Joe Mantegna
Joseph Anthony Mantegna is an American actor, producer and director. Mantegna began his career on stage in 1969 with the musical Hair, he earned a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for portraying Richard Roma in the first American production of David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, the first of many collaborations with Mamet. Mantegna was awarded the Tony and Joseph Jefferson Awards for his role in David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize–winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, his long-standing association with Mamet includes the premieres of A Life in the Theatre, The Disappearance of the Jews and Speed-the-Plow on Broadway. Mantegna has directed a lauded production of Mamet's Lakeboat, which enjoyed a successful theatrical run in Los Angeles, he directed the film version. In addition to theatrical appearances directed by Mamet, Mantegna appeared in Mamet's films House of Games, Things Change, Homicide Expanding to film and television, Mantegna is best known for his roles in box office hits including Three Amigos, The Godfather Part III, Forget Paris, Up Close and Personal.
Since 2007, he has starred in the CBS television series Criminal Minds as FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi. Beginning with the 1991 episode "Bart the Murderer", Mantegna has voiced the recurring role of mob boss Fat Tony on the animated series The Simpsons, as well as The Simpsons Movie. Mantegna has starred in the television series Joan of Arcadia, he earned Emmy Award nominations for his roles in three different miniseries: The Last Don, The Rat Pack, The Starter Wife. He has served as executive producer for various movies and television movies, including Corduroy and Lakeboat, which he directed. Additionally, he played Robert B. Parker's fictional detective Spenser in three made-for-TV movies between 1999 and 2001, has narrated a number of audiobook readings of the Spenser novels. An avid firearms enthusiast, he is the host of MidwayUSA's Gun Stories on the cable television Outdoor Channel. Of Italian and Sicilian descendance, Mantegna was born in 1947 in Chicago, Illinois, his parents were Mary Ann, a shipping clerk from Acquaviva delle Fonti, Italy who died in 2017 at the age of 101, Joseph Henry Mantegna, an insurance salesman from Calascibetta, Sicily who died in 1971 of tuberculosis.
Mantegna attended J. Sterling Morton High School East in Cicero, Illinois, he studied acting at the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University from 1967–69. As a young man in Chicago, he played bass in a band called The Apocryphals, which played with another local group, The Missing Links, who went on to form the band Chicago. Mantegna is still close to the original members of Chicago and keeps in touch with his old bandmates as well. Mantegna made his acting debut in the 1969 stage production of Hair and debuted on Broadway in Working, he co-wrote Bleacher Bums, an award-winning play, first performed at Chicago's Organic Theater Company, was a member of its original cast. In the movie Xanadu, he had a small role, cut, although since his name is in the film's credits, Mantegna gets residuals for the film. Mantegna won a Tony award for his portrayal of Richard Roma in David Mamet's play Glengarry Glen Ross, he has had a successful association with Mamet, appearing in a number of his works. Mantegna made his feature film debut in Medusa Challenger.
He played womanizing dentist Bruce Fleckstein in Compromising Positions. He starred in an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1985 called Shelter Skelter, his other early film roles were supporting performances in The Money Pit and Suspect. He starred in the critically acclaimed movies House of Games and Things Change, both written by Mamet, he and Things Change co-star Don Ameche received the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival. In 1991, Mantegna starred in another Mamet story, the praised police thriller Homicide. Mantegna has played a wide range of roles, from the comic, as a jaded disc jockey in Airheads and an inept kidnapper from Baby's Day Out, to the dramatic, in roles such as Joey Zasa, a treacherous mobster in The Godfather Part III and an Emmy-nominated performance as singer Dean Martin in HBO's film The Rat Pack. Mantegna has a recurring role in the animated series The Simpsons as the voice of mob boss Anthony "Fat Tony" D'Amico, he insists on voicing the character every time he appears, no matter.
To quote: "If Fat Tony sneezes, I want to be there." However, in one instance, Phil Hartman voiced Fat Tony in the episode "A Fish Called Selma". Mantegna spoofed himself when he hosted Saturday Night Live for the 1990–1991 season in which he calmly began his monologue by saying he did not wish to be typecast from his gangster roles. A disappointed little boy and his father leave, as they mistakenly believed the host would be Joe Montana due to the similar names. Mantegna began speaking in a low, controlled voice to the little boy, telling him it was best to stay in the audience and respect his performance. In 2002, Mantegna starred as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Joseph Novelli, on the CBS midseason replacement drama First Monday. Mantegna received the Lifetime Achievement Award on April 26, 2004, at the Los Angeles Italian Film Festival. On August 11, 2007, Mante
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, journalist and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Ebert and Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel helped popularize nationally televised film reviewing when they co-hosted the PBS show Sneak Previews, followed by several variously named At the Movies programs; the two verbally traded humorous barbs while discussing films. They created and trademarked the phrase "Two Thumbs Up", used when both hosts gave the same film a positive review. After Siskel died in 1999, Ebert continued hosting the show with various co-hosts and starting in 2000, with Richard Roeper. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic", Tom Van Riper of Forbes described him as "the most powerful pundit in America", Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America".
Ebert lived with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands beginning in 2002. In 2006, he required treatment necessitating the removal of his lower jaw, leaving him disfigured and costing him the ability to speak or eat normally, his ability to write remained unimpaired and he continued to publish both online and in print until his death on April 4, 2013. Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana, the only child of Annabel, a bookkeeper, Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician, he was raised Roman Catholic, attending St. Mary's elementary school and serving as an altar boy in Urbana, his paternal grandparents were German his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch. Ebert's interest in journalism began when he was a student at Urbana High School, where he was a sports writer for The News-Gazette in Champaign, Illinois. In his senior year, he was class president and editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper, The Echo. In 1958, he won the Illinois High School Association state speech championship in "radio speaking", an event that simulates radio newscasts.
Regarding his early influences in film criticism, Ebert wrote in the 1998 parody collection Mad About the Movies: Ebert began taking classes at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign as an early-entrance student, completing his high school courses while taking his first university class. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1960, Ebert attended and received his undergraduate degree in 1964. While at the University of Illinois, Ebert worked as a reporter for The Daily Illini and served as its editor during his senior year while continuing to work as a reporter for the News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; as an undergraduate, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and president of the U. S. Student Press Association. One of the first movie reviews he wrote was a review of La Dolce Vita, published in The Daily Illini in October 1961. Ebert spent a semester as a master's student in the department of English there before attending the University of Cape Town on a Rotary fellowship for a year.
He returned from Cape Town to his graduate studies at Illinois for two more semesters and after being accepted as a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, he prepared to move to Chicago. He needed a job to support himself while he worked on his doctorate and so applied to the Chicago Daily News, hoping that, as he had sold freelance pieces to the Daily News, including an article on the death of writer Brendan Behan, he would be hired by editor Herman Kogan. Instead Kogan referred Ebert to the city editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Hoge, who hired Ebert as a reporter and feature writer at the Sun-Times in 1966, he attended doctoral classes at the University of Chicago while working as a general reporter at the Sun-Times for a year. After movie critic Eleanor Keane left the Sun-Times in April 1967, editor Robert Zonka gave the job to Ebert; the load of graduate school and being a film critic proved too much, so Ebert left the University of Chicago to focus his energies on film criticism.
Ebert began his career as a film critic in 1967. That same year, he met film critic Pauline Kael for the first time at the New York Film Festival. After he sent her some of his columns, she told him they were "the best film criticism being done in American newspapers today"; that same year, Ebert's first book, a history of the University of Illinois titled Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life, was published by the University's press. In 1969, his review of Night of the Living Dead was published in Reader's Digest. Ebert co-wrote the screenplay for the 1970 Russ Meyer film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and sometimes joked about being responsible for the film, poorly received on its release yet has become a cult classic. Ebert and Meyer made Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Up!, other films, were involved in the ill-fated Sex Pistols movie Who Killed Bambi? Starting in 1968, Ebert worked for the University of Chicago as an adjunct lecturer, teaching a night class on film at the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies.
In 1975, Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. As of 2007, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad. Ebert publish
Virginia Hill
Virginia Hill was an American organized crime figure. An Alabama native, Hill became a Chicago outfit courier during the mid-1930s. Hill was famous for being the girlfriend of mobster Bugsy Siegel. Born Onie Virginia Hill on August 26, 1916 in Lipscomb, Hill was the seventh of ten children born to horse trader W. M. Hill and his wife Margaret. By the time Hill was eight, she moved to Marietta, Georgia with her mother and siblings after her parents separated. Hill attended Roberts Grammar School, where she completed eighth grade dropped out. In November 1931, Hill 15, married 16-year-old George Randell. In 1933 Hill left Georgia for Chicago with the hopes of breaking into show business. Once in Chicago, Hill separated from Randell. Hill found a job as a waitress at the mob-run San Carlo Italian Village exhibit during the 1933 Century of Progress Chicago's World Fair. and supplemented her income working as a prostitute. She came to the attention of a wealthy bookmaker and gambler, Joseph Epstein, who became her financial advisor and reputed lover, Hill's entree into the Chicago Outfit crime organization.
In addition to being sexually passed around the Chicago mob, she was used as a courier to pass messages between mobsters. One contemporary commentator described Hill as:... more than just another set of curves. She had... a good memory, a considerable flair for hole-in-the-corner diplomacy to allay the suspicions of trigger-happy killers and a dual personality, close-lipped about essentials, able to chatter and foolishly about inconsequentials. Law enforcement concluded that she was a "central clearing house" for intelligence on organized crime and enjoyed an independent power base within the Mafia. Hill became associated with Charles Fischetti, a cousin and bodyguard of Al Capone, it was Fischetti who sent Hill to New York to keep tabs on Luciano family capo Joe Adonis, which she did by becoming his lover. Hill told people that she was a Southern-belle society girl who had gone through four rich husbands, all divorced or dead, that she had received $1 million each from their estates, but authentic socialites saw through the ruse.
Hill built up an entourage of hangers-on and Latin gigolos hanging out on Broadway and picked up the check. While in New York, Hill was introduced to another Luciano associate, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, they ended up in a hotel together that night. Siegel's and Hill's separate life paths brought them both to Hollywood, they began a torrid affair. There were rumors that she and Siegel were secretly married in Mexico after Siegel divorced his wife Esta in 1946, but there has not been any evidence to prove the theory. Lore has it that Siegel named the Flamingo Las Vegas resort after Hill, who loved to gamble and whose nickname was "Flamingo," a moniker that Siegel was said to have given her, referring to her long, thin legs, but others have said that Hill was in fact short and somewhat matronly in form. Another story about the origin of the nickname said that after a few drinks, Hill's face would flush a flamingo-like pink. However, organized crime king Lucky Luciano wrote in his memoir that Siegel once owned an interest in the Hialeah Park Race Track and viewed the flamingos who populated nearby as a good omen.
The "Flamingo" name was given to the project at its inception by original resort financier Billy Wilkerson. Four days before Siegel was assassinated at Hill's home in California, Hill took an unscheduled flight to Paris, giving rise to speculation that she was warned in advance of Siegel's impending murder. In 1950, Hill married an Austrian skier. In 1951, Hill was subpoenaed to testify before the Kefauver hearings, where she denied having any knowledge of organized crime despite being described by Time magazine in March of that year as the "queen of the gangsters' molls." After Hill was indicted for income tax evasion in 1954, she moved to Europe, where she lived for the rest of her life with her son. Hill died of an overdose of sleeping pills in Koppl, near Salzburg, Austria on March 24, 1966 at the age of 49. Hill is buried in Aigen Cemetery in Salzburg. According to Andy Edmonds' biography Bugsy's Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill, her death was suspicious despite it being an apparent suicide.
The Austrian media, which were well informed about her former relationship with Siegel, speculated that she tried to get money by using her knowledge of the Italian-American Mafia and Mexican drug cartels. Hill was the subject of a 1974 television movie, she was played by Annette Bening in the 1991 film Bugsy, a dramatization of her relationship with Bugsy Siegel. Edmonds, Andy. Bugsy's Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing Group, 1993. ISBN 1-55972-164-2 Virginia Hill on IMDb Excerpt of testimony
Joe Adonis
Joe Adonis known as "Joey A", "Joe Adone", "Joe Arosa", "James Arosa", "Joe DiMeo", was a New York mobster, an important participant in the formation of the modern Cosa Nostra crime families. Adonis was born Giuseppe Antonio Doto in the small town of Montemarano, near Naples, to Michele and Maria Doto. In 1909, Adonis and his family migrated to the United States at New York City; as a young man, Adonis supported himself by picking pockets. While working on the streets, Adonis became friends with future mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano and mobster Settimo Accardi, who were involved in illegal gambling. Adonis developed a loyalty to Luciano. At the beginning of Prohibition, Adonis, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel started a bootlegging operation in Brooklyn; this operation soon began supplying large amounts of alcohol to the show business community along Broadway in Manhattan. Doto soon assumed the role of a gentleman bootlegger. In the early 1920s, Doto started calling himself "Joe Adonis", it is uncertain as to.
One story states that Adonis received this nickname from a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl, dating him. Another story says. Vain, Adonis spent a great deal of time in personal grooming. On one occasion, Lucky Luciano saw Adonis combing his thick, dark hair in front of a mirror and asked him, "Who do you think you are, Rudolph Valentino?" Adonis replied, "For looks, that guy's a bum!"Adonis and his wife Joan had four children. Adonis was a cousin of Luciano crime family capo Alan Bono, who supervised Adonis's operations in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. In the 1920s, Adonis became an enforcer for the boss of some rackets in Brooklyn. While working for Yale, Adonis met future Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone, working for Yale. Meanwhile, Luciano became an enforcer for Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, who ran an organization loosely based on clans from Naples and Southern Italy. After the 1928 assassination of Yale, Masseria took over Yale's criminal organization. Masseria soon became embroiled in the vicious Castellammarese War with his archrival, Salvatore Maranzano.
Maranzano represented the Sicilian clans, most of which came from Castellammare del Sicily. As the war progressed, both bosses started recruiting more soldiers. By 1930, Adonis had joined the Masseria faction; as the war turned against Masseria, Luciano secretly contacted Maranzano about switching sides. When Masseria heard about Luciano's betrayal, he approached Adonis about killing Luciano. However, Adonis instead warned Luciano about the murder plot. On April 15, 1931, Adonis participated in Masseria's murder. Luciano had lured Masseria to a meeting at a Coney Island, restaurant. During the meal, Luciano excused himself to go to the restroom; as soon as Luciano was gone, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel rushed into the dining room and shot Masseria to death. No one was indicted in the Masseria murder. With the death of Masseria, the war ended, Maranzano was the victor. To avoid any future wars, Maranzano reorganized all the Italian-American gangs into families and anointed himself as the "boss of all bosses."
Luciano and his loyalists became dissatisfied with Maranzano's power grab. When Luciano discovered that the suspicious Maranzano had ordered his murder, Luciano struck first. On September 10, 1931, several gunmen killed Maranzano in his Manhattan office. With Maranzano's death, Luciano became the pre-eminent organized crime boss in New York City. However, unlike Maranzano, Luciano did not want to become the "boss of all bosses." Instead, he established a National Crime Syndicate that united all the Italian-American gangs across the country and allowed for shared decision-making. For his part in murdering Masseria, Adonis received a seat on the Syndicate "board of directors." He changed his name to Joe Adonis. Adonis and Luciano soon controlled bootlegging in Midtown Manhattan. At its height, the operation employed 100 workers. Adonis bought car dealerships in New Jersey; when customers bought cars from his dealerships, the salesmen would intimidate them into buying "protection insurance" for the vehicle.
Adonis soon moved into cigarette distribution, buying up vending machines by the hundreds and stocking them with stolen cigarettes. Adonis ran his criminal empire from a restaurant that he owned in Brooklyn. By 1932, Adonis was a major criminal power in Brooklyn. Despite his wealth, Adonis still participated in jewelry robberies, a throwback to his early criminal career on the streets. In 1932, Adonis participated in the kidnapping and brutal beating in Brooklyn of Isidore Juffe and Issac Wapinsky. In 1931, Adonis had lent the two men money for investment and kidnapped them in 1932 after deciding that he should be receiving a higher profit. Two days after the kidnappings, Adonis released Juffe and Wapinsky after receiving a $5,000 ransom payment. A month Wapinsky died of internal injuries from being assaulted. Adonis placed many politicians and high-ranking police officers on his payroll. Adonis used his political influence to assist members of the Luciano crime family, such as Luciano and Genovese, mob associates such as Meyer Lansky and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the head of Murder, Inc.
As a syndicate board member, along with Buchalter, may have been responsible for
Allen Daviau
Allen Daviau, A. S. C. is an American cinematographer. He has been nominated and won numerous awards, including 5 Oscar nominations and 2 BAFTA nominations, winning 1 BAFTA award. Allen Daviau on IMDb
Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky, known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American major organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate in the United States. Associated with the Jewish mob, Lansky developed a gambling empire, he was said to own points in casinos in Las Vegas, The Bahamas and London. Although a member of the Jewish mob, Lansky undoubtedly had strong influence with the Italian-American Mafia and played a large role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld; the full extent of this role has been the subject of some debate, as Lansky himself denied many of the accusations against him. Despite nearly fifty years as a member-participant in organized crime, Lansky was never found guilty of anything more serious than illegal gambling, he has a legacy of being one of the most financially successful gangsters in American history. Before he fled Cuba, he was said to be worth an estimated $20 million. However, when he died in 1983, his family was shocked to learn that his estate was worth around $57,000.
Lansky was born Meier Suchowlański in Grodno, in the Russian Empire to a Polish-Jewish family who experienced anti-semitic pogroms. He was born in the former lands of Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, which were under Russian rule, when asked about his native country, Lansky always responded "Poland". In 1911, he emigrated to the United States through the port of Odessa with his mother and brother Jacob, joined his father, who had immigrated in 1909, settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. Lansky met Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, they became lifelong friends, as well as partners in the bootlegging trade, together managed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, with its reputation as one of the most violent Prohibition gangs. Lansky was close friends with Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano respected the younger boy's defiant responses to his threats, the two formed a lasting partnership thereafter. By 1936, Lansky had established gambling operations in Florida, New Orleans, Cuba; these gambling operations were successful as they were founded upon two innovations: Firstly and his connections had the technical expertise to manage them based upon Lansky's knowledge of the true mathematical odds of most popular wagering games.
Secondly, mob connections, as well as bribed law enforcement, were used to ensure legal and physical security of their establishments from other crime figures and law enforcement. There was an absolute rule of integrity concerning the games and wagers made within their establishments. Lansky's "carpet joints" in Florida and elsewhere were never "clip-joints" where gamblers were unsure of whether or not the games were rigged against them. Lansky ensured. In 1946, Lansky convinced the Italian-American Mafia to place Siegel in charge of Las Vegas, became a major investor in Siegel's Flamingo Hotel. To protect himself from the type of prosecution which sent Al Capone to prison for tax evasion and prostitution, Lansky transferred the illegal earnings from his growing casino empire to a Swiss bank account, where anonymity was assured by the 1934 Swiss Banking Act. Lansky even bought an offshore bank in Switzerland, which he used to launder money through a network of shell and holding companies. In the 1930s, Lansky and his gang stepped outside their usual criminal activities to break up rallies held by the pro-Nazi German-American Bund.
He recalled a particular rally in Yorkville, a German neighborhood in Manhattan, that he and 14 other associates disrupted: The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us. We threw some of them out the windows. Most of the Nazis ran out. We beat them up. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always accept insults. During World War II, Lansky was instrumental in helping the Office of Naval Intelligence's Operation Underworld, in which the government recruited criminals to watch out for German infiltrators and submarine-borne saboteurs. Lansky helped arrange a deal with the government via a high-ranking U. S. Navy official; this deal would secure the release of Luciano from prison. German submarines were sinking Allied shipping in great numbers along the eastern seaboard and the Caribbean coast, there was great fear of attack or sabotage by Nazi sympathizers. Lansky connected the ONI with Luciano, who instructed Joseph Lanza to prevent sabotage on the New York waterfront.
Lansky attended a secret meeting in Havana in 1946 to discuss Siegel's management of the Flamingo Hotel, running far behind schedule and costing Siegel's Mafia investors a great deal of money. While the other bosses wanted to kill Siegel, Lansky begged them to give his friend a second chance. Despite this reprieve, Siegel continued to lose money on the Flamingo. A second meeting was called. However, by the time this meeting took place, the casino turned a small profit. Lansky again, with Luciano's support, convinced the other investors to give Siegel some more time. However, when the hotel started losing money again, the other investors decided that Siegel was finished, it is believed that Lansky himself was compelled to give the final okay on eliminating
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