Having done a lot of research on the Mob and Hollywood, I've been anxious to visit some of these locations myself. Since we had lunch in Beverly Hills, this was the perfect opportunity. Rather than cover them in the order we saw them, I'm going to go in chronological order according to L.A. crime history.
First up is Virginia Hill's house in Beverly Hills, which is kind of hard to see for the trees, but otherwise looks much like it did in 1947. Virginia Hill was the girlfriend of Mobster Bugsy Siegel. After getting in trouble with the Mob due to the excessive cost over-runs of The Flamingo in Vegas (not to mention the million or so dollars he and Hill had skimmed from the project), Siegel met his end here on June 20, 1947. He and bodyguard Alan Smiley had just come back from dinner and sat down on the couch. Nine shots from an assassin's rifle went through the window. Smiley had one bullet pass through his coat sleeve, but was otherwise unharmed after diving for the fireplace.
Following Bugsy's passing, all of his rackets went to his second-in-command, Mickey Cohen. Mickey was already running things in L.A. since Bugsy was spending all of his time in Vegas anyway. This didn't set well with fellow Mobster Jack Dragna, an Old World Sicilian who didn't like Jews in the Italian Mafia and had hoped to reclaim control with Bugsy gone.
Mickey lived in this small (but still expensive) house in Brentwood, not too far from Beverly Hills. Notice how it bears absolutely ZERO resemblance to the sprawling, mountaintop fortress depicted in Gangster Squad.
Following Bugsy's death, Dragna and his cohorts decided to take Mickey out on their own in what became known as The Battle of the Sunset Strip (Mickey's primary territory). Dragna and Co. made SIX attempts on Mickey's life, all of them unsuccessful. The first attempt was to plant a bomb, but the fuse didn't go off and Mickey discovered it the next morning. The second attempt was a shotgun ambush as he pulled into the driveway. Luckily for Mickey, the driveway is circular, so he managed to escape largely unharmed by ducking down, stepping on the gas, and driving blind for a couple of blocks. The third attempt was to plant another bomb under Mickey's bedroom (his wife, LaVonne, had her own room at the other end of the house). This one did go off, but the bomb was inadvertently placed under Mickey's closet safe, which shielded much of the blast. The wall was destroyed, along with much of Mickey's wardrobe, but again he was unharmed.
Eventually, in 1950, Mickey was sent away for tax evasion. His right-hand man was a young womanizer named Johnny Stompanato, who developed quite a reputation dating Hollywood actresses. Frank Sinatra was most interested in keeping Johnny away from Ava Gardner.
Following Mickey's incarceration, Johnny began dating Lana Turner. It was a tumultuous relationship, to say the least. Lana lived at this house in Beverly Hills with her daughter, Cheryl Crane. One night during yet another heated battle between Lana and Johnny, Cheryl ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife to protect her mother. She ran upstairs and stabbed Johnny, killing him. She and Lana claimed it was accidental. Eventually, after much legal tumult, Cheryl was acquitted on the grounds that she was protecting her mother.
No comments:
Post a Comment