Biography of Lucky Luciano, American Gangster

Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on January 3, 1946, as a reward for his wartime cooperation, Governor Thomas E. Dewey commuted Charles "Lucky" Luciano's lifetime prison sentence on condition that he did not resist deportation to Italy.

Lucky Luciano- Chairman of the Mob, Documentary
https://youtu.be/fWNeoaDPE_8?t=34

Images:
1. Charles 'Lucky' Luciano organized crime boss of the Sicilian 'La Cosa Nostra' Mafia, poses for an FBI photo in 1925
2. Young Charles 'Lucky' Luciano.
3. Charles 'Lucky' Luciano 'There's no such thing as good money or bad money. There's just money.'

Biographies:
1. imdb.com/name/nm0524592/bio
2. themobmuseum.org/notable_names/lucky-luciano/

1. Background from {[https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0524592/bio]}
Lucky Luciano Biography
Overview
Born November 24, 1897 in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, Italy
Died January 26, 1962 in Naples, Campania, Italy (heart attack)
Birth Name Salvatore Lucania
Nicknames Lucky Luciano; Charley; Charles Salvatore; Charley Lucky; Charlie Lucky;
Charlie
Height 5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini Bio
US gangster and racketeer. Born Charles Salvadore Lucania in Sicily, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1906. In 1907 he started shoplifting. He was given his nickname by childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky for his luck with betting on racehorses, but it also could have applied to the many times he avoided imprisonment and prosecution as a Mafia "godfather" who operated successfully and profitably in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1928 and 1930 the Castellammarese War broke out between the gangs of Giuseppe Masseria (aka Joe the Boss) and Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano sent some men to "rough up" Luciano, and when they caught him they not only beat and stabbed him, but addition severed the muscles of his right cheek, leaving him with a droop in his right eye. He was left for dead under the Brooklyn Bridge. However, he lived up to his nickname and survived. Recovering, he sided with Maranzano in the conflict. By 1931 Masseria had been assassinated and Maranzano had won. He named himself "boss of bosses" (capo di tuti capo), but that title proved to be short-lived. Luciano and Lansky's had their men visit Maranzano in his office, disguised as government agents, and assassinated him. Luciano followed that with anywhere from 40 to 90 additional murders during the series of killings that came to be called the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers". Luciano was now the undisputed boss of a "new" Mafia. His business included narcotics-peddling, extortion and, especially, prostitution, including everything from low-rent streetwalkers to high-priced call girls. Luciano, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime, was arrested 25 times between 1919 and 1936 but convicted only once. When three prostitutes finally agreed to give evidence against him, he was arrested (1936) and found guilty of compelling women to become prostitutes. Even from prison, he retained control of his Family, setting up the Crime Syndicate of Mafia Families. During World War II he helped U.S. military intelligence through his Mafia connections in Italy and was given a suspended sentence on condition that he leave the US. In 1946 he was released from prison and deported to Italy as an undesirable alien. He returned to Naples, Italy, where he lived out his life in luxury. Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport. He was only posthumously allowed to return to the USA, where he was buried at St John's Cemetery in New York.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. Varma
US gangster and racketeer. Born Charles Salvadore Lucania in Sicily, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1906. In 1907 he started shoplifting. He was given his nickname by childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky for his luck with betting on racehorses, but it also could have applied to the many times he avoided imprisonment and prosecution as a Mafia "godfather" who operated successfully and profitably in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1928 and 1930 the Castellammarese War broke out between the gangs of Giuseppe Masseria (aka Joe the Boss) and Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano sent some men to "rough up" Luciano, and when they caught him they not only beat and stabbed him, but addition severed the muscles of his right cheek, leaving him with a droop in his right eye. He was left for dead under the Brooklyn Bridge. However, he lived up to his nickname and survived. Recovering, he sided with Maranzano in the conflict. By 1931 Masseria had been assassinated and Maranzano had won. He named himself "boss of bosses" (capo di tuti capo), but that title proved to be short-lived. Luciano and Lansky's had their men visit Maranzano in his office, disguised as government agents, and assassinated him. Luciano was now the undisputed boss of a "new" Mafia. His business included narcotics-peddling, extortion and, especially, prostitution, including everything from low-rent streetwalkers to high-priced call girls. Luciano, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime, was arrested 25 times between 1919 and 1936 but convicted only once. When three prostitutes finally agreed to give evidence against him, he was arrested (1936) and found guilty of compelling women to become prostitutes. Even from prison, he retained control of his Family, setting up the Crime Syndicate of Mafia Families. During World War II he helped U.S. military intelligence through his Mafia connections in Italy and was given a suspended sentence on condition that he leave the US. In 1946 he was released from prison and deported to Italy as an undesirable alien. He returned to Naples, Italy, where he lived out his life in luxury. Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport. He was only posthumously allowed to return to the USA, where he was buried at St John's Cemetery in New York.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. Varma
Trade Mark (2)
1. Scar running the length of right jawline (knife wound from beating)
2. Drooping right eyelid (result of beating)
Trivia (11)
1. Uncle of Judy Luciano.
2. His autobiography is titled "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano: The Mafia Story In His Own Words.".
3. After being deported from the United States, he bought a pet chihuahua and named it "Bambi", after the Disney movie, Bambi (1942), as a reminder of America.
4. Attended P.S. 19 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
5. On the day he died he was supposed to meet a film producer to discuss making a movie about his life. He had already had such a discussion previously with Dean Martin about making a movie where Frank Sinatra would play Luciano and Martin would also star (though it's unclear what role Martin would've played).
6. Family emigrated from Italy to New York in 1907.
7. Is portrayed by Bill Graham in Bugsy (1991).
8. Is buried in Saint John's Cemetery, Middle Village, Queens, New York , USA.
9. Appointed Vincent Mangano head of what eventually became the Carlo Gambino crime family.
10. Died of a heart attack at Naples International Airport where he had gone to meet with American producer Martin Gosch about a film based on his life. After the meeting with Gosch, Luciano was stricken with a heart attack and died. He was unaware that Italian drug agents had followed him to the airport in anticipation of arresting him on drug smuggling charges.


2. Background from {[http://themobmuseum.org/notable_names/lucky-luciano/]}
"Born: November 24, 1897, Sicily, Italy
Died: January 26, 1962, Naples, Italy
Nicknames: Lucky, Charlie Lucky
Associates: Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, the Five Families, the Commission, Bugsy Siegel
Charles “Lucky” Luciano, born Salvatore Lucania in 1897 in Sicily, probably did more to create the modern American Mafia and the national criminal Syndicate than any other single man. Luciano led a group of young Italian and Jewish mobsters against the older set of so-called “Moustache Petes,” and in the process set the stage for the Mob to grow beyond the limits of bootlegging profits to become, in the words of his friend Meyer Lansky, “bigger than United States Steel.”
Luciano, who moved to the United States and settled in the Lower East Side with his family at age 10, was recruited early into gangster life and was a member of the Five Points Gang in Manhattan. Around the start of Prohibition in 1920, he was recruited as a gunman by Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria, and a few years later Luciano went to work for Arnold Rothstein, another seminal figure in early organized crime. By the mid-1920s, Luciano was reportedly making millions in bootlegging profits.
With Rothstein’s murder in 1928, Luciano went back to working for Masseria, who by this time was the self-styled “Boss of Bosses,” and who was going to war with a rival, Salvatore “The Duke” Maranzano.
Luciano secretly sided with Maranzano in the bloody Castellammarese War and helped set up Masseria for assassination in 1931. Before the end of the year, Luciano and other “Young Turks” would knock off Maranzano, and the era of the Old World “Moustache Petes” would be over.
With Maranzano’s assassination by a gang from Murder, Incorporated – allegedly including Joe Adonis, Bugsy Siegel, Albert Anastasia and Vito Genovese, all of whom would go on to well-known roles in the Mob — Luciano inherited the crime family that would eventually become known as the Genovese family. A natural organizer, Luciano continued the committee of Five Families, which was established by Maranzano and would control East Coast rackets for decades. But rather than naming himself “Boss of Bosses,” as Maranzano had, Luciano called himself the chairman of the board.
Further, he established and hosted the first national meetings of what became known as the Commission, a national criminal syndicate, all in the name of avoiding unnecessary bloodshed and maximizing profits for all the families.
But all of that meant Luciano was a very public leader of the Mob, and that drew attention from law enforcement, and specifically from a young prosecutor in New York named Thomas Dewey. Dewey and his assistant, an African-American attorney named Eunice Carter, noticed that many of the prostitutes who were being arrested were represented by the same bondsmen and attorneys working for Luciano.
Armed with this information, in 1936, Dewey led raids on brothels throughout the city, arresting more than 100 people, mostly women, many of whom were unable to post the bail of $10,000 set by the courts. Some of those arrested provided information to the prosecutors that led to Luciano’s arrest and trial that same year. On June 6, 1936, Luciano was convicted of 62 charges of compulsory prostitution; he was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in state prison.
Luciano turned over leadership of the national Commission to Frank Costello.
That wasn’t the end of Luciano’s story, however. During World War II, the government needed the Mob’s help to keep the New York docks free of strikes, sabotage and other problems. Luciano agreed to help, on the assumption that he would get a break on his sentence. Dewey, the former prosecutor, was now New York governor and in a position to grant clemency.
After the war ended, Dewey commuted Luciano’s sentence with the understanding that the Mob leader would leave the United States, which he did, returning to Italy as a deportee. Luciano still maintained his ties to the American Mafia as a sort of elder statesman. The same year that he debarked to Italy, Luciano came to Havana, Cuba, and along with hobnobbing with celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, hosted a meeting of top-level mobsters from all the major American crime families.
Pressure from the U.S. government – specifically a threat to ban the export of American medicines to the island country – forced the Cuban government to deport Luciano back to Italy.
Luciano spent the rest of his life under close Italian police scrutiny. Luciano often met with American tourists and sailors and frequently professed his love for the United States. He died of a heart attack in 1962 at the Naples airport, where he had gone to meet with a movie producer considering a biography of Luciano."

FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury MSgt Paul Connors SPC Michael Terrell

Ya he was a horrible criminal, but he was also a patriot who put country first (even if there was something for him in it).

SGT (Join to see) the Italian mob made a place in America, for sure.