The Godfather, The Freedmen, The Untouchables…Among the most emblematic creations of the seventh art are a certain number of films featuring the mafia. It is these stories of licensed crooks and opportunists who started from nothing that have ennobled American filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma.
But the mafia was not always in front of the camera: it often pulled the strings on the fringes of the industry, in the shadows of the big studios. “Cinema is the most corrupt environment I know. Las Vegas is even better than Hollywood.observed the Italian-American writer Mario Puzo, author of the novel The Godfather and co-writer of the saga of the same name with Francis Ford Coppola.
The protest figure of the thug seduced America from the 1930s, at a time when the Great Depression freed the antihero (like Batman, created during this period). Cinema celebrates bandits, misfits and mafiosi, like so many Robin Hoods converted into gun carriers. The public asks for more.
It must be said that in this first half of the 20th centurye century, mobsters as much as stars obsess the social directory: they frequent the same casinos, dine in the same restaurants, cultivate the same vices (gambling, prostitution, drugs). “Thugs are like jewels that you can parade around during dinners on the town”admitted Henry Hill, notorious gangster of the 1960s and 1970s, played by Ray Liotta in The Freedmenby Martin Scorsese (released in 1990).
Once upon a time in America
But it’s not just the chic, the glamor and the glitter that attracts the tentacles of the mafia as far from New York or Chicago. The cinema industry is an excellent lever for money laundering: you can sink millions of dollars into a big production, for a huge return on investment in a few years.
At the same time, the little hands in the industry extort the owners of cinemas. The unions, born in 1921 in Hollywood, were subdued by thugs who broke the picket lines against studio pay, putting everyone back to work and blocking salaries.
It was the era when paparazzi immortalized starlets and murderers in the same photos. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, a notorious conman, is familiar with actors Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Cary Grant. George Raft, a very prominent actor and dancer in the 1930s (made famous for his portrayal of a gangster in the Scarface by Howard Hawks in 1932), frequents certain bigwigs of organized crime.
Even Marilyn Monroe owes her emergence to the influence of Johnny Rosselli, an Italian-American gangster from Chicago, who allegedly twisted the arm of the head of Columbia to get her a role! “Gangsters tried to imitate Hollywood as much as Hollywood tried to imitate gangsters. The filmmakers were very impressed by the gangsters and vice versa. They were all part of the romantic whirlwind of American drama.said actor Warren Beatty, who played Bugsy Siegel in the cinema in 1991, in the film Bugsyby Barry Levinson.
What’s more, the worlds of cinema and the underworld come together on several points. Lands conducive to easy money, operating in isolation, they are frequented by immigrants and descendants of immigrants lured by the American dream (Frank Sinatra’s grandfather came from the same Sicilian village as the mafioso Lucky Luciano). Short-circuited by Prohibition, the supply of alcohol and drugs – notably cocaine, the guilty pleasure of the Hollywood elite – strengthened the links between show business and the mafia.
In a context where intimidation, bribery and trafficking take place behind the scenes of major productions, few studios keep their hands clean. Some agree to let the dirty money of the underworld fill their own funds, or to use gangsters to keep their employees on the right track.
Many extras from the first part of the Godfather came from the underworld and “provided” by gangster Joe Colombo, who had the privilege of proofreading the script before filming.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer even opened its own brothel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles (California), with a notable feature: the “girls” were selected for their resemblance to movie stars of the time, such as Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck. The famous American production studio goes so far as to rent the services of its costume designers and hairdressers to employees!
The mafiosi in charge
The presence of the mafia in the filmmakers’ entourage will also influence their art. On the set of Godfatherdirected by Francis Ford Coppola (1972), producer Al Ruddy is informed by the LA police that he is being followed by thugs… The mafia is indeed wary of the stereotypical image that Hollywood productions project of them.
The big guys of godfather Joseph “Joe” Colombo therefore come to get involved in the negotiations, which will generate a more positive, almost mythologized representation of the Italian-American mafia in the saga, far from the usual clichés. Moreover, many of the extras in the first part came from the underworld and were “provided” by Joe Colombo, who had the privilege of rereading the script before filming!
When does the mafia’s imprint begin to fade from Hollywood? Starting in the 1950s, the American government launched investigations into corruption and organized crime, culminating in the 1970 RICO Act (“Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act”), which cut off the tentacles of the mafia.
Bugsy Siegel was assassinated in 1947, Johnny Rosselli in 1976, and many of their accomplices were sent to prison or forced to become informants. But there still remain, today, some traces of these dangerous connections between organized crime and the Hollywood galaxy… Hasn’t omerta – the mafiosi’s law of silence – covered up the actions of Hollywood’s sexual predators for years?
