When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging.

When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, they call it hospitality.

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MR. COSTELLO GOES TO WASHINGTON | Life Magazine, 1950s

HE ARRIVES at airport with Attorney George Wolf (left). Detectives recognized him but travelers did not. HE FIDGETS, awaiting breakfast in hotel, because he wanted to be prompt (“It is proper”) for hearing at 10. HE GULPS FOOD that finally arrived at 9:45, saying, “First time I had my picture taken with glasses on.” HE IS BRIEFED by lawyer before taking stand. He was late after all because he first went to wrong building. HE TESTIFIES before subcommittee that he knows little of bookmaking, adding, “I’m practically retired.” HE LEAVES for his hotel as a Senate lieutenant flags a cab. He said later, “They [the senators] treated me fine.”

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Frank Sinatra poses with friends (including mob boss Carlo Gambino; standing, second from right) in his dressing room at Westchester Premier Theater in New York City, Sept. 26, 1976.

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Charles “Lucky” Luciano, April 18, 1936

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Virginia Hill Hauser, ex-girlfriend of mobster "Bugsy" Siegel testifying at the Kefauver Senate Crime Investigating Committee Hearings. Life, 1951.

Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

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COMPOSITE PIC: Mafia boss Frank Costello testifying before Kefauver hearings. Only his hands were televised. Life, 1951.

Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

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New Jersey crime boss Abner “Longy” Zwillman, proprietor of the Public Service Tobacco Company in Hillside, New Jersey. Life, February, 1959.

Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

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"Sure,” He Said. 

By Paul Meskil

Although he was a multimillionaire, police arrested him for vagrancy — no visible means of support — in 1964 when he was caught dining with an alleged top bookie in a Times Square restaurant. The vagrancy charge came when the cops found only $6 in the pockets of Costello’s $300 suit.

When reporters asked if he was broke, Costello grinned, jingled some coins together and growled: "Sure."

New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 1973

[Photo taken of Costello in March 1951 by Alfred Eisenstaedt]

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Abner “Longie” Zwillman, right, of West Orange, N.J., prohibition era figure, is shown as he appeared for trial in federal court, Jan. 18, 1950.

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The Real Story of Bugsy’s Moll

By Elinor Burkett

Her joie de vivre also extended to fisticuffs -- as a participant, not a spectator.

For years her opponents were reporters whom she threatened to shoot, mangle, stab and blow up with atomic bombs.

Her most spectacular performance took place in in Las Vegas, in an incident in which she flew into a jealous rage when [Benjamin] Siegel started talking with a blond cigarette girl. Betty Dexter wound up in Clark County General Hospital with two broken vertebrae.

Washington Post, January 1, 1992

[Photo taken of Hill in March 1951 by Alfred Eisenstaedt]

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Charles “Lucky” Luciano (middle) arrives at court, ca. 1936

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A Look at 5 High-Profile Mob Hits: Albert Anastasia, 1957

By Matt Stevens and Sarah Mervosh

Albert Anastasia, a feared mob boss who was known as the head of Murder Inc., an execution squad accused of dozens of murders in the early 20th century, had managed to escape death by the electric chair.

But death found him in a barber’s chair, as he relaxed under a pile of hot towels.

Mr. Anastasia had been convicted of murder in 1921 and sentenced to death, but was freed in a retrial. He was killed on Oct. 25, 1957, when two men walked into the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel and drew their guns. The men, wearing scarves to hide their faces, shot Mr. Anastasia five times.

No arrests were made. But the authorities believed that Carmine J. Persico, a mob boss who died this month in prison, had a strong hand in his and other murders. In a sentencing memorandum about Mr. Persico in 1986, federal prosecutors said he had admitted to a relative, “I killed Anastasia.”

New York Times, March 14, 2019

[Photo taken of Anastasia in 1951]

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Mrs. Shapiro Puts Court in Turmoil

Wife of Gurrah Resents Talk of Prosecutor and Kicks Him | New York Times | December 18, 1942

Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, 52 years old… was arraigned yesterday in General Sessions. His appearance might have gone off with merely a verbal clash between the racketeer and Assistant District Attorney Sol Gelb if his wife, Mrs. Ann Shapiro, had not decided to take part in the proceedings.

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New Jersey crime boss Abner "Longy" Zwillman of Murder Inc. shortly before his "suicide." Life, February 1959

Senator Charles Tobey: “Is it true that you have been known in New Jersey for a long time as the Al Capone of New Jersey?” Abner Zwillman: “That is a myth that has been developing, Mr. Senator, for a good many years, and during the time when I should have had sense to stop it, or get up and get out of the state, I did not have the sense enough, until the point where it blossomed and bloomed... I am not that, I don’t intend to be, I never strived to be, and I am trying to make a living for my family and myself. But these rumors go around. They accuse me of owning places. I walk into a restaurant and I own the restaurant. I walk into a hotel and I own the hotel. I take a shine twice, and I own the bootblack too.”

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Benjamin Siegel (right) with his attorney, ca. 1940 

In 1939, Big Greeny Greenberg, a former associate of Bugsy, was found dead. Police arrested Bugsy. In jail, Bugsy lived fine, arranged for meals of steak and pheasant, and had liquor served in his cell to entertain his women visitors. And things took care of themselves. Two State's witnesses suddenly died: the case against Bugsy died with them. - “Crime: Murder in Beverly Hills” | Time | June 30, 1947

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Schultz Declares He’s a Benefactor

New York Times | Meyer Berger

Introduction of another name called for some further conversational shadow-boxing. Did Flegenheimer [Dutch Schultz] know the late Vincent Coll?

“I knew his sister,” was Flegenheimer’s answer. “She’s Florence Redden. I just received a letter from her wishing luck in my trial.”

“Well, were you and Coll good friends?” Flegenheimer grinned.

“Sometimes,” he said.

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What Kind of Language Is That to Use in The Times?

New York Times | David W. Dunlap 

Dutch Schultz was a gangster you did not want to anger. And Meyer Berger of The Times had infuriated him.

A profile Mr. Berger wrote in 1933 about the Bronx bootlegger called him a “pushover for a blonde.” Outraged, Schultz confronted Mr. Berger in person to demand an explanation for the slander.

“But it’s the truth isn’t it?” the reporter asked.

“Yes,” the gangster replied, “but what kind of language is that to use in The New York Times?”

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New Jersey-based mob boss Abner “Longie” Zwillman had a sense of humor -- in 1951 a United States Senate committee asked him whether he knew the girlfriend of a murdered mobster. 

"From seeing her on the television," he replied sarcastically, "she didn't look too hard to know."

- Marc Mappen, Jerseyana