Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [33]
During the Sixties, there were five Mafia “families” dividing up the pie of various turfs and rackets in New York City, under the control of one Godfatherlike “boss of bosses.” Although the modern Mafia encourages more of a “businessman” image and tries to play down the bloodletting, the families are generally fighting among themselves for greater power and influence, and one of the most successful families during the Sixties was the Profaci family, which later became the Colombo family. In intermittent but very bloody opposition to them were the Gallo family, led by the brothers Larry, Joey, and Albert “Kid Blast” Gallo, who were never quite able to attain equivalent power even though they remained the overlords of one small section of Brooklyn. According to a detailed analysis of mob warfare by Fred J. Cook in the June 4, 1972, New York Times, “The severe bloodletting in the Profaci-Colombo family began when the greed of the Gallo brothers set them lusting after [the former's] power. Indeed, it touched them with the kind of madness that drives a shark berserk in a blood-stained sea,” and the Gallos tried every lethal ploy they could think of to muscle their way into a bigger piece of the action. In October 1957, Joey Gallo, acting on a Profaci contract, blasted the notorious Albert Anas-tasia, onetime lord of Murder, Inc., out of his barber's chair in a celebrated rubout, thus paving the way for Carlo Gambino to become, and remain, boss of bosses through the Sixties and early Seventies. But the Gallos never found any more favor with Gambino than they had with his predecessors, so they embarked on an all-out war with the Profacis that lasted from 1961 to 1963; though there were no real winners, the Gallos were no match either in numbers or tactically for the Profacis, and the war ended in early 1962 when Crazy Joe Gallo was sentenced to seven to fourteen years in prison for extortion, and, a few months later, Joseph Profaci died of cancer.
While Joe Gallo was in prison, he read extensively, becoming a sort of jailhouse intellectual, and when he was finally released in 1970 he began to cultivate contacts in the literary and show business worlds, who welcomed him to their parties and obviously considered him an exotic amusement indeed. Jimmy Breslin's book The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight had been inspired by the legendary ineptitude of the Gallo family in their early-Sixties bids for power, and Joey developed close contacts with Jerry Orbach, who played a character corresponding to him in the movie based on the book, and his wife Marta, with whom, in the last months of his life, Joey began collaborating on various autobiographical literary projects. Out of Radical Chic bloomed Mafia Chic; he became something of an aboveground social figure, and told columnist Earl Wilson that he was “going straight.”
Apparently that was a lie, however. While Joey was in prison, his gang languishing and awaiting his return, a new figure had arisen from the Profaci ranks to bring New York mob power to a whole new, all but avant-garde level: Joe Colombo. Colombo founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League, an organization ostensibly devoted to deploring and “legitimately” opposing the “prejudice” which caused most Americans to link mob activities with citizens of Italian descent. Between 150,000 and 250,000 Italian-Americans joined the League, and the impact on politicians was considerable, which was how Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay ended up having their pictures taken with underworld toughs. Joey Gallo returned from prison with his power on his own turf intact, but of course completely cut out of the Colombo empire. On June 28, 1971, Joe Colombo was gunned down by a supposedly lone and uncontracted black man in front of thousands of his horrified followers at a rally in Columbus Circle. The consensus was