Word: owney
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Died. George Jean ("Big Frenchy") De Mange, 47, cagey onetime hoodlum, highjacker and bootlegger, latterly a millionaire Broadway restaurateur (The Club Argonaut, Park Avenue. Silver Slipper); of a heart attack; in Manhattan. As a Hudson Duster, Big Frenchy early opposed British-born Owen ("Owney") Madden's Gophers, later joined Owney in the liquor racket. In 1931 Owney scraped up $35,000 to ransom Big Frenchy when itchy-fingered Vincent Coll kidnapped him and threatened his life. Last week Owney was chief mourner at Big Frenchy's funeral, complete with six cars dripping with flowers...
...Harlem, or that Charles ("Lucky") Luciano, head of the prostitute trust (since jailed), was more than a social acquaintance of Jimmy Hines. He did stay at the same hotel and play golf with Luciano on a junket to Hot Springs, Ark. Another Hot Springs habitue was 'Legger Owney Madden (beer...
...returning from a trip to Alaska, Owney trotted up the gangplank of the steamship Victoria, bound for Japan. There, the Emperor decorated him with a medal. Owney continued around the world by way of the Suez Canal and the Azores. All along the way he was met by bigwigs who awarded him medals. In Manhattan he remained only a few hours before he was whisked onto a westbound mail car. When he arrived in Tacoma, Wash., Owney had traveled round the world in 132 days. So in San Francisco, when he somehow got into a bench show with a houseful...
...grew older, Owney became irritable and testy. The Post Office Department frowned on him. But in spite of official displeasure Owney's friends, the clerks, kept him traveling. Owney came to the end of his journeys in Toledo. He bit a post-office clerk, and on June 12, 1897, he was shot. But such was Owney's fame that he was stuffed and placed in a glass case in the Smithsonian Institution. For 40 years Owney sat in his niche in the Smithsonian, awaiting a successor. It is now fairly certain there will never be another quite like...
Next week, as "a gracious link with the tradition of the old service," Owney, having traveled for the first time in 40 years, will sit in state in the lobby of the Commodore Perry Hotel in Toledo, to greet the successors of his longtime friends and protectors...