Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Burnette, Elizabeth Dunnan, How you doing, girl?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 2: How are you You look good? You look like you're
Speaker 2: really happy. You're enjoying the summer. You a little red
Speaker 2: from against some sun well Son?
Speaker 3: Yeah, how about you? You look you look fit in
Speaker 3: as a fiddle.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm in fine, in fine fiddle. I'm in
Speaker 2: fine feddle. Yeah whatever it is. Was that old Henry
Speaker 2: Miller thing, I'm in fine feddle, meaning like I'm I'm
Speaker 2: crapping good. There you go. I like it. You're crapping good.
Speaker 2: I'm regular.
Speaker 3: They're just gonna do a gut check on everybody.
Speaker 2: Terry, Terry, how's your guy? How's you got, biome? Terry?
Speaker 2: You still got that bubble gut going up? Terry? No,
Speaker 2: come back out, Terry gone again? Yeah? Do you know
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous? Oh I'm so glad you do ask me,
Speaker 2: because I have an answer for you. Thank you. And
Speaker 2: it's my version of a mashup for you, Elizabeth, what
Speaker 2: and evolves my man Dick Vandyke. Okay, so when he
Speaker 2: was doing a like the world premiere of Chitty Chitty
Speaker 2: Bang Bang in New York. He said this very interesting
Speaker 2: quote in my world. He said, most kids love hot dogs,
Speaker 2: at least my kids do. We often broil corn on
Speaker 2: the cob and hot dogs over the coals. I don't
Speaker 2: eat dogs myself, except in salad. Marjorie, my wife makes
Speaker 2: a salad with macaroni, mayonnaise, pickles and onions and lots
Speaker 2: of hot dogs cut up. It's a great combination. That's
Speaker 2: a very mid century thing, right, just missing the aspect.
Speaker 2: So he basically pointed out that you know, he'd been
Speaker 2: over in England and really enjoyed the cooking over there,
Speaker 2: which you don't hear very He was like, you know,
Speaker 2: hyping up. We had a Charles dickenstyle Christmas. Anyway, he
Speaker 2: was saying. Every year on his birthday, she prepares his
Speaker 2: favorite dish. She soaks some navy beans, then boils him
Speaker 2: in a big hunk of ham for the longest time. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: she has baked some corn bread and puts a layer
Speaker 2: of crumpled up corn bread and a bowl ladles the beans,
Speaker 2: soup over it and tops it with some diced onions, tomato,
Speaker 2: and a few dashes of tabasco. It's a mess, but
Speaker 2: I love it. Right anyway. The Dick Van Dyke Macaroni
Speaker 2: hot dog salad. Yeah, I've got the recipe for you.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Ten hot dogs cooked cut in one eighth
Speaker 2: inch rounds, two cups of cooked macaroni, chilled, three tablespoons
Speaker 2: of sweet pickle relish, one and a half tablespoons of
Speaker 2: minced white onion, one third cup chopped celery optional, three
Speaker 2: tablespoons mayonnaise, one teaspoon prepared mustard, salt, freshly ground pepper
Speaker 2: to taste. So there, you'ld a whole lot of mayonnaise
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 4: No, no, you know, I think I would try it.
Speaker 2: You combine the hot dog rounds with the macaroni, the
Speaker 2: sweet pickle, the relish, onion, celery, mayonnaise, and mustard, and
Speaker 2: then season to taste, mixed well served.
Speaker 3: Chilled, two cups of pasta and three tablespoons.
Speaker 2: And he recommends you pair it with corn cooked over
Speaker 2: the grill. I've got an I'm gonna give you. Want
Speaker 2: to make some for us, I'm gonna give Terry this menu. Also,
Speaker 2: he's got a whole Nathan's famous hot Dogs ov So
Speaker 2: hot dogs wine, And yes.
Speaker 4: He's your guy.
Speaker 2: That's my idea of a mash up, Elizabeth, there you go.
Speaker 2: Macaroni and hot dogs my main man. We dance a
Speaker 2: lot of like so.
Speaker 3: I do kind of like macaroni salad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're not into it. No, I mean pasta
Speaker 2: salads I like, but so often they have too much mayonnaise.
Speaker 2: And like that one it's light and it's got hot dogs. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: Like that's two good wins. It is that is That
Speaker 2: is also ridiculous.
Speaker 3: It's ridiculous that he's like recounting all these very mid century,
Speaker 3: middle of the road recipes.
Speaker 2: My favorite birthday dinner, it's a hot dog salad.
Speaker 3: Well, and then the like pork be ye yeah, totally
Speaker 3: bless God bless.
Speaker 2: By the way, do you see how my mashup didn't
Speaker 2: make you sick? Yeah? I did see that. Just take notes. Okay,
Speaker 2: do you want to.
Speaker 4: Know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Big Crime Family, Small Time Crime. This is Ridiculous Crime,
Speaker 3: A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, ice and cons.
Speaker 3: It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah. Silver coins, Zarin, Oh, I like those?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you ever get into coin collecting other than the
Speaker 3: pennies that ruddu Rose, ain't you.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I have like right over there, and I
Speaker 2: brought them in actually to the office.
Speaker 4: Because I was asked to carry them with you.
Speaker 2: I have these books and my grandfather gave me that
Speaker 2: are all of the pennies in the last century and
Speaker 2: some and some from the nineteenth century. Why did why
Speaker 2: did you bring them up? I found some new pennies
Speaker 2: and I had some time, so I wanted to look
Speaker 2: at them and add them to the book. It only yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: I was rolling around, okay, whatever I used to. I
Speaker 2: used to with rolls of pennies in my car, and
Speaker 2: I used to have like all this change on my
Speaker 2: dashboard like where you're like speedometer readout is. It was
Speaker 2: just like two inches thick and change.
Speaker 3: But that wasn't like a coin collection.
Speaker 2: It was sure, it was a collection pins, but honestly
Speaker 2: all honestly, yes, I do. I like Buffalo Nichols. I
Speaker 2: like a bunch of the World War two era coins
Speaker 2: because they had like the metal shortages. So I have
Speaker 2: a lot. And I also have lucky coins that I've
Speaker 2: collected from around the world. I've got, you know, a
Speaker 2: bunch of like I went to Europe back before the
Speaker 2: EU had made the the Euro. So I have all
Speaker 2: of their coinage, okay, So, and I've got a bunch
Speaker 2: of Asian coins that even though I have not been
Speaker 2: to Japan, I've got a bunch of Japanese coins because
Speaker 2: I like the way they look. So yeah, I've got
Speaker 2: a bunch of coins. Nice, I call it a coin.
Speaker 3: Collect I like those nineteen seventy six quarters.
Speaker 2: Oh that was cool. Yeah, those are cool. I also
Speaker 2: I liked the updated the state quarters when they had
Speaker 2: the series.
Speaker 3: They tried to collect those various state quarters, but then
Speaker 3: I realized I didn't care, and I gave up.
Speaker 2: You need a book?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I also needed money for parking meters.
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, dip in Iowa.
Speaker 2: We had a good run. But a bunch of my favorites.
Speaker 3: Do you what's your favorite?
Speaker 2: That's interesting? State quarters? What's your third favorite?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: Man, that's interesting. I mean obviously I have a lot
Speaker 2: of like sentimental biases like Georgia.
Speaker 3: George pretty right doesn't have a good Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's really cool, so nice.
Speaker 3: Well, coins the whole hobby a whole business, quite frankly,
Speaker 3: and like stamps, there are things that make certain coins
Speaker 3: special sometimes it's the material from which they're made, gold, silver, styrophoone.
Speaker 2: I threw in that last one. See if you were
Speaker 2: listening to me syrophone, I heard it. I just thought
Speaker 2: you were having a stroke, and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: call that.
Speaker 3: Don't pay it, don't don't call attention to that when
Speaker 3: it happens. But what if the value of the metal
Speaker 3: This is the question I posed unto you today. What
Speaker 3: if the value of the metal in the coin goes
Speaker 3: through the roof. Whenever the metal in a coin becomes
Speaker 3: worth more than its face value, those coins disappear into
Speaker 3: crucibles totally.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so that's very true. And we've had this
Speaker 2: problem right now with the minting of like nickels, is
Speaker 2: that they're more valuable than the nickels, right right.
Speaker 3: And so for a couple hundred years, the US government
Speaker 3: went back and forth on how to prevent folks from
Speaker 3: just melting coins down.
Speaker 2: Can't stop us? Now that you can't.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they decrease the percentage of silver in coin, and.
Speaker 4: So that forced wayfer thin, yeah, force the phase.
Speaker 3: Value higher than the value of the metal within. The
Speaker 3: most interesting, I think chapter in all of this was
Speaker 3: the Pittman Act of nineteen eighteen. It's the single largest
Speaker 3: deliberate destruction of US silver coinage. So under the Pittman Act,
Speaker 3: about two hundred and seventy million silver dollars, mostly Morgan dollars,
Speaker 3: got melted down. The bullion was sold to Britain because
Speaker 3: they were using it to shore up confidence in the
Speaker 3: rupee in India during wartime.
Speaker 2: I'll just say I didn't make the Indian.
Speaker 3: So the Act also required that the silver would be
Speaker 3: replaced eventually, which is why Morgan dollars were then struck
Speaker 3: again in nineteen twenty one after this seventeen year gap,
Speaker 3: and then they followed that with the Peace dollar design.
Speaker 3: So there are several Morgan dates that are super scarce
Speaker 3: today because the mintages went into the Pittman melt. So
Speaker 3: that's what makes them very valuable. Over the years, rising
Speaker 3: industrial demand and a growing coin shortage pushed silver toward
Speaker 3: the point where a quarters metal exceeded twenty five cents,
Speaker 3: and so the Coinage Act of nineteen sixty five removed
Speaker 3: silver entirely from dimes and quarters, and they switched to
Speaker 3: a copper nickel clad and they cut the half dollar
Speaker 3: down to forty percent silver. So the public immediately began
Speaker 3: pulling pre nineteen sixty five coins from circulation, like people
Speaker 3: wanted to keep their hands on this, and the Treasury
Speaker 3: was like, we have to stop this. So starting in
Speaker 3: May of nineteen sixty seven, it prohibited melting and exporting
Speaker 3: silver coins.
Speaker 2: Now I'm going to be all about the pre nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five quarters, A new thing to worry. Well, I've
Speaker 2: got a new collection going for you.
Speaker 3: So the ban was lifted in nineteen seventy once enough
Speaker 3: of that clad coinage was in circulation. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 3: by the nineteen seventies, silver coins were basically gone from
Speaker 3: the tills.
Speaker 2: It was all clad.
Speaker 3: So let's hold that time from May of nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven until nineteen seventy in our heads. Yes, I have
Speaker 3: another thread in this tapestry of a tail that we
Speaker 3: need to follow. We're following the threads from the spool
Speaker 3: to the loom. Here's eron like that, seeing what elements
Speaker 3: contribute to this story. So let's talk about Joe Colombo.
Speaker 2: Mafia.
Speaker 3: Don really took a hard one of your favorite topics.
Speaker 2: I do like Joe Colombo. You love the Mafia.
Speaker 3: Joseph Anthony Colombo, Senior Boss of what became known as
Speaker 3: the Colombo crime family, one of New York's.
Speaker 2: Five families on the Commission.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was an unusual figure in mafia history because
Speaker 3: he deliberately sought publicity. Yes, you know, this was something
Speaker 3: unheard of among his peers, totally.
Speaker 2: Carlo Gambino was like, what the hell, Yeah, what are
Speaker 2: you doing?
Speaker 3: He went on Dick Cabot, he spoke to the press,
Speaker 3: He was everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Yes, and so he was
Speaker 3: born in Brooklyn to Anthony Colombo, a member of the
Speaker 3: Profaci crime family.
Speaker 2: Yes, a great one.
Speaker 3: And he grew up around the organization that his father
Speaker 3: belonged to. Nineteen thirty eight, when Joe was fifteen, he
Speaker 3: lost his dad. And I'm going to preserve our percentages
Speaker 3: here and just keep going.
Speaker 2: Imagine we're doing that a couple of times. N It's
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: So Colombo though, Joe Senior, he enlisted in the US
Speaker 3: Coast Guard during World War Two, got discharged in forty
Speaker 3: five after he was diagnosed with a nervous condition.
Speaker 2: O colleg Yeah, who're talking like shell shot kind of thing,
Speaker 2: like PTSD or nervous condition like my handshake.
Speaker 3: I don't know, who knows who's to say. Afterward, he
Speaker 3: worked like a series of legitimate looking jobs a longshorman,
Speaker 3: the dogs meat company salesman, Okay, real estate salesman. That
Speaker 3: was like his eventual thing with the distributor Cantalupo Realty
Speaker 3: in Brooklyn, Oh, Okay. And this was the job that
Speaker 3: he kept listing as his occupation like well into his
Speaker 3: years as a crime boss. So he worked his way
Speaker 3: up through the Profaci family as an enforcer. He remained
Speaker 3: loyal to the leadership during this bloody Gallo Profacci war
Speaker 3: in the early ser Gallo Yeah. So his break came
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty three. Joseph Maloco, who had taken over
Speaker 3: after Joseph Profacci's death, ordered Colombo to carry out the
Speaker 3: murders of rival bosses Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lukesey the Gentleman.
Speaker 3: These are the names right that you hear all the time.
Speaker 3: So this was a plot that was instigated by another
Speaker 3: crime boss, Joseph Banano, oh Joe Bananas. So Colombo was
Speaker 3: told to do this. Instead, he tipped off the intended
Speaker 3: targets and the Mafia Commission spared him. They forced Malyoco
Speaker 3: into retirement and they handed Colombo, the whole family.
Speaker 2: I love. By the way, these are like my bedtime stories.
Speaker 2: Growing up right is like okay. And then Carlo Gambido
Speaker 2: gets the word that the hit is off. This is
Speaker 2: a very insightful thing.
Speaker 3: So he's like forty one years old now he Joe
Speaker 3: Senior is the youngest boss.
Speaker 2: In New York. Wow, forty one.
Speaker 3: So he's got his wife Lucille. They have five kids,
Speaker 3: three sons, Christopher Colombo, Joseph Columbo Junior, I know, and
Speaker 3: Anthony Colombo. Anthony. Indeed, what I really want to do
Speaker 3: today is tell you about Joseph Columbo Junior, Joe Junior.
Speaker 3: He's our focus. He and his crime are the crazy
Speaker 3: tapestry before us. So it all starts with a Brooklyn
Speaker 3: coin dealer having a bad year, Richard Salamone. He ran
Speaker 3: a coin shop in Bay Ridge and it's still I
Speaker 3: looked at the address. It's still a coin shop to
Speaker 3: this day.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: By late nineteen sixty eight, he was somewhere between fifty
Speaker 3: and sixty thousand dollars in the hole, depending on who
Speaker 3: you believed back then. So instead of like sulking about it,
Speaker 3: he did some quick arithmetic and you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of other.
Speaker 2: Coin dealers at the time. We're doing this quick arithmetic.
Speaker 2: I got a lot of money in this place.
Speaker 3: He's a Yeah, if I melt these things down, the
Speaker 3: silver and all these old US coins that I have
Speaker 3: are worth more than the printed face value, as I
Speaker 3: just explained. So it was illegal, sure, but it was
Speaker 3: also on paper. Elizabeth, who's to say it was a
Speaker 3: tie prophet?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: I bet so when you're faced with this debt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you got a coin shop, you got a
Speaker 2: lot of corn.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of coin.
Speaker 3: So Salamone pitched the idea to this regular customer of his,
Speaker 3: Joseph Columbo Junior.
Speaker 2: He was a collector.
Speaker 3: He was a coin collector. He like hung out the
Speaker 3: coin shop. So the operation itself was like really almost
Speaker 3: charmingly small time.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So the original plan was that they were gonna smelt
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand dollars in coins and turn it into
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars in silver ingots. Wow, So that was
Speaker 3: the that was they exchange they were looking at. That
Speaker 3: was a bit ambitious. Junior wasn't sold on that. Instead,
Speaker 3: He's like, look, I'll give you twenty grand and I'll
Speaker 3: chip in on it. This isn't the only thing you're have,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to funnel it to you through an
Speaker 3: associate of mine, Joseph Ayanaki. So the coins themselves then
Speaker 3: went to a fourth man, David Leonard, and he's the
Speaker 3: one who actually did the melting. So he got a
Speaker 3: flat feet twenty dollars for a bag of coins which
Speaker 3: generally contained between five hundred and one thousand dollars. And
Speaker 3: then Leonard perc Yeah Leonard then, and they also gave
Speaker 3: him like a few cents an ounts once the resulting
Speaker 3: and gets were sold into this Manhattan refinery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe he had like a gambling problem we
Speaker 2: don't know about, and that's why.
Speaker 3: He's working it off exactly its value added. So the
Speaker 3: scheme ran from roughly November of nineteen sixty eight into
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, right up until the melting ban itself
Speaker 3: was lifted May nineteen seventy. But here's the thing. The
Speaker 3: market didn't cooperate. Silver prices dropped and the crew reportedly
Speaker 3: ended up about four grand in the red. So they
Speaker 3: melted these coins and lost value.
Speaker 2: None of that silver fluctuates so hard, I know.
Speaker 3: None of that stopped the government from indicting Joe Junior
Speaker 3: Knack Leonard Slamone in late nineteen seventy for violating the
Speaker 3: Treasuries coin melting statute. Joe Junior was looking at five
Speaker 3: years if he was convicted.
Speaker 2: Salamone. He pleaded guilty.
Speaker 3: He got ahead of it and he pleaded guilty to
Speaker 3: conspiracy charges. He testified for the prosecution at the grand
Speaker 3: jury trial, agreed to testify during the criminal trial.
Speaker 2: Were they throwing like Rico Adam with a conspiracy?
Speaker 3: Who knows Joe Senior. He's convinced that Joe Junior was
Speaker 3: targeted pretty much because of the family from whence he came.
Speaker 3: So Joe Senior started a movement that the Italian American
Speaker 3: Civil Rights League.
Speaker 6: Oh oh yeah, so.
Speaker 4: The Italian.
Speaker 3: Was that was what started at to get Joe Junior
Speaker 3: out of trouble, the Italian American Civil Rights Christopher. It
Speaker 3: was an advocacy organization and its stated mission was to
Speaker 3: fight ethnic discrimination against Italian Americans, particularly the popular assumption
Speaker 3: that Italian heritage implied menality. Yes, they protested what they
Speaker 3: called selective ethnically motivated federal law enforcement. So Joe Senior
Speaker 3: he organized picketers outside the FBI's Manhattan Field office protesting
Speaker 3: the charges against Joe.
Speaker 2: Junior heard the signs holding up.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 3: The picketing ran for months and like there was all
Speaker 3: this press coverage.
Speaker 2: We won our civil rights.
Speaker 3: And all it did was just the organization just grew crazy.
Speaker 3: There were tens of thousands of members, dozens of chap
Speaker 3: I mean, they kind of inflated some of the figures, but.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, but I can see the people.
Speaker 3: Then here's the funding to the league drew criticism from
Speaker 3: other Italian American organizations and public figures who thought that
Speaker 3: the you know, the league being run by an actual
Speaker 3: mafia boss was like the worst messenger for the argument
Speaker 3: that Italian Americans aren't mobsters.
Speaker 4: Is kind of yeah, more than ironic other crime bosses.
Speaker 3: Carlo Gambino first and almost he was furious.
Speaker 2: Oh I bet he.
Speaker 3: Hated because the publicity violated omerta, the code of silence,
Speaker 3: tradition of invisibility, and it invited exactly the federal attention
Speaker 3: that they were trying.
Speaker 2: To avoid and kind turns them into a joke.
Speaker 3: Joe Senior unbothered.
Speaker 2: You're going to be on like the late night talk show.
Speaker 3: Senior didn't care even knew what he was doing. So
Speaker 3: back to Joe Junior. Jury selection begins. Joe Senior and
Speaker 3: this brand new Italian American Civil Rights League. They show
Speaker 3: up to make their displeasure known, and they framed the
Speaker 3: whole prosecution as harassment of the family. The presiding judge
Speaker 3: could kind of see where this was going, so he
Speaker 3: asked the press to hold off on trial coverage until
Speaker 3: a verdict came down.
Speaker 2: He's like, you're going to spook the jury. They didn't.
Speaker 3: He didn't have to worry about leaks. The jurors were
Speaker 3: just reading the paper, you know, and they it was
Speaker 3: in the paper. So the very next day a miss
Speaker 3: trial was declared after five jurors admitted that they ignored
Speaker 3: the instructions to avoid media about the case. And then
Speaker 3: there was one juror who was like, yeah, I read
Speaker 3: about Joe Colombo Senior as like an organized crime figure.
Speaker 3: I might that's gonna have an effect on how I
Speaker 3: judged that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, give a little bias NOWLS. So I saw
Speaker 2: it on Carson the Monologue.
Speaker 3: A new trial was set for February in a bit
Speaker 3: of scheduling that only nineteen seventy could produce. Father and
Speaker 3: son then more or less swapped courtrooms. What do you mean,
Speaker 3: So Junior's mistrial was going on in Brooklyn. Senior was
Speaker 3: on trial in Manhattan for perjury. He was accused of
Speaker 3: lying to a state licensing board about who he'd spent
Speaker 3: a nineteen sixty five labor Day weekend with at a
Speaker 3: Catskills resort. So he said, oh, I just had this
Speaker 3: quiet evening of a dinner in a show, and detectives
Speaker 3: were like, no, you were in the hotel lounge with
Speaker 3: all of these reputed gangland figures. Got convicted on two
Speaker 3: of the five counts just before Christmas, got convicted.
Speaker 2: Let's stop for ads. When we return, we're going to
Speaker 2: go back to court.
Speaker 3: Zaren Joe Colombo junior, son of a mob boss, a
Speaker 3: son of a gun busted for conspiracy to melt down
Speaker 3: coins for their silver.
Speaker 2: It's it's petty stuff.
Speaker 4: It's so really it's like Jersey City totally.
Speaker 3: And the crazy part is that by the time the
Speaker 3: charges were filed, what they had done was like about
Speaker 3: to be legal. And then the other crazy part is
Speaker 3: that they did didn't have a sense of the silver
Speaker 3: market and so they lost money. Were like, you know what,
Speaker 3: we're still going to make a case against you insult,
Speaker 3: meat injury. So the coin melting retrial, when it finally
Speaker 3: opened in February nineteen seventy one, had like a twist
Speaker 3: that you'd find in a cliche mob movie. Yes, Salomone
Speaker 3: took the stand and testified more or less as expected.
Speaker 2: Remember he turned states out.
Speaker 3: He was like, Junior joined the scheme because I had
Speaker 3: this big financial loss. You know, Junior is a longtime
Speaker 3: customer of the shop. He's a loyal guy, you know
Speaker 3: the drill. But then overnight Salomone reversed course entirely. Back
Speaker 3: in court the next day, he now claimed that the
Speaker 3: FBI had renigged on a bundle of promises that he
Speaker 3: you know, that were made in exchange for his original
Speaker 3: grand jury test. And he was like, they promised me cash.
Speaker 3: They gave me cash. They said they'd help me find work.
Speaker 3: They were going to get me back my pistol permit
Speaker 3: that had been confiscated. We're going to get my fifty
Speaker 3: g's back that I was in the hole.
Speaker 2: I don't think they can do all that I know.
Speaker 3: And a pardon the whole thing, everything last part. And
Speaker 3: so with those promises supposedly off the table, he recanted
Speaker 3: his story like wholesale, and he insisted, you know what,
Speaker 3: Junior never personally put up any money. The funds had
Speaker 3: come from Inachi.
Speaker 2: I only met him once, was at a birthday party
Speaker 2: for a little kid.
Speaker 3: According to the New York Times quote, he said that
Speaker 3: the twenty thousand dollars for the coins came from mister Ionachi,
Speaker 3: and that mister Colombo told him later, listen, Ianachi gave
Speaker 3: you that money. If you owe him, give him the money.
Speaker 3: I have nothing to do with it. Did you write
Speaker 3: that part down?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But he didn't throw Ionachi under the bus. According to
Speaker 3: the Times again quote, he also absolved mister Ianachi of
Speaker 3: participating in the scheme, testifying that he only knew that
Speaker 3: he was quote buying bags of silver coins for investment
Speaker 3: in trading in a rising silver mark.
Speaker 2: It was for uniforms with the local Catholic Boys scot
Speaker 2: exactly so.
Speaker 3: According to the Times quote, Spectators including the defendant's father,
Speaker 3: relatives and friends, whispered excitedly at Salomony's turnabout. The father,
Speaker 3: reputedly a leader of organized crime in Brooklyn, quickly referred
Speaker 3: to a picketing demonstration he had helped to organize against
Speaker 3: the Federal Bureau of Investigation last summer to protest his
Speaker 3: son's indictment. We would never have went the distance we
Speaker 3: went if my son was not framed. He said, Yes, Salomone,
Speaker 3: he just like reiterates, look this, I just made all
Speaker 3: this stuff up because the FBI pressured me they needed
Speaker 3: a case, needed to keep it all afloat. And then
Speaker 3: he turns he tells the judge, you know, I lied
Speaker 3: to the grand jury, and the judge responds, quote, I
Speaker 3: think you better get yourself. An attorney says it in
Speaker 3: open court because just admitted to exactly in open court.
Speaker 3: So because of the lying, the original prosecutor, Dennis Dillon,
Speaker 3: he had to step down to become a witness.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So he swore up and down that Salomone had been
Speaker 3: court case. He's like, he was truthful the first time around.
Speaker 3: And so the prosecution tried to salvage things. They introduced
Speaker 3: a last minute witness who would supposedly testify that Salomone
Speaker 3: had privately expressed serious fear for his safety and for
Speaker 3: the safety of his.
Speaker 4: Family threats from them all yeah, And they even.
Speaker 3: Hinted that there were like incriminating tapes that this secret
Speaker 3: witness had like stashed away as insurance.
Speaker 2: Oh, the judge wasn't.
Speaker 3: Having it inadmissible, never brought the witness forward. So the trial
Speaker 3: it's hitting its final stretch and things are about to
Speaker 3: get wild. Yeah, Zarin, close your eyes, I want you
Speaker 3: to picture it.
Speaker 6: Hell yeah.
Speaker 3: It's February twenty sixth, nineteen seventy one. You're seated in
Speaker 3: the gallery in a courtroom in the Federal Courthouse, and
Speaker 3: it's eight thirty at night, but the place is packed.
Speaker 3: Word has just come down that the verdict is in
Speaker 3: at the trial at Joe Columbo Junior. You aren't attached
Speaker 3: to this case in any way. You're just big into
Speaker 3: mob stuff. You love the stories. You find everyone involved fascinating.
Speaker 3: You heard about the trial, and you don't live too
Speaker 3: far away from the courthouse. You stay in a basement
Speaker 3: studio at the end of Pineapple Street, by the East
Speaker 3: River and spitting distance from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Speaker 2: It's a short walk to the courthouse.
Speaker 3: This has been fantastic in here. You've been able to
Speaker 3: see Joe Senior and the family sitting up front, and
Speaker 3: a host of other members of the Columbo crime family.
Speaker 3: You're sitting next to a woman holding a rosary. She
Speaker 3: murmurs Hail Mary's, her eyes closed. The bailiff orders everyone
Speaker 3: to rise. The judge glides in his robe as stern
Speaker 3: as his facial expression. You all stand and then take
Speaker 3: a seat again. Just as the judge is about to speak,
Speaker 3: a man rushes up to the bench.
Speaker 2: It's that guy, Dennis.
Speaker 4: Dillon, original prosecutor.
Speaker 3: He testified the other day about how Salomone lied about
Speaker 3: lying crazy stuff. Dylan reaches the bench and slaps his
Speaker 3: hands against the lacquered wood. He breathlessly tells the judge
Speaker 3: that he'd just been threatened outside the courtroom. It was
Speaker 3: one of Columbo's guys, he says.
Speaker 2: People gasp.
Speaker 3: Joe Senior blows the dismissing exhale through his lips, a
Speaker 3: soft shaw. The young guy next to him just rolls
Speaker 3: his eyes. Another looks at the ceiling and mutters mud.
Speaker 3: The judge asks what the man said to Dylan. Dylan replies,
Speaker 3: he asked whether I'd prefer to be dealt with.
Speaker 2: By knife or by fist.
Speaker 3: Joe Senior and his son Anthony quickly stand and make
Speaker 3: toward the bench.
Speaker 2: Your heart is pounding.
Speaker 3: This is unlike anything you've ever seen, and has exceeded
Speaker 3: your wildest expectations. The woman next to you reaches over
Speaker 3: and grabs your hand, her knuckles white, the rosary still
Speaker 3: clutched in her other hand. Bailiff's spring into action, but
Speaker 3: not fast enough. Dylan spins around as Joe sor Anthony approach.
Speaker 3: Senior raises his hand and lands a satisfying slap across
Speaker 3: Dylan's face. The gallery gasps akin, men shout. A woman
Speaker 3: in the back cries out. More people stand. The sound
Speaker 3: of chairs scraping the floor and papers falling to the
Speaker 3: ground adds to the chaos. Bailiff's restrained the columbos and
Speaker 3: Dylan has whisked out a side door. The judge bangs
Speaker 3: his gabbled. After some settling, the courtroom grows silent. The
Speaker 3: judge says, this has been an emotional day, and I
Speaker 3: don't have to remind anyone about threats to federal officers.
Speaker 3: The woman next to you with the rosary shouts out.
Speaker 2: What about vice versa?
Speaker 3: The crowd erupts again with shouts of agreement.
Speaker 4: The judge bangs his gavel again.
Speaker 3: Two police officers make their way down to your row
Speaker 3: and snatch up the woman with the rosary, hauling her off.
Speaker 3: She looks at you and whispers, I'd say it again too,
Speaker 3: and winks as she's dragged away. You settle in and
Speaker 3: watch the jury file into their seats ready to announce
Speaker 3: their verdict. This is better than going to the pictures.
Speaker 2: You think, oh, that was awesome.
Speaker 4: Saren this all happened, no doubt.
Speaker 3: The late okay, so yeah that she did yielded up
Speaker 3: order was eventually restored. Jury delivered its verdict, Joe Junior
Speaker 3: and Ianachi were acquitted, and Leonard, the one guy who'd
Speaker 3: actually done the melting, he got convicted. Salomone flip flopping
Speaker 3: his way through two trials. He got hit with a
Speaker 3: perjury charge on top of the conspiracy plea that he'd
Speaker 3: already entered guilty to, so he got nine months. Junior's
Speaker 3: walking free, but he's not going straight. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 3: he got indicted alongside Anthony and his brother and like
Speaker 3: a dozen others as part of what prosecutors were calling
Speaker 3: this new Columbo family crew, and June eighty six, all
Speaker 3: three brothers pleaded guilty to racketeering. Anthony, who was like
Speaker 3: head of the crew, he got a fourteen year term
Speaker 3: plus two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fines and
Speaker 3: two hundred fifty thousand dollars restitution, and the others took
Speaker 3: terms arranging from like five to fourteen years fourteen years.
Speaker 3: At Anthony's October eighty sixth sentencing, UPI noted that Joe Junior,
Speaker 3: who was thirty nine and living in Windsor, New York,
Speaker 3: he got five years, so we know we have it there.
Speaker 3: A seventy two count indictment had charged the crew with murder, robbery, extortion, gambling,
Speaker 3: drug trafficking, and the guilty police covered only racketeering, conspiracy
Speaker 3: and like certain specified acts.
Speaker 2: Everything else was dismissed, even murder. Yep, brush that one off.
Speaker 3: Anthony's lawyer, Barry Slotnik, said publicly that his client denied
Speaker 3: being a.
Speaker 2: Member of organized crime. Don't we all.
Speaker 3: Denied any involvement in drug trafficking or murder, And he
Speaker 3: also said the brothers pleaded guilty because they wanted to
Speaker 3: spare their family along track doing it for my ma.
Speaker 3: Joe Junior he got out around nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: You're breaking your mother's time.
Speaker 3: By available accounts, it looks like he stayed out of.
Speaker 2: Legal trouble and out of the press from that point on.
Speaker 2: Oka good for him. Yeah, the press park.
Speaker 3: Well, notably when federal prosecutors brought the well publicized two
Speaker 3: thousand and one Columbo Brothers crew indictment involving the double
Speaker 3: click kickback scheme. That's a whole other thing to get into. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was just Anthony and Christopher. Who was Christopher.
Speaker 2: So Joe Junior's like, look, I'm trying to keep my mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was out of it and so locked my coins.
Speaker 3: I'm not doing Joe Junior, not part of it.
Speaker 2: You're looking out for Italian civil rights.
Speaker 3: Christopher was the brother who later became a minor media
Speaker 3: figure on his own. There was a two thousand and
Speaker 3: five HBO show called House Rest starring Chris Colombo. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: and it was like a reality show with him on House.
Speaker 2: Arrest, House to Rest. Yeah, Joe Junior wanted nothing to
Speaker 2: do with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Joe Junior passed away October twenty ninth, twenty fourteen, in Newburgh,
Speaker 3: New York, at the age of sixty seven. It wasn't
Speaker 3: a bullet that got him. He died from neurological lime disease,
Speaker 3: neurological lime disease. Yeah, I know that you are terrified
Speaker 3: of lime disease.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm terrified of a couple of things that are
Speaker 2: just absolutely bizarre. Ticks and lime disease is one. The
Speaker 2: bat and dog bites for rabies is another. But I
Speaker 2: do not want the hydrophobia that just scares the hell
Speaker 2: out of me, and the lot of the conditions. I've
Speaker 2: known a couple people had lime disease and had it
Speaker 2: real bad, yeah, and I was like, that is horrendous.
Speaker 2: That's like up there. It's not quite like my fear
Speaker 2: of like a like a pyroclastic flow from like Pompeii,
Speaker 2: which is like one of my absolutely insane fears. I
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about most volcanoes like boiling my brains,
Speaker 2: butme disease is definitely up there. So that's why I
Speaker 2: pretty much will always be wearing long sleeves and pants
Speaker 2: no matter how it can be one hundred and ten degrees.
Speaker 2: You will catch me in long sleeves and pants if
Speaker 2: I'm anywhere near grass. When I go mountain biking, people
Speaker 2: will mock me for the fact that I'm always out
Speaker 2: there in long sleep but I'm like, look, I was
Speaker 2: a housepain. I dressed like this. I'm used to being
Speaker 2: one hundred degrees fully covered. And also then I don't
Speaker 2: have to worry about my other thing, which is I'm
Speaker 2: allergic to bees.
Speaker 3: So well, yeah that's a big thing too. But you know,
Speaker 3: there's a new thing with a strain of limes disease
Speaker 3: where you get a meat allergy.
Speaker 2: Oh the red meat. It's red meat. Yeah, you become
Speaker 2: and a lot of people there's even now a conspiracy
Speaker 2: theory that there are tick boxes being released so that
Speaker 2: people become allergic to red meat and we can bring
Speaker 2: down the red meat consumption. I just se TikTok or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they got it's conspiracy theory for the red mething. I know.
Speaker 2: I don't thought.
Speaker 3: That was interesting that there was lime disease that took
Speaker 3: them out in a family. Yeah, known for the mob,
Speaker 3: a lot of violent catching, metal poisoning. Let's pause for
Speaker 3: some ads. Now the crime section is pretty much over,
Speaker 3: but I want to circle back to something that caught
Speaker 3: my interest.
Speaker 6: Okay, cool, all right, zareny.
Speaker 3: So you know, if you're really all about crime and
Speaker 3: you don't like ridiculousness, like you see yourself out.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you came ridiculous, there's not really. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's a little bit anyway, So I told you
Speaker 3: about the Italian American Civil Rights League.
Speaker 2: Yes, which I'm still laughing at on the inside. Right.
Speaker 3: So Joe Columbo, as I said, MLK, who's our Malcolm X.
Speaker 3: He started it to fight against Joe Junior's legal troubles
Speaker 3: with Coen Melting like the whole it's anyway ridiculous, okay,
Speaker 3: But then the movement grew and it got tied in
Speaker 3: with one of the most well known pieces of entertainment
Speaker 3: to feature the Mafia ever. Hu that's right, Zarin the Godfather.
Speaker 3: Oh snap, yeah, oh snap. So most know it is
Speaker 3: a movie, but started as a book work of crime fiction.
Speaker 3: It was written by Italian American novelist Mario Puzzo. It
Speaker 3: follows an invented mafia dynasty or is the brit Say dynasty? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Same language, yeah, same language?
Speaker 3: Who knew? Operating out of New York City and Long Island,
Speaker 3: under the leadership of the patriarch Vito Corleone, the godfather
Speaker 3: of the title Olive Oil Merchant, all of the King
Speaker 3: of the Olive Oil Okay, So the main narrative runs
Speaker 3: through nineteen forty five to nineteen fifty five, and there
Speaker 3: are all these extended flashbacks Tree seeing Vito's life from
Speaker 3: his boyhood onward. So it was the first entry in
Speaker 3: what eventually grew into like a multi book series, and
Speaker 3: it was often credited with bringing Italian terms such as consiglieri, kappa, regime, cosinostra,
Speaker 3: omertas I mentioned earlier into common usage among English.
Speaker 2: Also hit the mattresses, like hit the mattresses.
Speaker 3: But people didn't know all these Italian words until then.
Speaker 2: People in the US totally.
Speaker 3: Mario Puzzo, he wrote The Godfather while deep in debt,
Speaker 3: so in debt. Paramount bought the film rights in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty seven for like not a lot of money. It
Speaker 3: was like twelve thousand dollars up front.
Speaker 2: It just like off the back of the popularity of
Speaker 2: like the Valacchi Joe Valacci like criminal, like you know,
Speaker 2: he goes before the Senate and testifies and really not
Speaker 2: really so I thought they were looking for a new crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, no, no, So they paid this out, just
Speaker 3: a little bit of money. They pay him out before
Speaker 3: the book came out, before it was published.
Speaker 2: Huh they got the galleys. Yeah, it came out.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty nine and it was on the best
Speaker 3: seller list for months, sold in the millions. Suddenly the
Speaker 3: studio has this property they hadn't planned for because like
Speaker 3: their enthusiasm was kind of limited their previous mob picture,
Speaker 3: The Brotherhood in nineteen sixty eight, Yes, with Kirk Douglas,
Speaker 3: it was a flop, total flop. So I think that
Speaker 3: they bought The Godfather anticipating that The Brotherhood would do
Speaker 3: really well and they have their own. Yeah. The internal
Speaker 3: read in the industry was like, gangster films are dead.
Speaker 2: Were past that point. No one, Watson, it's not the syndicid,
Speaker 2: it's not cool, right.
Speaker 3: Robert Evans had a production and Charles Bludorn this like
Speaker 3: volatile chairman of Paramount's parent company, Gulf Western. They wanted, look,
Speaker 3: make it cheap, make it fast, like we don't want anything.
Speaker 2: And Bob Evans is like a taste maker. So you
Speaker 2: have like basically a bean counter and a tastemaker. How
Speaker 2: do you make both of them happy? Exactly? And then
Speaker 2: enter Albert Ruddy.
Speaker 3: He's the producer who's main credit at the time was
Speaker 3: the sitcom Hogan's Heroes.
Speaker 2: Get Out of Town. I did not know that was
Speaker 2: his main cab.
Speaker 3: And he got the job partly because he pitched it
Speaker 3: as like a really inexpensive contemporary picture. And Francis Ford
Speaker 3: Coppola was hired rather reluctantly, very young. But yeah, they
Speaker 3: weren't really sure, and they nearly fired him a bunch
Speaker 3: of times, like it just was not so Evans and
Speaker 3: Copola They're like, we have to shoot it in New York. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: like it has to be so we have the tastemaker
Speaker 3: and the director seeing the vision. And that decision put
Speaker 3: the production directly into the hands of the city's unions.
Speaker 2: Oh its location permits yes, and you saly.
Speaker 3: Less officially the people who controlled both of those huh so.
Speaker 3: By early nineteen seventy one, the Italian American Civil Rights
Speaker 3: League was at its peak. They had a benefit concert
Speaker 3: at Madison Square Garden that featured Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 2: The chairman of the board. Chair out for the Italian.
Speaker 3: Unity Day rally at Columbus Circle June twenty ninth, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy They were like fifty thousand people there.
Speaker 2: The Christopher Columbus Statue with the fountain and yes, oh my.
Speaker 3: God, exactly so. Because of pressure from the League. At
Speaker 3: this point, Attorney General John Mitchell told the Justice Department
Speaker 3: to stop using the words mafia and cosinostra in press releases.
Speaker 2: Mixon's Attorney general, Yeah.
Speaker 3: New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller issued similar guidance to state agencies, like, look,
Speaker 3: you can't use these words mafia or cosinostra. The League
Speaker 3: showed that it could, like put bodies on the sidewalk
Speaker 3: at a short notice, and that's not in a murder sense,
Speaker 3: but in a picket line.
Speaker 2: So I got youa yeah, So the God premiere with
Speaker 2: the godfother obvious target totally so. The league's position, even
Speaker 2: though the filmmaker is Italian Coppola, doesn't matter, we don't trust,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: And the author of totally So, the League's position was
Speaker 3: that there's this like, lavishly produced, widely distributed movie is
Speaker 3: going to cement the association between Italian ancestry and organized
Speaker 3: crime in a way that like no news.
Speaker 2: Story could even do. And little do they know? Do
Speaker 2: they know?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: Some of the pressure was ideological, some of it, I
Speaker 3: would say most of it was the league's leadership seeing
Speaker 3: a large corporation with a lot to lose and an
Speaker 3: urgent shooting schedule, a shakedown, shakedown, you're back into crime.
Speaker 4: Boom.
Speaker 2: You found it, thank god.
Speaker 3: So the League they're saying, look, we've got tens of
Speaker 3: thousands of members. They start organizing letter writing campaigns. New
Speaker 3: York state legislators of Italian descent they raised their objections.
Speaker 3: There's picket lines. Location shooting in New York dependent on
Speaker 3: teamsters and other unions and.
Speaker 2: So the electricians.
Speaker 3: So the production starts encountering trouble, and so the permits
Speaker 3: get stalled. Locations are falling through. The cruise are like
Speaker 3: there's problems with them, there's no shows. Robert Evans Bob
Speaker 3: Evans described receiving threatening phone calls at his hotel.
Speaker 2: Was about to say, okay, do you know they're getting
Speaker 2: anonymous phone calls.
Speaker 3: Ruddy's car was reportedly shot at well parked outside of
Speaker 3: his office, like all the windows were shot out.
Speaker 2: Oh damn. Sure would be a shame of something that happened.
Speaker 3: Gulf Western Manhattan offices. They got bomb threats. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: they I mean it was yeah. Accounts vary in the details,
Speaker 3: and the participants obviously had reasons to like embellish their
Speaker 3: own stories, but the production genuinely believed it was in trouble.
Speaker 3: So contact came through Anthony Colombo, Joe Colombo's son, Joe
Speaker 3: Junior's bretta. So he reached out and arranged a meeting.
Speaker 3: How to sit down, Ruddy shows up in like a
Speaker 3: beat up Chevy instead of studio car, because he was like,
Speaker 3: that's going to send the right signal. I don't know
Speaker 3: what that is.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but he thought it was the right signal.
Speaker 2: So he meets with Colombo.
Speaker 3: I mean, these guys, what do you think that these
Speaker 3: guys are driving the mobsters are driving around.
Speaker 2: And beat up because trying to show it on blue collar.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So he meets with Colombo and league representatives and eventually
Speaker 3: hands over the shooting script for them to review. Oh so,
Speaker 3: what Anthony and Joe Senior wanted turned out to be
Speaker 3: surprisingly narrow. So they didn't want the film canceled, they
Speaker 3: didn't want it rewritten. They just wanted the words mafia
Speaker 3: and cosinostra to be taken out of it. And Ruddy
Speaker 3: checked and it's like those terms only came up once
Speaker 3: or twice in the entire screenplay.
Speaker 2: As I say, only like with either reporters or like
Speaker 2: senate hearings. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Puzzo's book had never really leaned on those words.
Speaker 2: They were just you know, incidental that down and like
Speaker 2: his underball were like, you know, as members of the mafia,
Speaker 2: we got to always remember our thing. You remember what
Speaker 2: that means everybody.
Speaker 3: So, I mean the story works through family and business
Speaker 3: and euphemisms.
Speaker 4: So Ruddy's like, yeah, that's totally fine.
Speaker 2: We'll take all that out. It's going to cost them nothing.
Speaker 2: In exchange.
Speaker 3: The League withdrew its objections so miraculously the union and
Speaker 3: the location problems they suddenly evaporated.
Speaker 4: Who knew, I mean, those things weren't.
Speaker 2: Related, surprise. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Ruddy also agreed that proceeds from the New York premiere
Speaker 3: of the movie would go to the league's hospital fund,
Speaker 3: which I don't know what that was.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised Sinatra didn't get in there, being like, this
Speaker 2: character is clearly based on me. I want to make
Speaker 2: sure well.
Speaker 3: So League members had to be hired as extras. That
Speaker 3: was another provision. March nineteenth, nineteen seventy one, Ruddy appeared
Speaker 3: at a press conference at the Park Share Hotel, standing
Speaker 3: next to Anthony Colombo and League officials to announce the agreement.
Speaker 2: This did not go well.
Speaker 4: Really, yeah, this story the press.
Speaker 3: The story ran on the front page of the New
Speaker 3: York Times. And so here we have a Hollywood studio
Speaker 3: publicly announcing that it had reached terms with an organization
Speaker 3: headed by a crime BOSSU was alablactic.
Speaker 4: Oh god, the optics for a publicly.
Speaker 3: Traded conglomerate, golf and Western stock and reputation are all
Speaker 3: he's concerned about, not Ruddy's location permits. Ruddy gets fired,
Speaker 3: he gets canned. So the firing lasted somewhere between a
Speaker 3: day and a few days, depending on who you listened to.
Speaker 2: But then he got reinstated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the practical argument was that he was the
Speaker 3: only person that the League was going to deal with,
Speaker 3: so replacing him meant reopening a settled problem. Than we
Speaker 3: have the political blowback, right. Frank Sinatra, among others, publicly
Speaker 3: criticized the arrangement. So there were some Italian American figures
Speaker 3: pointed out the obvious, As I said before, like a
Speaker 3: real mafia boss negotiating the depiction of a fictional mafia.
Speaker 3: Mafia boss and yeah, it kind of undercuts that central
Speaker 3: claim that no organization exists, like there's no mafia.
Speaker 2: But hold on a second.
Speaker 4: Talking about being in the exactly, So the Colombo.
Speaker 3: Vibe was baked into the movie at this point. So
Speaker 3: Lenny Montana, he was a former professional wrestler. He was
Speaker 3: working as a bodyguard and an enforcer associated with the
Speaker 3: Columbo family and he was hanging around the film set
Speaker 3: as part of the league's involvement. Copola spots him this enormous,
Speaker 3: like heavy featured man is going to give him a part.
Speaker 2: You know who he is.
Speaker 7: You know he is Luca Brose. This guy, he's incredible.
Speaker 7: You look at like, oh my god, that is a
Speaker 7: mafia enforcer. Was an enforcer of the mafia.
Speaker 3: In the scene where Brazi rehearses his congratulations to Don
Speaker 3: Corleone at the wedding, yeah, Montana was reportedly so nervous
Speaker 3: acting opposite of Marlon Brando that he stumbled over his lines,
Speaker 3: and Coppola liked the effect enough to keep it. And
Speaker 3: then right in the preceding shot of him anxiously practicing
Speaker 3: the speech to himself, brilliant.
Speaker 2: So good.
Speaker 3: Yes, then there are the wedding extras. A number of
Speaker 3: League members and associates ended up on screen.
Speaker 2: Oh, I bet.
Speaker 3: Gianni Russo who played Carlo Ritzi. He had genuine connections.
Speaker 2: In that world. Yeah, the son in law.
Speaker 4: He lobbied for that part.
Speaker 3: Al Martino cast as the singer Johnny Fontage.
Speaker 2: It was character. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He reportedly secured and then held onto his role, partly
Speaker 3: through pressure applied by connected friends. After the production tried
Speaker 3: to replace him with Vic Damone. Oh, They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: put victim one in. No, and then they, you know,
Speaker 3: shop on their doorstep. Predating the League business, but part
Speaker 3: of the same climate. Frank Sinatra he thought that Johnny
Speaker 3: Fontaine was a caricature of him.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was when Puzso was introduced to him at Chasin's
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles. Sinatra reportedly just like tore into him,
Speaker 3: rated him at length and at volume. He called him
Speaker 3: a pimp. He called him all James story, all in
Speaker 3: front of the entire restaurant. Frank didn't care about that.
Speaker 2: He'd say whatever we talked about that.
Speaker 3: Huzzo wrote about the encounter afterwards, but was like kind
Speaker 3: of amused by it. I mean it is one of
Speaker 3: those things. Yes, exactly, By several accounts, Colombo, having read
Speaker 3: the script, was not really bothered by it.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: The objection was to the vocabulary general principle rather than
Speaker 3: the content. Ruddy in the Columbos maintained something like a
Speaker 3: cordial relationship. After interesting, the whole arrangement effectively ended. On
Speaker 3: June twenty eighth, nineteen seventy one, the League was holding
Speaker 3: its second Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle in New
Speaker 3: York when Joe Senior got shot in the head. Oh
Speaker 3: that's right, So Godfather was still in production at this point.
Speaker 3: Joe Senior survived, was permanently incapacitated, but the League just like.
Speaker 2: Lost its engine.
Speaker 3: So the film opened in March of nineteen seventy two
Speaker 3: and became four a time, the highest grossing film ever made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and pretty much till Star Wars, right or Jaws?
Speaker 2: I think Jaws.
Speaker 3: So here's the irony of it all. The League's campaign
Speaker 3: produced a film with the words mafia and cosinoster removed,
Speaker 3: and it made no difference whatsoever to the association it
Speaker 3: was trying to break.
Speaker 4: And they love the movie well.
Speaker 3: In fact, you could argue that The Godfather did more
Speaker 3: than any other single work to fix Italian American organized
Speaker 3: crime in the popular match one percent.
Speaker 2: I mean, like other than the Sopranos, I don't think
Speaker 2: you can think of a thing that is more like
Speaker 2: beloved version of the mafia exact. And it also elevated it,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't like you're not comparing them to like
Speaker 2: scarface and like organized crime that is more like drug
Speaker 2: crime and like more modern crimes. They were like elevated
Speaker 2: and given like almost exactly. It's like nights of the
Speaker 2: past as opposed to like you know bad, like you know,
Speaker 2: chewt them ups and alleys, you know in.
Speaker 3: The family intrigue of it and the push.
Speaker 2: Pull honor and like all the questions beautiful the old
Speaker 2: world in the new world, think about all the quotable lines.
Speaker 3: So this, yeah, exactly, what's your ridiculous takeaways?
Speaker 2: Aaron oh Man, There's something it's so.
Speaker 3: Hard to hold back because you know all this stuff
Speaker 3: and then thinking.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult for me at certain points. I think
Speaker 2: you looked over when you were talking about Luca Razzi
Speaker 2: and I was literally holding my mouth so I wouldn't
Speaker 2: spit it out because I was like, she's getting there,
Speaker 2: she's getting He's the best like, I mean, he the
Speaker 2: fact that, yes, I was very well aware that he
Speaker 2: was a real Mathia enforcer. And every time I watch
Speaker 2: that movie, which is usually at least once a year,
Speaker 2: I sit there and just marvel at like the reality
Speaker 2: and the life in him. He's one of those actors.
Speaker 2: It's just like he makes the movie that much more credible. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I guess we'll just say that's my Rideculo's takeaway,
Speaker 2: how much I love Luca Bratzi. What is yours? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: I like that this is such a classic tale, like
Speaker 3: something in the Godfather or in the Sopranos, where you
Speaker 3: have the one son who's like trying real hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's doing.
Speaker 3: A deal on melting down the silver coins and he
Speaker 3: raises all this hubbub and the dad. Like the fact
Speaker 3: that the Italian American League came out of that.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it was.
Speaker 2: To protect.
Speaker 4: For smelting coin by Yeah.
Speaker 3: So that's my takeaway is how much I loved that.
Speaker 3: I think that said we need a talkback, Dave.
Speaker 5: Oh my god much. I love Hey, Zaren, Elizabeth and
Speaker 5: producer g I hope you're all doing well. I live
Speaker 5: in Philadelphia and I thought I'd tell you, guys something ridiculous.
Speaker 5: My first name is letter A, just letter A. It's
Speaker 5: all my birth certificate. You can ask my mom. I'm
Speaker 5: called Maggie though for my middle name. But I love
Speaker 5: your podcast so so much, so much, so much. Thank
Speaker 5: you for making me laugh. All right, bye, guys.
Speaker 2: You and I Saron talk about great names, and A
Speaker 2: is a great name, A Maggie last name.
Speaker 4: So do you go by A?
Speaker 2: I know, but I mean, like with anybody, is there
Speaker 2: anyone who calls you? Ah? I'm wondering.
Speaker 3: I gotta be a pain, like being you know, in
Speaker 3: class and then or or.
Speaker 2: Like online me most of my life by a lot
Speaker 2: of people, so like, hey, Z, so I know what
Speaker 2: it's like to be a single letter sure, but A
Speaker 2: is a one where people wouldn't think that it's like Z.
Speaker 2: Somehow sounds like a name because you have the ze.
Speaker 2: What are you voting here?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just wondering too, Like when you have to
Speaker 3: fill out online forms, is it ever like no, put
Speaker 3: your full name not.
Speaker 2: Just an initial. Yeah, it's interesting, you.
Speaker 3: Know, because bureaucracy doesn't doesn't adjust for creativity.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 3: That's cool though, I love that Magie. That's it for today.
Speaker 3: You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.
Speaker 3: We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram.
Speaker 3: You can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: Terry will take a look at that. Leave us a
Speaker 3: talk back on the iHeart app. Please I love those
Speaker 3: reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 3: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Capo Argento. Dave Cousten,
Speaker 3: our Ridiculous Assistant, is chair of the Coin Collector's Civil
Speaker 3: Rights League, Terry Maldonado.
Speaker 2: Fon research is by Godfather.
Speaker 3: Wedding scene extra thanks to an uncle who pulled some
Speaker 3: strings Marissa Brown. The theme song is by Silver Smelters
Speaker 3: Thomas Lee and Travis Duddon. Post wardrobe is provided by
Speaker 3: Botany five hundred. Producer Dave Couston's wardrobe is by Mister
Speaker 3: Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 3: and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Underboss hanging out at
Speaker 3: Craft Services, Ben Bolin and Federal prosecutor who got slapped
Speaker 3: by Joe Banano on a fishing boat. Noel Brown.
Speaker 5: Disquime say it one more times. Crime.
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