Hollywood and the Mob by Tim Adler

Author:Tim Adler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2007-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Surreal and Sordid

By the late 1950s, New York Mafia kingpin Frank Costello had become so infuriated with former RKO Studios boss Joseph Kennedy that he was threatening to have him killed. Kennedy had been appointed US ambassador to Britain before the Second World War, resigning because of his opposition to America entering the conflict. Some said he was a Nazi sympathiser. In the late 1940s, Kennedy was a regular at the casino Costello co-owned with Meyer Lansky, the Colonial Inn in Miami Beach. Lansky said that at one time Kennedy was coming four or five times a week. Kennedy reminded the casino’s publicist Harold Conrad of being ‘a priest on the cheat’.

In the mid-1950s, Kennedy and Costello had fallen out over a Manhattan property deal. In his vaunted position, Kennedy was no longer returning Costello’s calls; Costello wanted to call in some favours. ‘You had the sense,’ a friend of Costello’s said, ‘that they were close during Prohibition and then something happened. Frank said that he helped Kennedy become wealthy. What happened between them I don’t know. But the way Frank talked you had the feeling that in later years he had tried to reach Joe Kennedy for something and that he was completely ignored. Frank didn’t mind if somebody said no to him. He could understand that. But nothing made him angrier than to be just ignored, as if he didn’t exist.’ Costello sent word to Kennedy that the mob was going to murder him. Kennedy panicked and begged Sam Giancana, who had inherited control of the Outfit from Tony Accardo and Paul Ricca in 1955, to intercede. Giancana also distrusted Kennedy for having come too far from his roots; for getting ‘uppity’, as he put it. Kennedy knew Giancana through his ownership of the Merchandise Mart Building in Chicago, which had once housed a block-long speakeasy. After a conversation with Costello, the contract was called off.

Kennedy was convinced that his son was going to become president of the United States. Towards the end of 1959, he made several calls to Giancana asking for his help. Kennedy promised the mob would have his son’s ear if it supported Jack Kennedy’s presidential campaign. The Outfit could still deliver many votes in Democratic Party wards. Giancana had his own favour to ask in return. The ambassador’s second son, Robert, was chief counsel to the Senate committee investigating union racketeering. Bobby Kennedy had grilled Giancana that June about corruption. Giancana pleaded the Fifth Amendment thirty-four times, declining to answer questions on the grounds that he might incriminate himself. His father assured Giancana the spotlight would be turned off the mob if the Mafia could deliver the Democratic Party vote in marginal wards.

But Giancana did not trust Kennedy and set about luring both Kennedy sons into a ‘honey trap’. Knowing both Kennedy boys shared their father’s promiscuous behaviour, Giancana decided to dig up enough dirt on the Kennedys to use as a bargaining tool if they did not keep their side of the deal.

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