Posted on 05/04/2005 5:36:35 PM PDT by blam
Sinatra 'almost got caught carrying $3.5m Mafia cash'
By Catherine Elsworth
(Filed: 05/05/2005)
Frank Sinatra once served as a Mafia courier and narrowly escaped arrest with a briefcase containing $3.5 million in cash, according to a new biography of the legendary singer.
The entertainer Jerry Lewis is quoted as saying that Sinatra "volunteered to be a messenger for them... And he almost got caught once... in New York."
Frank Sinatra: mob links
Extracts of Sinatra: The Life, an unauthorised biography by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, were published yesterday by Vanity Fair magazine.
Lewis said that Sinatra was going through customs with a briefcase containing "three and a half million in fifties" and that customs officials opened the case.
But due to crowds jostling for a glimpse of the star, officials aborted their search. Otherwise, Lewis said, "We would never have heard of him again."
According to Vanity Fair, the authors do not claim that Lewis witnessed the customs incident but related the account "as a fact of which he had knowledge".
Lewis, one of the singer's Rat Pack compatriots from the 1960s, claims that Sinatra's mob links "had to do with the morality that a handshake goes before God". The anecdote is one of many fleshing out Sinatra's reputed close ties to the Mafia.
The singer carried mob money several times, Lewis is quoted as saying. He knew the Mafia was expanding beyond its East Coast base and volunteered to be a "messenger".
"Frank, at a cocktail party, told Meyer [Lansky, a known mobster] in no uncertain terms, 'If there is going to be East Coast, West Coast, intercontinental and foreign - if all that's going to happen, I go all the time," Lewis says.
Sinatra, who died aged 82 in 1998, always denied any links to the mob, although FBI files released seven months after his death portrayed him as a close friend of Sam Giancana, the reputed Chicago mobster.
The federal documents also suggested that he had contact with Mafia boss Lucky Luciano during a 1947 trip to Cuba and alleged that his early singing career was backed by a New Jersey-based racketeer named Willie Moretti.
The book quotes Lewis as saying that the cash smuggling incident occurred shortly after Luciano was deported from the US to Italy in 1946.
According to Vanity Fair, the authors of the book describe Sinatra's "long-time, intimate relationship with Luciano", who in 1936 was declared New York's "public enemy Number One", progressing from "beatings to no fewer than 20 murders to pioneering drug trafficking".
Sinatra said he did not meet Luciano until a chance encounter in 1947, but the book suggests that he had contact with "top New York area mobsters as early as 1938 or 1939". It also describes how Sinatra's mob links helped his career.
It quotes Sonny King, a friend of the singer, as saying: "The Boys got on to Frank. In part because he was a saloon singer and they loved saloon songs, and they liked his cockiness... They liked to think of him as their kid, or son."
Sinatra was also allegedly helped by his "godfathers", who, at a gathering in Cuba, essentially "sentenced to death" the mobster Bugsy Siegel, who was blocking the singer's attempts to set himself up in Las Vegas. It was Luciano, the book says, who approved the killing of Siegel.
I remember Bishop in a couple of movies, and vaguely remember he appeared on a few TV shows, but never really got him as a comedian or anything else.
I never paid much attention to Frank Sinatra when I was young, but, man oh man, I love his singing now. We listen to him and Tony Bennett all the time.
Muleteam1
I plugged in a Sinatra CD during a road trip in January. I had never really listened to him before. I haven't listened to much else since.
I've become a fan.
Just bought another CD on Saturday (Great Performances 1953 - 1960). Good stuff.
Wasn't it:
Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy
Ditto. Big time.
While I don't doubt that Frank was mobbed up, $3.5 million is 70,000 $50 bills. It must have been quite a "briefcase".
If you get a chance to see "The Man with the Golden Arm" if you haven't yet that was excellent. "Suddenly" was pretty good too.
The Rat Pack actually was much larger. It was originally Bogart and his crew and just kind of morphed over the years.
That said, Lewis and Martin weren't exactly close after their team broke up.
Frank was always a hero of mine. It is no wonder that he had mob connections, look where he came from. He had a drive and he believed in the American dream. By the sheer force of his will and his talent he made it to the top. I loved the "Rat Pack" as well. Dean was another one of my favorites. The man invented "cool".
"A million dollars in new 100 dollar bills has a volume of 643 cubic inches." - US Mint
So 3.5 million dollars would be ~2251 cubic inches.
The average brief case is 3"x18"x12" = 648 cubic inches... just big enough for $1 million. This "brief" case would have to be 10.5 inches thick!
If the cash was unmarked, random serialized, used bills like those prefered in organized crime transfers, the volume increases by 50% ... giving a brief case of 22" thick. If it were $20 bills (also the prefered denomination) the brief case is now the size of a couple of steamer trunks.
Now, if he had said "bearer bonds" then I might believe this story.
Oops, I missed the "in fifities" in the article... multiply my figures by 2.
of course, "fifities" might be a lot smaller than "fifties." That is if you can get Fifi to remove them... which might be fun.
We should all turn off the talk shows and news and listen to music. It would make us all feel better. Dancing to music even helps more as I seem to recall. :)
Muleteam1
Wrong. His punctured eardrum prevented him from serving. But he did do his part by starring in a US Army produced movie "The House I Live In," which earned him an Academy Award.
Someone just mentioned Bogart in regard to the Rat Pack. I really like most of his movies. I just watched Casa Blanca this past rainy weekend.
Muleteam1
"Sinatra Reprise - The Very Good Years"
Capitol Collectors Series Frank Sinatra
Both excellent. The phrasing is great.
So the magazine says that the authors say that Lewis said that somebody else said that Frank did this? ;)
Frank is the greatest. I think you've got to be a little older to appreciate him, but once you discover his music you can listen to him all day.
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