A new type of folk hero began to emerge as well as a new class of stars, one being Raft, who had started as a chauffeur for mobsters and became a good friend of Siegel.
(L-R) Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and George Raft at a Hollywood courthouse in July 1944 Everettīroke but opportunistic, Hollywood, led by Warner Bros, started cranking out movies designed to capture the danger and exotica of the era – hence Scarface, Dillinger and Public Enemy. Instead, it instantly created a whole new generation of gangsters as well as a lexicon of words like “bootlegging,” “speakeasies” and “rumrunning.” The cost of enforcement kept soaring even as tax revenues plummeted, thus tilting the nation into depression. When the Prohibition movement became law 100 years ago, the alcohol ban was going to clean up the nation’s morals and restore family life. Their relationship became strained when the studios discovered that their gangster friends were secretly organizing labor unions, demanding “protection money” from the studio heads. Siegel and henchmen like Meyer Lansky and Longy Zwillman felt a kinship with Hollywood leaders like Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures and MGM’s Louis B.
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One of his most proficient killers was ultra-Orthodox (Shnayerson’s book is part of Yale’s series titled Jewish Lives). Mario Puzo’s cast of characters in The Godfather was vividly Italian and Catholic, while Bugsy’s cohorts initially were observant Jews who contributed faithfully to Israel. He was delighted when the likes of Ava Gardner, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and, of course, Sinatra, showed up at the opening of his casino, but his guests understood that Bugsy would kill anyone who crossed him (he admitted to 12 murders, but the FBI estimated 30). Shnayerson’s Bugsy is a hard-core mobster whose fortune was saved when the Jewish Mafia merged with their Italian brethren to create the very profitable Syndicate (otherwise called Murder Inc.).
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By today’s standards, Levinson’s artfully shot (and pricey) film seems like a Beatty vanity project, co-starring then fiancée Annette Bening, who comes across more like a Vassar girl than the street-tough Virginia Hill.īeatty’s Bugsy is drawn to Hollywood to become a movie star like his pal George Raft, but after some bad screen tests decides instead to invent Las Vegas by building The Flamingo. The brutal thug depicted in Shnayerson’s new book, “Bugsy” bears little similarity to the courtly and immaculate egotist portrayed by Warren Beatty in Barry Levinson’s 1991 Bugsy, widely available this week on home screens. They even accepted loans from them and greenlit some their movies (the “bad guys” looked good in them). The classic ones were produced during the 1930s depression when the financially strapped studios welcomed the intrusion of mob figures like Bugsy.
An excellent new biography titled Bugsy Siegel by Michael Shnayerson reminds us that gangster movies were heavy on mythology but short on accuracy. While I share Wilder’s skepticism about the remake business, a case could be made that the entire gangster genre deserves a revisit. Peter Bart: Golden Globes Voters Get Their Perks And Paydays, But Also Clout
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