Reviewed: The Lansky Legacy: The Life and Letters of Meyer Lansky
Authors: Meyer Lansky II and S. J. Peddie
Meyer Lansky didn’t have a flashy nickname like Phil “The Stick” Kovolick or Willie “Ice Pick” Alderman. Lansky probably preferred it that way. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. It was bad for business. Some may know him as “The Mob’s Accountant” or from the character Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II. He was born at the turn of the century in 1902. He grew up as a tough Jewish kid in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. With his best friend Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, they formed The Bugs and Meyer Mob.
There was money to be made during Prohibition in the early 1920s. Arnold Rothstein recruited Siegel and Lansky. “Rothstein was famous for fixing the 1919 World Series in the notorious Black Sox Scandal, although it isn’t entirely clear whether he fixed the series or merely capitalized on it… He preferred to bankroll the jobs he had in mind and let other people take the risks. Tough, young Jewish kids were the perfect kind of talent.”
This is just the beginning of Meyer Lansky’s life story as told in the book The Lansky Legacy: The Life and Letters of Meyer Lansky. The book was written by his grandson Meyer Lansky II along with investigative journalist S. J. Peddie. I had a hard time figuring out how much I could include in this review. The story spans 80 years of relationships with colorful figures like Charles “Lucky” Luciano and even “Ol’ Blue Eyes” Frank Sinatra. The Godfather movies were famous for being over three-hour sagas, so how could I fit it all in this column?
The book looked intimidating. It’s thick. I wasn’t sure if I could read the whole thing and have time to write the review and make my deadline. There were shorter books in my stack from the Israelite, but I was intrigued to learn about Jewish mobsters. The picture on the cover showed a man in a black suit walking his little dog past a parking meter. He was wearing sunglasses. His head was turned looking behind him. Was someone following him? I wasn’t sure. I took the gamble, and I opened the cover.
I read over 100 pages the first day. I wouldn’t call myself a fast reader, especially since I take notes along the way. I suspect that S. J. Peddie, the author of Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John “Sonny” Franzese, wrote much of the narrative, with Meyer Lansky II adding his family perspectives. Many of the chapters read like they were written by a journalist—succinct and to the point. It kept the pages turning as we traveled through the years of Lansky’s life from New York to Vegas to Cuba and to Israel. After three days, I got to the end, and I felt sad for Meyer Lansky. ‘Why don’t the feds stop harassing him already!’ I thought.
Since the story was told by Lansky’s grandson, many won’t be surprised by my reaction. But Antoinette Giancana, daughter of mob boss Sam Giancana, said it best in the book’s foreword. She wrote, “They were all very sweet people. In the private way, the way we were whenever we got together with these guys; it was family. In the outside world, they would be treacherous. I wouldn’t trust them. But as long as they treated you well personally, it was all that really counted.”
Grandson Lansky explained, “When I see the phonies acting like experts on a stage, it makes me mad, I want to set the record straight. My grandfather was the same way. He hated hypocrites. That’s why I wrote this book. I want to give people an inside look at what really went on, what the life was like. My grandfather was famous for keeping all his business deals in his head. Fortunately for posterity’s sake, when it came to his family, he wrote it down.”
Lansky “wrote it down” in the form of letters to his son Paul. Lansky’s personal letters are quoted throughout. The book also includes an extensive appendix with photocopies of all of the letters plus transcriptions. In this excerpt, I think Lansky sounds more like a Jewish mother than a mobster. He was writing about his son Paul’s wife Edna. “This is all the lecturing for now. Get some good food in the house for the Family. Edna looked a little underfed. Maybe if you gave her a better grade a food you could get her off the starches and desserts.”
Meyer Lansky was a gifted student who could recite Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by heart. He also memorized the Gettysburg Address. The book stated that he jumped ahead from first grade to sixth grade in only three years.
But math was his special talent. “As he watched gamblers lose money…he set his sights on controlling the game. One way to do that was to calculate the odds, and it turned out that he had an uncanny ability to figure them out. Later in life, Lansky’s business associates marveled at his genius with numbers. Able to do complex calculations in his head, he never wrote anything down. As he learned more about business and making money on the streets, that talent became a crucial survival skill. Not leaving a paper trail made it harder for investigators to pin anything on him.”
In one of his letters, he writes about his son Buddy giving him an algebra book as a present. I can imagine a different world where Meyer Lansky could have become Dr. Lansky the famous physicist or mathematician.
Lansky’s main focus in his business was gambling. He built casinos with all of the amenities to attract the top clientele. He operated successful casinos in Florida, Las Vegas, and Cuba. But then came the Kefauver hearings investigating illegal gambling and other organized crime activity. The Senate hearings televised in 1951 were run by Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver.
The Kefauver hearings were way before the O.J. trial, but I got the feeling that the country became immersed in a similar sensational atmosphere. It was during the infancy of TV. It’s estimated that between 20 and 30 million people were glued to their TV sets to get a glimpse of a mobster or his girlfriend who was wearing a $5,000 mink stole.
I thought back to what the grandson said about his grandfather hating hypocrites. It turned out that Senator Kefauver gambled. Here is a quote about Lansky having to testify. “He researched Kefauver. He knew that he gambled heavily. According to Sandra [Lansky’s daughter], he and Polakoff met with Kefauver privately and showed him all the gambling IOUs he had accumulated. Whether or not her claim about the IOUs was true, Lansky and his lawyer managed to persuade the sanctimonious senator to allow him to testify privately—a major victory.”
I can only imagine what Lansky would think today if he saw that sports betting companies like FanDuel were sponsors of NFL football games!
But gambling wasn’t the only problem. The book doesn’t gloss over the killings. Witnesses were killed, rival mob bosses were killed, and territory was divided up. And Lansky was thought to have approved his share. Appendix G is called “Mafia Boss Succession.” It goes through almost 10 pages of Mafia boss successions from 1890 to the present day. It reminded me of a list of successions from the royal families of Europe, but instead of King Henry II, you had names like Salvatore “Banana King” Catanzaro.
I have so much more I could say, but there just isn’t room. I would love to talk about his struggles getting a visa to live in Israel, for example. The book has plenty of engaging details from Lansky’s life. But it’s really a book about a father and a grandfather who wrote advice like, “It is wise for you to buy land; it is the best insurance policy provided you don’t become a slave for it. Make sure your earnings will permit you to make your payments and taxes. Hold the land as long as you can, it has to go up.”
I discovered that the picture on the cover was Meyer Lansky walking his dog Bruiser. His grandson said, “He’d walk Bruiser—by now blind—along Collins Avenue and nod to neighbors. It seemed as if he went everywhere with Bruiser. People regarded it as an incongruous sight—a powerful and feared mobster patiently walking a tiny, disabled dog.”