Word: lucania
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Behind Red Lights (by Samuel Shipman & Beth Brown; Jack Curtis, producer) is a melodrama based on the mechanics of organized harlotry as illumined in the Manhattan trial of a squint-eyed vice tycoon named Charles ("Lucky'') Lucania (TIME, June 15). One character definitely not drawn from the Lucania dossier is a noble-hearted ''madam" who sheds a steady stream of sweetness & light, tries to dissuade new girls from becoming prostitutes before permitting them to do so, refuses to be coerced by the vice ring and connives with the authorities to smash it. Near...
Many a racketeer last week viewed with alarm a reversion to horse-&-buggy justice when a Manhattan jury pointed Charles ("Lucky") Lucania and eight of his lieutenants toward stiff jail sentences by convicting them, not on an oblique income tax-evasion charge but directly for doing illicit business...
...Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey questioned them on the details of their occupation (TIME, May 25). No old-fashioned vice trial was this. The prosecutor had been appointed at the request of New York's Governor Lehman, not to wipe out an ancient profession but to abolish rackets. Lucania and his prosperous executives had terrorized a large section of the city's dealers in flesh, had put prostitution on a chain-store basis...
...long trial through which sleek Businessman Lucania sat with reptilian calm, his high-powered lawyers launched into a 13-hour summation for the defense, attacking the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses, declaring that strumpets had been taken on wild parties by the state in order to induce them to testify. Mr. Dewey contented himself with a seven-hour answer. Urging the jury not to spare Lucania, he declared: "Unless you are willing to convict the top man you might as well acquit everyone...
...Saturday night when the jury of business and professional men retired to consider the case. Rather than lock up the jurymen, Justice McCook went to sleep in his chambers. Lucania and his friends lay down in their cells. Their wives went home. Just after 5 the next morning the judge was roused from his sleep. Lucania & friends shuffled into court in wrinkled clothes. Prosecutor Dewey, on the other hand, bounced in with a fresh shave...