Jonathan Winters stopped mid-sentence on the Tonight Show stage on March 8th, 1973 and did something that made Johnny Carson’s coffee mug freeze halfway to his lips. He pulled a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his red cardigan sweater, set it on the desk between them, and said four words…
The year was 1975. Universal Pictures had just rejected Clint Eastwood’s proposal to direct the outlaw Joseé Wales for the third time. When Clint stood up from the conference table and walked toward the door, studio executive Richard Dayton made a comment that everyone in the room found hilarious. Let him go. He’ll be…
Family restaurant blocked during Grand Torino shoot. Owner losing business, begging crew to move. They refused. Clint Eastwood found out. Rewrote script overnight. When owner watched Grand Torino premiere 6 months later and saw what Clint put in the movie, she broke down crying in the theater. It was October 2008, and the production of…
July 12th, 1979, 2:45 p.m. Joe and Mary’s Italian American restaurant, 205 Nicaboka Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn. Carmine Galante sat in the outdoor garden patio, finishing lunch with his cousin, Joseeppe Torano, and associate Leonard Coppa. The 69-year-old boss of the Banano crime family lit his signature cigar, the one that had earned him the nickname,…
It was the 1930s. Banks were failing. Jobs were disappearing. And across the Midwest, men with Thompson submachine guns were becoming national headlines. You remember Dillinger. You remember Bonnie and Clyde. But there were others. Men like Harvey Bailey, who stole over a million dollars before federal prison closed in. Eddie Green, the planner behind…
In the 1930s, the American underworld built a machine designed for one purpose, silencing anyone who stood in its way. They called it Murder Inc., a crew of contract killers who enforced the syndicate’s rules with ice picks, pistols, and cold efficiency. Tonight, we’re stepping into the lives of five men whose hands helped…
February 25th, 1994, 2:10 p.m. Nesbbit Memorial Hospital, Kingston, Pennsylvania. Russell Buffalino died in a hospital bed at the age of 90. No assassin’s bullet, no prison cell, natural causes. for a man who ran one of America’s most powerful crime families for 35 years, who allegedly ordered the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, who controlled…
It’s the spring of 1986 in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. Inside the Odessa nightclub, a Russian immigrant named Maritt Balagula is running one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in American history. His gasoline bootlegging operation is pulling in $150 million every single month. But on June 12th, a man named Vladimir Resnikov walks through…
February 18, 1979. Flatlands, Brooklyn. A stretch of garbage strewn lots and abandoned buildings near the Belt Parkway. Children playing in the weeds find something they aren’t supposed to find. A refrigerated tractor trailer rusted, sitting in a vacant lot. The door is partially open. Inside, a body. A man bound, gagged, hog tied with…
In 2019, 26 million households watched Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman on Netflix. Joe Peshy played a quiet old man who ran a curtain factory in Pennsylvania. He spoke softly. He moved slowly. He seemed like a side character, a regional figure orbiting bigger names like Hawa and the Five Families. Most viewers had never heard…
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