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.
Joey Bishop's greatest claim to fame will probably the on-air firing of his "sidekick"- Regis Philban- on his late night tv show. I think Regis cried.
And they had the audacity to give him a military funeral based on his performances for the military I think. People correct me if I'm mistaken on this one, because I'm not sure, but seem to remember this.
And there is no doubt whatsoever that Sinatra was involved with the Mob. He thought it was cool to hang with the wiseguys but they thought of him as a Hollywood *sshole that they could use to get to Kennedy, which they did. The Mob used him to connect with Kennedy, and the Kennedys used him to get votes. He was a schmuck in my opinion who often treated people horribly.
For the record, Lansky was a huge gangster, but not mafia. Lansky was Jewish, which precluded him from membership in an organization comprised entirely of Sicilians. Even Al Capone, who was a Neapolitan, was never considered an equal of the mafia leadership because he was not Sicilian.
"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 don't think Las Vegas as we know it existed at the time Ben Siegel was murdered. Siegel, who was also Jewish, was not killed for any reason pertaining to Sinatra. He was killed because the hotel/ casino he was running in the Nevada desert was not turning a profit, and because he committed the unpardonable sin of threatening Luciano. Mafia men were waiting in the lobby of the hotel, went to the front desk about two minutes after Siegel had his head blown off with a rifle, and announced that they were taking over. Siegel was killed hundreds of miles away from Las Vegas.
A singer of Sinatra's stature would have had no interest in Las Vegas at the time of the Siegel murder.
Uh, Martin and Lewis...
My daughter was married in Lake Tahoe last April and we all went up there for the wedding--
She and the whole wedding party stayed at the Cal-Neva and the reception was held in a room over the tunnels that Sinatra used to get from the stage to the cabins...
We took a tour with the head Casino guy, and boy, you would think that HE was there for everything, he talked for an hour, and took us all over underneath the hotel and casino--showed us initials that were supposedly carved down there on the wood that were supposed to be Marilyn Monroes from being there with John Kennedy...
What a place, it reeked of history...
Interesting screen name you have. Does the word Metairie mean anything to you?
Muleteam1
I've loved Sinatra since 9th grade. I highly recommend anything from his Capitol years. His phrasing is superb.
The Rat Pack thing occurred AFTER Martin and Lewis broke up.
70,000 bills, about 150lbs.
Muleteam1
Muleteam1
If you doubt that Sinatra was mobbed up you need to read The Last Mafioso by Jimmy The Weasel Fratiane. It describes Frank's connection to Giancana and how he would give concerts in certain cities where the mob could skim money off the top from the gate receipts supposedly going to various charities.
But by the 60s when they had split, the rat pack was in full bloom. It would have been weird for Lewis to hang around the group with martin everpresent. Also, Lewis was quit busy until the late 60s making pictures and then after with MD.
Casablanca and The African Queen are the only two I've seen with Bogart, both excellent. I'll try and catch Scirroco, he did a whole bunch of movies I'd like to get a hold of on DVD.
Sinatra and Nelson Riddle
Sinatra? Mobbed up? Nah..:)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is fabulous.
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