Word: profaci
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...plot is just the kind of gangster genealogy that, as they say, names names (Genovese, Anastasia, Profaci, Luciano), although the movie actually has less relation to the underworld history of the past four decades than to old Edward G. Robinson bloodlettings on the Warner Brothers back lot. In the traditional Robinson role of the chairman of the thugs is Joseph Wiseman, a usually reliable actor who has mysteriously decided to portray the Sicilian overlord Salvatore Maranzano in an accent that is pure Transylvanian. Maranzano divides the gangs all over the country into families, then stands back and watches...
...blood between the Colombos and Gallos went back to 1960, when Joey, along with his brothers Larry and Albert ("Kid Blast"), began a rebellion in the Brooklyn fief of the late Joseph Profaci. After a two-year war and at least nine murders, Joseph Colombo took over the Profaci organization. Again last year, the Gallos tried to move in on Colombo's gambling operations. They also opposed Colombo's Italian-American Civil Rights League. Before last summer's rally, Gallo's men moved through the Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn ordering shopkeepers to remain open on Unity...
...drawbridge in a medieval Italian castle town. Last week about 20 members of the Gallo mob were dug in near Joey's old headquarters, a store front on Brooklyn's President Street, just across the street from the redoubt they occupied during the 1961-62 Gallo-Profaci war. If they have followed their practice from those days, they have nailed chicken wire over the windows, to prevent hand grenades from being lobbed in. In such campaigns, security is tight. Sentries are posted on nearby streets to watch for strangers in the neighborhood. The food brought in to feed...
...though their position is now mainly defensive, the Gallos have put out contracts for the deaths of three enemies: 1) Alphonse ("Alley Boy") Persico, the Colombo war chieftain; 2) Nick Bianco, a New England gangster whom the Gallos want killed because he arranged the treaty that ended the Gallo-Profaci war ten years ago while Joey was in jail; and 3) Joe Yacovelli, a Colombo capo. The Gallos believe that Yacovelli had a hand in Joey's murder...
...Joey took pleasure in breaking the arm of one of his clients who was sluggish about paying protection money. He punctured an enemy with ice picks. He had gained his status by serving as one member (Colombo was another) of a five-man execution squad of Mafia Boss Joe Profaci in the late '50s. Police claim they had scored 40 hits. By then he and his brothers had carved out a chunk of the Brooklyn rackets; they turned against Profaci, touching off a gang war in which nine mobsters died and three disappeared...