Exploring The Lansky Legacy
He was, in many ways, the Alexander Hamilton of the modern American underworld – a founding father who emphasized economics and helped build an empire.
Meyer Lansky was there at the beginning and has been the subject of books, movies and documentaries that paint a picture of how the mob turned gambling into a major moneymaking proposition for gangsters and how today, that same industry legitimately churns out millions for corporate America.
A new book revisits much of that story, but with an added twist. This is Lansky, up close and personal. In his own words and with commentary and asides from someone who knew him well.
So here is Meyer, in a letter to his son Paul, discussing Thanksgiving dinner preparations and suggesting how his daughter-in-law might handle things in the kitchen.
“I don’t know how Edna makes her dressing,” Lansky wrote. “It is good to put liver in your dressing. Best of all, chicken giblets. She may also find her Turkey tastier if she bases it with chicken consommé.”
Or here is the consummate gangster/businessman offering a piece of advice (perhaps with tongue in cheek) to an auto mechanic he has befriended in Miami.
“Buy raw land for cash and forget about it. It will make you money,” Lansky said before shifting his focus toward other, not necessarily related, matters that appeared to be lessons in life. “I don’t care how much trouble you’re in; if you throw enough cash at it, it will go away.”
And then, in an aside that is both chilling and humorous, Lansky added, “And if you ever have to kill anyone, do it yourself.”
Those are just two of the fascinating anecdotal stories or asides in The Lansky Legacy, The Life and Letters of Meyer Lansky (Citadel Press/Kensington Publishing). The book, released this summer, is written by award-winning journalist S. J. Peddie and Meyer Lansky II, the grandson of the infamous mobster.
The letters and personal recollections of the younger Lansky help paint a fuller picture of a man whose impact on the American underworld cannot be overstated.
The book includes a recounting of many of the well-known Lansky stories. His immigrant beginnings in New York, his early partnership with Charles “Lucky” Luciano as both made their way through the ethnic jungle that was the breeding ground for the mob and their association with Arnold Rothstein, the Jewish gangster who mentored both and who, in many ways, is the real Godfather of the American underworld.
The perception in most circles is that the Mafia – Cosa Nostra – was the dominant organization. In fact, Jewish gangsters set the tone in the 1920s and 1930s and it was Rothstein’s approach – make money, not headlines – that turned the ethnic underworld into an economic juggernaut.
Lansky, more than anyone, was Rothstein’s heir apparent and took the mob to the next level.
That’s part of the story, but The Lansky Legacy offers much more.
Meyer Lansky was a devoted – but less than faithful – husband to both his first and second wives. He was a caring father who nevertheless had a troubled relationship with his children, including a spoiled daughter who, the authors contend, became an FBI informant.
Lansky had a complicated relationship with his son Buddy who struggled all his life with cerebral palsy, a debilitating disease that Lansky, even at the height of his power and wealth, could not alleviate.
He took the most pride in his son Paul, a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran who became a successful businessman in his own right. But he objected when Paul said he intended to name his son Meyer. Lansky feared the name would prove to be a “burden” for his grandson.
Personal conflicts and familial dealings play out against the backdrop of American underworld history with Lansky leading a group of Jewish gangsters in disrupting Nazi, antisemitic rallies in New York prior to World War II and Lansky working with the U.S. government to protect the docks in New York from German saboteurs once the war broke out.
While not especially religious, his devotion to Israel was a point of personal pride. And this eventually became a major disappointment and a sense of betrayal when he was denied the “right of return” that the nascent country offered to most Jews. The U.S. Government, forgetting or refusing to acknowledge Lansky’s contributions during the war, played a major part in scuttling his attempt to settle permanently in Israel, launching a series of investigations aimed at jailing the ailing gangster late in his life.
Lansky fought off the investigations but never got to return to Israel, where he had lived briefly in the early 1970s.
In a letter to Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin in 1977, Lansky pleaded his case and wrote of his desire to return.
“I have unfortunately become a product of the media. Much of it has been exaggerated…They, as you must know, can make or break. On the other hand, I do not profess to being a Saint, but I have never been 99% of the way I was built up. As you may know, charges in the U.S. were built up against me, but the courts threw all that out.”
Lansky then asked how much harm a sick and elderly man could do to Israel, “the place of my heritage…the one country I truly desire to be in.”
Nevertheless, his request was denied, one of several major setbacks in his later years.
He remained in Miami, where he lived comfortably but not extravagantly, putting the lie to reports of a $30 million fortune amassed over the years.
Violence might have been part of the world that he came from, but was not, according to The Lansky Legacy , his calling card. The murder of his good friend Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel has long been described as a mob hit, ordered – or at least condoned – by Lansky. Siegel was suspected of stealing millions from the Flamingo, the lavish Las Vegas casino that changed the face of casino gambling. Siegel oversaw the construction and early days of operation at the casino which was bankrolled by Lansky and others.
The authors contend that the mob had nothing to do with the murder. It is one of several examples in which the book offers a different – and more sympathetic – version of events from Lansky’s perspective.
But the few attempts to sugarcoat history do not detract from the overall story.
Not every venture that Lansky attempted proved successful.
One of the biggest disappointments was Cuba, where Lansky’s vision of an adult fantasy land built around lavish casinos, fancy restaurants and top-of-the-line entertainment collapsed. Lansky had struck a deal with Fulgencio Batista, Cuba’s corrupt and greedy president. Batista fled the country when Fidel Castro came down from the Sierra Maestra mountains and drove the mob – and eventually the United States – out of the island nation.
The repercussions of that event are still being felt seven decades later.
Lansky “lost most of his fortune when Batista’s regime in Cuba collapsed,” the authors write.
But his legacy remains rich.
The gambling empire that is modern-day Las Vegas exists in large part because of the vision and entrepreneurial sense of Meyer Lansky, who preached that gambling was a business that needed to be run legitimately in order to generate long-term and sustained economic growth.
“He was a singular historical figure who transformed organized crime and the business of gambling and helped finance the development of one of the biggest tourist and entertainment meccas in the world in the form of Las Vegas,” the authors write before adding a question.
“Who knows what Cuba would be today had Castro not seized power?”
For better or worse, Meyer Lansky was one of the founding fathers of the modern American underworld. He was always, to borrow a phrase, “in the room where it happened.” And more often than not, his legacy demonstrates he was the man making it happen.
(Author’s note – Citadel Press/Kensington Publishing is also the publisher of my biography of Angelo Bruno. “The Docile Don” is scheduled to be released in January.)
