Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster and the Battle for Los Angeles: Mickey Cohen
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August 18th, 1948 in Los Angeles. There's a mafia war being waged on the Sunset Strip, the likes of which LA has never seen before. Wise guys and thugs are getting to shootouts in broad daylight, firing Tommy guns while hanging off the backs of cars, all for control of the entire city. All the rackets, the gambling, the labor unions tied up with Hollywood studios, the protection fees, the prostitution, the extortion, and the many, many heists.

See, LA isn't like New York, Chicago, or even Philly or Cleveland. It's a sprawling city, hard to control. And it didn't have the official top-level families that had really built something up, even during Prohibition. Sure, there were gangsters, but the city was still considered somewhat wide open when the syndicate sent out Bugsy Siegel in the late 1930s to get everything under control. Their control. His control. Some of the guys in LA didn't take too kindly to that.

the ones who openly expressed their defiance got riddled with bullets, except for Jack Dragna. He had some sway with the big bosses over in New York, and while he had to let Siegel do his thing, he wasn't happy about it. Then in 1947, Siegel plays around with the syndicate's money a little too much in Vegas and catches a sniper's bullet in the eye while he's sitting in his living room, the Mo Green Special.

And Siegel's second in command, a guy who the commission had originally sent out there as his protection, takes over his rackets. And that is Mickey Cohen. Mickey's short, 5'5", and he's been a hustler since he was literally 6 years old. He was a boxer, he was a wild-haired stick-up kid in his teens, and he's ran every sort of heist and robbery you can think of.

But what he really loves is gambling and women, especially starlets and pinup girls, boxing, horses, expensive clothes, fancy dinners, nightlife, and beating or killing anyone who gets in his way.

They call him Hollywood celebrity gangster because he pals around with all the actors, all the stars, Marilyn Monroe, Errol Flynn, the Rat Pack. He's close with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., all the Hollywood moguls, and he even helps Tricky Dick Nixon jumpstart his political career, even though he's not a fan of the guy. Mickey just needs politicians in his pockets, and he has a bunch, as well as high-ranking police officers. Mickey once said of himself, quote,

But Drag does not to be played with.

Mickey's operating out of his fancy clothing store, Haberdashery, on Sunset Boulevard when he hands off some play tickets to any Get Your Gun A Ball plays to one of Dragna's guys. That guy just happened to have tuberculosis recently. Mickey's a really clean guy, so he shakes the guy's hand and then he heads to the bathroom to wash his. When Dragna's guy gets outside the shop, he gives a signal to a hit squad in waiting.

One of the members of the hit squad is Frank "The Bump" Valpansaro, one of the most feared hitmen in the country. Him and another guy enter the shop and they blast Mickey's main bodyguard, Hookie Rothman, in the face with a shotgun. Two of Mickey's other shooters are there too, and they get shot, but one of them wrestles a gun away from one of the hitmen, who then both flee.

This is the Underworld Podcast.

Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, a weekly exploration of global organized crime, past, present, and future. Hosted by two journalists, myself, Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean Williams, who is British. We are in it for the money, not for the love, and we take turns waxing poetic while telling you a story about a gangster, gang, or gang-related criminal phenomenon. Sometimes we do a little bit of bantering. Some people get mad about that, but you know, it is what it is. You guys, you guys got to deal with it.

As always, bonus episodes for the low, low price of $5 a month at patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. Or you can sign up on Spotify or iTunes. It also makes these episodes ad free. Wait, should we do a banter free podcast Patreon tier two? Do you think people would sign up for that? Yeah. Would that actually also be good banter? Ironically?

No, I think it's no banter. You know, maybe they'd be. Anyway. That's always been my best position, yeah. You'd also go to underworldpod.com for some pretty legit merch like a Don't Instagram Your Crimes t-shirt.

Or email us at theunderworldpodcast at gmail.com for any tips, suggestions, or money-making schemes. Shout out to the guys who have emailed us Caribbean getaways and also potential crypto scams. Both are appreciated. Keep them coming. Help us sell our IP to the Grand Theft Auto guys. I don't know. What else, Sean? You know, just why, Sean? Why? Yeah, question. A question I ask myself more and more by the day, Danny. Why? Oh, why? Oh, why? Yeah, let's...

Yeah, okay, let's do this. Great cinematic intro, by the way. I really enjoyed that. Let's get that energy up. Hey, been looking forward to this one for a while. I mean, you were doing this for a while. I remember you talking to me about this, maybe even in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I wanted to, but I only got around to it in the last couple of weeks. But yeah.

Mickey Cohen, great old school mafioso, boss of Los Angeles, the Hollywood celebrity gangster. If you've ever seen like an LA noir film with a mob boss, it was probably based around Mickey. He slept with all the starlets. He was known for his insanely expensive wardrobe. He ran gambling, high cost prostitution, controlled labor unions, extortion rackets, was tied into all the movie studios.

had an army of shooters, killed people, mixed with politicians, newspaper editors, and every famous actor and actress of the era. You know, Raymond Chandler, James Elroy, all those L.A. Hollywood pulp crime writers. They all based their guys off of Mickey. He was a legend.

And the West Coast guys, I think, in my opinion, don't get nearly as much attention as the New York guys do, especially with us. So I wanted to get into Mickey and his life. Yeah, that's the episode, right? We're done. Yeah. They say no gangster has ever played the media better. He was kind of gaudy before gaudy was gaudy.

before Joey Merlino, all that. He used to write letters to editors. He would wine and dine journalists. Some he considered friends. There were mafia guys who, the New York guys would get mad about him being in the spotlight. I mean, he did late night talk shows.

And this is a terrible thing to say about someone, but I think if he was alive today, he would definitely have a podcast. And not like a podcast like this one, maybe even like a TikTok or something. RIP. Yeah. Although not here. We got it. We got it. We're free. I'm sure you guys will be better off in the long run. Sure. He also, he wrote an autobiography, which I read for this episode, which is great. It's actually really entertaining. You would think a lot of these autobiographies are,

There aren't that many written by criminals. They're kind of just like blowing smoke up their own ass. Mickey's is pretty, pretty solid. I also use Brad Lewis's book about him called Hollywood Celebrity Gangster, which was a bit of a weird one and a bit off, but it's an okay read. Yeah, what was off about it?

It's got a lot of that thing that I don't like when journalists do, which is like psychoanalyzing people that you don't know, you know, that you've never really spoke to, which I think is just kind of like cheap and gimmicky. And it's just weird. It starts waxing poetic about stuff that I don't think is super relevant or super interesting. But if you've interviewed someone for like two hours, right, you can psychoanalyze them all you want. Then you definitely know what they're all about.

Yeah, cool.

And because of that, they have this lore around them. And it's interesting to think about, you know, who made that lore? Where do we actually know about these guys and from who, right? It's cops, gangsters themselves, and journalists. And there's a lot of contradicting info with Mickey. It can be really hard to parse out what's fact, what's fiction, who knows what.

you know, especially now when you've got so many people and podcasts and YouTube and social media influencers, people involved in the life, people pretending to be involved in the life, a lot of people telling a different version of the same story, fabricating and all that. You know, when you do what kind of what me and Sean do, when you really consult tons of different sources on the same events all over, you

You really see how fluid it can be sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's my TED talk on this. Yeah, preach. Are we talking, by the way, about that guy you mentioned, the one who says he's in with the cartels? I think in general, just a lot of people, they're going to take what is conducive for the narrative and what sounds better or what's going to get more attention. And I think we're guilty of that too, especially in headlines.

But it gets kind of ridiculous. You know, you draw superlatives all the time. But anyway, sorry, rambling too long on this. Mickey is born in Brownsville, New York. These days, Brownsville is still the most violent neighborhood in New York City.

It's where Mike Tyson came from. It's where MOP came from. A lot of the gnarliest gangs from New York, including Murder, Inc., originated from Brownsville. And when Mickey's born there, it's an Eastern European Jewish ghetto, kind of like the Lower East Side. It's full of gangsters and thieves and all sorts of criminals. He's born in either 1911 or 1913. And that Brownsville is just a really violent, fearsome place. It's kind of full of that urchinage.

early 1900s New York gangs in New York poverty, even though that movie was based on the Barrowy. It's still like, you know, just vicious tenement buildings, everyone striving for what they can get. His dad works in the smoked fish business. He dies when Mickey's a baby, and his mother, who's a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from Kiev, she takes on raising six kids. And she wants to get her kids out of Brownsville as fast as possible, so she moves to Los Angeles, into East LA, a neighborhood called Boyle Heights.

By the time he's six years old, Mickey's working on the corners selling newspapers. Then in 1919, Prohibition happens and Mickey's older brother, already a hustler, gets involved and soon so does Mickey even when he's like seven or eight years old. His mother even opens up a gin mill in the family pharmacy shop and him and his older brothers, they play their roles. Pretty soon, Mickey is getting an education on the street.

He's hanging with bootleggers and numbers runners. He's still hawking his newspapers, fighting other kids for the prime corners, and even running a dice game for some of the other newsboys. I mean, this kid is a savant. He's clearly going places in the criminal world. He also gets handy with his fist, which even though he ends up being like a small guy, maybe five foot five, is going to be his calling card.

Also, Sean, you're going to love this. He befriends a city editor for one of the LA papers so he can sleep in the office to get the early editions to sell. But he also has to help the guy sober up a bunch and find his way back to his desk. And that's sort of how they become friends. And this is sort of like how he comes to understand the power of the media and media for him and media about him. Yeah, I do love that actually. Also, all journalists are drunk all of the time, which is true.

So by the time he's in his teens, he's hustling, he's transporting booze, he's running numbers. He's still a kid. He's just even doing like little heists, robbing candy stores, ending up in reform school for periods. He's running with a crew of Mexicans, Jews and Italians from that neighborhood. They're getting pinched here and there and sent to these like, you know, reformatory schools and like juvenile detention centers. By the time he's 12 or 13, he's boxing in illegal underground fights at

At 15, he moves to Cleveland to get serious about boxing. God, imagine having to move to Cleveland, man. You know, there's no Jake Paul or Mike Tyson here. It's just everyone watching these brawlers really duke it out and all sorts of criminals and mafiosos intertwined in the business.

Yeah, I was thinking when you were mentioning about Mickey Cohen, he's not a particularly light chap. 5'5 is stretching it a bit for a boxing career. But today, doing my research, I learned about Dwight Muhammad Kawi. So it must be some Nation of Islam stuff there. He was a heavyweight, 43 and 11, and he fought George Foreman, 5'5 legend.

That that is insane. But also like five foot five is normal for these guys that are flyweights and bantamweights. You know, it's like a pretty when you're down when you're boxing at like, yeah, yeah. But is he small, Mickey? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's small for like five foot five. I guess back then people were smaller, but still he's considered short. Like they they mentioned that about him, too. But I guess if you're fighting at 115, five foot five is not is not that small, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if you're 5'9 and heavier? Yeah, I mean, a guy who's 5'5 and a heavyweight is insane. I would like to see a picture of that man. Tyson was only 5'10 and he was considered super short, but he used to get inside. Anyway, the rackets and the boxing world are basically one and the same. And Mickey's going to stay in both for his entire life.

There's also heavy Jewish organized crime in Cleveland, like Moe Dalitz, who the character Moe Green from The Godfather is partially based on, also somewhat on Bugsy Siegel. And Mickey gets to know everyone and kind of works his muscles sometimes as the running booze from Canada over the Great Lakes.

He also gets big into armed robbery. Here's a quote for Mickey. Pistols, shotguns, Tommy guns, whatever was handy. We specialized in gambling joints, cafes, and whorehouses. The guy was getting after it, and he did a little bit too much. In 1934, after Prohibition, he's popped on a robbery charge and then on an embezzlement charge.

He ends up being arrested like literally dozens, maybe not even hundreds of times and only ends up, well, we'll talk about what he goes to prison for, but he's getting arrested like every other month. He has his own gang at this point of like seven or eight hard-nosed thugs, including a guy named Hookie Rothman, the guy from the opening who gets killed, who becomes his right-hand man. They do hundreds of stick-ups and heists apparently, but cause too much trouble for one of the big gangs and are told to head somewhere else and Mickey ends up in New York.

He gets involved in the boxing world there too. You know, he starts off fighting, I think at 117 pounds, but he throws hands. He does damage. He fights whoever wants it. He moves up to 135 pounds sometimes, which is crazy. If you're, if you're moving up 20 pounds and in your weight class, he's even pissing off his manager because he won't say no. I mean, he has some serious legitimate fights. Like he's not just like some amateur guy who doesn't get, doesn't fight big names. I mean, like I said, not Jake Paul, no fake fighters, no meatballs. Yeah.

Yeah, coming for Jake Paul today, which is the good and correct take. I just want him to fight one

fighter in his weight class that's like a 200th ranked prospect you know like just fight one fun one fight one real fighter close to your age close to your weight class does i'm not even saying top 100 fight a 200 just find some guy in like central america you know fighting out of a gym and get him in i mean you're not gonna find a heavyweight in central america i'm just saying go to any gym in new york you'll find a pro uh i know a few anyway all right guys let's talk factor meals

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Guy keeps getting sent to Cleveland. Yeah, what's going on?

No offense to Cleveland. We just got to cheer for Cleveland. There's a bit of offense to Cleveland. Yeah. He continues doing stick-ups. He's kind of under the protection of the Cleveland Syndicate led by Moe Dallas. But again, he's pissing people off, which you're starting to see the pattern there. Now he gets moved to Chicago. In Chicago, he keeps robbing while also serving as protection for some gambling operations and gets a really violent reputation.

He's working for a gambling boss there when three guys show up outside the establishment and pull out guns. Mickey shoots first, ends up killing two of them, and he actually gets arrested on the murder. He gets let go on self-defense and also because everyone else was in on the take and he could claim the self-defense really easily.

Because of this incident, he says he gets the attention of one Al Capone, who tells him to knock it off and that he should shut down his own dice game, but they kind of like each other. Mickey refuses to back down. Shortly afterwards, he's standing outside one of his joints when a guy comes by with a Tommy gun and sprays a bunch of shots at him. He's untouched, but pissed that he ruined his fancy camel hair coat. I mean, how do you miss a guy from point blank with a submachine gun? That is...

There's some Jake Paul shit. I mean, you're on the move, dude. Have you ever fired, like, trying to hit a target from, like, 50 yards out with a non-zeroing gun? I have never done a drive-by, no. That's a good point. But yeah, I imagine it's a little harder than it seems. Capone, like we said, he ends up liking Mickey.

Mickey claims he admires his fearlessness and takes him in a bit. And that's according to some sources, including Mickey. Others have said that Mickey never met Capone and that Capone was locked up the whole time that Mickey was in Chicago. And, you know,

The thing about gangsters and gang members are they all just kind of lie. Not all, but most are dishonest. Like it goes with the territory. You know, people want to blow up headlines. They want to make themselves look. They're not reliable narrators or autobiographers. So the stuff with Mickey, you know, he even knows at this point, Brad Lewis, who wrote the biography of Mick, he spends a lot of time talking about how there will be four versions of like every major event of Mickey's life. One told by Mickey, one told by a journalist, another by a different journalist, and another by the FBI.

Okay, Mickey still causing chaos in Chicago. At one point, apparently beats to death a hitman who went after him. He also spent some brief time in Detroit. Soon enough, though, he gets a call from Meyer Lansky, who at that point was part of the commission or the syndicate. That's the major national mob controlling group that they had formed up in the early 30s. We've mentioned them plenty of times. It's when, you know, all the powerful mobsters got together, led by Lucky Luciano, and made like a company board to make all the big decisions.

At this point, they're planning to send infamous mob boss Benny Bugsy Siegel out west to Los Angeles to set up shop there. And they want Mickey there sort of as like his protection, not just for him, but also to kind of keep an eye on Bugsy. And this is either 1937 or 1939, depending on who you ask. And Mickey was already either back in LA briefly or sent back there for the sole purpose of working with Bugsy.

Bugsy, we don't have to go into too much detail here. One of the most infamous old school mobsters of all time, founding member of Murder Inc., New York mob royalty. He takes Mickey on as his like bodyguard, runner and gunner, second in command.

The West Coast is wide open. The big Hollywood studios are ramping up and the movie business is starting to bring in big money. There's also a ton of gambling, drugs from Mexico. Law enforcement is like a nept compared to New York and Chicago. It is the wild west. And the commission, they appoint Bugsy as the guy to bring it all under control and see what he can do. Of course, there's already some operators out there. They're not going to stand a chance versus the commission. But Bugsy needs backup either way.

He actually has a meeting with all the top guys in LA and he basically says, like, I'm in charge now. You're all going to answer to me and kick up to me. One prominent mobster disagrees. He's promptly shot three times, survives, defiantly reopens his nightclubs, and then is shot again a dozen times, does not survive. They're called Murder Inc. for a reason.

I mean, they're only one for one on that hit. And bullet-wise, they're only one for 15. So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, one for two. I get it. I get what you're saying. One for two. Cullen's already sort of, you know, established himself as this operator and enforcer in the underworld. Now he's helping Bugsy manage the day-to-day operations and ensuring compliance from all the rivals and the subordinates. Still, he doesn't exactly love taking orders from Siegel, and he keeps doing his own sort of independent thing with stick-ups and heists for a while. But working under Siegel...

allows Cohen to learn from one of the most innovative minds in organized crime. He's charismatic. He's strategic. You know, he's the kind of guy who's wearing a suit and like investing in legitimate businesses to hide his money. And he's going to leave a lasting impression on Mickey, who starts to pick up on some of his maneuvers, like the mixing of the legitimate and illegitimate businesses, understanding PR, the sort of glamour of it all, and getting respect, not just through power, but through charm.

We're talking like 1939 here. LA underworld is exploding. These guys are making a ton of gambling off women. They're backed up by the most powerful criminal organization in the country. Possibly that's ever existed in the U S I mean, if you think about it seriously, has anyone ever been as powerful as a syndicate was not the cartels. Oh, wait, Sean, what about those crooks in Congress? Oh, beautiful setup. Execution goods. I, that was terrible. Uh,

LA is also just like wild with nightlife cabarets Mickey's out every night he's dressing well he's schmoozing with everyone he's got five different women on his arm every night just really living the life him and Bugsy are like Hollywood's infamous gangsters they're out all over Mickey's still robbing and doing heists running gambling ops and handling stuff for Bugsy.

Their main competition, who's actually in good with the syndicate but still kind of under Bugsy, is a Sicilian mustache Pete by the name of Jack Dragna, who is no slouch himself. This whole back and forth between Mickey and Dragna continues for decades, and it's kind of hard to make sense of it because Dragna's been out in LA for a while, but he doesn't really have control of it. He's not super competent. He wasn't super organized. He didn't have the brains or the skill that Bugsy and later Mickey had.

He had the backings, though, of Tommy Lucchese, who's pretty prominent in the commission, but Mickey and Bugsy have Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. Dragna and Mickey, they kind of go back and forth for a while. I guess the commission respects them both, but it's hard to understand because they're both actively trying to kill each other at times.

Which the commission was supposed to solve. I guess it's because they had different backers. And the book by Lewis claims this is sort of a battle between Jewish and Italian mob factions. But they were both so intertwined, not just in Mickey's gangs, like Jews and Italians, but also in the commission. So I don't really know how much sense that makes.

Mickey and Bugsy soon get involved with the Hollywood moguls, Jack Warner, Louis B. Meyer, the guys who really build up the first big studios. They set up an insurance business. They get control of all the unions. They do all the extras casting and basically charge big protection fees.

In New York, like it's manufacturing, then construction. In LA, it's making movies. And they get real intertwined in Hollywood business. I mean, I know LA Confidential was set after the war. I guess we're going to come to that as well later on. But a good excuse to mention, I think I read somewhere that it's the highest rated movie of all time on Rotten Tomatoes. I suppose that's going to be weighted a bit from like,

Soviet or Japanese cinema or whatever, but still incredible movie. And now I'm reminded of it. I'm definitely going to watch it maybe tonight, maybe next week after I've finished piling through severance. Anyway, I just watched the offer, which is about the making of the Godfather. And there's a little bit in LA. Mickey Cohen's actually in it briefly, which is weird. Cause I think, yeah,

He was kind of, you know, not really super active by that time. It also does a lot of stuff with like New York and the mob making movies in New York. It's a great movie. I mean, it's really, really worth a watch.

Mickey and Bugsy also get involved in trying to take control of the race wire, which was a massive thing in gambling back then. You couldn't like, there are no apps, right? You couldn't make a parlay while on the toilet and then find out you lost a leg already while still on the toilet. I mean, remember when you used to be able to do a poo without your phone? Remember that?

No, that's a that's the opening line of my new stand up show, by the way. So the the race wire is essentially a private network of telegraph and telephone lines that connects racetracks to bookies across the country. Before there was, you know, widespread television or instant communication, you had to get those race results as fast as possible. And it was a real logistical challenge.

The race wire solves that by delivering the up-to-the-minute results of horse races to bookmakers, allowing them to close their bets and pay the winners efficiently. This real-time sort of flow of the information, it gives the bookies the edge over competitors who, you know, are using slower, sort of less reliable methods of obtaining the race results.

Legitimate businesses, they operate some of the race wires, but organized crime quickly sees the potential and takes over many of these systems. And the mob uses the race wire not only to control gambling operations, but also as a tool for extortion. Bookies who want access to the race wire, they have to pay a big fee. And this kind of gives the guys who control it a steady stream of income for the syndicate controlling it. It's like Bloomberg Terminal for scumbags.

By monopolizing access to the race results, the mobsters can kind of dictate to the independent bookies, you know, what the odds are going to be and who's in charge and who gets paid. And for Mickey, this is a big part of building out the West Coast Empire. Same thing with Bugsy. So getting control of these race results is huge for the mobsters. And with Mickey, he's kind of tasked with overseeing all the gambling operations in Los Angeles.

he's really got to take control of it him and bugsy too and it allows them to kind of manage a sprawling network of bookies not just in la but kind of all over while maintaining a high degree of control over this information that's coming out yeah this is this is really cool i mean look shit coins fixed cricket matches penny stocks i mean we're all we're all just chasing the race wire man it's the dream it's my only dream actually that that and a 10 handicap maybe

Yeah, last night I got involved in the, I finally got a phantom wallet. So I immediately lost 50% of my money on the Baron Trump coin, which was not a real thing. Then I gained it back on the Trump coin. And now I don't even know, dude, I could turn my phone on after this. I could be a millionaire or I could have nothing. That is the fun of it all, you know? Can I take a bet on that 50-50? Yeah.

The race wire, it's important enough that there were wars fought all over. People are killed more than just a few.

Mickey, though, despite hobnobbing with these sort of elites, he continues living out his rep as a wild freelancer. He robs one of Dragna's guys, Johnny Roselli, who we've talked about before. He was involved in the CIA plot to kill Castro with Sam Giancana and Santo Traficante Jr., so not a minor player. He's also out in L.A. as sort of like the go-to guy for the Chicago outfit. He's working with Dragna. Mickey also shoots a prominent bookie named Iris Jimmy Fox, who's trying to muscle in on two low-level bookies he knows.

He's arrested. He's let go pretty quickly because he's got a lot of cops on the take. Is Johnny Roselli the one who ends up in the trash can? Is that him? I mean, he's killed like before before. I think he's killed before he's supposed to testify during the CIA thing. Is that is that the guy? Yeah, I think I think he was. I think he was the guy who was found. I think he was supposed to testify or talk to a commission. And then he was he was killed.

But anyway, Mickey, this whole time, he's talking to journalists. He's kind of cultivating this image as a classy guy, a man around town, everything like that. He's telling newspapers that crime has gone down since he got to town, even saying at one point, quote, the people of Los Angeles ought to get down on their knees and thank God for Mickey Cohen. Because if it wasn't for me, Dragnet would have this town tied up.

Soon enough, though, there's just too much money on the table for a big project. And the syndicate gets Dragnet and Bugsy to team up for this project. And that, of course, is building up Las Vegas. And we'll get to that in a second.

Mickey, meanwhile, is opening up restaurants and nightclubs all down the Sunset Strip. One time he threatens Jackie Gleason for not paying his bill. He's palling around with all these guys, but still getting himself in shootouts and into trouble making the newspapers. And it's kind of like, you know, these guys love him, all these actors, because he's like a real deal gangster shooting at people. And he's at the same restaurants and clubs as them, and they're eating it up.

One time he actually gets locked up for something small. And when he's in his cell, he recognizes an infamous Nazi and radio host by the name of Robert Noble, who's locked up with one of his cohorts on a sedition charge. Mickey arranges to have them both put in a cell and then he just beats the crap out of them. And at one point he talks about his autobiography, like bouncing their heads off one another. Sean, are you ready for this headline? And the subhead, it's incredible. It's the 1942 Los Angeles Times article. Quote,

This fellow thought Noble had kick coming. Comment about MacArthur in detention tank, Nets former pension leader punt in pants. Beautiful. Not a word wasted. That's poetry, man. A simpler time. I mean, to be fair, it's not as good as Super Cali Go Ballistic Celtic or Atrocious, which is the greatest headline of all time, but nothing is. I don't even want to know. Shout out to our Scottish listeners.

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Mickey's still like a, he's still a rough guy, you know, but he wants to make these changes. He's trying to blend in. He talks about this in his autobiography, how he realizes that now he's in like a different echelon of society and he has to change his ways. He has to get proper. He hires coaches for his addiction and his manners. He's trying to be more classy and fit in with all the celebs and high rollers. He's trying to be more

He moves to Beverly Hills in 1942 and he's palling around with Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra and Errol Flynn, Marilyn Monroe. You know, he's dating starlets. It is the golden age of L.A. mob life. I mean, pin up for all short kings around the world. But yeah, I mean, I got to jump in here with a sizzling take. So I was just in a Zagreb hotel, which is playing him 24-7. Sinatra, like he's just just fine, right? He's just OK. He's got a good voice, I guess. He's not the greatest. I mean,

These are the kinds of opinions that are too hot for TikTok, Danny. They just won't allow them. I don't know, man. I think with Sinatra, too, it was like the lifestyle and the Rat Pack and those guys. And Mickey was like running around with all of them. But yeah, it hits, you know? Good lad. You see enough mob movies and it really has like a... Yeah, I mean, I've been to Yankee Stadium. Every now and then, someone tries to kill Mickey. He's dodging Tommy guns, firing from guys hanging off the backs of cars.

But he's still running the gambling, the extortion rackets, these unions, Hollywood stuff, all while helping Bugsy develop Las Vegas. Here's journalist Peter Noyes, quote, If you lived in LA in the 40s and you didn't know who Mickey Cohen was, you had to be in a mental institution. He was everyone's ideal of a gangster in this town.

Also, we all know about JFK's mob buddies, right? But did you know about Richard Nixon's? In 1945, when Richard Nixon is running to be a congressman in the LA district, he comes to Mickey for help with winning the election. Mickey's quoted as saying that he doesn't like Nixon. He has a bad feeling about him. But Mickey throws in some cash for his campaign and helps him with fundraising because he's always happy to have another politician in his pocket. And he needs it because he's still brawling and killing.

His guy, Hookie Rothman, gets into a scrap with these two brothers who were racket guys, and they swear to everyone who will listen, they're going to take him and Mickey out. When one of the brothers runs into his office soon after to attack him, Mickey instead kills the guy, and he gets off again on self-defense. This, of course, makes him even more of a star in the city than he already is. It's on the front page of all the newspapers, and now he's starting to get national attention.

In 1946, 1947, you know, rival bookmakers and mobsters are getting taken out all over. The LAPD are investigating him. The feds are paying attention, though. This is before Hoover even admits there is a mafia. And the feds kind of see Mickey as like a local police matter. So they're not they're paying attention, but they're not really going after him aggressively. Also, did did none of these guys serve in the war? Did they not get called up? Because, I mean, even Nixon did.

No, they, Mickey actually tried to go in, I believe in 1940 and they, uh, they let him go after a couple of months. I think there was an issue with like authority or something along those lines, but he volunteered a little while. And I think, I think a bunch of the other guys did as well, but yeah, a bunch of mobsters served and Mickey, Mickey, I believe it was 40, maybe 41, like went in to like get a break from like the LA mob life. And, uh, he volunteered.

By the late 1940s, though, Bugsy's in real trouble after the casino he launches, the Flamingo, doesn't do so hot, and he goes way over budget and is accused of skimming off the top, and the commission orders him killed. And this one kind of gets to me, man, because it's like Lansky and Bugsy basically came up since they were teenagers. You know, he had to sign off on him being murdered. And there's just so many stories like that. Like any glorification of the mob, whatever.

People always end up having their childhood friends or even their relatives killed. There is no real loyalty. Bugsy had just pissed off too many people. He was stealing too much. And his former friends and partners just get a sniper to shoot him in the eye in his living room. So, yeah, man, it's not the best.

Mickey Cohen is deeply affected by his mentor's death. He later claims to have no knowledge of who ordered the hit, but suggests that it was the result of internal mob politics. I mean, can you just imagine the heartfelt pod episode that he'd do about that now? That would like do amazing numbers.

Mickey takes over from Bugsy and now he is the boss, the most powerful and visible mob influence on the West Coast, according to author Brad Lewis. Front page of magazines, hanging with the Rat Pack, even advising Frank Sinatra on his love life at one point. Life magazine calls him a gang lord without a peer.

He runs his empire out of a fancy clothing store for men, a haberdashery, as they say, on Santa Monica Boulevard. There was also got a bunch of restaurants and nightclubs and cabarets. He has got his hands in everything. He's even helping run guns to the Haganah with the help of Abra Anastasia. He hosts a gala with Jewish, Italian, and Irish mobsters to raise money for the cause. And he advises them on how to take on the British, allegedly. Yeah, this is where I'm going to draw the line. Yeah.

Meanwhile, Dragna is fuming, right? He's not really being taken seriously as a force.

There's no more little back and forth. The syndicate's going to stay out of it. And Mickey and Dragna are going to really fight to the death. That's when we get the cold open. And this is like big national news. This like launch of a broad daylight LA gang war. Mickey ups his protection, bulletproof doors around the clock guards. Meanwhile, the cops are being pressured to do something, anything to stop Mickey. He's getting hassled, arrested by some, but others, he still got on his payroll. He rarely gets in any real trouble.

You know, he would get tipped off before some police raids on his gambling joints. The mayor of LA in the late 1940s actually sometimes personally reaches out to Mickey to have someone beaten and he gets in trouble for that. He really plays it off well since the guy who he had beaten had been harassing an old woman. So the feds at this point are also on Mickey too. They're bugging his clothing stores. They're tapping his phones.

In July of 1949, Mickey goes late night to a famous restaurant to meet a bunch of journalists. There's a bunch of gangsters with him, even a plainclothes detective whose job it is to tail Mickey. At around 3.30 in the morning, someone just shoots up the entire place. Mickey's hit in the shoulder, a cop gets hit,

civilians get hit some of Mickey's guys Mickey drives himself to the hospital there's like five other victims including one or two who die an anonymous call comes into the hospital that night saying be on your guard we're gonna come down and get Mickey Cohen but they actually I think some people show up but they're unable to find Mickey and finish him off

Rumors are that Dragna ordered it and that maybe big New York player Frank Costello signed off on it, had okayed it. Though Mickey ends up talking a lot about how much he loved and respected Costello. So I don't really know if Costello would have signed off on that.

But there is a media frenzy. I mean, think about it. Hollywood, L.A., gangsters and journalists and celebrities at a restaurant together, plainclothes cops there. It's a wild shootout. And you just know the journalist wrote like the most annoyingly dramatic column ever. You know, that like, there I was in the middle of a shootout, the titans of the underworld, whatever. Who the fuck knows? I mean, don't tell me you wouldn't write that one too. Oh, no, I would milk it for years. Yeah. Yeah, years.

Dragna keeps trying to kill Mickey. He even tries to blow up his house a few times. In August of 1949, the guys sent to blow up his house accidentally blow up the house across the street. At one point, someone actually plants an M1A1 Bangalore torpedo from World War II, which has a nine pound explosive under his house, but it never goes off.

Wait, who's just running around with a World War II torpedo? Is that something you can buy at the haberdashers or something? I mean, late 1940s, early 1950s, you control the docks, man. You know, I'm sure there's access to all that sort of stuff.

At this point, a lot of people in L.A. are getting pissed off. There's even vigilantes who want to arrest Mickey. Meanwhile, he's still kind of the king. The feds aren't going full strength yet. Apparently, things get so heated that word gets to President Truman, who says that the FBI should not be involved in local matters. Dragna blows up part of Mickey's mansion in Brentwood. He survived something like 12 assassination attempts throughout his career.

He goes to trial a bunch. He's always getting off. The press still loves him. And he's got these kind of like Yogi Berra type quotes. Here's one. If I see a guy a couple of times, the press calls him my henchman. What the hell is a henchman anyway?

Says writer Kerry Williams, quote, He's a fascinating figure to all sorts of people. Columnists, politicians, movie actors, society figures, and others who are drawn to him by stories of his power and wealth, his fabulous hospitality, and above all, by the curiosity that people have about a man who moves under the shadow of a death sentence. Things start to change big time for Mickey, though, in 1950 because the country is going to get a lot more serious about organized crime. The Senate Select Committee on Organized Crime and Interstate Commerce said,

is the first most Americans learn of the mafia and how it works. We've talked about it a bunch before, but weeks and weeks of hearings on organized crime and what's happening with it in America, lots of gangsters mentioned, questioned, called up, 92 days of televised hearings in a row about the mafia in America. It's just wild. Mickey, of course, is there. They go after him hard. They go through his books, his businesses, and they get nothing.

At the end of 1950, his lawyer is gunned down outside his house, likely on the orders of Dragna. By the time 1951 rolls around, the authorities are going after Mickey for the old classic tax evasion. He's charged in April of 1951. By that point, he's pretending he's broke, that he has to sell everything, and he ends up having an auction of personal items, and it's a big enough deal that it's written up in Newsweek.

Alas, he's soon convicted of income tax evasion. The first gangster to go down for it in California, a five-year sentence. He actually gets sent up to Alcatraz, the infamous island prison of San Francisco. And, you know, he does the Goodfellas thing, special food sent in, throws a party for the other inmates, gets visits from William Randolph Hearst and the Reverend Billy Graham. He ends up serving close to four years before he's released. Dragna cannot capitalize while he's locked up, so when he gets out, L.A. is still his for the taking.

He's again all over the headlines, more infamous than ever when he rolls back into town. Interestingly, he's so charmed to guard at Alcatraz, the guy follows him to LA where Mickey gets him a job in insurance. Mickey tells everyone he's done with gambling, he's done with the rackets, but of course, he's soon running everything yet again. The feds and the LAPD now are watching his every move. It's still kind of seen as an embarrassment that no one has got him on anything else, especially the LAPD. You know, it's the IRS who does the tax stuff.

His new cover is a tropical plant business, which is, I mean, that's great. And he still continues his weekly battling with the police. Yeah, I mean, he's been arrested, what, a million times at this point for, like, murder and beating people to death. So, yeah, I'd say it's pretty embarrassing for the cops. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think there's also stuff that ends up happening with the ACLU and, like, him suing them for harassment. It's a big news story. So, like, Cohen knew how to play the game.

In May of 1957, he does a big time TV interview on ABC News with reporter Mike Wallace of later 60 Minutes fame. And Mickey, he says some wild shit. Quote, I have killed no man in the first place that didn't deserve killing by the standards of our way of life. In all of these, what you would call killings, I had no alternative. It was either my life or their life.

You couldn't call these cold-blooded killings. He confesses a lot, but maintains now he's a changed man. You know, look at the range man. He's got a whole new game plan. Yeah, I mean, did he forget that he only went to jail for a tax wrap? I feel like we got a slogan for this somewhere on the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I just saw an excuse to quote Cameron on lyrics.

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He also insults L.A. politicians and police so badly that ABC News and Wallace have to apologize a week later. Lawsuits are filed, including the L.A. police chief suing Mickey, the network and the advertisers. The mayor of L.A. sues, too. At some point, like during this whole thing, Mickey either writes a letter or says the quote. I was a pretty fair replica of the devil, which is I mean, it's a badass line. I just have to say that. Yeah.

This whole time, there's always rumors that he's been killed. You know, he's in talks to make a movie about his life. He's the boss of LA still. And at one point, he may have saved Sammy Davis Jr.'s life from the mob. What happens is Kim Novak, who's like the Sidney Sweeney over time, is romantically involved with Sammy Davis Jr. Novak's on her way to being a huge star, but this is the late 50s, and that sort of thing does not play in America. Even if Sammy Davis Jr. is the coolest black Jew to ever exist,

You know, he definitely beats out Lenny Kravitz and Drake. So movie studio execs call Frank Costello, top mobster in New York City, to do something about Sammy because they think he's going to kind of like, this relationship's going to be bad for Kim's career. And they have a lot of money invested in her.

Costello calls Mickey, tells him to do whatever the studio executives want. When Mickey meets them, they're telling him Sammy needs to be taken out, you know, at least have his legs broken, maybe killed. And the guy is like dropping the N word. But Mickey is boys with Sammy. He even knows Sammy's parents. I think he was friends before with them before he was friends with Sammy. And he tells the executive, if anything happens to Sammy, he's going to do the same thing to the executives.

Eventually, Sammy backs off Kim. But there's actually another side to this story that says Mickey...

did warn Sammy and even issued threats to Sammy. So it's two completely opposite stories. Sammy Davis Jr. though ends up testifying at a later trial for Mickey as a character witness and they're still friends years and years later. They're hanging out like into Mickey's later years when he's not really powerful. So I'm kind of leaning towards Mickey's version of events. Yeah, I guess that's a kind of incredibly sad story wrapped up in a crazy one, but also Kim Novak in Vertigo. Wowee. I mean, what a babe.

They don't make him like that anymore, do they, Danny? Hey, Greta Garbo, huh? There's a woman. You know, in these books and these write-ups of Mickey, they always talk about like all these starlets that he dated and like how they were smoke shows and like famous. And I can't really reference any of them because I barely know who they are. So I doubt like if I start talking, like our audience is going to have no idea. So I'm just like, yeah, he dated a bunch of hot movie stars. You can imagine it yourselves.

There we go. Yeah. All right. We're into the 1950s now. Mickey is still a man about Hollywood, still pursued by the feds, getting into brawls with FBI agents, fighting the waiter at a Rat Pack hangout owned by Frank Sinatra. Then we get more big government mafia hearings, right? We get the infamous McClellan hearings. Mickey gets grilled by Robert Kennedy, the original, not Junior, though Mickey apparently used to eat ice cream and pastries every day. So I'm sure any conversations between them would have been aggressive as well.

He doesn't mind Senator McKellen. He says he's all right, but he hates RFK and he says RFK has it in for him. RFK keeps going after him for years, even though Mickey and JFK were kind of partying with the same people, sometimes together, I think, though I'm not 100% sure on that.

Mickey's life then is just a mix of lawsuits, police investigations, big media stories, fan mail, torrid affairs with 20-something starlets. He's trying to be this gentleman gangster, but stuff is still going down. An up-and-coming mobster who had tussled with Mickey and friends shows up to a restaurant. Mickey's at a table with a bunch of folks. The guy punches one of Mickey's goons, and the up-and-coming mobster gets gunned down in front of everyone. The shooter is eventually convicted. Everyone thinks Mickey has ordered it, but nothing is proven.

Robert Kennedy, you know, he's then he's attorney general. He has it in for Mickey. By the time the 60s are rolling, Mickey's hit with yet another tax indictment, something like 13 charges. He's 47 years old. He's facing 32 years.

In July of 1961, Mickey's found guilty on a bunch of counts, sentenced to 15 years, back to Alcatraz where he hangs with guys like Bumpy Johnson. I mean, mate, just do all the murdering you want, but pay your fucking taxes. It really is. I mean, especially back then, like it really was, man. You just got to pay your taxes, bro. Yeah, just pay. He eventually gets moved to a prison in Atlanta where he kind of takes over for Vito Genovese who was there and, you know, had all the fancy prison jobs. Mickey's like his replacement. And get this, while in prison, our

RFK wants to get more info out of Mickey. He wants to get dirt on Nixon and quote, early in Mickey's Atlanta stay, Kennedy personally traveled to the prison to intimidate him, unexpectedly cornering him when he was about to shower with five reporters all holding cameras. Kennedy confronted nude Mickey Cohen and asked, how the hell are you going to live 15 years in this goddamn chicken coop? Mickey replied, hey, look, if I was given 1500 years, I would do what I have to do. Don't worry about me.

Which, I mean, that's from the Brad Lewis book, which is like, it's pretty crazy. Hearing this stuff, doesn't it make you kind of buy into like the JFK mob conspiracy? The JFK stuff? Yeah. Yeah, it's just ticked over from 99 to 100% in my head. Like the mob really hated, like JFK promised them stuff. He promised them not to make RFK the attorney general and then he did it. Yeah. You know, which is crazy. I mean, he talks about too how like Frank Sinatra-

Mickey writes this in his book, help persuade the mob to help JFK win in Chicago, like the old story goes, and that certain members of the mob were helping JFK get some time with famous broads, as they say, and that JFK had promised, like I said, not to make RFK the attorney general. So I don't know, man. Mickey refuses to cooperate, though. Also, an amazing line from his autobiography when he's talking about JFK, who he liked a lot, quote, I don't want to take anything away from John Kennedy being the president.

Needing broads two, three times a day doesn't take away from him being the president, which, uh, okay. Yeah. That's good. One horned up dude, you know, other politicians to attempt to get Mickey to give up some dirt on Nixon and his connection to mobsters. I think he actually does speak to a journalist or two to try to get his time reduced. He definitely talks about it in his book.

Shortly after the RFK meeting, Mickey's watching TV in prison when a mentally unstable inmate cracks him in the back of the head with a pipe, a lead pipe, seriously messes him up. He almost dies. He has to get a bunch of brain surgeries. Yeah, isn't this exactly how Whitey Bulger ended up getting whacked? Well, Whitey Bulger got beat to death, I think, right? Because he was in prison and like he was a snitch.

Mickey, I think the guy door lock or something. Yeah. Yeah. Mickey, I think the guy was really just like office face. Like it wasn't, they looked into whether he was hired by anyone, um, whether Mickey was targeted. Uh, and the guy was just like a loon, you know, I think he apologized later and all that sort of stuff. So it's not, not as similar, but yeah, Mickey's health suffers. Feds are still on him. They're convinced he's running things from prison. But in January of 1972, uh,

He's finally released. He goes back to Hollywood. He's still kind of going out with Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., still hobnobbing, still getting fan mail. He openly admonishes the kind of younger new breed of criminal who he says has no pride.

He gets a couple of restaurants going, sees old friends from the biz, goes to clubs and bars, which, I mean, is insane. Like, imagine doing that every night in your 50s or 60s. I don't want to do that now. He does some speaking tours. He works on some Hollywood stuff. He publishes his book. Oh, and when Patricia Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, the family calls Mickey for help.

Legend has it that Mickey used his contacts and actually located her, but had to back off for a number of reasons. So that's a weird final chapter in his life. He dies of cancer in 1976. Before he dies, I believe he admits to six murders, but I think we know of most of them because of the justified killings thing. Yeah. Didn't he admit to them the whole way through his life? I think he admitted to four in the book, maybe five. Okay.

I'm not entirely sure, but I definitely saw the number six brought up in some later interviews. Yeah, man. It makes me want to watch LA Confidential right now. Yeah. I think I'm going to do that actually, just after I watch some YouTube videos for the next six hours about how to improve my golf swing. Yeah. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. So we appreciate you guys sticking through us. Hopefully you did.

so