Mark Wahlberg portrays Mafia killer Gregory Scarpa Sr. in ‘By Any Means’
During the summer of 1964, New York City mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr. traveled south to rural Mississippi and, using violent scare tactics, helped the FBI learn where the Ku Klux Klan had buried three slain civil rights workers. Later, when the KKK killed another civil rights leader in Mississippi by firebombing his house, Scarpa went back to help authorities solve that crime. The FBI’s secret alliance with a hardened Mafia criminal is the subject of a new movie, By Any Means, scheduled to open in theaters on September 4. Directed by Elegance Bratton, the movie stars Mark Wahlberg as Scarpa and Yahya Abdul-Mateen ...
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Whitey in Hollywood
One of the most overtly symbolic scenes in Mob movie-making comes at the end of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film The…
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The world’s top five Mob bosses
There was a time when Mob bosses in the United States were household names, but not anymore. Consider the FBI’s…
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World War I played key role in passage of Prohibition
In January 1919, Albert Von Tinzler and Edward Laska published “The Alcoholic Blues,” a song describing the feelings of a…
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Ninety years later, Arnold Rothstein murder still a mystery
Ninety years ago this week, with the dying breath of New York’s most provocative Mob entrepreneur, one of America’s great…
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Boston mobster Whitey Bulger killed
James “Whitey” Bulger, the violent Boston mobster serving a life sentence for taking part in 11 murders, was reportedly beaten…
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‘At home on the streets, and always on the job’
A freelance newspaper photographer named Arthur Fellig, a squat, rumpled, cigar-chomping immigrant who liked being called Weegee, will forever be…
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After 50 years on the Las Vegas Strip, Circus Circus still going strong
Fifty years ago this month, Circus Circus opened its doors at the north end of the Las Vegas Strip. It’s…
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