We look at the real story behind Boardwalk Empire and Lucky Luciano.
This may contain SPOILERS for Boardwalk Empire season 5.
Be careful…
Lucky Luciano is best known as the father of organized crime.
He started the Five Families in New York and The Commission that oversaw crime in America.
Hes best known as Charlie Lucky because, well, he was.
OnBoardwalk Empire, Charles Lucky Luciano is played by Vincent Piazza.
Lercara Friddi was a sulfur mining town and Papa Antonio worked in the mines.
Tenth Street was a tough block.
It was always a tough block.
Salvatore went to PS 19, or at least he was supposed to, he was a constant truant.
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Like the other kids in the neighborhood he shoplifted and rolled drunks for cash.
When Salvatore was 14 he quit school and started selling hats for $7 a week.
Hats werent the only thing Luciano was peddling.
Salvatore got pinched for some heroin he had hidden in a hat box.
Salvatore didnt want to be a crum, a guy who worked for a living.
Lucky figured it didnt really make much of a difference what he was selling as long as it sold.
Antonio and Rosalia didnt see it that way and packed him off to the Brooklyn Truant School.
Luciano did six months.
When Salvatore got out of reform school, he had a new nickname, Charlie.
He put together his own gang offering protection to Jewish kids.
It was a bargain.
But not for Meyer Lansky who was too tough to pay up no many how many beatings he took.
And this Meyer Lansky wasnt a big kid either.
He was just tough and thickheaded.
He could take it.
Lansky and Lucania became lifelong friends and business partners.
Lepke was an expert at schlamming, beating guys with a pipe wrapped in newspapers.
Charlie drifted south to Mulberry Street and Little Italy.
The Five Pointers fought over turf, rackets, protection and just the hell of it.
Salvatore From Fourteenth Street hooked up with the Five Pointers just long enough to be noticed by the Mafia.
Charlie also became affiliated with Guiseppe Masseria.
Guys would show up and trade what liquor they had in surplus for liquors other traders had in excess.
Masseria wiped out his Chrystie Street competition Salvatore Mauro and went after Umberto Valentis stash.
Two innocent by-standers were also killed in the ambush, but Masseria was never indicted.
He had an unlimited gun license and postponed his trial until everyone forgot about it.
Valenti was whacked outside a spaghetti joint on the Lower East Side.
Masseria became the number one mob guy in the city.
People called him Joe the Boss.
Masseria put Frankie Yale in charge of Brooklyn and Luciano in charge of his Manhattan operations.
Masseria also made Luciano his right hand man and never went anywhere without him.
Luciano used the Downtown Realty Corp. and Moe Ducores drugstore on 49th Street as a front.
Charlie took a piece of three more drugstores to fence swag and more easily deliver drugs.
The Diamond Gang included Dutch Shultz and Eugene Moran at the time.
Luciano also did business with two Federal undercover cops, Secret Service Agents Jon Lyons and Agent Coyle.
Luciano sold them some heroin, got busted and gave up a Calabrese operation on Mulberry Street.
Their cache was worth hundreds of thousands.
It was bankrolled by Arnold Rothstein, whos name on the street was the Big Bankroll.
Rothstein hedged his investments against insurance policies he took out on his partners, with himself as sole beneficiary.
Through Rothstein, Luciano met George Uffner, who rounded out the rough edges of Lucianos dope trade.
Rothstein was whacked right after Election Day in 1928.
He owed a big marker and had a lot of money riding on the winners.
The voters delivered Rothstein his payoff, but he wasnt around to collect.
(A little side note.
Joe Adonis was really named Joseph Doto, they called him Adonis because he had a good-looking mug.
When Humphrey Bogart saw him in a speak, he decided that was the guy he had to play.
Charlie Lucky and Masseria had some dinner and played some cards at Scarpatos restaurant on Coney Island.
Masseria was dead and Charlie Lucky was the head of the family.
But first there was this other Mustache Pete to take care of, Salvatore Marazano.
Maranzano also thought Charlie Lucky needed some trimming and called in Lepke to do the job.
For 48 hours, starting on September 11, 1931 forty high-up members of the mob started dropping.
Not a Sicilian among them.
They flashed fake badges and Maranzano was out of the picture.
Joseph Bonanno would be his successor.
Dutch Shultz was on the lam at the time and Bo Weinberg was called in to deliver the Bronx.
Weinberg was fitted for cement shoes for his trouble when Schultz came in from the cold.
Charlie Lucky moved into Waldolf Towers.
He hit the town with Lepke, Adonis and Lansky.
Charlie the Boss put gangsters in white shirts and ties.
He mixed business with pleasure at the tracks.
Italian restaurants moved uptown to provide Lucky his pasta.
He took in all the best bouts at Madison Square Garden.
When the Purple Mob hit the city, Luciano provided private entertainment from Broadways biggest show girls.
He had a chauffeur and expensive tastes and he came to the attention of Thomas E. Dewey.
Luciano named Vito Genovese his underboss in 1931.
Genovese was one of gunmen on the Masseria job.
Fiorello La Guardia took to the radio to call for an end to crime.
Dutch Schultz called for Deweys head.
Lucky ended that discussion at a Newark Chop Suey joint.
Pages of ramblings were recorded as Schultz lay dying after a bad fortune cookie.
Lucky got lucky with molls and actresses, in spite of little flare-ups that actually made headlines.
Dewey caught Charlie with his pants down and charged him with pimping in 1936.
A place they called Siberia.
Siberia is out there.
But Luciano dictated major mob moves from his cell.
When the war ended, Luciano was paroled and deported to Italy.
But he also met with his friends Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel in Cuba.
Cuba deported Luciano back to Italy in 1947.
He was confined to Naples, hell for Sicilians, but with better food.
From Naples, Luciano headed the biggest international heroin operation of the time.
Hundreds of people went to Lucianos funeral in Naples.
He was buried in the Lucania family vault at St. Johns Cemetery in Queens, New York.
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