From The Vault Of Art Shay: The Mafia Social
By Art Shay in News on Jul 11, 2012 6:00PM
(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. In this week's look at his archives, Art shares more stories about tailing the Mafia.)
I knew a boastful Mafia man, now residing in a respectably gated cemetery, who claimed he delayed a reprisal murder so he could watch Tony Soprano put the moves on his leggy shrink. I don't know how the infusion of real with fictional Mafia women will play in Chicago, but judging from the advanced PR branch of the modern mob, the impoverished but still slavering Press, it should do as well as the Jersey boys' branch. The slavering trade is now bigger than the slavery trade used to be.
In chasing the Mafia 50 or 60 times to feed the upper end of the slavering Press: Time, Life, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post and , in the old days, Sports Illustrated, my sometimes foil and assistant, my beautiful, brainy wife Florence, a famed rare book dealer, and I observed that the Mob 's foibles were just as human as those of our less colorful ordinary friends and relatives. We took, along with Life magazine, a special interest back in the solemn 60s, of the colorful pater familias of the Chicago mob, Tony Accardo, aka "Big Tuna," And his fellow denizens of the Midwest crime deeps —see some of their nicknames below.
(My friend Nelson Algren died before he could finish a book he wanted us to do, called "Chicago's Deeps, Steeps and Creeps.")
As it happens,Gangland Chicago by J.P.Rich noted in 2008 in its "History of the Outfit" that its "social event of the year began" at St. Luke's in River Forest, Ill. "The real wedding festivities didn't begin until later that evening at the reception, which was held at the syndicate-controlled Villa Venice, a night club with Italian decor, complete with gondolas coursing the surprised Des Plaines River.
The wedding couple was Linda Lee Accardo, Tony's daughter and Mike Palermo,son of an old Accardo friend. Some of the 700 guests observed by the FBI: Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio, Joseph "Doves" Aiuppa, Jim "Jimmy The Bomber" Catuara, John "Jackie the Lackey" Cerone, Samuel "Mad Sam" DeStefano, Joseph "Joey" Glimco, Momo "Sam" Giancana (who betimes shared a super- hot lady with Sinatra and JFK),Murray "The Camel" Humphreys et al.
A New Orleans-Hollywood, er, producer, Papa Bouchet, produced a scantily clad assortment of six foot tall chorines who also danced, to entertain the Mafia wives and girlfriends in attendance.
Florence and I had to shoot around a giant empty truck parked by a friend of Accardo's athwart the main entrance, to block the paparazzi of the day. Tony had a thing about his privacy. At one of his annual picnics in his River Forest backyard the enterprising Chicago Tribune had prevailed on a neighbor to let them shoot some overall pictures. The Tribune ran them, the FBI acquired them, and a couple of months later the neighbor who had admitted the Trib fotog to his upper window, found his rather large business burned to the ground. No clues.
Some years later, Accardo's house was burgled while he was away. Nothing very expensive was missing, but three months later all six of the burglars were found strangled, separately. No clues.
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, Chicago's Nelson Algren, is also available at Amazon.