MY DOG, BART, BORN TO BE WILD......
Town Players Now Seeking Plays
for 2016
August 11
by BWW News Desk
Town Players of Newtown is
seeking play submissions from individuals interested in directing at the Little
Theatre during the group's 2016 season.
Potential directors are invited
to submit up to three (3) scripts for consideration by the theater's play
selection committee. Town Players puts on a variety of shows each season, from
farce to period pieces to modern drama. The only type of show the theater
cannot consider is a full-fledged musical due to space restrictions. Town
Players is only looking to stage published works by established playwrights.
A play submission sheet is
available for download at the Town Players website - www.newtownplayers.org -
under Directors/How to Submit. If you would like a sheet sent to you, please
request one by emailinginfo@newtownplayers.org. Submissions may be mailed to:
Town Players
Attn: Play Selection Committee
PO Box 211
Newtown, CT 06470
Submissions can also be scanned
and emailed to info@newtownplayers.org with "Play Submission" in the
subject line.
If you have not directed at Town
Players in the past, please include a resume.
The submission deadline is
October 15, 2015. Once all submissions are received, the committee will review
them and let submitting directors know of their decisions.
For those interested in directing
but don't have a particular play in mind, Town Players like to hear from you as
well. Please send your resume, along with the time period you are available to
direct, either via email or regular mail.
As a rule at Town Players,
directors may not appear in their own productions.
Questions about this process in
particular, or about directing at Town Players in general, may be submitted
toinfo@newtownplayers.org.
Town Players' Little Theatre is a
community theater, currently in its 80th season, located on 18 Orchard Hill
Road, just off Route 25 (a mile north of the Sand Hill Plaza) in Newtown, Conn.
HERE'S SOME EXCERPTS FROM MY BOOK ON THE BEATLES
Across The Universe John Lennon
wrote this song after having an argument with his wife Cynthia. He said,
"I was l ying next to me first wife in bed, and I was irritated. She must
have been going on and on about something and she'd gone to sleep and I kept hearing
these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs
and it turned into sort of a cosmic song rather than an irritated song... it
drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write it, but I was slightly irritable
and I went downstairs and I couldn't get to sleep until I'd put it on
paper." The refrain "Jai Guru
Deva Om" is a mantra intended to lull the mind into a higher
consciousness. The words are in Sanskrit, and they mean "I give thanks to
Guru Dev," who was the teacher of The Maharishi. The "Om" at the
end is the drawn out "oooohm" used in meditation to relate to the
natural vibration of the universe. (While visiting the Maharishi in Rishikesh,
John purchased a set of brass bracelets with the words "Jai Guru Dev"
imprinted on them)
A Day in The Life by The Beatles
took a 41 piece orchestra to complete the recording. The musicians were told to
attend the session dressed formally. When they got there, they were presented
with party novelties (false noses, party hats, gorilla-paw glove) to wear,
which made it clear this was not going to be a typical session. The orchestra
was conducted by Paul McCartney, who told them to start with the lowest note of
their instruments and gradually play to the highest. It was finally recorded in 3 sessions: First
the basic track, then the orchestra, then the last note was dubbed in. The
beginning of this song was based on 2 stories John Lennon read in the Daily
Mail newspaper: Guinness heir Tara Browne dying when he smashed his lotus into
a parked van, and an article in the UK Daily Express in early 1967 which told
of how the Blackburn Roads Surveyor had counted 4000 holes in the roads of
Blackburn and commented that the volume of material needed to fill them in was
enough to fill the Albert Hall. Lennon took some liberties with the Tara Browne
story - he changed it so he Blew his mind out in the car. “I didn't copy the accident.” Lennon said
“Tara didn't blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that
verse. At the time, Paul didn't realize the reference was to Tara. He thought
it was about a stoned politician.” John's friend Terry Doran was the one who
completed John's line Now they know how many holes it takes to fill... Terry
told him fill the Albert Hall, John. McCartney contributed the line I'd love to
turn you on. This was a drug reference, but the BBC banned it for the line
about having a smoke and going into a dream, which they thought was about
marijuana and McCartney's middle section (Woke up, got out of bed...) was
intended for another song. The final chord was produced by all 4 Beatles and
George Martin banging on 3 pianos simultaneously. As the sound diminished, the
engineer boosted to faders. The resulting note lasts 42 seconds, and the studio
air conditioners can be heard toward the end as the faders were pushed to the
limit to record it.
Ain't She Sweet was written by
Milton Ager who wrote it for his daughter Shana Ager, who in her adult life was
known as the political commentator Shana Alexander.
All My Loving Paul McCartney
wrote the lyrics while shaving. He said, "It was the first song I'd ever
written the words first. I never wrote words first, it was always some kind of
accompaniment. I've hardly ever done it since either." The lyrics follow the "letter song"
model as used on "P.S. I Love You"
All You Need Is Love" was
first performed by The Beatles on Our World, the first live global television
link. Watched by 400 million in 26 countries the program was broadcast via
satellite on June 25, 1967. The BBC had commissioned The Beatles to write a
song for the United Kingdom's contribution, a song containing a simple message
to be understood by all nationalities. "It was an inspired song and they
really wanted to give the world a message," said Brian Epstein. "The
nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted. It is a clear message
saying that love is everything." According to journalist Jade Wright,
"Lennon was fascinated by the power of slogans to unite people and never
afraid to create art out of propaganda. When asked in 1971 whether songs like
"Give Peace a Chance" and "Power to the People" were
propaganda songs, he answered: 'Sure. So was All You Need Is Love. I'm a
revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change.'"
All I've Got To Do "That's
me” John Lennon said “trying to do Smokey Robinson again." This particular
song was inspired by the Miracles song "You Can Depend on Me."
And Your Bird Can Sing by The Beatles. Lennon wrote this about Mick Jaggers pop-star
girlfriend ("bird" in British Isles slang) Marianne Faithfull.
PHOTOS I'VE TAKEN..........................
I was in St. Louis, snapping photos in an Italian neighborhood when I watch this little girl dance up the street singing and twirling her umbrella. She was the vision of happiness...then I started shooting away and she grew bashful, I'm sorry I ruined her joy.
I’ll take one of these guys over
a million people who talk a good fight
about making the world a better place.
Iowa barber gives haircuts to
children in exchange for them reading stories to him
MIKE BURLEY, Telegraph Herald via
AP
DUBUQUE (AP) | Children who read
books to a local barber have received a free haircut as part of a community
event in Dubuque to help families prepare for the upcoming school year.
Barber Courtney Holmes traded the
tales for trims on Saturday during the second annual Back to School Bash in
Comiskey Park.
Tayshawn Kirby, 9, of Dubuque,
read from "Fats, Oils and Sweets," by Carol Parenzan Smalley,
informing Holmes that the average person eats 150 pounds of sugar each year.
Before Tayshawn's 10-year-old brother, Titan Feeney, took his turn in the
barber chair, he told his brother the new look was great.
"I just want to support kids
reading," Holmes said.
St. Mark Youth Enrichment gave
away books during the event, some of which were read to Holmes. Outreach
coordinator Beth McGorry with St. Mark said she enjoyed watching Holmes help
young children sound out the words they didn't know yet.
Caitlin Daniels, grade-level
reading coordinator with the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, also
helped struggling readers in the barber chair.
"It's great. All the kids,
they want to have a good haircut to go back to school," she said.
"They're paying through reading."
The city's acting resource
manager, Anderson Sainci, coordinated the event, which involved nonprofits and
other community partners.
More than 100 people learned
about free resources and before- and after-school opportunities available to
families and students. The first full day of classes in Dubuque is Sept. 1.
People taking pictures of people: San Diego
I'm an amateur photographer, I travel a lot so some years ago and I noticed that everywhere I went there was someone taking a photo of someone else. It's part of the human condition and I think it’s fun so I started snapping pictures of people taking pictures.
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.......................
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS FROM FILM.......................
AND COLOR (FILM) TOO...................................
CAN I HELP YOU?
Last winter I drove down to the Maryland shore where a herd of wild horses live in a state forest just off the beach. Centuries ago a ship carrying the horses sank off the coast, and the herd swam to the shore and have been there ever since. They have no fear of people but can be very aggressive and mean. In this case, I stopped to get a photo, the horse stuck his head in the car and did a search for free food. I gave him half of my tomato sandwich.
Excerpt from my book "No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care.
Toward the end of the summer, one of the other
boys from the third floor, Larry Hanson, told me, “They’re gonna have a huge
rock concert for three days over in upstate New York, just over the border.” He
lowered his voice, leaned closer, and said, “If we hitchhike, we could be there
in a couple hours.”
The
concert was in Woodstock, New York and I decided to go although it was a stupid
thing to do. We slipped out of the school on Friday morning, just after
breakfast. We figured that no one would know we were gone until lights out at
eleven o’clock .
Using the
back roads through the small villages and towns we arrived in New Haven by
early afternoon. In those days, New Haven, the home of Yale University, was a
hotbed of the counter-culture, anti-Vietnam-War set, and a youth-centered city.
The Green, a park in the middle of the city, was occupied by hundreds of young
people. Tables gave out information on the anti-war movement, the Black
Panthers and the Yippie Party, guitar music, burning incense, and dancing.
Several local Episcopalian churches gave out free food: brown rice and apples.
Hanson and
I forgot about Woodstock and stayed on the Green for the rest of the day and
into the night, meeting girls and sitting in large circles listening to
lectures on racism, injustice, and the war.
Around
midnight we were in the back of a van with a dozen other kids, smoking grass,
one joint after the other, until there was so much smoke I couldn’t see the
person sitting next to me. I had never smoked a joint before, but after a while
I managed to smoke two, and had entered into a detailed conversation with the
kid seated next to me about the wonders of the tuna fish sandwich.
“And then
there is the mayonnaise,” I said, and then, after contemplating the wonders of
mayonnaise for what might have been either ten seconds or ten minutes, I added,
“God! Doesn’t mayonnaise sound just so perfect right now! Man, what a great
word—mayonnaise.”
My speech
on the wonders of my favorite condiment probably would have gone on all night,
but after a knock on the van’s back door someone opened it, letting out a
massive cloud of white smoke into the faces of two New Haven cops. We were all
too stoned to run, but I had it in my mind to go find a tuna sandwich and
started walking away.
“Hey,” a
cop yelled at me. “Marco Polo, where you goin’?”
I snapped
out of it and said, “With you?”
“You bet
your ass you are,” he said. “Get in the wagon.”
We meekly
piled into the paddy wagon when it arrived and were brought down to the central
police station. When Hanson, who was several years older than I was, learned we
were going to be booked as adults and tossed into jail, he told the cops we
were minors from St. John’s.
We were
driven across town in a squad car to the juvenile detention center, actually a
big house with bars on the windows, set in the middle of a bad neighborhood.
Tossed into a locked, completely dark room, I felt around, found the bed, and
fell asleep.
The next
morning we were back at St. John’s under room detention. I was allowed out for
school and meals, and that was it.
At a series of meetings, none of which I was
allowed to attend, the school social worker, the state social worker, Father
MacDonald, my teacher, and the prefects asked the question, what was wrong with
me? Would I run away from the school? Of course, if they had asked me, I would
have told them, but they didn’t ask. They determined that I was suffering from
some sort of hostility, and they wrote that in their files, and then they all
went back to what they were doing.
As an
additional part of my punishment I was to work as the chapel steward, cleaning
the church and preparing the altar. One day, while working in the sacristy, I
found a twenty-gallon jug of the cheap wine used in the communion service. I
had never tasted wine, so I decided to take a swig, using the chalice as my
cup. I liked the sweet taste, finished off the cup, and poured myself another.
I liked that, too, and poured myself a third, and then took the bottle and the
chalice and my drunken self out to the steps that lea to the altar, sat down,
and relaxed. And that was where they found me later that night, sound asleep,
empty bottle and sacred chalice in hand.
A prefect
shook me awake and I answered by throwing a punch. More prefects came and more
punches were thrown until they overpowered me. I was taken to a hospital to
sober up, and the next morning, before breakfast, a state social worker arrived
with my belongings packed into brown paper bags. He put me in into a black
sedan with the state logo emblazoned on the side doors and I was gone.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/
In
1962, six year old John Tuohy, his two brothers and two sisters entered Connecticut’s
foster care system and were promptly split apart. Over the next ten years, John
would live in more than ten foster homes, group homes and state schools, from
his native Waterbury to Ansonia, New Haven, West Haven, Deep River and
Hartford. In the end, a decade later, the state returned him to the same home
and the same parents they had taken him from. As tragic as is funny compelling
story will make you cry and laugh as you journey with this child to overcome
the obstacles of the foster care system and find his dreams.
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir/dp/0692361294/
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
John
William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in
writing from Lindenwood University. He is the author of numerous non-fiction on
the history of organized crime including the ground break biography of
bootlegger Roger Tuohy "When Capone's Mob Murdered Touhy" and
"Guns and Glamour: A History of Organized Crime in Chicago."
His
non-fiction crime short stories have appeared in The New Criminologist,
American Mafia and other publications. John won the City of Chicago's Celtic
Playfest for his work The Hannigan's of Beverly, and his short story fiction
work, Karma Finds Franny Glass, appeared in AdmitTwo Magazine in October of
2008.
His
play, Cyberdate.Com, was chosen for a public performance at the Actors Chapel
in Manhattan in February of 2007 as part of the groups Reading Series for New
York project. In June of 2008, the play won the Virginia Theater of The First
Amendment Award for best new play.
Contact
John:
MYWRITERSSITE.BLOGSPOT.COM
JWTUOHY95@GMAIL.COM
From
Professor William Anthony Connolly
This
incredible memoir, No Time to Say Goodbye, tells of entertaining angels,
dancing with devils, and of the abandoned children many viewed simply as
raining manna from some lesser god.
The
young and unfortunate lives of the Tuohy bruins—sometimes Irish, sometimes
Jewish, often Catholic, rambunctious, but all imbued with Lion’s hearts— is
told here with brutal honesty leavened with humor and laudable introspective
forgiveness.
The
memoir will have you falling to your knees thanking that benevolent Irish cop
in the sky, your lucky stars, or hugging the oxygen out of your own kids the
fate foisted upon Johnny and his siblings does not and did not befall your own
brood.
John William Tuohy, a nationally-recognized
authority on organized crime and Irish levity, is your trusted guide through
the weeds the decades of neglect ensnared he and his brothers and sisters, all
suffering for the impersonal and often mercenary taint of the foster care
system.
Theirs,
and Tuohy’s, story is not at all figures of speech as this review might
suggest, but all too real and all too sad, and maddening. I wanted to scream. I
wanted to get into a time machine, go back and adopt every last one of them. I
was angry. I was captivated.
The
requisite damning verities of foster care are all here, regretfully, but what
sets this story above others is its beating heart, even a bruised and broken
one, still willing to forgive and understand, and continue to aid its walking
wounded. I cannot recommend this book enough
THE ART OF WAR...............................
SO SAYS THE BARD...................
Central Park
SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
What does mean?
It means this, but remember above
all else that the words are being spoken by a young man to a young woman, so it’s
not supposed to run smoothly. With that that said;
The poem starts with a flattering
question to the beloved—"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The
beloved is both "more lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day.
The speaker lists some negative things about summer: it is short—"summer's
lease hath all too short a date"—and sometimes the sun is too
hot—"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved
has beauty that will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's
day. By putting his love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is
preserving it forever. "So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So
long lives this, and this gives life to thee." The lover's beauty will
live on, through the poem which will last as long as it can be read.
HERE'S A NICE POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY.................
Central Park
A Red, Red Rose
By
Robert Burns
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That’s sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my
dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my
dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall
run.
And fare thee well, my only Luve
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand
mile
HERE IS AN EXCEPT FROM MY BOOK "THE BOOK OF AMERICAN-JEWISH GANGSTERS"
(Max Zellner is a pen name, it was my grandfather's born name. During World War 1 he changed it to the less German sounding Paul Selner)
Bioff
Willie His name is barely known today, but for almost a decade he
was at the forefront of what remains the largest extortion case in the history
of American criminal justice, that set the foundation of modern organized
crime.
When the national depression knocked the
bottom out of Chicago’s once enormous prostitution racket, Bioff, a pimp,
started to shake down Fulton Street shopkeepers, restricting himself to the
Jewish stores and thus allowing George Brown, another goon whom Bioff knew only
in passing, to work the Gentile side of the street.
Since Brown and Bioff collected
their payoffs from Fulton Street at the same time of the day, on the same day
of the week, they starting talking and soon formed a partnership dubbed
B&B, for Brown and Bioff.
Together, Brown and Bioff merged their shake down operations on Fulton
Street and expanded their control of the stagehand’s union by increasing dues
by $5.00, and then pocketing the increase for themselves. Since that plan
worked out so easily, over dinner one night they came up with another plan to
raise more money, by threatening the theaters with a strike. Bioff came up with
an even better idea. Instead of collecting money once from the theater owners,
they would sell them a “a no strike guarantee,” which they would collect monthly.
The two hoods approached Barney Balaban, owner of Chicago’s largest and
most successful movie house chain, Balaban and Katz theaters. Sam Katz, who
would go on to own MGM Studios, and Barney Balaban, who would one day run
Paramount, had begun operating nickelodeons as teenagers, and in 1916, were
among the very first to produce silent films. Balaban was a tough, two fisted,
self-made man and when Bioff and Brown showed up with their extortion threats,
he personally threw them out of the building, no small chore.
Bioff and Brown talked about it and
decided that they entered into the shakedown the wrong way because they were
unsure of themselves and nervous, and it showed. A few days later, they went
back, more self-assured, and promised Balaban that if they didn’t get their
way, there would be a strike, it would last for months . . . unless Balaban
gave $20,000 to B&B Enterprises.
To soften the blow, Bioff told Balaban
that the money was to go directly to unemployed union members, for emergency
help, like a soup kitchen. It was a lie of course. They intended, in fact they
did, steal every penny of the money. But Bioff was smart enough to know that if
Balaban gave the $20,000 to a charitable cause, like a soup kitchen, then the
company could write the money off of their corporate tax bill and win public
admiration at the same time.
Barney Balaban was also a shrewd dealer.
He quickly figured out that neither Bioff nor Brown would keep any written
documents of the transaction since they intended to steal the money anyway.
That meant that Balaban and Katz could fork over $20,000 to Bioff and Brown’s
“soup kitchen” and tell the government they had donated $100,000 and then
pocket the additional $80,000 for themselves. The beauty of it was, Bioff and
Brown would swear that they had been given any amount Balaban said they had
been given. They had to. They had no other choice.
Brown and Bioff got the twenty grand. In
cash. It was delivered by Balaban’s lawyer Leo Spitz, who, before handing the
money over, reached into the suitcase and pulled out $1,000 and stuffed it in
his pocket “for carrying charges,” he explained.
Like the small timers they were,
after the payoff, Bioff and Brown went out on the town and gambled away
thousands of dollars in a mob-run casino inside the Loop, a place called the
Club 100, run by Nick Circella, a surly hood who worked directly for syndicate
boss Frankie Rio, a former Capone bodyguard.
Rio and Circella were in the club that
night, both of them had known Bioff for twenty years. As they sipped their
espressos from the owner’s table, and watched Bioff lose another grand on the
roulette wheel, Circella wondered aloud, “where two losers like Willie and
Brown would get that kind of cash.” Rio was thinking the same thing and ordered
Circella to find out what the two had been up to. Two days later, Frankie Rio
called Bioff and Brown, and told them they were going to see Frank Nitti’s
home.
After the federal government
railroaded Al Capone off to prison and out of power forever, his place was
taken by Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti, who got the position more out of attrition
due to thinning mob ranks than anything else.
Bioff and Brown, dressed in their best
suits, waited in the drawing room of Nitti’s twenty-room mansion, having
arrived 15 minutes early. George Brown was terrified. He was certain the
summons to Nitti’s place was the kiss of death, although he didn’t know what he
done to deserve it. But Bioff, always the smarter of the two, saw the summons
for what it was, the opportunity. Otherwise, he reasoned, if they had crossed
Nitti in some way they didn’t realize, they would have been dead already, left
in a back alley in the loop someplace, not waiting in a living room on a
Saturday morning.
After a half hour, a young, smartly
dressed thug they didn’t recognize came out and led them into a large, formal
living room where Phil D’Andrea, former Capone bodyguard, Paul Ricca, Charles
“Cherry Nose” Gioe, a top executive in the outfit and Louis “Little New York”
Campagna were waiting. The boss himself, Frank Nitti, sat in his desk chair,
glaring up at Brown and Bioff. “Where’d you get the money?” Nitti snapped. “And
don’t you fuck’n lie to me.”
George Brown was too terrified to speak,
so Bioff did all the talking, explaining the entire shakedown in a matter of
minutes, but blaming everything on his partner, George Brown.
Nitti understood everything, even before
Bioff had finished talking. He also saw the big picture at once. There were hundreds
of movie theaters in pre-television Chicago, thousands in Illinois and tens of
thousands across the United States. The potential was endless.
Nitti leaned back in his oversized leather
chair and declared that he was cutting the outfit in on B&B’s deal for 50%,
although he would later increase that to 75% and then 90%. From that amount,
10% of the gross went into the mob’s general treasury and the rest was divided
up among those who had invested in the scheme. Furthermore, Nitti said, he was
taking the stagehand’s union from Bioff and Brown and reducing them to his
bagmen within the union. They, Brown and Bioff, would handle the day-to-day
problems in the local, but if they had any serious troubles, they were to
report them to Nick Circella. When he was finished talking, Nitti leaned up
towards his desk and said, “All right, now get out.”
The Chicago outfit had always had its eye
on Hollywood. It started with Capone. Just before he went to jail forever, Big
Al had called a general meeting of the boys and told them he intended to extend
his power westward to Los Angeles and ordered Nitti to draw up a plan to look
into taking over Chicago’s enormous entertainment industry. Then the Taxmen
came around and slammed away Capone for good, but Nitti never forgot the plan
to invade Hollywood.
Now, in 1933, Nitti looked at Hollywood
and its stars and producers with skeletons in their closets, and said, “The
goose was in the oven waiting to be cooked.”
He was right, too. Los Angeles was a wide-open city. Disputes were
settled in gunshots, wildcat gangsters simply moved into town and bribed
politicians, elections were rigged by competing gangs. The district attorney,
Baron Fritts, was already on his way to becoming one of the country’s most
corrupt lawmen and the police chief, Jim Davis, was a loudmouth clown who
carried two six-gun revolvers, and, was so corrupt that a detective’s badge
could be purchased for five dollars. The Mayor, Frank Shaw, admitted to
newspapers that he rigged elections and placed his brother in charge of a spy
squad within the police department that kept track of, and intimidated, his
enemies. Compared to Los Angeles, Frank Nitti’s Chicago was a bastion of order.
But that was Los Angeles. Hollywood was a different place, hell it was a
different planet.
An avid reader of the daily financials,
Nitti learned that the movie business was ripe for extortion, for a wage
increase shakedown, because the depression had hit the industry hard, and
profits were off. The danger in low profits for the studios, was that the
entire motion picture business was only 15 years old. Other, older and more
established businesses might be able to withstand a drain on its cash, but the
Hollywood studios weren’t ready for the same trial. Still, even with sagging
profits and a shaky foundation, movie pictures were one of America’s top ten
grossing industries. Every day, tens of millions of dollars poured into its
bank accounts, and Nitti and the syndicate wanted a piece of the cash. With
control of the national union entertainment unions, they would get it, just the
way Capone had planned it back in 1929.
A few days after the meeting with Brown
and Bioff, Frank Nitti met with his council at the Capri restaurant inside
Chicago’s loop so he could introduce his plan to take over the entire union on
a national level.
Over lunch, Nitti pulled out the newspaper
clipping he had on Balaban’s nationwide operation and said he had spent the
morning on the phone with Lucky Luciano in New York. He told the boys, Paul
Ricca, Louis Campagna, Frankie Rio and Nick Circella, that he and Luciano had
decided that their mobs, New York and Chicago, would work together to take over
the movie business across America.
The entertainment business was
too big, Nitti explained, and covered too many miles, for Chicago to try and
take it alone. Besides, he added, Luciano and the other New York families
already controlled the East Coast Stage Workers and projectionists’ locals
whose control was vital to a successful takeover.
Nitti said that he and Lucky had decided
that the first place to start was with Barney Balaban. They would send Bioff
back into Balaban’s office with a demand for a 20% increase for the projectionists.
Nitti said that he expected Balaban to refuse to pay. When he did, the New York
syndicate, working the Chicago syndicate, would arrange a general strike
against all of Balaban’s theaters on the East Coast and the Midwest.
Nitti said that the projectionists
would be out of work for a few weeks and the theater chain would close down.
Then, at the last minute, Nitti would send in George Brown to act as peacemaker
and stabilizer who would end the strike through peaceful negotiations, while at
the same time getting the projectionists a small raise. With that done, the mob
would run him for the Stagehand Union presidency in the next election. That’s
what they did and it worked. The strike ended and George Brown was the hero of
the working man and the studios alike.
In June of 1934, the union held its
national election in Louisville, Kentucky. With the weight of the entire
national syndicate behind him, George Brown was elected national President of
the IATSE, the union that, effectively, controlled the entertainment business,
and Willie Bioff was appointed Brown’s “Special Representative”, at a salary of
$22,000. The Chicago mob’s takeover of a giant American industry had begun.
After the convention, Frank Nitti called
Bioff and Brown into his office and told them that he had decided that it was
best if they, Bioff and Brown, moved out to California where they would be
closer to the studio’s offices and production centers. The pair did as they
were ordered, and while Brown spent most his time locked behind his office
doors drinking beer, Willie Bioff made himself busy. In less than three months,
he took $250,000 in cash from the movie moguls at Warner, 20th Century Fox,
Paramount, everybody paid, all of it in cash, wrapped in brown paper bundles.
When Bioff arrived in Hollywood,
Chicago representative Johnny Roselli met him at the train station and gave the
little pimp an orientation tour of the city and the industry he was about to
bring to its knees.
As they drove through Beverly Hills, Roselli
stopped in front of Joan Crawford’s mansion and told Bioff an interesting
story. Roselli said that right after he had landed a job for himself as a staff
investigator for the Hay’s office, he was given a case to look into by MGM
Studios. It seemed that when one of their rising stars, a real beauty named
Joan Crawford, was a starving 19-year-old actress, she had appeared in several
pornographic films.
Now in 1935, some freelance
extortionists said that they had a print of the film and were shaking down MGM
for $100,000 to hand over the film negative. The bosses over at MGM considered
the investment they already had in Crawford, added that with her box office
appeal and potential, and decided that it would be less expensive to pay the
extortionists off, but not for $100,000.
The bosses handed the case over to
Roselli and told him to contact the hoods and offer them $25,000 in cash to
back off. The studio would write the money off of their taxes as a business
expense.
Roselli contacted the hoods, a group of
small timers, and explained that he represented not only MGM Studios but the
Mafia as well. He told them that if they ever contacted the studios or Crawford
again, he’d kill them. Case solved.
Roselli pocketed the studio’s $25,000, produced the film negative and the
threats stopped.
A few years later, Roselli and Bioff met
again. After a complicated series of federal wage laws and disputes with the
movie studios over a 20% increase in salaries, the independent entertainment
unions decided to strike on April 30, 1937. A strike by these unions could
close down film production across California. If that happened, the syndicate
would never collect on their control over the unions.
The studios wanted the strike broken and they
wanted the syndicate to break it. Frank Nitti argued against any involvement,
but this time things were reversed, the studios pressured the outfit, and took
their case to Lucky Luciano and Longy Zwillman in New York. Luciano and
Zwillman talked to Nitti and, reluctantly, Nitti agreed to break the strike.
Nitti handed the job to Johnny Roselli
who hired a squad of twenty leg-breakers from Chicago and San Francisco and
marched them to the Hollywood police station where they were given gun permits and
then brought them to the studio gates where the striking union membership was
gathered.
Armed with baseball bats and steel
chains, Roselli’s goons threw themselves at the striking union members who took
a severe beating that first day but were back on the strike line the next
morning.
The outfit goons continued to dole out
beatings for several more weeks before the union brass imported its own
sluggers, some hired from local gyms, others brought in from the Long
Shoreman’s union in New York.
Herb Sorrell, a labor organizer for the
union recalled that “there were numerous fights, and it was a rough strike. In
the six weeks that it lasted, there were several killed and I didn’t know how
many injured. In fact it was the roughest strike I ever participated in.”
Realizing that brute force wouldn’t win the strike, Roselli told George
Brown and Willie Bioff to call a press conference with the studio bosses and
declare the striking union’s leadership as “communist infiltrated.”
Then all-powerful Screen Actors Guild
voted to ignore the union’s picket lines and eventually the smaller unions
either disbanded or became a part of the larger organizations. The Federation
of Motion Picture Crafts was destroyed, the outfit’s union reigned supreme.
Nitti, who always expected the worst in
everything, was amazed to find out that he didn’t need a ramrod to knock down
Hollywood’s golden gates. He just knocked gently and they sprung open for him.
The reason for that was that Hollywood, as Nitti would quickly learn, was, like
him, all about money.
Although it later became known as the
Bioff and Brown extortion scandal, it wasn’t really extortion, at least not in
the classic sense, because the studio heads, by paying off Bioff and Nitti’s not
to raise prices, were actually saving money, perhaps millions of dollars over
what they would have to have paid a legitimate union in wage increases.
Furthermore, the scandal benefited the studios in other ways because the mob,
for everything that was evil about it, usually kept its word once it was paid,
and the mob had agreed not to raise labor prices.
That promise assured the studios that productions would finish without
stoppage or a problem from IATSE’s 12,000 members, and as result of a toothless
union, the studios fired workers at will and pushed others to work over time
without compensation; as a result, films were made for less money because not
as many people were needed. In fact, the payoffs to the mob, saved the studios
about $15,000,000.00 in what they would have paid out in wage increases.
With the mob behind them as a
working partner, the studios no longer had to deal with Communists who had
infiltrated the locals and stirred up trouble, or the small time thugs who kept
coming back for more nickels and dimes or the weak labor leaders who couldn’t
keep their promises because they had no real control over their membership.
Producers knew that with the mob in charge, they could get a picture wrapped up
on schedule because there would be no strikes and as an added bonus the mob
ordered Bioff & Brown to raise prices for live theater, opera, plays and
concerts, which were competing with the movie business. Everybody, except the
membership, was happy.
Joe Schenck was one of the founding Fathers of Hollywood. Joe Schenck got involved with, in fact he
almost helped to design, the mob’s shakedown of the Hollywood studios in April
of 1936. Unlike the gangsters who lived from day to day on their incomes, the
studio heads relied on budgets.
Bioff’s surprise visits were
starting to tax the bottom line. The studio heads gathered together and decided
to let Nick Schenck come up with a plan that would satisfy the outfit and the
studios.
Schenck was about to pay Bioff anywhere
near a million dollars, however, he did a quick take on Bioff and decided that
he could be bribed. Schenck told Bioff that the DuPont representative in
California wanted to increase his raw film business with MGM and the other
studios. He said that DuPont was willing to pay Bioff a 7% commission to act as
the designated “agent” between DuPont Chemical and the Hollywood studios;
better yet, all of the actual footwork would be done by a “sub agent” assigned
by DuPont, all Bioff had to do was cash the checks.
Bioff agreed to the deal under the
conditions that his income never fell under $50,000 a year and that Schenck was
not to mention the commission deal to anyone else, meaning Frank Nitti, or his
west coast boy, Johnny Roselli.
Schenck called the other studio heads,
explained the situation and all of them agreed, reluctantly, to switch their
business from Eastman Kodak raw film to DuPont. In the last part of 1937, the
raw film commission deal that Schenck had put together gave Bioff $159,025 in
commissions, an enormous amount of money for that time.
Flush with more cash than he ever dreamed
possible, Willie Bioff “went Hollywood.” He started to wear expensive clothes
and carried three diamond-studded, solid gold, union business cards in his
wallet. Using mostly union funds, and by applying yet another special
collection on the studios, Bioff was able to raise enough funds to buy a
massive ranch. Here, he grew alfalfa and flowers and relaxed in his mahogany-paneled
mansion where, although he could barely read, Bioff had a pine-knot library
filled with the world’s greatest books and rare and expensive volumes. He
bought a Louis XV bedroom and rare Chinese vases and fancied himself a
connoisseur of rare vases and had a kidney shaped swimming pool built in the
back yard for his seven children.
Willie Bioff’s new ranch and the unusual
methods he used to finance it weren’t missed by Montgomery Clift, the Screen
Actors Guild President, who had his own informants within the studios. Clift
figured, correctly, that the ranch was a payoff from Schenck to ensure Bioff’s
secrecy. Then, one of Clift’s informants provided him with a copy of the check
that Schenck had made out to Willie Bioff for $100,000. Clift reported the deal
to the IRS and eventually Schenck was secretly indicted for tax evasion.
When questioned about the check
he had written to Bioff, Schenck said it was a loan. Later on, he made the
mistake of testifying to that under oath. When the government was able to prove
that Schenck paid Bioff the money as a means to avoid taxes, he was indicted on
several counts of tax evasion. Schenck, always the businessman, decided to
cooperate with the government in exchange for his a light sentence.
The government agreed and Joe Schenck sat
before the grand jury and outlined the entire scam. The grand jury eventually
found Schenck guilty of tax evasion and he was sentenced to five years at a
federal prison, but Joe Schenck wasn’t just anybody. He wasn’t going to serve
out his term in jail and the whole world knew it. He served just under a year,
was granted a Presidential by Harry S. Truman and then went to running his
studios as though nothing had happened.
Based on Schenck’s testimony, the federal
grand jury issued subpoenas for all the major studio heads, but still, up until
almost the very end, the government had no real clear understanding of the
extent of Bioff’s extortion scam or the fact that the mob, New York and
Chicago, were involved. Then Harry Warner stood before the grand jury and
filled in the gaps. Warner’s evidence was enough to put everybody involved
behind bars.
On May 23, 1941, Brown, Bioff, Paul
Ricca, Frank Nitti, Nick Circella, Charlie Gioe, and Phil D’Andrea were
indicted for extortion and tax evasion. Willie Bioff had no intention of doing
any jail time. He called US Attorney
Boris Kostelanetz from a jailhouse visitor’s phone and opened the conversation
by saying, “This is Bioff . . . Okay, Boris, what do you want to know?”
Bioff laid out the entire scheme for
Kostelanetz, times, dates, places, names and amounts; of course he worked a
good deal for himself first. In exchange for his testimony, the government
agreed to let Bioff keep the money he had stolen over the past decade,
furthermore, he would walk away from any charges against him.
After three weeks, Bioff finished
giving his testimony to the grand jury, and when he was finished talking,
indictments were handed down for Johnny Roselli, Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca, Louis
Campagna, Charlie Gioe, Phil D’Andrea, Ralph Pierce and Frankie Diamond.
There was a trial, but none of the outfit
members took the stand in their own defense, the case against them was that
overwhelming. On December 30, 1943, the verdict against them was returned. They
were each found guilty and sentenced an average of ten years in federal prison
plus $10,000 fine and were liable for the back taxes owed. It was, as the
Chicago Herald American wrote, “The total demolition of the Chicago syndicate.”
Frank Nitti never went to trial on the
Bioff charges, because a day before he was indicted, he took a .45 and blew his
brains out, just as he had always promised he would if he ever faced another
long prison sentence.
Paul Ricca decided he wasn’t going to
do any jail time either. Working through Campagna’s wife they were put in touch
with a Missouri legislator named Edward “Putty Nose” Brady who in turn placed
them in contact with a St. Louis lawyer named Paul Dillon who wasn’t new to the
mob. He knew Murray Humphreys, the Chicago outfit’s collector, very well and
had defended two IATSE union officers at Humphreys’ request, after they were
caught beating up a movie theater owner in St. Louis in 1939.
Dillon, then 68, also had strong political
connections to the Missouri underworld including Johnny Lazia, the Kansas City
gambling king who was killed in 1934 and Tom Pendergast, the boss of Kansas
City.
But, what Ricca needed Dillon for was his
close, personnel relationship with President Harry Truman. In 1934, at the
personnel request of Missouri crime king, Boss Pendergast, Dillon had acted as
Harry Truman campaign manager in his race for the senate. Dillon had also
worked as a lawyer for Boss Pendergast, and represented Prendergast’s chief
lieutenant, “Smiling Johnny” Lazia, on an income tax fraud charge.
Dillon loved the power, the money and the
clout working with these clients gave him. He bragged, often and loudly, that
he could visit Truman at the White House whenever he wanted to.
In October of 1945, Dillon met “Putty
Nose” Brady, who had ties to the Chicago outfit that went back to the Capone
organization. With Brady at the meeting was an ex-prizefighter, and occasional
Brady business partner, James Testa. Dillon, according to Testa, provided them
with a price list with a set amount of money he would need to have each of the
Chicago hoods released by using his influence in Washington with the Truman
White House.
While Dillon was collecting his bribe
money from Testa and Brady, another lawyer named Maury Hughes of Dallas,
traveled to Washington and met with Attorney General Clark. The two men had
grown up together. Shortly after the meeting, the Attorney General requested
the gangsters transfer to Leavenworth.
For decades no one in law enforcement was
clear on what hand Clark had played in the transfer or where Hughes fit in
until Murray Humphreys summed it all up when he, knowingly or unknowingly, told
an FBI microphone on October 16, 1964. “Attorney General Tom Clarke was, he
always was, 100% for doing favors . . . the guy Maury Hughes who went to Clarke
was an ex law partner (from Dallas) and then the scandal broke.”
Humphreys also said that another lawyer
they hired, Bradley Eben, was paid the astounding fee of $15,000, an enormous
amount of money in 1945, to “consult” on the case. Eben’s mother was a Truman
White House employee who worked as a liaison between Attorney General Clarke
and the President.
On August 6, 1947, Dillon, made an
application for parole for Ricca, Gioe, Campagna and D’Andrea. The application
was strongly opposed by Boris Kostelanetz, the special assistant attorney
general, even the federal judge who passed sentence wrote to the attorney
general Clark objecting to the application for parole. But, on August 13, 1947,
exactly one week after the application for parole had been placed, Ricca,
Campagna, Gioe and D’Andrea were released on parole. A federal parole team made up of 3 men voted unanimously to release the hoods
and acted so quickly and quietly on their decision, that the parole office in
Chicago didn’t have time to submit its standard analysis of the case, which
meant that the parole team reached its decision having seen only a fraction of
the inmates’ records.
The public, especially in Hollywood and
Chicago, were outraged over the hoods’ release, and Representative Fred E.
Busbey confronted the Parole Board members and asked them, directly and without
mincing words, if it was true that they had accepted a $500,000 bribe to grant
paroles to the hoods. Remarkably, not one of the parole board members denied
accepting the money, nor would they admit to it.
The House Expenditures Committee
recommended that the four hoods be sent back to prison and that their paroles
be revoked. The carefully worded report held that the paroles had been given
under highly questionable circumstances, and identified Dillon and Hughes as
being personal friends of President Truman and Attorney General Clark. It concluded,
however, that it could find no grounds to indict the President, Clarke or
Hughes and could find no evidence that anyone had been bribed but concluded
that “A good Samaritan” had spent big money to get the hoods released.
That “good Samaritan” turned out to be
Tony Accardo, who ordered each of his capos to visit the attorney’s office and
drop a specific amount on the desk to free Ricca and the others. They were to
say nothing except, “This is for Paul Ricca,” drop the money on the desk, and leave.
By the end of the day, Ricca’s lawyers had the $200,000 needed to pay off his
tax lien. Now the hoods’ Attorney could truly say that “a bunch of strangers
and good and concerned citizens donated the money.”
When Louis Campagna was called before
committee he said he didn’t know who any of the estimated forty-two men were
who dropped the money on the lawyer’s desk or what their motivation was.
“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”
Representative Hoffman asked Campagna.
“Yes, Yes. After all this,” Campagna
said “I suppose I do . . . I mean if you were me, wouldn’t you?”
In its final report, the Congressional
Committee charged to look into the entire mess wrote: “The syndicate has given
the most striking demonstration of political clout in the history of the
republic.”
Willie Bioff moved to Arizona, where he
lived under the name Willie Nelson, Nelson being his wife's maiden name. Contrary to what's usually written, Willie
Bioff wasn't hiding out in Arizona. In fact, he worked at the Riviera Casino in
Vegas as the entertainment director for Gus Greenbaum, Chicago's man in Nevada.
Outgoing, likable and very rich, Willie
was a natural for politics, and was soon popular within the golden elite of
Phoenix society, which is how he met Barry Goldwater, in November of 1952. The two men became fast friends.
Goldwater, a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, flew Bioff and
his wife all over the state to attend various parties, and Willie landed a
steady flow of cash into Goldwater's political campaign chest. Bioff even
loaned Bobby Goldwater $10,000 for a farming investment in Southern
California. A month before the Mafia
killed him, Willie Bioff and his wife, Barry Goldwater and his family,
vacationed together in Las Vegas.
In 1955, Peter Licavoli and Paul Ricca,
boss of the Chicago mob, started to shake Bioff down for cash. Willie paid off for a while, but then
remarked that he might go to the federal government for help. The next morning, Bioff stepped into his
Ford pickup, stepped on the gas and was killed instantly by a bomb planted under
the hood of the truck. Both of his legs and his right arm was blown off.
Murder Inc group photo. From left Pittsburgh Phil, Bugsy Goldstein, Abe Kid Twist Reles, and Happy Maione. Pittsburgh Phil and Buggsy (correct spelling, two g's) Goldstein were electrocuted by the state of New York. Reles was tossed out a hotel window and killed by the cops who were working for the mob. Happy Maione, an Irishman, vanished from the face of the earth. Rumor was that he moved to Las Vegas, changed his name lived for another forty years
Excerpt from my book "When Capone’s Mob Murdered Touhy.”
Although they may not have had a
headquarters, the Touhy gang did have their own priest, Father Joseph Weber,
who Roger had met back in 1923 when Weber was an Indiana State Prison chaplain
while Tommy Touhy was serving time for his role in an Indianapolis department
store burglary. Roger and his brother Eddie asked Weber to use his influence to
get a parole hearing for Tommy. Weber agreed, and by the end of the year Tommy
was paroled and the Touhys were indebted to a priest who ran one of the poorest
parishes in Indianapolis. Later, after the brothers were established in the
bootlegging business, they donated 10 percent of their business profits to
Weber's parish. '1 was," said Roger, "God's bagman."
The brothers benefitted the priest in other ways. Weber had always been
politically active in Indianapolis and argued vehemently for the city's growing
black population. Weber claimed that the Klu Klux Klan, which had its regional
headquarters in Indianapolis, included some of the city's and state's leading
families and politicians. As a result, Weber said, the black citizens of
Indianapolis were denied even the most basic of city services.
One day as a passing part of a conversation, Weber mentioned to Tommy
Touhy that if he had the Klan's secret membership files, he could confirm his
suspicions and break their power. A few days later, on April 1, 1923, a moonlit
Easter Sunday, a burglar broke into the Klan's headquarters and stole the
organization's state membership list, some 12,208 names, which included some of
the most powerful and well respected people in the Midwest. The next day, parts
of the list were published in the Catholic newspaper Tolerance under the
headlines "Who's Who in Indianapolis."
"The Klan offered me $25,000 for the records, which I turned
down," Roger wrote.
Weber didn't always stay above the fray himself. John Sambo was a small
time beer hall operator who managed Sambo's Place, a Capone saloon next to the
Big Oaks Golf Course on the extreme northwest edge of Chicago. The problem was
that the place bordered on Roger Touhy's territory. Tommy Touhy paid Sambo a
visit and he changed to Touhy's brand.
Sambo reported to the FBI that one sunny afternoon, Roger Touhy and
several of his men, including Father Weber, entered the saloon at mid-day and
drank until the sun went down. That night a young Negro boy came into the bar
room to shine shoes and the drunken Touhys pulled out their weapons and fired
shots at the boy's feet to make him dance.
Several months later, Sambo fell out of favor with the Touhys when he
stopped selling their beer and switched to Capone's brand. An FBI report on
Sambo states, "[On] one occasion Roger Touhy, George Wilke and Leroy
Marshalk came into his place of business and took him down to the basement,
stating that they had information that he was selling other beer. Sambo stated
at that time that he believed that Touhy would have killed him, but that
Marshalk, whom Sambo had known for some time, stopped him."
To the newspapers, the public, the police and the politicians, Roger's
Des Plains operation looked exactly the way he and Kolb wanted it to look; like
a hick, two-bit operation that grossed a few hundred thousand dollars a year.
"And Touhy, " Ray Brennan said, "was careful to foster that illusion.
He lived well, but not lavishly in Des Plaines as it was a quiet town where he
was considered a leading citizen. He was a contributor to charities and a
member of fraternal organizations and golf clubs. Touhy and Kolb had a
million-dollar-a-year business going plus a neat income from slot machines and
a few road houses but they were wary enough not to brag about it. They were
smart enough to pay income taxes on it."
Roger, who was now the father of two boys, made his final move to the
suburbs in the spring of 1926 and purchased a large, comfortable home, just
north of the center of Des Plains. His neighbors considered the bootlegger and
his family respectable, hardworking people. "Nice," recalled one
neighbor. "Not what you would think for a bootlegger. They were quiet
people...refined."
'There was no stigma to selling beer." Touhy wrote. "I bought
a place that some of the newspapers later called a 'mansion' or a 'gang
fortress.' It was a six-room bungalow and later I put a sixty-foot swimming pool
in the back. The only gang I ever had around there was a guard with a shotgun
after the Capone mob tried to kidnap my kids....I lived quietly with my family
during those big money years. I put a workshop, office and bar in my basement.
There was a playhouse for the kids in my backyard. My wife got along well with
our neighbors."
Even when Tommy and Roger were being hounded by the police during the
John Factor kidnapping, their neighbors supported them. Des Plains historian
Mark Henkes wrote, "Touhy gave his money freely to people and families in
a pinch. He left baskets of food on the doorsteps of homes with a $20 bill
attached to the basket handle. The recipients sometimes never knew where the
food came from. He paid medical bills for some families. He made good money
selling beer and he gave some of it away." Even though Roger did his best
to fit in, there were occasional setbacks like the incident when the Chicago
Tribune and other groups were planning a historical pageant for Des Plains in which
citizens would dress as early settlers and travel down the Des Plains river in
wooden canoes. Meanwhile, Touhy wanted to get rid of some mash, the
fermentation of beer, by pumping it into the river. He hired a crew to dig a
trench and lay a sewer line from his plant to the river.
He poured hundreds, perhaps thousands of gallons of the mash into the
river. The problem was that Des Plains was going through a dry season and the
river was low and barely moving. The stench from the mash was unbearable.
Father Patrick O'Connor, head of St. Mary's Training School in Des Plains and a
member of the parade committee, got a whiff of the foul smell in the river and
immediately knew what happened. O'Connor knew Roger and called him about the
problem he had created. 'What in the hell were you thinking, Rog? Half of
Chicago will be here in a day and you turn the river into a flood of bootleg
booze! Do something before the pageant starts."
Roger apologized and hired more than twenty boys from Maine High School
in Des Plains to dump thousands of gallons of perfume into the river, "and
the pageant was a sweet-smelling success."
So, while the public, the press and the police may have been fooled by
Roger's small time image, A1 Capone knew exactly how much money Touhy and Kolb
were earning out on the dusty back roads of Cook County. He wanted a piece of
it, a large piece of it. As he always did, Capone first tried to talk his way
into a partnership explaining the benefits of working within his operation.
They met a total of six times that year, in Florida, during the winter months
on fishing trips, and Capone offered to let Roger use his yacht.
Touhy said, "He offered to let me use his yacht or stay in his big
house, surrounded by a wall about as thick as Statesville's (prison) on Palm
Island in Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami Beach. I didn't accept. "
Photos of Roger Touhy and of the Touhy case;
Roger's son, Tommy 1959
Willie Sharky, Touhy enforcer
"Chicken: McFadden, Touhy labor goon
Here's some photo's from my picture book "The Life and World of Al Capone"
Here's some photos of the Chicago mobs leadership through the years
Frank Nitti
Nitti's second wife, Annetta
Here's some Chicago Mob photos for you..............................
Super bookie Ken Eto
The grave of the two hood sent to kill Eto and goofed it up
Eto testifies before Congress
10 Scientifically Proven Methods to Increase your Happiness Right Now
By Christina Sarich.
The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to
enjoy it. ~ Richard Bach
Do you even remember the last
time you felt sheer pleasure, or unmitigated glee? What is your most recent
recollection of bubbling over with happiness? I mean, when you felt so giddy
that your cheeks were glowing, your heart was thumping, and your eyes welled up
with unfettered joy? If that hasn’t happened to you in the last little while
(or even a very long while), don’t fret.
As John Barrymore once said,
“Happiness often sneaks in a door you didn’t know you left open.” Chasing
happiness isn’t really going to make it magically appear, but you can create
the circumstances that ‘leave the door open’ to a joyful and meaningful life by
setting the stage for happiness, and allowing it a grand entrance. You can feel
happier right now, with these scientifically proven methods.
Exercise for seven minutes.
I don’t care if you stand in one
place and jump up and down, go for a walk, or climb the stairs at your office,
you can feel happier right now by being physically active. In a study described
in the book, The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated their
depression with medication, exercise, or a combination of both medication and
exercise. The results of this study should be extremely motivating. Although
all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels
early on, the follow-up assessments proved to be radically different. When
tested at six months to see if they had ‘relapsed’ into depression, 38 percent
of those who took medication alone slipped back into a depressed state, and for
those who exercised? Only nine percent relapsed. The proof is evident. You can
feel better by exercising, and it doesn’t take much.
Write down 20 things you are
grateful for.
Don’t type up what you are
grateful for, write them down, since it requires more neurons to do so, and
you’ll feel much better. Robert Emmons, often called the world’s leading expert
in the science of gratitude, says that people who keep gratitude journals
experience higher levels of positive emotions, more joy and pleasure, and stay
alert and optimistic more easily.
Take a 15-minute power nap.
Getting more sleep is one of the
best ways to feel happier. “You’re putting energy in the bank when you go to
sleep,” says Barry Krakow, MD, medical director of Maimonides Sleep Arts and
Sciences, Ltd. in Albuquerque, N.M. “On a cellular level, the body is literally
repairing and restoring itself. Without it, you can’t do what you want —
physically or mentally.” This also means that you’ll likely find negative
emotions creeping in more easily, and find it difficult to constructively
handle emotions like anger or frustration, because sleep deprivation increases
amygdala activity (a brain structure integral to experiences of negative
emotions such as anger and rage) and a disconnect between the amygdala and the area
of the brain that regulates its functions. Power napping for at least 15-20
minutes will already start to improve your mood and cognitive functioning, and
getting rapid eye movement or REM sleep, which usually takes 60 to 90 minutes
of napping, plays a key role in making new connections in the brain and solving
creative problems. Napping is even better for you than drinking a cup of
coffee.
Get outside.
There a 101 reasons nature makes
us feel good, but ‘green science’ as it is called, is learning more about how
the blue sky and green trees really affect us all the time. For one thing,
nature teaches us that we are perfect just the way we are. When we are alone in
nature, there is no classism, racism, homophobia, or sexism. A rushing river
doesn’t care what level of the social hierarchy you’ve reached, or haven’t.
Time slows to a more manageable pace, and we experience profound healing on
levels mainstream medicine likely will never understand. For starters, you are
breathing in fresh air, and absorbing Vitamin D, which is a known precursor for
making happy hormones. Being outdoors is so uplifting that many people describe
is as being a spiritual experience. If you can only be outside for a few
minutes every day, take advantage of that opportunity. Your happiness is
forever connected to being one with nature.
Be with your peeps.
Spending time with friends and
family is one of those ‘can’t buy me love’ things that really does add to our
overall happiness. Daniel Gilbert is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology
at Harvard University. The professor tells us that most of the things we do in
life are to acquire more time with friends and family – so why not just cut to
the chase, and DO that. The ‘happiness’ expert says, “We are happy when we have
family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we
think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.”
The ‘can’t buy me love’ aspect is quite real, in fact. The connections we have
with friends and family is worth as much as $132,000 a year in terms of life
satisfaction, according to the Journal of Socio-Economics. If you don’t have
friends, you can make some new ones by taking a class at a community college,
joining a sports team or look for a social event to meet new people in your
city.
Meditate.
A study by the University of
Sydney surveyed 350 people who had meditated for more than two years, and
compared those results with existing government surveys on people’s mental and
physical health. Those who meditated were found to be ten percent happier than
those who didn’t. While that doesn’t seem like much, meditation can also give
us more mental clarity, feelings of peace and of gratitude (see number two),
and 76 other scientifically verifiable benefits that you’d otherwise be missing
out on.
Watch the Weather.
The American Meteorological
Society has published research that found temperature has a bigger effect on
our happiness than variables like wind speed and humidity. It also found that
happiness is maximized at 57 degrees (13.9°C), so keep an eye on the weather
forecast and head outside when the weather is prime. If you live in a warmer
climate, find a shady spot and sit in nature.
Help somebody.
Doing good deeds, or helping
someone else for 100 hours a year contributes massively to your overall
feelings of peace, well-being, and happiness. “A lot of times we think that
happiness comes about because you get things for yourself,” said Richard Ryan,
a psychologist at the University of Rochester, but “it turns out that in a
paradoxical way, giving gets you more, and I think that’s an important message
in a culture that’s pretty often getting messages to the opposite effect.”
Stop the commute.
Okay, so you can’t just up and
quit your job, but you might be able to work out a ‘flex’ schedule that allows
you to work from home a few days a week, or you might even consider moving
closer to your workplace. Why? Commuting makes us unhappy. A Swedish study
found that commuting is so hard on folks that people are 40% more likely to
divorce if one person commutes more than 45 minutes to work every day. If you
absolutely must sit in traffic for an average of 38 to 60 hours a year, then at
least listen to an uplifting book on tape, or learn a new language. This can
make you happy, too.
Learn something new.
A core psychological need for
humans is to learn and master new skills. Psychologists call this need
‘mastery.’ You can see it in babies learning to crawl or sit up for the first
time, but also in grown adults mastering a violin concerto, or learning how to
converse in a second language. Learning something new in one area of our lives
also often triggers an add-on bonus of learning something new in another area.
It’s a win-win-win situation. You learn one thing, and this helps you learn a
bonus skill or concept, and this also leads to more happiness. You don’t have
to get formal certificates or professional qualifications. Just learning how to
plant a garden or play a new chord on your guitar can boost levels of
happiness.
“Most folks are as happy as they
make up their minds to be.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
Brazil's Mediums Channel Dead
Artists. Is It Worship Or Just Delusion?
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro/NPR
Unlike most art exhibitions, this
one starts with a prayer.
A heavyset 77-year-old woman with
girlishly pinned blonde hair stands behind a table. An array of colored chalk
and oil paints fan out in front of her. She puts her head in her hands and
concentrates.
Her demeanor changes.
Then, to the sound of eerie music,
she begins to draw. Her hands are nimble and decisive, despite her age, and
very quickly, something begins to take shape: A face with a bright-green,
19th-century hat.
After 18 minutes and change —
they timed it — she is finished. She signs the work, "Renoir."
The woman who is painting is
actually called Valdelice Da Silva Dias Salum.
She tells me spirits began
manifesting themselves around her when she was a child. But it wasn't until
years later that it really began to get frightening, kind of like the movie
Poltergeist. The TV would suddenly switch on; the radio would blare at full volume.
It turns out the spirits of dead
French Impressionist painters were trying to make contact: Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh,
Gauguin, Degas. Pretty much all of them.
Salum says she grew up poor and
illiterate. She didn't even know who these painters were. She says she had no
artistic talent. But the spirits selected her.
All this might sound odd outside
Brazil, but here it is fairly common and widely accepted.
Salum follows Spiritism, which is
basically a religious offshoot of the 19th-century practice of communicating
with the dead via table-rapping and séances. Spiritism is hugely popular in
Brazil, with more than 4 million followers.
Spiritists believe in Jesus's
Gospel, and in reincarnation. They believe that the dead can communicate with
the living through mediums — and not only communicate, but create through the
living, too.
"I don't know what they are
going to do and what they are going to paint," Salum says. "I'm
totally enveloped by them. I don't have a sense of time passing."
Unique Challenges
It's not only paintings that get
channeled.
At a Spiritist bookstore in
downtown São Paulo, I'm shown five books — including one by famed Brazilian
spiritist Divaldo Franco — that carry Victor Hugo's name.
It's a Saturday and the place is
packed with readers and books. There are more than 220 Spiritist publishing
houses in Brazil.
One of the star authors is Sandra
Guedes Marques Carneiro. Her books have sold more than 250,000 copies. She
writes romances — of a kind. Her latest is called Salome, and she tells me she
thinks it's a "sign" that I am interviewing her. The book is about a
female journalist who travels to the war-torn Middle East and then comes to
Brazil — kind of like me.
Carneiro emphasizes that the
books are basically religious texts. The spirits are writing to try and bring
about enlightenment and understanding to the earth. It makes the message more
entertaining if it's wrapped in a good love story.
Her spirit author, for the
record, is called Lucius, and he has a huge following — so much so that other
author mediums channel him as well.
Alexandre Marques edits and
publishes the work of his wife, Sandra. He says this part of the publishing
industry presents some unique challenges.
"We don't have a way of
commissioning books," Marques says. "They come from the other side to
us."
Another difference from
traditional publishing? Editing.
Surprisingly, Marques says it's
actually easier to edit a dead author than a living one. Apparently, they are less
defensive about the integrity of their work.
"The spirits are easier
going, actually," he says.
Still, it's a labor-intensive
process. It is pretty difficult to get approval for your edits from a spirit.
"We send the suggested
alterations to the medium," Marques explains. "The medium consults
the spiritual author. They answer if they agree or not."
Spiritual Copyright
This all gets into some strange
legal ground. There was a case in which the widow of a famous dead author sued
a medium for royalties because he was supposedly channeling her dead husband's
spirit and writing new blockbusters.
We consulted a lawyer who's an
expert in spiritual copyright. Renata Soltanovich says that, as long as the
consumer who buys the work understands that it's been channeled through a
medium, it's not fraud.
Back at the painting exhibition,
Salum is channeling another dead painter. I'm not an art critic, but the
paintings, in my opinion, are not ready to be hung in the Louvre.
I ask her why her works don't
quite match the standard of some of the originals.
She explains it's hard for the
spirits to cross into the corporeal world.
"It's because of my lack of
knowledge," she says. "They are using me as an instrument, but I am
weak."
In the end, she says, it's all
about faith.
14 Things You Should Know About
Paid Leave in the U.S.
Many workers in this country
aren't eligible for unpaid leave, much less paid leave.
By Prachi Gupta
At some point in your career, you
will probably need to take time off from your job to care for yourself or a family
member, or to welcome a tiny new human into your life. But because the federal
government doesn't require your workplace to offer paid family leave, it's
possible that you will have to choose between earning money and looking after a
loved one – the latter which, yes, is pretty darn hard to do without an income.
This has created a frustrating Catch-22 situation for many Americans,
especially for low-income workers, single parents, and for women, the latter of
whom are more likely to leave full-time work to care for others. Family leave
policies are slowly changing, however, as both experts in the public and
private sector are starting to recognize the societal and economic benefits of
offering paid time off. The policies are complicated to navigate, so if you're
a parent in the workforce, here are 14 things you need to know about how family
leave works.
1. Every industrialized country
in the world except for the U.S. offers paid leave. Despite its status as a
superpower, America is the only developed country on the planet that doesn't
have federal statutes protecting minimum paid vacation, sick days, and family
leave. In fact, according toColumbia University professor Jane Waldfogel, who
tracks paid parental leave programs globally, "most other countries offer
an average of 10, 12 months or maybe more of paid parental leave." If this
makes you sad, listen to John Oliver vent about it for 12 minutes and then come
back here to read more.
2. Instead, America offers unpaid
leave. While the federal government has not mandated paid family leave, in 1993
Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) into law. FMLA says
that businesses are required to give working men and women up to 12 weeks off
for pregnancy, prenatal care and childbirth; adoption or foster care; or
caregiving for oneself or an immediate family member with a serious health
condition. In some cases, family members of ill military servicemembers are
eligible for 26 weeks of leave in a year. FMLA ensures that qualifying
employees will continue to be covered under their elected health coverage
throughout the time off and will return to the same (or similar) job with the
same pay and same benefits they had before their hiatus. Businesses are not
required to pay workers for time off under FMLA.
3. Not everyone is eligible for
unpaid leave under FMLA. Aside from the obvious issue of losing your income,
another drawback to the FMLA is that a lot of people and businesses don't meet
the qualifications. In fact, according to a 2012 survey prepared for the
Department of Labor, most worksites are not covered by the FMLA because they're
too small. Only 59 percent of American workers – and less than 20 percent of
all new mothers – are eligible for the FMLA. This is due to the following
regulations: You have to work at a company that employs at least 50 people who
live within 75 miles of the business (yes, that is weirdly specific) and you
must have worked there for an entire year. In that year, you must have put in
at least 1,250 hours, not including paid time off or sick days.
4. Recognizing that these
regulations can be prohibitive, some states have loosened the eligibility
requirements of the FMLA. For example, Maine allows private businesses with as
few as 15 employees to be eligible for FMLA, while the District of Columbia
extends unpaid family and medical leave to "16 weeks in a 24-month period
for workers in establishments with 20 employees or more." Some states have
also expanded upon the definition of "family": New Jersey, for
example, recognizes "civil union partner and child of civil union partner,
parent-in-law, step parent" as family members for whom an employee can
care for under family leave, while Hawaii includes "grandparent,
parent-in-law, grandparent-in-law or an employee's reciprocal beneficiary"
as family.
5. Most people receive some pay
when they take unpaid leave. Two-thirds of American workers eligible for FMLA
cobble together necessary family leave time with their sick days and other
accrued paid time off to pay, at least partially, for a leave. Most who receive
partial or no pay, however, report having a difficult time supporting
themselves. It's always worth looking into what sort of specialized benefits
may be available at your workplace – some employers also offer sick leave pools,
in which co-workers can donate time off.
6. However, 39 percent of
American workers don't have sick days. About 43 million people don't get paid
sick days, making even the aforementioned paid arrangements impossible for
them. The Center for American Progress notes that less-educated and
lower-income families "currently have the lowest levels of access to any
form of leave, paid or unpaid," meaning that under the current system,
many of the parents who most need help get the least.
7. Some private sector workers do
get paid leave in America. Though not required by law, many top companies offer
paid leave as part of their benefits and have found that such policies enhance
employee retention, productivity, and morale. This includes corporations like
Netflix, Google and Microsoft, who offer fairly generous packages for both
maternal and paternal leave. But only 11 percent of workers report having paid
time off. Paid leave is a privilege more readily available to college-educated
workers, who, a 2014 report by the President's Council of Economic
Advisersnotes, are "twice as likely to have access to paid leave as
workers without a high school degree."
8. Local and state governments
are starting to embracing paid leave. In 2004, California became the first state
to enact a paid family leave law. Offered as an extension of the state's
Temporary Disability Insurance program, employees receive partial pay (around
55 percent of one's paycheck up to $1,067 per week ) for six weeks out of a
12-month period in which a worker can take care of an ill family member,
domestic partner, or bond with a child. Rhode Island, New Jersey, and
Washington state have passed similar laws (Washington has yet to
enact its law,
however). A handful of states have created laws offering paid family leave to
government workers, including Ohio, Virginia, and Illinois. At the local level,
cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Austin, and Pittsburgh have moved to offer
nonunion municipal workers paid family leave.
9. Mothers who receive paid leave
are more likely to come back to work. Women are one-third more likely than men
to take unpaid leave to take care of a baby or an elder, which exacerbates
gender inequality and the wage gap in the workplace. But offering paid leave
encourages women to come back to work. Looking at California's data, the
National Partnership for Women & Families found that "first-time
mothers who take paid leave are more likely than those who take unpaid leave or
no leave to return to the same employer." National data suggests that paid
leave policies amount to a significant difference in a woman's earnings over
her lifetime, according to the Center for American Progress: "Mothers who
were able to take paid leave after the birth of their first child also have
present-day wages up to 16 years after they had their child, that are 9 percent
higher than other mothers."
10. But paid family leave isn't
just beneficial for women. Paternity leave encourages men to take time off to
care for a newborn, shifting the perception that child care or caregiving is
solely women's work. Over time, paternity leave programs may help break
workplace gender norms, reducing the workplace stigma against men making time
for family. Perhaps most important, paternity leave helps dads bond with their newborns
and become more involved parents. "The more leave men take when their
children are young," notes the Guardian, "the more highly satisfied
they becomewith their relationship with their child – and the more likely they
are to remain involved in childcare after their return to work."
11. Children are better off when
their caretakers have access to paid leave, too.The White House report notes
that in European countries, "paid leave programs are a relatively
cost-effective way to reduce infant mortality because family leave allows
parents to better care for their child and monitor their child's health,"
and that kids whose parents don't have paid leave "are more likely to show
up sick to school and infect others." The American Public Health
Association has called paid leave a public health issue.
12. Most Americans want paid
leave, regardless of gender or political affiliation. A New York Times/CBS News
Poll conducted in May found that 85 percent of respondents wanted government
mandates for paid sick days and 80 percent were in favor of paid family leave.
13. One of the major concerns
about mandating paid leave is the fear that it would put a high economic burden
on businesses. Data suggests that's not the case, however. For the most part,
current state laws do not require employers to pay for paid leave benefits.
Funding for California's state insurance programs, for example, comes from
employee paycheck withholdings. Nearly 90 percent of businesses in California
said they incurred no extra costs as a result of the paid leave program. Nine
percent even reported enjoying a cost savings thanks to reduced benefit costs
and/or lower turnover. Overall, businesses saw higher morale, higher
productivity and greater retention. Small businesses with fewer than 99 employees
saw more benefits than large businesses, presumably because offering paid leave
benefits helped them compete with bigger firms to attract and retain talent.
Reports evaluating data from New Jersey and Rhode Island's paid leave programs
similarly found that paid leave was not negative for businesses, and even had
positive results,according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
14. Family leave will continue to
be a major issue in the upcoming election. In January, President Obama signed
an executive order giving federal employees six weeks of paid family leave and
offered $2 billion to states to raise initiatives that support paid leave
programs. Democrats havereintroduced bills mandating paid leave: The Federal
Employee Paid Parental Leave Act, passed by the House in both 2008 and 2009
only to stall in the Senate, furthers Obama's vision to offer paid family leave
to federal workers who are expecting, adopting, or taking in a new child.
There's also the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would create a
federal paid leave program funded by employer and employee contributions and
administered by the Social Security Administration. Republicans, who have been
staunch critics of paid family leave, have offered up a less generous bill, the
Family Friendly and Workplace Flexibility Act, which would permit private
sector hourly-wage workers to put compensation earned by working overtime
toward paid leave.
GOP presidential candidate and
former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina opposes mandating family leave.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the current front-runners for
the Democratic presidential nomination, both support paid family leave. On
Mother's Day, Clinton published a video in strong support of paid family leave,
saying, "It's outrageous that America is the only country in the developed
world that doesn't guarantee paid leave." Sanders, meanwhile, who
co-sponsored the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, recently announced his
"Family Values Agenda," saying,. "It is time to join the rest of
the industrialized world by showing the people of this country that we are not
just a nation that talks about family values but that we are a nation that is
prepared to live up to these ideals."
GOOD WORDS TO HAVE………………..
Kindred 1: of a similar nature or
character : like : of the same ancestry. Kindred comes from a combination of
kin (a word for one's relatives) and the Old English word rǣden
("condition"), which itself comes from the verb rǣden,
meaning "to advise." Kindred entered English as a noun first, in the
12th century. That noun, which can refer to a group of related individuals or
to one's own relatives, gave rise to the adjective kindred in the 14th century.
Venery 1. The practice or pursuit
of sexual pleasure. 2. Hunting. For 1: From Latin veneria, from venus (desire,
love). Venus was the goddess of love and beauty in Roman mythology who gave her
name to the planet Venus. Earliest documented use: 1497.For 2: From Old French
venerie, from vener (to hunt). Earliest documented use: 1330. In olden times
one was supposed to know the terms of venery. Ultimately both senses are from
the Indo-European root wen- (to desire or to strive for), which is also the
source of wish, win, overweening, venerate, venison, banyan, wonted,venial, and
ween.
Zydeco: Popular music of southern
Louisiana that combines tunes of French origin with elements of Caribbean music
and the blues. Legend has it that the word zydeco originated in the lyrics of
Les Haricots Sont Pas Salés, a popular Cajun dance tune. Loosely translated,
the song's title means "the beans are not salty," and when spoken in
French Creole, les haricots (French for "beans") sounds something
like zydeco. Zydeco first appeared in print in 1949 and has been used to
describe this kind of music ever since.
Excerpt from my book “On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film”
CHAPTER
18
THE HUAC
Fall,
1950
“The closer a man approaches tragedy the more
intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment,
which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism”
Arthur Miller
Hollywood’s assault on Hollywood,
in the form of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and other
weapons, was born out of the cold war which began, more or less, on March 12,
1947 when President Harry Truman, in keeping with the Truman Doctrine,
requested $400 million in aid from Congress to combat communism in Greece and
Turkey.
The doctrine was an answer to the
growing power of the Russian Soviet Union, which had already spread out into
Eastern Europe, followed by the June 1949, Chinese Communists victory over
Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces. Two months later, while the world
watched, Mao traveled to Moscow, where he negotiates the Sino-Soviet Treaty of
Friendship and Alliance. A year later, on June 25, 1950, North Korean Communist
forces, armed and trained by Mao’s generals, crossed the 38th parallel and
invaded democratic South Korea. Two days later, Truman ordered U.S. forces into
South Korea to repel the attack.
Within the United States,
paranoia spread based in an absolute conviction that there was an enemy within
the republic, that the Communists had established a firm foothold within the
United States government and other circles of power, and were using that influence
to erode democracy. Daily events, either
by happenstance or unwittingly created through self-will, seemed to confirm the
paranoia that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Communist sleeper agents
were active with the American boarders.
On November 1, 1952 the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb
at a test site in the Marshall Islands. This was followed, less than a year
later; by the Soviets announce their first test of a hydrogen bomb. It was
learned later that
The secrets on the bombs
preparation were passed along to the Russian by a 19 year old American
Scientist. They had our bomb. The
devastation at Hiroshima was a recent memory for world. They could end the
world and its formula had been given to them by one of our own. There had to
answers. To find them, Congress increased the investigative powers of the once
virtually toothless Special Committee on Un-American Activities, the HUAC.
In 1947, the HUAC turned its
attention to exposing Communists' influence in the movie industry. Amidst much
fanfare, the new HUAC chairman, Parnell Thomas, (R-N.J) and John McDowell,
(R-Penn) arrived in Los Angeles in May and set up headquarters at the Biltmore
Hotel where they interviewed most of their friendly witnesses, mainly from the
MPA and Studio head Jack Warner who identified each and every person on his
studio's payroll he suspected of being a communist or of harboring left wing
sympathies.
While it true that the HUAC also
launched multiple investigations into Communist infiltration of organized
labors, the Federal government, Hollywood was the focus of their main
assault. The industry had just released
a series of films filled with liberal sentiment and the Film Noir style, then
all the rage, had taken on a disparaging view of life under any system of
government. Also, there was, it should be said, at least a modicum of factual
substance to the committee’s charges.
But it really had nothing to do with Communists as much as it had to do
with political opportunism and an assault on Liberalism. The cold warriors
intended to set an example in Hollywood with HUAC and discourage any moves by
Hollywood to make films advocating social change at home or critical of foreign
policy.
The HUAC's operating theory was that Communists had established a
significant base in Hollywood and were using that foothold to place subversive
messages into films, discriminating against those who in the industry who
opposed them and were placing negative images of the United States in films
that would have wide international distribution.
It was a good theory, but it
simply wasn't based in any fact or reality. At the time, Hollywood was, and had
been since its start, an industry controlled from top to bottom by a handful of
hard- nosed businessmen who ran the industry as a Money making entertainment
outlet and nothing else. Most, like, Darryl Zanuck, were involved with every
step of the film making processes, from beginning to end. The fact was that the
studios fell clearly on the side of the US Government in terms of creating
propaganda for the world to see. But
films and propaganda weren’t really what the committee was after. In reality,
its primary target was the ultra-liberal Screen Writers Guild, founded only in
13 years before in 1933. John Howard
Lawson - later one of the Hollywood Ten - was the leader of the guild. Although
he denied being an active communist at the time (He didn’t deny that he had
been one in the past) he was certainly a leftist, as were a great many other
unions and union members of the period (including a young Jimmy Hoffa) And
although they left wing, they were not necessarily communists.
What the Committee wanted to
prove, in fact, needed to prove, was that
"card-carrying party members dominated the Screen Writers Guild,
that Communists had succeeded in introducing subversive propaganda into motion
pictures, and that President Roosevelt had brought improper pressure to bear
upon the industry to produce pro-Soviet films during the war."
While it was certainly true that
Hollywood in general and the Writers Guild in particular, held more than the
national average of members of the Communist party, the bulk were inactive
members. Regardless, they were within their rights to be members of whatever
political party they so choose. Many had
joined the party as part of a lofty and well-meaning set of ideals, especially
those who came to adulthood during the great depression as an answer to the
increasing economic inequity in the nation. But most, put off by the party's
iron fisted rule, son became disenchanted and moved along to other
beliefs.
The HUAC didn't care about lost ideals and
disenchanted dreams. Hollywood, even Hollywood scriptwriters, caught the
public’s attention and kept the public’s attention. Hollywood was good for the
business of red hunting.
"Don't look for any
so-called corrective legislation to result from the forthcoming Un-American
Activities Committee investigation of Communism in Hollywood" Newsweek
Magazine wrote on September 15, 1947 "Primarily the committee is fishing
for headlines. By citing specific examples of Communist influences in movie
scripts, the group hopes to alert the public to them."
For Arthur Miller, the hearings were "The
inquisition.” for Ellen Schrecker; they were "a symbolic ritual".
Victor Navasky more aptly described them as
"degradation ceremonies.”
Not that the committee needed the
hearings, in almost every case, they already had the names that they demanded.
The Committee, run by the ultra-right wing, was determined to find Communists
in Hollywood and to punish them, or, at the least, make an example of
them. While those who refused to testify
before the Committee were punished by banishment, financial and professional
ruin, (or some by suicide) for those who did testify the punishment was no less
severe. Such was the case of
Waterfront’s future star, Lee J. Cobb.
Cobb joined the Group Theater in
1935 where he appeared with Elia Kazan in the highly successful Clifford Odets
play, Waiting for Lefty
Success came in 1947, when Henry
Miller chose him to play the lead role of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman,
directed by Elia Kazan. That was
followed up by his highly acclaimed work on the 1948 classic, Call Northside
777. By the start of the 1950's, Cobb
was headed towards the height of his career.
Then he was named as a communist at the HUAC hearings and called in to
give his testimony. After refusing for
two years to appear before the committee, on June 23, 1953, not only did he
appear secretly before the HUAC, but also named names, some twenty in all. Cobb recalled:
"The HUAC did a deal with
me. I was pretty much worn down. I had no money. I could not borrow. I had the expenses of taking care of the
children. Why am I subjecting my loved
ones to this? If it's worth dying for,
and I am just as idealistic as the next fellow.
But I decided it wasn't worth dying for, and if this gesture were the
way of getting out of the penitentiary, I'd do it. I had to be employable
again. When the facilities of the government of the United States are drawn on
an individual, it can be terrifying. The blacklist is just the opening gambit -
being deprived of work. Your passport is confiscated. That's minor. But not
being able to move without being tailed is something else. After a certain point, it grows to implied as
well as articulated threats, and people succumb. My wife did, and she was
institutionalized" 58
The rumor around town was that Cobb had paid
the HUAC twenty-five thousand dollars, through his lawyer Martin Gang, to keep
his testimony a secret. If he did pay the money, it was pointless, the
committee released the text anyway and the results on Cobb were devastating.
Renowned for his insecurities and vanity, he had few friends in Hollywood. When
his testimony became public, what few friends he did have in the industry
abandoned him. His wife left him and work stopped coming his way. He was trying
to support himself and his two children "On thin air and a dream" He
considered filing for bankruptcy "I was in" he said "a low
mental state" 59 Waterfront would be his saving role.
BLOGLAPEDIA’S
BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of
Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The
Kennedy’s in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
FROM LLR BOOKS. COM
Litchfield Literary Books. A really small company run by
writers.
AMERICAN HISTORY
The Day
Nixon Met Elvis
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Nixon-Met-elvis/
Theodore
Roosevelt: Letters to his Children. 1903-1918
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Letters-Children-1903-1918/dp/
THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND CIVILIZATIONS
The Works
of Horace
Paperback 174 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Works-Horace-Richard-Willoughby/
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Epictetus
Paperback 142 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Epictetus-Golden-Sayings
Quo
Vadis: A narrative of the time of Nero
Paperback 420 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quo-Vadis-Narrative-Time-Nero
CHILDRENS
BOOKS
The
Porchless Pumpkin: A Halloween Story for Children
A Halloween play for young children. By consent of the author,
this play may be performed, at no charge, by educational institutions,
neighborhood organizations and other not-for-profit-organizations.
A fun story with a moral
“I believe that Denny O'Day is an American treasure and this
little book proves it. Jack is a pumpkin who happens to be very small, by
pumpkins standards and as a result he goes unbought in the pumpkin patch on
Halloween eve, but at the last moment he is given his chance to prove that just
because you're small doesn't mean you can't be brave. Here is the point that I
found so wonderful, the book stresses that while size doesn't matter when it
comes to courage...ITS OKAY TO BE SCARED....as well. I think children need to
hear that, that's its okay to be unsure because life is a ongoing lesson isn't
it?”
Paperback: 42 pages
http://www.amazon.com/OLANTERN-PORCHLESS-PUMPKIN-Halloween-Children
BOOKS
ON FOSTER CARE
It's Not
All Right to be a Foster Kid....no matter what they tell you: Tweet the books
contents
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Right-Foster-Kid-no-matter-what
From the Author
I spent my childhood, from age seven through seventeen, in
foster care. Over the course of those
ten years, many decent, well-meaning, and concerned people told me, "It's
okay to be foster kid."
In saying that, those very good people meant to encourage me,
and I appreciated their kindness then, and all these many decades later, I
still appreciate their good intentions. But as I was tossed around the foster
care system, it began to dawn on me that they were wrong. It was not all right to be a foster kid.
During my time in the system, I was bounced every eighteen
months from three foster homes to an orphanage to a boy's school and to a group
home before I left on my own accord at age seventeen.
In the course of my stay in foster care, I was severely beaten
in two homes by my "care givers" and separated from my four siblings
who were also in care, sometimes only blocks away from where I was living.
I left the system rather than to wait to age out, although the
effects of leaving the system without any family, means, or safety net of any
kind, were the same as if I had aged out. I lived in poverty for the first part
of my life, dropped out of high school, and had continuous problems with the
law.
Today, almost nothing
about foster care has changed. Exactly
what happened to me is happening to some other child, somewhere in America,
right now. The system, corrupt, bloated,
and inefficient, goes on, unchanging and secretive.
Something has gone wrong in a system that was originally a
compassionate social policy built to improve lives but is now a definitive
cause in ruining lives. Due to gross
negligence, mismanagement, apathy, and greed, mostly what the foster care
system builds are dangerous consequences. Truly, foster care has become our
epic national disgrace and a nightmare for those of us who have lived through
it.
Yet there is a suspicion among some Americans that foster care
costs too much, undermines the work ethic, and is at odds with a satisfying
life. Others see foster care as a part
of the welfare system, as legal plunder of the public treasuries.
None of that is true;
in fact, all that sort of thinking does is to blame the victims. There is not a single child in the system who
wants to be there or asked to be there.
Foster kids are in foster care because they had nowhere else to go. It's that simple. And believe me, if those kids could get out
of the system and be reunited with their parents and lead normal, healthy
lives, they would. And if foster care is a sort of legal plunder of the public
treasuries, it's not the kids in the system who are doing the plundering.
We need to end this
needless suffering. We need to end it
because it is morally and ethically wrong and because the generations to come
will not judge us on the might of our armed forces or our technological
advancements or on our fabulous wealth.
Rather, they will judge
us, I am certain, on our compassion for those who are friendless, on our
decency to those who have nothing and on our efforts, successful or not, to
make our nation and our world a better place.
And if we cannot accomplish those things in the short time allotted to
us, then let them say of us "at least they tried."
You can change the tragedy of foster care and here's how to do
it. We have created this book so that
almost all of it can be tweeted out by you to the world. You have the power to improve the lives of
those in our society who are least able to defend themselves. All you need is the will to do it.
If the American people,
as good, decent and generous as they are, knew what was going on in foster
care, in their name and with their money, they would stop it. But, generally speaking, although the public
has a vague notion that foster care is a mess, they don't have the complete
picture. They are not aware of the human, economic and social cost that the
mismanagement of the foster care system puts on our nation.
By tweeting the facts laid out in this work, you can help to
change all of that. You can make a
difference. You can change things for
the better.
We can always change the future for a foster kid; to make it
better ...you have the power to do that. Speak up (or tweet out) because it's
your country. Don't depend on the
"The other guy" to speak up for these kids, because you are the other
guy.
We cannot build a future for foster children, but we can build
foster children for the future and the time to start that change is today.
No time
to say Goodbye: Memoirs of a life in foster
Paperbook 440 Books
http://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Say-Goodbye-Memoir
BOOKS ABOUT FILM
On the
Waterfront: The Making of a Great American Film
Paperback: 416 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Waterfront-Making-Great-American-Film/
BOOKS ABOUT GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATUAL
Scotish
Ghost Stories
Paperback 186 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Ghost-Stories-Elliott-ODonell
HUMOR BOOKS
The Book
of funny odd and interesting things people say
Paperback: 278 pages
http://www.amazon.com/book-funny-interesting-things-people
The Wee
Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook
Perfect
Behavior: A guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises
http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Behavior-Ladies-Gentlemen-Social
BOOKS ABOUT THE 1960s
You Don’t
Need a Weatherman. Underground 1969
Paperback 122 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Weatherman-Notes-Weatherman-Underground-1969
Baby
Boomers Guide to the Beatles Songs of the Sixties
Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-Guide-Beatles-Songs-Sixties/
Baby
Boomers Guide to Songs of the 1960s
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Boomers-Guide-Songs-1960s
IRISH- AMERICANA
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The Wee Book of Irish Jokes
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Series-Irish-Jokes-ebook/
The Wee
Book of Irish Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-Recipes/
The Wee Book of the American-Irish Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wee-Book-Irish-American-Gangsters/
The Wee book of Irish Blessings...
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Blessing-Proverbs-Toasts-ebook/
The Wee
Book of the American Irish in Their Own Words
http://www.amazon.com/Book-American-Irish-Their-Words/
Everything
you need to know about St. Patrick
Paperback 26 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Need-About-Saint-Patrick
A Reading
Book in Ancient Irish History
Paperback 147pages
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Book-Ancient-Irish-History
The Book
of Things Irish
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Things-Irish-William-Tuohy/
Poets and
Dreamer; Stories translated from the Irish
Paperback 158 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Poets-Dreamers-Stories-Translated-Irish/
The
History of the Great Irish Famine: Abridged and Illustrated
Paperback 356 pages
http://www.amazon.com/History-Great-Irish-Famine-Illustrated/
BOOKS ABOUT NEW ENGLAND
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook/
Wicked
Good New England Recipes
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Good-New-England-Recipes/
The
Connecticut Irish
Paper back 140 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Connecticut-Irish-Catherine-F-Connolly
The
Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers
Paperback 64 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Fifth-Regiment-Connecticut-Volunteers-Rebellion
The Life
of James Mars
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-James-Mars-Slave-Connecticut
Stories
of Colonial Connecticut
Paperback 116 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Colonial-Connnecticut-Caroline-Clifford
What they
Say in Old New England
Paperback 194 pages
http://www.amazon.com/What-they-say-New-England/
BOOK ABOUT ORGANIZED CRIME
Chicago
Organized Crime
Chicago-Mob-Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/Chicagos-Mob-Bosses-Accardo-ebook
The Mob
Files: It Happened Here: Places of Note in Chicago gangland 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-1900-2000-ebook
An
Illustrated Chronological History of the Chicago Mob. Time Line 1837-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Chronological-History-Chicago-1837-2000/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Buster-Peterson-Committee-ebook/
The Mob
Files. Guns and Glamour: The Chicago Mob. A History. 1900-2000
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Guns-Glamour-ebook/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized crime in photos. Crime Boss Tony Accardo
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-photos-Accardo/
Shooting
the Mob: Organized Crime in Photos: The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Valentines-Massacre
The Life
and World of Al Capone in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Life-World-Al-Capone
AL
CAPONE: The Biography of a Self-Made Man.: Revised from the 0riginal 1930
edition.Over 200 new photographs
Paperback: 340 pages
http://www.amazon.com/CAPONE-Biography-Self-Made-Over-photographs
Whacked.
One Hundred Years Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Outfit
Paperback: 172 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Whacked-Hundred-Murder-Mayhem-Chicago/
Las
Vegas Organized Crime
The Mob
in Vegas
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Vegas-ebook
Bugsy
& His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://www.amazon.com/Bugsy-His-Flamingo-Testimony-Virginia/
Testimony
by Mobsters Lewis McWillie, Joseph Campisi and Irwin Weiner (The Mob Files
Series)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-ebook
Rattling
the Cup on Chicago Crime.
Paperback 264 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Rattling-Cup-Chicago-Crime-Abridged
The Life
and Times of Terrible Tommy O’Connor.
Paperback 94 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Terrible-Tommy-OConnor
The Mob,
Sam Giancana and the overthrow of the Black Policy Racket in Chicago
Paperback 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Giancana-ovethrow-Policy-Rackets-Chicago
When Capone’s
Mob Murdered Roger Touhy. In Photos
Paperback 234 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Capones-Murdered-Roger-Touhy-photos
Organized
Crime in Hollywood
The Mob in Hollywood
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Files-Hollywood-ebook/
The Bioff
Scandal
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Bioff-Scandal-Shakedown-Hollywood-Studios
Organized
Crime in New York
Joe Pistone’s war on the mafia
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Petrosinos-War-Mafia-Files/
Mob
Testimony: Joe Pistone, Michael Scars DiLeonardo, Angelo Lonardo and others
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Testimony-DiLeonardo-testimony-Undercover/
The New
York Mafia: The Origins of the New York Mob
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mafia-Origins
The New
York Mob: The Bosses
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-York-Mob-Bosses/
Organized
Crime 25 Years after Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate
http://www.amazon.com/Organized-Crime-Valachi-Hearings-ebook
Shooting
the mob: Dutch Schultz
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Mob-Organized-Photographs-Schultz
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal. (Illustrated)
http://www.amazon.com/Gangland-Gaslight-Killing-Rosenthal-Illustrated/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City
Paperback 382 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Street-Gangs-Gangsters-York
THE RUSSIAN MOBS
The
Russian Mafia in America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Russian-Mafia-America-ebook/
The
Threat of Russian Organzied Crime
Paperback 192 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Threat-Russian-Organized-Crime-photographs-ebook
Organized
Crime/General
Best of
Mob Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Files-Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-Crime/
Best of
Mob Stories Part 2
http://www.amazon.com/Series-Illustrated-Articles-Organized-ebook/
Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters
http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Book-Prohibition-Gangsters-ebook
Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobsters in Photos
http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-For-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
More Mob
Recipes to Die For. Meals and Mobs
http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Meals-Mobsters-Photos
The New
England Mafia
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-England-Mafia-ebook
Shooting
the mob. Organized crime in photos. Dead Mobsters, Gangsters and Hoods.
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-mob-Organized-photos-Mobsters-Gangsters/
The
Salerno Report: The Mafia and the Murder of President John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Salerno-Report-President-ebook/
The
Mob Files: Mob Wars. "We only kill each other"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Wars-other/
The Mob
across America
http://www.amazon.com/The-Files-Across-America-ebook/
The US
Government’s Time Line of Organzied Crime 1920-1987
http://www.amazon.com/GOVERNMENTS-ORGANIZED-1920-1987-Illustrated-ebook/
Early
Street Gangs and Gangsters of New York City: 1800-1919. Illustrated
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-1800-1919-Illustrated-Street-ebook/
The Mob
Files: Mob Cops, Lawyers and Informants and Fronts
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mob-Files-Informants-ebook/
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The Book
of American-Jewish Gangsters: A Pictorial History.
Paperback: 436 pages
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-American-Jewish-Gangsters-Pictorial/
The Mob
and the Kennedy Assassination
Paperback 414 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Mob-Kennedy-Assassination-Ruby-Testimony-Mobsters
BOOKS ABOUT THE OLD WEST
The Last
Outlaw: The story of Cole Younger, by Himself
Paperback 152 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Outlaw-Story-Younger-Himself
BOOKS ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Chicago:
A photographic essay.
Paperback: 200 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Photographic-Essay-William-Thomas
STAGE PLAYS
Boomers
on a train: A ten minute play
Paperback 22 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Boomers-train-ten-minute-Play-ebook
Four
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy
Four More
Short Plays
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Short-Plays-William-Tuohy/
High and
Goodbye: Everybody gets the Timothy Leary they deserve. A full length play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/High-Goodbye-Everybody-Timothy-deserve
Cyberdate.
An Everyday Love Story about Everyday People
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberdate-Everyday-Story-People-ebook/
The
Dutchman's Soliloquy: A one Act Play based on the factual last words of
Gangster Dutch Schultz.
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/Dutchmans-Soliloquy-factual-Gangster-Schultz/
Fishbowling
on The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: Or William S. Burroughs intersects with
Dutch Schultz
Print Length: 57 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Fishbowling-Last-Words-Dutch-Schultz-ebook/
American
Shakespeare: August Wilson in his own words. A One Act Play
By John William Tuohy
http://www.amazon.com/American-Shakespeare-August-Wilson-ebook
She
Stoops to Conquer
http://www.amazon.com/She-Stoops-Conquer-Oliver-Goldsmith/
The Seven
Deadly Sins of Gilligan’s Island: A ten minute play
Print Length: 14 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Gilligans-Island-minute-ebook/
BOOKS ABOUT VIRGINIA
OUT OF
CONTROL: An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police
http://www.amazon.com/Control-Informal-History-Fairfax-Police/
McLean
Virginia. A short informal history
http://www.amazon.com/McLean-Virginia-Short-Informal-History/
THE QUOTABLE SERIES
The
Quotable Emerson: Life lessons from the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Over 300
quotes
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Emerson-lessons-quotes
The
Quotable John F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-John-F-Kennedy/
The Quotable
Oscar Wilde
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons/
The
Quotable Machiavelli
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-Thayer/
The
Quotable Confucius: Life Lesson from the Chinese Master
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese/
The
Quotable Henry David Thoreau
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Henry-Thoreau-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Robert F. Kennedy
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Robert-F-Kennedy-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Writer: Writers on the Writers Life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Quotable-Writer-Quotables-ebook
The words
of Walt Whitman: An American Poet
Paperback: 162 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Walt-Whitman-American-Poet
Gangster
Quotes: Mobsters in their own words. Illustrated
Paperback: 128 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-Quotes-Mobsters-words-Illustrated/
The
Quotable Popes
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Popes-Maria-Conasenti
The
Quotable Kahlil Gibran with Artwork from Kahlil Gibran
Paperback 52 pages
Kahlil Gibran, an artist, poet, and writer was born on January
6, 1883 n the north of modern-day Lebanon and in what was then part of Ottoman
Empire. He had no formal schooling in Lebanon. In 1895, the family immigrated
to the United States when Kahlil was a young man and settled in South Boston.
Gibran enrolled in an art school and was soon a member of the avant-garde
community and became especially close to Boston artist, photographer, and
publisher Fred Holland Day who encouraged and supported Gibran’s creative
projects. An accomplished artist in drawing and watercolor, Kahlil attended art
school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style. He
held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's
studio. It was at this exhibition, that Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who
ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship and love affair
that lasted the rest of Gibran’s short life. Haskell influenced every aspect of
Gibran’s personal life and career. She became his editor when he began to write
and ushered his first book into publication in 1918, The Madman, a slim volume
of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry
and prose. Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48
from cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis.
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Kahlil-Gibran-artwork/
The
Quotable Dorothy Parker
Paperback 86 pages
The
Quotable Machiavelli
Paperback 36 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Machiavelli-Richard-L-Thayer
The
Quotable Greeks
Paperback 230 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Greeks-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotabe Oscar Wilde
Paperback 24 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Oscar-Wilde-lessons-words/
The
Quotable Helen Keller
Paperback 66 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Helen-Keller-Richard-Willoughby
The Art
of War: Sun Tzu
Paperback 60 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Confucius-Lesson-Chinese-Quotables-ebook
The
Quotable Shakespeare
Paperback 54 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Shakespeare-Richard-W-Willoughby
The
Quotable Gorucho Marx
Paperback 46 pages
http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Groucho-Marx-Devon-Alexander
