims to have won through pressure from friends in the Mob. Russo also claims to have bedded Marilyn Monroe when he was just 16.
As a teenager Russo was a messenger for Frank Costello, the Genovese crime family boss and inspiration for Godfather "Don" Vito Corleone. And during pre-production he became an intermediary between producers and the New York mafia. Joe Columbo, boss of the Columbo crime family, gave the film the green light but only if Russo appeared in the film.
When Marlon Brando questioned his casting Russo claims to have taken him aside, conveniently out of earshot, and said: "Let me tell you something...you fuck this up for me, I'm gonna suck on your heart, you understand that?'.
Just like many of both Sinatra’s and Russo’s other claims… maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.
Russo did however remain involved with the Mafia, managing to beat a variety of charges stemming from his organised crime associations.
George Raft began life in similar circumstances to Gianni Russo, but took a different path. Growing up in a rough neighborhood, he formed friendships with a number of people with ‘connctions’ and for a time worked for New York Irish Mob boss Owney Madden. He befriended future mobsters Bugsy Siegel (who would go on to develop his own Hollywood connections) and Meyer Lansky (who specialised in casinos and money laundering) but never followed them into ‘business’.
It was one of Raft’s earliest roles, playing Rinaldo in the highly influential Scarface (1932) that made him a star, and popular with actual mobsters. Raft's onscreen habit of repeatedly flipping a coin inspired real life mobsters to copy his style and mannerisms.
Despite never being involved in illegal activity Raft was once banned from entering the United Kingdom because of his criminal associations. There is some suggestion that he used his relationship with organized crime figures to protect his friends, allegedly stopping planned assassinations of James Cagney and Gary Cooper when they angered Mafia figures.
Billy Wilder considered Raft ‘the bottom of the barrel’ as an actor but still offered him one of his best onscreen roles as Chicago mob boss ‘Spats’ Columbo in Some Like it Hot.
Lana Turner was widely known as a big star with a very messy personal life. She married seven times, and she was rumored to have had affairs with many of Hollywood's leading men.
Easily the messiest of her relationships with the one with mobster Johnny Stompanato who had ties to mob boss Mickey Cohen and was both violent and unpredictable. When Turner tried to end the affair due to his possessiveness and outbursts of anger, Stompanato threatened her with a razor. She was warned that she would face reprisals from the mob if anything ever happened to him.
On April 4, 1958. Stompanato and Turner got into a loud, violent argument that ended with Stompanato's stabbing death. Turner testified that her daughter, Cheryl Crane (who was 14 at the time), had rushed into the room to stab Stompanato in order to protect her, with the killing being ruled as a justifiable homicide.
While there were rumours that Turner was the killer, and that Cheryl was in love with the older man, and the death was the result of a twisted love triangle Crane admitted to the stabbing in her published 1988 memoir Detour: A Hollywood Story. In the book she also revealed that she had come out to her parents as a lesbian when she was 13, a year before the stabbing.
Lots of marriages hit the rocks, and relationships with the Mob are no different.