From the Vault of Art Shay: Mob Hits
By Staff in News on Apr 20, 2011 4:00PM
This is Harry Davidoff whom I mentioned below. His union reportedly specialized in stealing merchandise from JFK\'s hangars on order. Things like cameras and jewels. I also skulked around the hangars for a couple of supporting frames. Good old Seventies.
Florence, my beautiful wife and assistant, photographed by my son Richard Shay, as we set off to cover the Vegas mob. Florence and I were packing about eight hidden cameras: 1 in my cigarette lighter, two sewn into my coat with holes for lenses, 1 in briefcase (you can see the lens hole). Florence\'s purse has a small auto-wind robot in it - you can see the hole for the lens. The camera in my briefcase was triggered by a cable release snaked into my sleeve. Florence also had a camera in a hollowed-out book.\r\n
Another, but unofficial Jewish Mafia member, Mickey Cohen, and his strongarm man Johnny Stompanato leave Maxwell Street police station after they were warned to leave town by sundown. \"The Stomp\" would be murdered a few weeks later by his girlfriend Lana Turner\'s 14-year-old daughter, wielding a kitchen knife when he allegedly tried to molest her. Word on Hollywood Boulevard was that Lana killed Stompanato, but had the presence of mind to call the great lawyer Jerry \"Get Me\" Giesler at 3 a.m. to work out a murder s\cript more amenable to the police. Like maybe Lana killed him for pimping on the side or siphoning money from her account- and somehow was persuaded that a jury would regard the sniffling of a 14-year-old potential actress would be more believable than the impassioned sniffling of a veteran blonde leading lady known for portraying tragic bitches with lousy boyfriends.
Photos by my wife, Florence, with her robot-in-the-purse camera at the Sands Hotel in Vegas. It shows the head of Cleveland\'s Mafia, Moe Dalitz - my God, maybe he was Jewish too - who minored in counting room skimming in Vegas.
Private gambling den in Ohio. I was caught by the boys\' watchdog Doberman and was so scared I hid the film behind that great hotel masterpiece of that table full of dogs playing poker. The bellboy said this was the original. I charged Life $11 for new pants. Algren said I should have bought the original for the $10 proffered.\"You coulda sold it to a fence on Division Street for $22.50 minimum and used the dough to help afford all the kids you and Florence are knocking out.\"
Hidden camera briefcase. Full page in the \<em\>Saturday Evening Post\<\/em\> of Ohio\'s first Mafia trial - the famous Barbuto one in Columbus. Got a letter from State\'s Attorney threatening me with arrest next time I came to Columbus. \"PS,\" his letter concluded, \"our guys want to know what kind of rig you used.\" Before meal detectors this kind of duty wasn\'t as fraught as it is today.
Tony Accardo, head of Chicago\'s Mafia, sits for an involuntary big picture in \<em\>Life\<\/em\>. I had found out where in the Federal Building he would be penned waiting to testify, then hid in the adjoining cubicle. All it took was a $20 tip to a nice cop I knew. Who pocketed the money saying - in the phrase immortalized by the Traffic Department - \"you don\'t have to do this, son.\" As Algren once told Simone and me, \"Chicago\'s the only town where if you know the right judge and have the dough, you can get Murder One reduced to a felony, and a felony reduced to a misdemeanor, and mopery with intent to creep reduced to simony or dismissed with a grateful smile.\"
My wonderful archivist Erica reminds me that the new John Gotti movie is almost here and they haven't bought any of the Mafia pictures I've made in 55 years of chasing them for 50 stories through 12 states. (Not to mention my constant state of fear.) She pulled up a Life ad I shot of my only Jewish Mafia capo - Harry Davidoff of New York, who wrestled unresisting me to the ground in front of his Long Island mansion. While I was falling I pulled out my tiny hidden Leica and planned to make one shot as I got up and he continued to rant at me.
So here it is as Life used it in an ad, breaching the anonymity I used to enjoy. Threatening phone calls, real and fake - "I know where your kids go to school. Deerfield, right?" - started coming in and Life offered round the clock protection, which I declined. I answered each threat with the same cold phrase. "You hurt anyone in my family motherfucka, I'll track you and your family down and machine gun you to death. And have a nice picture of you delivered to your funeral. No charge."
It rubs off on you.
The nice thing about this adventure was Life paid me $400 and expenses to go to New York for the assignment, then $3,000 for also using the picture in full page ads across the country. I threw the money talk in for my friend and collector Sandro, the great advertising photographer who, I hear, sometimes scores $200,000 and uses 16 assistants for a dangerous ad picture.
So there I was deep in a New Jersey swamp with a 600mm lens, staking out Sam "The Plumber" Cavalcante for Life. Sam and his army of 200 would be the partial model for the Corleone family and Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone, and would also be the model for Tony Di Meo, brought to life in "The Sopranos" around these same dank New Jersey swamps that actor James Gandolfini fleshed out. Riffing with, among other things, guns and a shrink's couch. What other things?
Uh... waste management, gambling, trucking, prostitution, wire fraud, fencing, extortion, pier theft, money laundering, drug running, for starters. In real life and eventually for your cinematic and TV pleasure.
The FBI had tipped us about Sam's "Kenilworth Air Conditioning Company" which they suspected was the financial fountainhead and linchpin of Salvatore's (Sam) Cavalcante's secret empire.
If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Nelson Algren's Chicago, is also available at Amazon.
