15 Jan. 85

Carl: I love your idea about a paperback library on the more celebrated bad guys of the 20s and 30s.

I know all the books--I mean all--and I have them all. I also have a notion that to be valid and more solidly useful it is likely that a collection of this kind would need a single editor (P. Sann, who else?) to write an updating preface for each and every book in the series as well, possibly, as footnotes here and there in situations where subsequent digging or disclosures from the law enforcement gentry have shed new light to give these accounts more substance.  

What I am listing here, so that you have a handle on everything that is available, will exceed your random number of ten books, leaving some room for discretion if ten did indeed turn out to  be the number. I am also telling you what is good or bad about these bios. You want to bear two things in mind: 1) I have chosen the best in each case, and 2), my annotations would furnish any necessary repairs to make a series of this nature more solidly authentic than any simple reprinting of the originals.

So--

CAPONE: THE LIFE AND WORLD OF AL CAPONE. John Kobler. Putnam, 1971. No contest against anything else ever done on the man. It's the whole story, which means that it's also Johnny Torrio, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran, Jake Lingle (the Chi Trib reporter Big Al had to put away for taking his money but not behaving properly), Jake (Greasy Thumb) Guzik, the murderous Genna clan, a touch of Don Vito Genovese, Frank Costello, Big Jim Colosimo,and all the others of that beautiful time. I've written about all of them myself, mostly in THE LAWLESS DECADE (just out in a new trade paperback).

LUCKY LUCIANO: HIS AMAZING TRIAL AND WILD WITNESS. Hickman Powell. Arno Press/Citadel Press, 1975. Powell an ex-Herald Trib guy and later Tom Dewey's man, knew it all but keyed so hard on the vice trial that the more desirable book might be THE LUCIANO STORY. Sid Feder and Joachim Joesten. David McKay, 1954. What we don't want is the bogus LAST TESTAMENT OF LUCKY LUCIANO manufactured for Little, Brown in '74 by Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer, bared as pure hokum by the N.Y. Times pre-pub and remaindered the day it came out. We would have to deal with it in the intro to whichever Luciano book we used.

FRANK COSTELLO PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNDERWORLD. George Wolf with Joseph DiMona. William Morrow, 1974. Wolf was Uncle Frank's lawyer for 30 years, so this one's rather kind.

KILL THE DUTCHMAN! THE STORY OF DUTCH SCHULTZ. Paul Sann. Arlington House, 1971, and then Popular Library in paper. This is the only book on Mr. Flegenheimer and it covers all of his contemporaries, keying on the syndicate giants, who had him put away--Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Costello, Albert Anastasia, Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro & Co. Heavy on Tom Dewey and that towering giant among thieving Tammany Hall honchos, Jimmy Hines.

THE BIG BANKROLL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN. Leo Katcher. Arlington House, 1958. Again, all the large names of the time who took their Ph.Ds at the feet of the underworld's original financial brain. Leo, who worked with me on The Post, did a very creditable job.

JOHNNY TORRIO: FIRST OF THE GANG LORDS. Jack McPhaul. Arlington House, 1971. McPhaul was a top Chicago reporter on the crime beat. I knocked this book in a review because the guy made up all kinds of dialogue, which is not one of my favorite sports, but the guts are all here.

MEYER LANSKY: MOGUL OF THE MOB. Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan and Eli Landau. Paddington Press Ltd, 1979. Meyer talked to Dan and Landau when he was trying to get into Israel to stay but didn't tell them anything. Their prime source was Joseph (Doc) Stacher, long settled in the Holy Land and a lifetime associate of Meyer's. The deal was that they print nothing until the Doc had passed into the Great Beyond lest the Little Man hasten his journey. This book is nicer to my friend Meyer than he deserved, so there might be a question about an alternative, like LANSKY. Hank Messick. Putnam's 1971. The problem is that Messick went the other way, whole hog, all out of the Justice Department's mile-high file. Hence the Messick book's loaded with a lot more blood, guts and corpses. Meyer, talking to me, gave both books very bad reviews.

DON CARLO: BOSS OF BOSSES. Paul Meskil. Popular Library, 1973 (don't know if there was a hardcover). This is the only book on Mr. Gambino and everybody's in it.

KING OF CRIME. Dom Frasca. Crown, 1959. Dom, a Journal-American staffer, did a decent job garnished with an interview he and my buddy and co-author Jim Horan managed with their "King"--Vito Genovese. This one would need a heavy preface and possibly footnotes because Genovese stayed alive (in the Atlanta can) into the 70s if memory serves. But, then, there's lots of Genovese in some of the items listed above.

THE UNTOUCHABLES. Eliot Ness with Oscar Fraley. Julian Messner, 1957. No need to say much about this one. It's basically Mr. Ness versus Mr. Capone and led to that forever-running TV series (Robert Stack using his Tommy gun like Bernhard Goetz handles his pistol) narrated by our pal Walter Winchell.

WE ONLY KILL EACH OTHER. Dean Jennings. Prentice-Hall, 1967. The Bugsy Siegel story and if there's anything else worth a damn on the ladies man who grew up with Mr. Lansky but did not learn enough (wiped out for cheating the syndicate on the Flamingo deal in Vegas) it never came to my attention. Good reading and on the ball. The big question will go down through the ages: Did Meyer sit in on the execution call? He denied it to me with some violence (but without making the case).

THE DON: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SAM GIANCANA. William Brashler. Harper & Row, 1977. Thoroughly professional and larded with Sinatra-JFK-Judith Exner but perhaps borderline because Mo Mo didn't make the big time in Chi till '39. But, then, I'm not sure it matters that much, since he did his basic training in the time of the gents all this is keyed to.

MURDER INC. Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder, 1951. This one has it all, with all the glittering names, and covers our time factor ideally. To me, an absolute must in any authoritative series in this area.

THE VALACHI PAPERS. Peter Maas. Putnam's, 1968. Another must, back to our time frame and forward from there.

It adds up to 14 books, Carl, but it wouldn't be all that hard to cut to your 10, since anything we dropped would be covered elsewhere. Trust me, there's nothing left out and again, I'm only slightly crazy about this idea and would work like nine horses on it. Also, I figure it's one you owe me, considering that I've done so damn little for you for so long.