History in politics. Post I. Immigration, crime and strife.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905

The Five Points Gang of New York City, which was formed as an Irish American gang, but under the leadership of Italian born "Paul Kelly", Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli.  The gang evolved from an entirely Irish gang into an Italian gang, reflecting demographic trends in Five Points.

Well, first of all, I also said there were a lot of benefits to that wave of immigration, but has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’? That’s what I’m talking about. We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.

* * *

What happens when you have massive amounts of illegal immigration? It actually starts to create ethnic conflict. It creates higher crime rates.

J. D. Vance

Is Vance right?

Keep in mind, I'm just basically fact checking here, not trying to make a political point.

Secondly, Gangs of New York is a horrible motion picture and historically inaccurate.¹

So let's start with the two basic assertions.  When you have:

• massive ethnic enclaves it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates; and
• massive amounts of illegal immigration creates ethnic conflict and higher crime rates.

Are these assertions correct, based on the historical data?

On the surface, a person could certainly argue yes.   The US Mafia was, at its core, an ethic gang. So was the US expression of the Camorra, as were the Chinese Tongs, and as are the various Mexican gangs sometimes loosely referred to as the "Mexican Mafia".  All of these entities found their first expression amongst ethnic groups that immigrated into the US, from Sicily, Italy, China and Mexico respectively, and retained their ethnic character thereafter.  And the US also saw, in the late 19th Century and into the mid 20th, Irish gangs and Jewish gangs, the latter two of which are largely forgotten.

But then, in examining it, there have also been African American gangs, and still are, as well as Hispanic gangs made up of American born Hispanics.

And, while we commonly do not think of it in this fashion, there have been domestic native born European American gangs.  The James Gang was made up entirely of Missourians and was widely tolerated in rural Missouri.  The Wild Bunch was a criminal gang with rotating members headquartered in Wyoming and made up entirely of whites.  Any number of Depression Era gangs out of Missouri and Oklahoma could also be named.

Hmmm. . . . 

So what can we draw from this.

The common element in all of this is poverty.  The common thread in the formation of all gangs, at their onset, is that their membership is poor, originally.  Gaining wealth is a primary motivating force of gang formation.

Gangs go right to crime, obviously, to address their lack of wealth.  The next element of it, however, is that they do form, originally, based on commonality, with the common element being shared ethnicity and status.  The Mafia formed originally in Sicily, an impoverished region of what is now Italy, for complicated and obscure reasons, but Sicilian ethnicity was obviously an element of it, and that element was imported into the US.  The Camorra was (and is) Neapolitan, and was when it came into the US.²  Sicilians and Neapolitans made up part of the impoverished Italian community that immigrated into the US in the late 19th Century and early 20th Centuries.  Indeed, the criminal organizations associated with them basically re-formed in the US, rather than being directly imported.

The James Gang sprang up from impoverished post Civil War rural Missouri with every single memer of it being a white, Protestant, Missourian.  The Rollins 40 Crips and the Bloods came from impoverished African American neighborhoods.  The Zetas and the Sinolas came out of impoverished communities in Mexico.

So, poverty is an early major motivator.

Poverty, combined with ethnic identity, creates the basic constituents for ethnic gangs.  It is, quite frankly, evolutionary biology at work.  Humans are tribal by nature, and form tribes in order to acquire and protect resources.  Gangs do that, operating in a world in which the members are outsiders due to their poverty and ethnicity.

But therein lies their weakness as well.

Over time, the ethnicity normally dissipates, and its always the case that the members of gangs are a minority of any one ethnicity.  Indeed, gangs tend to terrorize the members of their own ethnicities far more than anyone else.  As the economic fortunes of the ethnic class rise, being a member no longer retains its original benefits.  While being a gang member might offer wealth, it also offers a high risk of shortened life. At a certain point that is a decreasing benefit to the ethnic cohort.  To a very large degree this is why the Camorra has largely disappeared in the US, the Mafia is a shadow of its former self, and why Irish and Jewish gangs simply no longer exist.

And ethnicities, moreover, dissipate.  To be in the Mafia, originally, you had to be of straight Sicilian descent in the US. Now you must have some Sicilian descent, but it's a decreasing amount.³ 

So, there's some truth to what Vance related about immigration and crime, but its a much more complicated picture than he relates.

What about ethnic conflict?

Well, as noted part of human nature is tribalism, and an interesting aspect of that is that the "different" both repels and attracts.  Large immigrant groups usually do cause some consternation in a prior group, no matter what it is, but contacts nearly immediately arise.  Indeed the relatively accurate historical novels Giants In The Earth and Peder Victorious by Ole Edvart Rølvaag do a good job of demonstrating that as, in his novels, a Lutheran Norwegian immigrant family is at first horrified by a Catholic Irish immigrant family moving into their region, only to have a child, Peder, marry into it.  Entire ethnicities, such as Creoles in the US and the Mexicans of Mexico are the result of intermixing of cultures.  The degree to which a culture is hostile to this varies, with some being very hostile to it, and others not so much.  Even where there's pretty strong resistance, however, it happens.

Strife, however, between two cultures in one reason also tends to have a strong common element, that being, once again, poverty.  When hostility breaks out between two ethnic groups in a region, it usually features a very strong element of poverty, so in a way, its once again scarcity of resources that is the common problem.

Where's that leave us on Vance's assertion?

Well, its not completely untrue in a superficial way, but in a really in depth manner, its poverty that's the problem.  So what we really are looking at is an economic topic, or should be.

Footnotes:

1.  Gangs of New York is not only historically inaccurate, its downright perverse.

The movie depicts the New York borough of Five Points in the 1840 through 1860s with a Nativist Protestant gang fighting an Irish Catholic gang, the Dead Rabbits (which was in fact a real gang).  New  York ethnic gangs in fact existed, but the conglomeration of nativist feelings, Irish immigration in general and Irish gangs is way over the top.

In terms of oddities, Daniel Day Lewis character is just weird.

2.  In fact, all the Italian criminal gangs come out of southern Italy, a region of Italy which has been historically impoverished and still is to a significant degree.

3.  A movie that depicts this really well is Goodfellas.

Last edition:

History in politics. A new trailing series of threads

Labels: History in politics, Politics

Sunday, April 23, 1944. Hollandia taken, MacArthur lands, John C. Squire's posthumous MoH, Greek troubles, Pyrgoi Massacre, Tragic accident, Missing mobster.

 Gen. MacArthur, Colonel Lloyd Lehbras, his aides, and other high officers, landing on the beach at Aitape, New Guinea, 23 April, 1944.

Hollandia fell to US forces and Tadji airfield is taken.  However, resistance was met inland at Sabron and the beachheads were experiencing congestion.

F4U crashing on the USS Guadalcanal, April 23, 1944.

The Amagiri was sunk in the Makassar Strait by a mine.

Mussolini agreed to continue permitting Italian troops to be trained in Germany. The best of them were to be used to form a new National Republican Army.

In Italy, U.S. Army PFC John C. Squires lost his life in an action which resulted in his receiving a posthumous Medal of Honor.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. At the start of his company's attack on strongly held enemy positions in and around Spaccasassi Creek, near Padiglione, Italy, on the night of 23-April 24, 1944, Pfc. Squires, platoon messenger, participating in his first offensive action, braved intense artillery, mortar, and antitank gun fire in order to investigate the effects of an antitank mine explosion on the leading platoon. Despite shells which burst close to him, Pfc. Squires made his way 50 yards forward to the advance element, noted the situation, reconnoitered a new route of advance and informed his platoon leader of the casualties sustained and the alternate route. Acting without orders, he rounded up stragglers, organized a group of lost men into a squad and led them forward. When the platoon reached Spaccasassi Creek and established an outpost, Pfc. Squires, knowing that almost all of the noncommissioned officers were casualties, placed 8 men in position of his own volition, disregarding enemy machinegun, machine-pistol, and grenade fire which covered the creek draw. When his platoon had been reduced to 14 men, he brought up reinforcements twice. On each trip he went through barbed wire and across an enemy minefield, under intense artillery and mortar fire. Three times in the early morning the outpost was counterattacked. Each time Pfc. Squires ignored withering enemy automatic fire and grenades which struck all around him, and fired hundreds of rounds of rifle, Browning automatic rifle, and captured German Spandau machinegun ammunition at the enemy, inflicting numerous casualties and materially aiding in repulsing the attacks. Following these fights, he moved 50 yards to the south end of the outpost and engaged 21 German soldiers in individual machinegun duels at point-blank range, forcing all 21 enemy to surrender and capturing 13 more Spandau guns. Learning the function of this weapon by questioning a German officer prisoner, he placed the captured guns in position and instructed other members of his platoon in their operation. The next night when the Germans attacked the outpost again he killed 3 and wounded more Germans with captured potato-masher grenades and fire from his Spandau gun. Pfc. Squires was killed in a subsequent action.

Finnish modified Soviet Il-4 bomber, April 23, 1944.

A communist mutiny on five Greek warships (it's always the sailors) was put down by loyal Greek forces.

Also in Greece, the Pyrgoi Massacre took place in which the SS killed 563 men, women and children, with the aid of local Greek accomplices.

Marion Harris, the first white singer to widely sing and record blues, died in a hotel fire caused by her falling asleep with a lit cigarette. She was 48 years old.

Canadian bootlegger Rocco Perri went for a walk in Hamilton Ontario to clear his head and disappeared.  It's widely believed he was fitted with cement shoes and drowned, but there are those who assert he lived into the 1950s in the U.S.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, April 22, 1944. American landings at Hollandia and Aitape.

1940s, 1944, Afghan tribal revolts of 1944–1947, Afghanistan, Battle of Hollandia, China, Hollandia, New Guinea, Operation Ichi-Go, Operation Persecution, Operation Reckless, World War Two

Saturday, March 4, 1944. The resisting defeated.

The USCGC Makinaw was commissioned on this date in 1944. She'd serve as an ice breaker until 2006.

The German military, evil cause notwithstanding, was proving itself to be as amazing in defeat as it had been in victory.  Never as well-equipped or modern as its propaganda would have it, it was nonetheless a potent fighting force, both in defeat as well as victory.  On this day, the Second Narva Offensive resulted in a German victory.

Outnumbered, the Germans took thousands of casualties, but not as many as the Red Army. Both armies had a disregard for life.  The Germans were, frankly quite surprisingly, aided by the presence of able Estonian recruits who had only recently entered service.

The latter was a portent of what was to come. As 1944 marched on, the German frontiers contracted, and as they did, the bloodletting, in part due to increased German resistance, meant that 1945, not 1944, was to be the bloodiest year of the war.

The Red Army launched a new series of offensive actions in Ukraine.  Stalwart German resistance notwithstanding, and the frankly primitive state of much of the Red Army, the tide had irrevocably turned.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—March 4, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Mar. 4, 1944: Maj. Gen. Alexander Patch assumes command of US Seventh Army in Algiers, to prepare for landings in southern France.

Germany's battlefield performance on the Baltic coast and in Italy notwithstanding, the direction the war was headed in was obvious and the Allies were preparing not only for Operation Overlord, but Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France.  Patch was placed in command of that operation.

Patch had already seen combat command in the war in the Pacific, and more specifically Guadalcanal, making him one of a handful of U.S. generals who served against the Germans and Japanese. His health in the Pacific had been very poor, and he suffered from pneumonia while serving there.

Patch was born into an Army family and had originally wanted to be a cavalryman, but foresaw its obsolesce so he instead chose the infantry when he graduated from West Point in 1913  He saw action in the Punitive Expedition and in World War One.  He never recovered from his respiratory ailments and died on November 21, 1945, just after the end of the war.  He was 55.

Other things were also occurring in Algiers.

French industrialist, and fascist, Piere Firmin Pucheu went on trial in Algiers in spite of conditions that probably should have led to his safe presence in Algeria, Vichy role notwithstanding.  He had been the Vichy minister of the interior.  He was the first person tried under the French Committee of National Liberation's September 1943 edict charging all Vichy ministers with treason, something that was frankly political and extralegal.  He would be found guilty and executed on March 20, 1944, going to his death after shaking hands with his own firing squad and giving the order to fire himself.

Pucheau is an uncomfortable example as to how some examples of Allied justice were not just. Pucheau was largely not admirable. He was a fascist, and he had a hatred of Jews.  His execution, however, can be viewed for his being on the losing side of the war.

The 8th Air Force targeted Berlin, but only 29 bombers made it through due to weather.

Fighting was going on at Los Negros, where Troy McGill performed an act of heroism that would result in his receiving a posthumous Medal of Honor.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy at Los Negros Island, Admiralty Group, on 4 March 1944. In the early morning hours Sgt. McGill, with a squad of eight men, occupied a revetment which bore the brunt of a furious attack by approximately 200 drink-crazed enemy troops. Although covered by crossfire from machine guns on the right and left flank he could receive no support from the remainder of our troops stationed at his rear. All members of the squad were killed or wounded except Sgt. McGill and another man, whom he ordered to return to the next revetment. Courageously resolved to hold his position at all costs, he fired his weapon until it ceased to function. Then, with the enemy only five yards away, he charged from his foxhole in the face of certain death and clubbed the enemy with his rifle in hand-to-hand combat until he was killed. At dawn 105 enemy dead were found around his position. Sgt. McGill's intrepid stand was an inspiration to his comrades and a decisive factor in the defeat of a fanatical enemy.

Chinese and American troops who have just received first aid treatment are seen in a 2½ ton truck for transfer to the rear.  March 4, 1944.  Note the tanker's helmet and the M1917 helmets

The U-472 was sunk in the Barents Sea.  She never sank a single ship.

China and Afghanistan entered into a pointless treaty of friendship.

Mobster Louie Lepke, birth name Louis Buchalter and also known as Louis Lepke or Lepke Buchalter, was executed.

Louis Capone met the same fate on this day, for the same reason.

The Phillies attempted to introduce a blue jay logo.

Monday, January 11, 2023. A generally violent day.

Life Magazine was out with a black and white cover of children in uniform, and a story on "Kid's Uniforms".  Both were Navy style.  No doubt, with the war being so overarching in everyone's life, this resulted in this style for children.

The United States and the United Kingdom signed treaties with the Republic of China renouncing extraterritorial privileges.  Both nations had exercised them since the 19th Century, along with other powers, with the same being a major insult to Chinese sovereignty.  Indeed, this sort of extraterritorial claim had been the primary cause of the Boxer Rebellion.

The British intercepted a telegram from SS Major Herman Hofle to Adolf Eichman noting the murder of 1,274,166 Polish Jews in 1942. The telegram was held with secret status by the British until 2000.

On the same day SS Major General Heinrich Müller began the deportation of 45,000 Polish Jews to munitions factories including 30,000 from Bialystok, Poland, 10,000 Theresienstadt, 3,000 from the Netherlands and 2,000 from Berlin.

Germany and Romania entered into a secret treaty providing for German bases in Romania in exchange for gold and Swiss francs.

President Roosevelt sent a budget message to Congress seeking $16,000,000,000 in new taxes or "compulsory loans" to meet the $100,000,000,000 needed for the war effort and $9,000,000,000 for other purposes.

Radical Italian American Socialist and labor leader Carlo Tresca, an opponent of Communism, Fascism, and the Mafia, was gunned down in a drive by shooting in Manhattan. While theories abound, nobody was ever arrested by the murder and nobody really knows who committed it, although the Mafia seems like the strongest candidate.

Forgeddaboutit?

First of all, let me note that I’m not accusing Trump of being in the mob.

I just found this interesting, and I unfortunately find it a sad and interesting look at how things were (hopefully not still are) in business, on the East Coast.

Back in December 2019, not all that long ago really, and running up to the election that following year, Rolling Stone published an article written by Seth Hettena entitled:

The Real-Life Mob Families of ‘The Irishman’? Donald Trump Knew Them

The president and his associates have long histories with the Mafia figures who populate Scorsese's film

The article was written because The Irishman had just been released on television.¹

Rolling Stone noted how the central characters in the film were now all dead, quite of a few of them because of mob hits, which also wasn't what the film was about.  It was about two very elderly men who are still living.  One of them was Donald Trump. As the article states:

Well, many still remember. One person who knew the real-life mob families that show up in The Irishman is President Donald Trump.

And it goes on:

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Trump’s buildings and his casinos attracted underworld figures like “Fat Tony” Salerno, the Fedora-wearing, cigar-chomping boss of the Genovese crime family. Salerno, who’s portrayed in the film by Domenick Lombardozzi, supplied the fast-drying concrete that built Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Salerno also controlled the local concrete workers union, and when a strike shut down construction in Manhattan in 1982, the one of the few buildings that wasn’t affected was Trump Tower.

The Irishman is based on the 2003 book I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, by Charles Brandt. (The title is a reference to the special kind of painting Sheeran did that left his victims’ brains on the wall.) The book is full of characters who didn’t make it into the movie, but they did surface in Trump’s world. One is Philadelphia mob boss Philip Testa, the “chicken man” whose 1981 murder by nail bomb Bruce Springsteen sings about in the song “Atlantic City.” Testa’s son sold Trump premium land that became a casino parking lot. Another figure in the book is Testa’s successor, Nicodemus “Little Nicky” Scarfo, whose associates tried to lease Trump land for his casino in Atlantic City — until New Jersey casino regulators quashed the deal.

And it goes on:

In 1983, the year Trump Tower opened its doors, the future president reportedly met the Genovese family boss. The common thread linking Salerno and Trump was Roy Cohn, the infamous lawyer who represented both men. Cohn, the heavy-lidded henchman to Senator Joseph McCarthy, introduced the two men in his Manhattan townhouse, according to the late journalist Wayne Barrett. Under oath, Trump swore that wasn’t true, but he also swore that he didn’t know that Cohn represented Salerno, a fact that had been widely reported in Cohn’s obituary a few years earlier.

And it’s not just Trump who has links to the world depicted in The Irishman. It also overlapped with some of the figures in Trump’s world, past and present. Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political adviser, also met Salerno when he visited Cohn’s Manhattan brownstone. This was in 1979, and Stone had been tapped to run Ronald Reagan’s political operation in New York. Cohn, dressed in a silk bathrobe, introduced Stone to the mobster and then offered to help him with the Reagan campaign. Cohn’s advice would change the course of Stone’s life: “What you need is Donald Trump.” Cohn sent the young political operative off to meet the up-and-coming real estate developer. It was a path that would lead 40 years later to Stone’s conviction last month on charges of lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks.

Ooo. . . ick.

And there's more:

In March 1986, Giuliani announced that a grand jury had indicted Salerno and others on charges that included rigging construction bids. Trump Plaza, a co-op apartment building on Manhattan’s East Side, was specifically mentioned in the 29-count indictment. Salerno arranged things so his concrete company got a $7.8 million contract at Trump Plaza. It just so happens that while these bids were being rigged, the building was under construction, right around the time that Trump met Salerno in Cohn’s townhouse. Even so, the indictment makes it clear that the bid-rigging occurred without the knowledge of developers.

The FBI had uncovered the concrete bid-rigging scheme at Trump Plaza by secretly bugging Mafia homes and hangouts, including the Palma Boys Social Club, where DeNiro and his “rabbi” Russell Bufalino, played by Joe Pesci, sit down with Salerno in Scorsese’s film. Giuliani, by his own account, listened to countless hours of secretly recorded conversations of mobsters, and he reportedly was able to pull off a convincing impression of the mobster’s scratchy voice. “When you listen to those guys for thousands of hours, you can’t help but sound like them,” Giuliani once said.

Well that explains a lot.

But it wasn't limited to Trump, another was. . . Joe Biden.

Trump wasn’t the only one who knew the people in the world of The Irishman. In addition to being a hit man, Sheeran was president of a local Teamsters union in Delaware. In 1972, shortly before Election Day, a prominent lawyer who was very big in the Democratic Party came to see him. There were some political ads that would run in the local newspaper every day in the last week before election, and the lawyer didn’t want them to run. So Sheeran set up a picket line outside the newspaper, and he knew the Teamsters union drivers who delivered the paper wouldn’t cross it. So the ads were never delivered, and on Election Day, Delaware had a new senator: a young man named Joe Biden. After that, Sheeran said Biden’s door was always open. “You could reach out for him, and he would listen,” he wrote.

The Biden story isn’t in the movie. There wasn’t room enough for everyone to make it into Scorsese’s epic Mafia biopic, but Salerno does — and with good reason. Salerno ran the most powerful of New York’s five Mafia families. “I’m the fucking boss, that’s who I am,” Salerno once boasted in a secretly recorded conversation. “Connecticut is mine; New Jersey is mine.” Nothing got built in New York without Salerno dipping his meaty hand into the till.

I think that last line is correct.  The Mafia was thick into unions, and it controlled a lot.  Unfortunately, that means that it dealt with conventional businessmen and politicians a lot as well.  This is foreign to a lot of the country, however, and it really never develops in the news, beyond the rumor stage, and it isn't likely to now.

Footnotes:

1.  To my surprise, I haven't done a review of the excellent film yet.  I'll have to do one.  It is well worth watching.

2. According to an article in Politico by David Cay Johnston:

There was something a little peculiar about the construction of Trump Tower, and subsequent Trump projects in New York. Most skyscrapers are steel girder construction, and that was especially true in the 1980s, says John Cross of the American Iron & Steel Institute. Some use pre-cast concrete. Trump chose a costlier and in many ways riskier method: ready-mix concrete. Ready-mix has some advantages: it can speed up construction, and doesn’t require costly fireproofing. But it must be poured quickly or it will harden in the delivery truck drums, ruining them as well as creating costly problems with the building itself. That leaves developers vulnerable to the unions: the worksite gate is union controlled, so even a brief labor slowdown can turn into an expensive disaster.

Salerno, Castellano and other organized crime figures controlled the ready-mix business in New York, and everyone in construction at the time knew it. So did government investigators trying to break up the mob, urged on by major developers such as the LeFrak and Resnick families. Trump ended up not only using ready-mix concrete, but also paying what a federal indictment of Salerno later concluded were inflated prices for it – repeatedly – to S & A Concrete, a firm Salerno and Castellano owned through fronts, and possibly to other mob-controlled firms. As Barrett noted, by choosing to build with ready-mix concrete rather than other materials, Trump put himself “at the mercy of a legion of concrete racketeers.”

Salerno and Castellano and other mob families controlled both the concrete business and the unions involved in delivering and pouring it. The risks this created became clear from testimony later by Irving Fischer, the general contractor who built Trump Tower. Fischer said concrete union “goons” once stormed his offices, holding a knife to throat of his switchboard operator to drive home the seriousness of their demands, which included no-show jobs during construction of Trump Tower.

But with Cohn as his lawyer, Trump apparently had no reason to personally fear Salerno or Castellano—at least, not once he agreed to pay inflated concrete prices. What Trump appeared to receive in return was union peace. That meant the project would never face costly construction or delivery delays.

Venerdì, 11 Agosto, 1922. Violenza

Ground was broken on Chicago's Soldier Field.

A Communist member of Italy's Chamber of Deputies declared that a recent general strike had failed as the proletariat was not sufficiently armed. This provoked a Fascists reaction during which fascist Francesco Giunta, who was armed, pulled out a revolver.  The session was suspended.

Umberto "the Ghost" Valenti, age 30, originally from Sicily, was shot and killed in a New York café under orders of the Genovese crime family.  Valenti, who was a hit man for the D'Aquila crime family, had killed a member of the Morello crime family removing the Camorra as a contender for the illegal liquor trade, but also meaning that competing Mafia crime families were now vying for that role.

Giuseppe Morello.  Probably completely unrelated, but while I was at the University of Wyoming, I twice had calculus classes taught by a graduate student with the last name Morello.  He was an excellent teacher.

This was part of a mob war with interesting aspects.  The Genovese family was part of the legendary "five families" of the New York mafia, but the Morello family was part of the Camorra.  Guiseepe Morello, the unfortunate victim of Valenti, was only recently out of prison at the time of his mob execution and the war turned to control of the former Comorrista's liquor business.  Valenti's murder, ordered by Giuseppe "Joe" Masseria, who had personally lured Valenti into the place of execution, settled the matter with the Genovese's coming out the victors.

Giuseppe "Joe" Masseria.  Masseria died in a hit ordered by Lucky Luciano in 1931.

Thursday, March 16, 1922. Trendsetters.

Walcott Rouse, March 16, 1922

 

On the same day that young Mr. Rouse was roller-skating with his dog in Washington, D.C., Ahmed Fuad Pasha was proclaimed King Fuad I of Egypt, making him one of only two kings in the country's mondern history.

He is mostly remembered for his son, who had a flamboyant if rocky and odd history.  Faud himself had an unhappy relationship with Farouk's mother, and indeed with both of his queens.  His first wife, Shivakiar Khanum Effendi, was his first cousin once removed.  They divorced in 1898, but Faud was shot in the throat by her brother during a dispute with her.  He survived that.  In 1919 he married Nazli Sabri, who was the maternal great-granddaughter of Suleiman Pasha, a French Napoleonic officer who converted to Islam.  She outlived Fuad but immigrated to the United States, reversing her great-grandfather's act, and converting to Catholicism.   She possessed the largest jewelry collection in the world.  Her youngest daughter Fathia also converted to Catholicism.

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was released from Sing Sing and would go on in his criminal career, fairly shortly becoming the head of what was called "Murder Inc".  The latter was an organization in which the Mafia could arrange for contract killings through non Mafia members, thereby insulating them from implication in them.  Buchalter was executed for his crimes in 1944.

Tuesday, March 14, 1972. Release of The Godfather

The Godfather, one of the greatest American movies ever made, premiered on this day in 1972.  We briefly, very briefly, reviewed the movie here in 2016:

Movies In History: The Godfather

Somehow I managed to review The Godfather, Part II, but not the Godfather.  I think that's because when I originally started doing these, the criteria was a bit different.  It'll be noted that my entry on the second movie is extremely short (at least right now, it's likely to be added to at some time).

The Godfather, of course, was the first of this three part series of films and perhaps is the best, although the second film is excellent.  The third film, The Godfather Part III, is lousy and not worth watching. 

This 1972 film presents the story of a New York mafia family.  Based on some discussion with a friend of mine who knows the mafia quite well, this movie, based on Mario Puzo's novel, is very closely based on real mafia characters and events and presents a highly accurate look into the Sicilian American mafia. 

The film takes place in New York, Sicily and Las Vegas, giving a fictionalized account of the spread of the mafia into narcotics and Las Vegas gambling.  It shows in detail the mafia culture of the time and its activities, including how various mafia families looked at different topics, such as the introduction of the illegal narcotics trade.  Very well done, the film presents 1940s New York, so naturally it doesn't seem to be a period piece.  That it is a period piece is more obvious in the portions of the film set in Sicily, but then they'd have to be.

This film is an excellent film in every way, including in cultural and material details.  It's also an acknowledged masterpiece of American film making and worth seeing for that reason alone.

Later reviews of films generally tended to be much longer than this, and with good reason.  This does give a snippet of the movie, which is what we tended to do at the time, but it doesn't state much more than that.

It's interesting to note that this film was released in 1972.  Richard Nixon was President.  The Mafia was still very much a thing.  The Vietnam War was still going on.  The Country was reeling from the turmoil of the 60s.  Inflation was ramping up.

And along comes this heartwarming family drama. . . 

Well, not so much, but oddly enough, to some degree, that's actually what's tended to make the film an enduring classic.  The Corleone family depicted in this movie are involved in prostitution, gambling and vice. They kill to keep their position in the New York crime scene, and they're involved in a protracted set of relationships with other killers.  But the center of their life revolves around their family, which not only incorporates their immediate family, but those who have been drawn into their crime family.

It's warped and compelling at the same time.

It wasn't really meant to be viewed that way.

Indeed, according to at least one source, the actual screenplay, coming when it did, was meant to be a sort of Marxist critique on American capitalism.  "It's only business" was the line that showed up in the film as an excuse for the horrors that were being met out, and that line is emphasized in the sequel.  But that's not how the American public took the film at all.  It was a crime drama, to be sure, but in some weird sort of way, the family aspect of it was uniquely compelling.  For that reason, one television channel actually runs the show over and over again over the Christmas season, as odd, and as warped, as that is.

And it is warped. Having read the book, and viewed the movie, what I think it does, and another reason it's so compelling, is that it illustrates the line from Baptisms, a line which in fact shows up at the end of the movie which features a Baptism.  The movie illustrates "the glamour of evil".

Wednesday, January 21, 1942. Banning pinball

On  this day in 1942 a court in New York ruled that pinball machines were games of chance, not skill, and therefore banned them.

There had been somewhat of a public campaign against the games in New York for some time.  Associated, to a certain degree, with youthful idleness and vice, there was evidence that gaming in New York was controlled by the Mafia, which brought some urgency to the effort by authorities.

I've never really liked pinball machines myself, so its a bit of a mystery to me why they were ever popular, but they were hugely popular at one time, enjoying a big swing of interest in the 1970s, just before video games arrived and basically wiped them out.

Rommel, pushed across North Africa, counterattacks:

Today in World War II History—January 21, 1942

The counterattack, which would reverse much of the gains of Operation Crusader, was a surprise to the British forces and emblematic of the seesaw nature of the fighting in North Africa.

Movies In History: The Godfather

Somehow I managed to review The Godfather, Part II, but not the Godfather.  I think that's because when I originally started doing these, the criteria was a bit different.  It'll be noted that my entry on the second movie is extremely short (at least right now, it's likely to be added to at some time).

The Godfather, of course, was the first of this three part series of films and perhaps is the best, although the second film is excellent.  The third film, The Godfather Part III, is lousy and not worth watching. 

This 1972 film presents the story of a New York mafia family.  Based on some discussion with a friend of mine who knows the mafia quite well, this movie, based on Mario Puzo's novel, is very closely based on real mafia characters and events and presents a highly accurate look into the Sicilian American mafia. 

The film takes place in New York, Sicily and Las Vegas, giving a fictionalized account of the spread of the mafia into narcotics and Las Vegas gambling.  It shows in detail the mafia culture of the time and its activities, including how various mafia families looked at different topics, such as the introduction of the illegal narcotics trade.  Very well done, the film presents 1940s New York, so naturally it doesn't seem to be a period piece.  That it is a period piece is more obvious in the portions of the film set in Sicily, but then they'd have to be.

This film is an excellent film in every way, including in cultural and material details.  It's also an acknowledged masterpiece of American film making and worth seeing for that reason alone.

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Related pages:

Movies In History:  The List

Movies In History: The Godfather, Part II

The Godfather, Part II

This movie gets on the list not for its portrayal of the Mafia, but for its portrayal of urban New York City in the early 20th Century.  Very well done.

I don't really know enough about the Mafia to really comment on how accurate in general this movie, or the first movie, may be in regard to it, but from what I understand, they are fairly close to accurate in their portrayals and the various crime families are in fact closely based on real ones.  The novel, which is a very good one, no doubt is as well.  This movie really excels in its portrayal of early 20th Century New York Italian ghettos, and it does a nice job with Cuba on the end of revolution in the 1950s as well.

The Pizza Connection: Fighting The Mafia Through Food : The Salt : NPR

The Pizza Connection: Fighting The Mafia Through Food : The Salt : NPR

Friday, May 8, 1914. Ag Extension comes into being. Dan Sickles passes on.

The Smith Lever Act went into providing for a national Cooperative Extension Service to be established.

This would allow university agriculture departments to offer rural education programs, which his a good thing.

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING EXTENSION

This is also an example of the American System of economics, which the current GOP detests.  It'd be interesting to see what they'd feel about the introduction of such a program today.

An article about the act from another site in another state:

Maryland 4-H and the Centennial of Smith-Lever

On the same day, the 63d Congress also passed a joint resolution "designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day, and for other purposes"

A small magnitude earthquake, 4.9, hit Giarre, Sicily, and resulted in the destruction of 223 homes and 120 deaths, saying something about the condition in which people lived.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Mount Etna erupted.

This demonstrates, of course, how tectonically active Italy is, but also how poor it was.  Since some point in the 1950s, it's been popular to depict Italy as glamorous, but in fact the country was desperately poor to a large extent prior to that time, and was "backward" by the standards of North Americans and northern Europeans.  Living conditions recalled Medieval conditions in much of the country up until a post-war economic revolution in Europe changed things, something that also helps to explain the rise of fascism in the 1920s, the strong Italian communist party in the 20th Century, criminal organizations, and large-scale emigration.

The funeral of Daniel Sickles was held in New York.

Sickles was a controversial Civil War and early Reconstruction era U.S. Army general.  A political figure, he was the only corps commander in the U.S. Army who had not been to West Point, something that didn't make him popular with Regular Army officers at the time, but then he was otherwise an aggressive figure who would have been unpopular no matter what.

Sickles controversially repositioned his command without authorization from Gen. Meade at Gettysburg, a move that proved to be a mistake. When Meade learned about this, he confronted Sickles but did not order him to withdraw, as it was too late to do so. Soon thereafter, Sickles was struck by a cannonball in the leg, which he survived of course, but which caused him to lose the leg and which ended his field career. He received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg, in spite of his actions in repositioning his command.

A New York state political figure before the war, he'd go on to serve in the House of Representatives, after serving a stint as Minister to Spain, for a single term in 1893-1895.

Sickles was a lawyer by trade, and the son of a patent lawyer.  His pre-war life was far from pacific.  He was admitted to the bar in 1843 and elected to the New York State Assembly in 1847.  In 1852, he married Teresa Bagioli against the wishes of both families, at which time he was 32, and she was about 15 or 16 years old.  While very young, she was reportedly sophisticated for her age, and spoke five languages.

In 1853, he was appointed Secretary of the US Legation in London.  He reportedly took Fanny White, a known prostitute, to London with him, and had already been censured by the New York State Assembly for escorting her into their chambers.  He even presented her to Queen Victoria.  Notably, his wife was home in the U.S. pregnant at the time.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, his wife in turn had an affair with the US Attorney for Washington, DC.  Sickles shot him dead on the street, but was acquitted for the killing in the first use of the temporary insanity defense in the U.S. 

His first wife died in 1867, having never really reconciled after the killing. They had one child.  He remarried to Maria "Cooke", a Spanish woman, in 1871. She also predeceased him. They had three children. As his marriage to an Italian American and a Spanish woman would suggest, he was Catholic, although obviously not the most observant one at points during his lifetime.  His funeral was held at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral.  He was 94 at the time of his death.

As a minor observation, because it extended year around at the time, Catholic observers of Sickles death who may have gone to post funeral receptions would have been restricted to meatless options, assuming there was no local dispensation.

While the controversial veteran of an old war was being buried, the Cheyenne paper was worrying about the possibility of a new one.

There was, of course, reason to worry, but that was no reason not to go watch a presentation about the Frontier wars that had followed the Civil War.

Sunkist oranges were already a thing, which surprises me.

As was Pabst Blue Ribbon, which does not surprise me.

Budweiser was continuing with its European wars theme.

And there was a reason for Postum.

Paramount Pictures was formed through a partnership between Famous Players Film Company and the Lasky Feature Play Company. 

The first French shipboard aircraft launch was made by René Caudron from a ramp constructed over the fore-deck of the seaplane tender Foudre.

The Caudron brothers, Gason and René,  would go on to form an early aircraft manufacturing company, Société des Avions Caudron.  Gaston Caudron died in an aircraft accident in 1915, but René carried on in aircraft manufacturing until the fall of France in World War Two.  He died in 1959.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 7, 1914. A Colorado murder is reported in Wyoming.

1910s, 1914, Cheyenne Wyoming, Colorado (Denver), Crime, Denver Colorado, Laramie Wyoming, Mexican Revolution, Occupation of Veracruz, Personalities, Wyoming (Cheyenne), Wyoming (Laramie)

Thursday, March 18, 1909. Tragedies.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 18:  1909.  Guernsey hotel keeper John "Posey" Ryan murdered his estranged wife, and her daughter, in the Palmer Restaurant in Cheyenne.  From WyoHistory.org. 

In other horrifying Cheyenne news:

In Denmark, Einar Dessau spoke over the radio to a government post six miles distant, becoming the first person to speak over the radio.

I can, on good days, speak well over three times that distance on my GMRS radio, or on bad ones, about half that.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., the fourth child of Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt, was born.  He died eight months later on November 8, 1909.  Five years later the Roosevelt's would name their fifth child the same name.  He would live until 1988.  His son also named Franklin remains with us to this day.

Tampa waterfront, March 18, 1909.

Tampa, March 18, 1909.

Savanah, Georgia, March 18, 1909.