The Outfit (39 page)

Other Outfit members had maintained a presence in the Cuban paradise. As captured in photos in extant family albums, Curly Humphreys had been traveling with his family to Cuba at least since the early 1940s. Likewise, it was oft reported that Joe Accardo enjoyed regular deep-sea-fishing vacations to Cuba and other Caribbean destinations. However, it is unknown if they conducted gang business on these outings. Despite the dearth of offshore intelligence, hints of the Chicago gang’s growing interest can be seen most conspicuously in the movements of Johnny Rosselli, always the most visible of the core Outfit members.

After the Kefauver circus, Johnny Rosselli’s star began to dim in Tinseltown. When his friend Brian Foy left Eagle Lion Studios, the owners let Rosselli’s contract expire, while Johnny’s parole adviser was telling him that the best way to avoid suspicion was to hold down regular employment. The loss of the Eagle Lion gig was stressful, but it was the dismissal of Johnny by his longtime pal Harry Cohn of Columbia that convinced “Mr. Smooth” to seek out greener pastures. Cohn stunned Rosselli when he refused to give him a producer’s job on the studio lot. “Johnny, how could I give you a job?” Cohn asked. “The stockholders would scalp me.” “You’re a rotten shit,” an angry Rosselli fired back. “Did the stockholders complain when I got ten years of prison because of you?”

There is some compelling evidence that before Rosselli abandoned Flollywood he managed to redress his snub by Cohn. At the time, the once meteoric career of gangster hanger-on Frank Sinatra was in free fall. With his voice in great disrepair, his marriage to Ava Gardner failing fast, and his MGM film contract recently canceled, “The Voice” was believed by his closest friends to be on the verge of suicide. Meanwhile, Harry Cohn was casting for the World War II film
From Here to Eternity.
Sinatra had read the book and was obsessed with landing the role of Private Angelo Maggio, a scrawny Italian-American soldier with a heart bigger than that of GI Joe. It was believed at the time that the film would be awash in Oscar nominations the following year, and Sinatra envisioned the film’s resuscitating his flagging career. The trouble was that Harry Cohn wanted only legitimate seasoned actors to read for the part.

Sinatra managed to sit down with Cohn, and over lunch the producer pulled no punches. “Look, Frank, that’s an actor’s part, a stage actor’s part,” Cohn told the crooner. “You’re nothing but a fucking hoofer.”

Dismayed but not yet resigned to defeat, Sinatra had his white-hot actress wife, Ava Gardner, lobby his case with Cohn’s better half. Other friends were conscripted into the cause, but Cohn gave little indication that he was interested in Sinatra. At this point, according to a number of well-placed sources, Sinatra enlisted the aid of the Outfit’s Johnny Rosselli. News reports initially surfaced that noted New York Commission boss Frank Costello was telling friends that his longtime pal Frank Sinatra had approached him for help with the Cohn situation. Columnist John J. Miller told writer Kitty Kelley that this was not uncommon. “Sinatra and Frank C. were great pals,” Miller remembered. “I know because I used to sit with Frank C. at the Copa and Sinatra would join us all the time. He was always asking favors of the old man, and whenever Sinatra had a problem, he went to Frank C. to solve it.” Apparently, this newest accommodation was facilitated by the Outfit’s Johnny Rosselli.

Although studio executives have denied that a Rosselli intervention ever took place, Rosselli admitted his role to his niece shortly before his death many years later. Former publicist and Rosselli pal Joe Seide said in 1989 that one of Costello’s key men told him how he had flown to L.A. to enlist the Outfit’s Rosselli in the cause. According to Seide: “The Maggio role, Sinatra wasn’t going to get it. There were no two ways about it . . . Johnny Rosselli was the go-between. Johnny was the one who talked to Harry - he was the one who laid it out. That was serious business. It was in the form of ’Look, you do this for me and maybe we won’t do this to you.’ . . . It wasn’t even a secret in the business.”

To no one’s surprise,
From Here to Eternity
was nominated in ten categories for the 1953 Academy Awards, winning eight of the coveted statuettes. Among the winners was Frank Sinatra for Best Supporting Actor. And as he had hoped, Sinatra’s career took off and the singer never looked back. The pivotal role Rosselli played in Sinatra’s turnaround, if in fact it happened, goes a long way toward explaining their lifelong friendship, which began about this time. The episode might also account for Sinatra’s dutiful obliging of Humphreys’ daughter when she needed a date for her high school dance. It was the least he could do for a gang from Chicago who had changed his life forever.

The alleged Rosselli-Sinatra incident was fictionalized in the 1969 novel
The Godfather
(which the Outfit played a key role in getting made as a movie, as will be seen). In that telling, a down-in-the-dumps Italian singer named Johnny Fontaine had his mob sponsors make a studio head “an offer he couldn’t refuse” in order to land their boy a plum film role. In the movie version, the mogul woke up to the sight of his prized racehorse’s severed head in his bed.
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The Outfit’s Emissary Goes Tropical

Rosselli’s friends in Hollywood had not deserted him socially, but they drew the line at having professional relationships with the now infamous ex-con. Thus the Outfit’s travelling emissary set out to conquer new worlds, simultaneously smoothing the way for his associates in Chicago. The top spot on Johnny’s new itinerary was Cuba.

Although his presence on the island is mentioned in only one FBI document, Rosselli’s business expansion into Cuba, as recounted by numerous associates and government agents, is undeniable. The timing for Rosselli and the Outfit could not have been better, since in 1952, Batista-Lansky had retaken the island nation and made up for lost time in establishing their Caribbean Monaco. Batista quickly placed Lansky in charge of gambling at the plush Montmartre Club and the more modest Monseigneur Club, both in downtown Havana. As Batista’s “adviser on gambling reform,” Lansky took an above-the-table retainer of $25,000 per year, and untold millions below. His money-counting crew had a saying that would become a mantra in Las Vegas: “Three for us, one for the government, and two for Meyer.”

Lansky next installed a casino in the elegant ten-story Nacional Hotel, over objections by expatriate Americans such as Ernest Hemingway, who viewed the placid, noncommercial gardens of the Nacional as their private club. Designed by art deco icon Igor Plevitzky, who also drew the plans for The Breakers in Palm Beach and The Biltmore in Coral Gables, the Nacional was (prior to Lansky-Batista) the last place one would expect to find the gambling ilk. With its manicured lawns on a bluff overlooking Havana Harbor, the Nacional had been the perfect setting for afternoon teas and bridge parties for the leisure class. But the avaricious Lansky-Batista changed all that with the addition of a bar, a showroom, and a casino. The Cuban gold rush was now on, and the Outfit’s interests were represented by Los Angeles exile Johnny Rosselli.