Wise Guys

Earlier today a viewer made a rather unexpected comment regarding one of my youtube videos. The video in question is titled "PS 40 5th Grade Play", and is exactly what the name implies. I taped the entire play, trimmed it down to about 7 minutes, and then uploaded it to my youtube channel. Anyway, the viewer's comment was "This was the school that mob boss Lucky Luciano attended". And, lo and behold, it appears that he is correct.

Did anyone know that NYC has a museum dedicated to organized crime? I made that discovery while attempting to verify my viewer's claim. The grandly named Museum of the American Gangster is housed in a former speakeasy, and is located at 80 St. Marks Place in Manhattan. If you follow this link to their web page about Mr. Luciano, then you will see that he did indeed attend the same school as my son Andrew. It would seem that the famous Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky attended PS 40 as well, and the school is where the two boys began a life-long friendship.

I recall reading something several years back about efforts to build an organized crime museum out in Las Vegas. And I remember thinking that a museum like that belongs in New York City. Nearly all of the iconic mob figures hailed from NYC, including Chicago's Al Capone, who was born in Brooklyn. I'm not certain what happened with the Vegas project, but I am very much looking forward to paying my first visit to that former speakeasy.

Andrew is quite impressed that such a infamous character attended the same school that he just graduated from this past year. Andrew has heard of Al Capone, but not Charles "Lucky" Luciano. I told him that Luciano helped us with the invasion of Sicily in WWII by establishing contact with his counterparts in Italy, and urging them not to cooperate with the Germans and Italians defending the Island. Whatever he did was deemed valuable enough to spring him from prison, but he was deported to Italy immediately. Meyer Lansky is an equally fascinating character. I think that he was the inspiration for the Jewish mob boss in The Godfather movies.

Andrew took on the role of President Kennedy in the play and delivered a condensed version of his inaugural address. He enjoyed playing the president, but I suspect that if we had known this sooner, Andrew would have made a pitch for including the school's most notorious alumni in the play. He already had the dark suit; all that was missing was the fedora and violin case.