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.
Muleteam1
I'd much rather listen to Ozzy Osbourne or Steven Tyler. Sinatra's style made me puke.
No there was no Military Funeral, just the usual celebrity free for all.
{snip}
Both party's starting being heads and tails of the same nickle and took turns being in power.. Are you ready for HILLARY... well GET READY.. It is "funny" how many on Bill Clinton's "death list" were hit mafia style.. 2008 IS the democrats turn, really....
Wonder how many "MADE" politicians there are now.. and not only "made" politicians.. but "made" Captains of industry.. A offer you can't turn down <<- not heard anymore.. could be the main mover of American politics today.. i.e. Arlen Spectre, John McLaim, Orly Hatch, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, somebody STOP ME..etc..
Maybe Socialism, Conservatives and Socialists are just a gambit for the rubes when really the Mafia(s) are in charge.. Which mafia.?. I dunno there are so many.. Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, various Latino ones, maybe a mix of all of them.. You know, territorys..
One things certain... Socialism is mafia territory on crack..
Did the Mafia MISS THAT FACT.?..
Don't count on it..
GRRRR. Although I did like the first four Sabbath albums...
Add one more broad to the list that hung with the Rat Pack--Juliet Prowse. Juliet Prowse had the best legs in Hollywood.
Side note on that album. If I recall correctly that was the only record Sinatra made where he gave equal credit to another performer.
He thought Jobim hung the moon and even on the TV special he did with Jobim he gave him top billing.
Hehe- wasn't me- honest. I lived there in 1973 and there was talk of moving "Bourbon Street" out to a strip plaza in Metairie since the original was such a hole. Also remember how unpopular "cajuns" were in N.O. How times have changed.
Well, lessee . . . he was a non-stop boozing, woman-chasing, Democrat-worshipping mob flunky who neglected his kids. No, he wasn't my kind of lounge lizard, either.
For talent give me Der Bingo. For voice quality, the thrilling music of Robert Goulet during his prime. For character I guess I'll take Ronald Reagan . . .
3.5 Million? In a briefcase?I'm glad someone 'ran the numbers' on that claim ...
Muleteam1
I say the 1st Black Sabbath album was the best rock ever produced. Hard to believe that rock music that great could have been done in 1969. Just think, they produced that album with $900 worth of equipment. Compare that to the millions of dollars used in mixing and remixing today's music. I have always wished that album could have been done with today's technology. I have never heard guitar as good as that since then.
You are right. Frank could sing, but he was scum in most other respects. People I knew in the movie industry were well acquainted with Sinatra and they all called him the ultimate reprobate, completely immoral and vindictive to anyone he thought had crossed him, including the Kennedy brothers. Both bedded Marilyn Monroe thanks to Frank's introduction and the help of Peter Lawford, another despicable human being.
Was thinking the same thing. Thanks for the math. 100's would likely have been less suspect at the time. How does that pan out weight and size wise?
Thus 3.5 million would weigh 3,500,000/50 grams or 70,000 grams or 70 kilos or 11 stone.
Size would be 70,000*2.61"*6.14"*.0043" or 21 gallons.
Yeah the cars were cool back then. Even the political humor was better, especially when they made fun of Roosevelt.
Okay. It was 50's. Somehow this story has suddenly become mythical in proportion. But then, so is Sinatra.
There really was water?
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