Word: gangsterisms
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...fighter plane flying a yellow banner emblazoned with a black "L" dropped a small nylon bag in the plaza of Villalba, Sicily. The bag was addressed to "Uncle Calo"-Calogero Vizzini, the millionaire chief of Italy's Mafia. In the bag was a gold foulard handkerchief belonging "to Gangster Lucky Luciano-a sign that Lucky wanted his old pals to play paisan to the Yanks. Four days later, when three U.S. tanks rolled into town, Vizzini climbed into one of them, clattered off to direct a joint Mafia-Allied operation, which pincered German and Italian troops in western Sicily...
Over the years he became a polished comic who never had to resort to blue material to get a laugh. In fact, he was responsible for the biggest clean joke in theater history. As a speakeasy waiter in the 1927 musical Manhattan Mary, he hovered over a gangster who asked him what there was to eat. "Jelly roll," suggested the comedian, "or perhaps the gentleman would like some nice ladyfingers." "Ladyfingers!" roared the gunsel. "My God, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" Whereupon Wynn ran offstage and returned leading a full-grown sway-backed horse...
...came the clanging overture: China's third atomic explosion in 18 months. Next came the dramatic appearance of the star: Chairman Mao Tse-tung turned up in public view for the first time since last November. Finally, there was the tragic-heroic ending: Peking claimed that five American "gangster" jets had shot down a Chinese "training" aircraft well inside the Chinese border, and vowed that "the debt in blood must be cleared." All very melodramatic, but, as with the best of Chinese opera, it was all just a bit hard to believe...
Occasionally, Hedda came through with some meaty news. She reported as "the truth" a conversation between Producer Harry Cohn and a gangster. Cohn, anxious to break up a blossoming romance between Sammy Davis Jr. and Kim Novak, telephoned Las Vegas. Said Cohn: "You take care of this for me, will you?" "Sure," said the voice on the other end. "I'll just say, 'You've only got one eye; want to try for none?' " On another occasion, Hedda reported that she had chastised Elizabeth Taylor for unseemly conduct after Mike Todd's death, and then...
Charles de Gaulle kept mum on his own police force's involvement in the kidnaping. And when a French magistrate finally played a tape recording reputed to carry the incriminating testimony of Paris Gangster Georges Figon (a participant in the plot who "committed suicide" just before French cops burst through his doorway), all that was heard was a trite cops-and-robbers script for a movie that Figon was working...