The inspiration for countless mafia movies, Lucky Luciano (1897–1962) was a Sicilian-born gangster who became the most powerful capo in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. He murdered his way to the top of the mob hierarchy, established peace between the Italian and Jewish mafias, and built an illicit empire that made him one of the richest men in the nation.
Luciano also played an important—albeit secret—role in World War II. From his prison cell, he used his mob contacts to ensure labor peace on the Manhattan waterfront, and he also helped plan the Allied invasion of his native Sicily in 1943. For his assistance in the war effort, Luciano was released from prison in 1946—on the condition that he never return to the United States again.
Salvatore Luciana was born in Sicily, where his father was a sulfur miner. (The mob boss later changed both his first and last names.) The family immigrated to New York City, where Luciano attended public school and met Meyer Lansky (1902–1983) and Bugsy Siegel (1906–1947), both of whom would become important mob associates. Many older mobsters were hesitant to ally with non-Sicilians. But Luciano, Lansky, and Siegel had little patience for ethnic divisions when there was money to be made.
Starting in the late 1920s, the trio dealt with the older generation of Sicilians by killing them one by one. By 1932, Luciano was in command of a huge operation encompassing loan-sharking, drug trafficking, and organized labor.
Indeed, what most Americans came to think of as the mafia was created by Luciano. He divided the organized crime world into five families—Gambino, Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese, and Bonanno—and established “the Commission” to settle gangland disputes. He even instituted the gangster dress code of fedoras and conservative suits, insisting that his men look respectable. At the height of the Depression, Luciano generated millions of dollars in profits, lived in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, and dated showgirls. His reign over the underworld was short-lived, however; the US attorney, Thomas E. Dewey (1902–1971), successfully prosecuted Luciano on ninety counts of extortion and “organized harlotry” in 1936.
After his release, Luciano was exiled to Italy, but he remained involved in heroin smuggling and other mob activities. Never allowed to return to the country he considered his home, Luciano died in Italy at age sixty-four.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Luciano’s crime family is now known as the Genovese family, one of the Five Families of New York City’s organized crime world.
- In 1998, Time magazine named Luciano one of its 100 most important people of the century.
- Luciano was the subject of a 1973 feature film, Lucky Luciano, which starred Gian Maria Volonté (1933–1994). Luciano has also been portrayed by Christian Slater (1969–) in Mobsters (1991), Bill Graham (1931–1991) in Bugsy (1991), and Andy Garcia (1956–) in Hoodlum (1997). The character of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972) is also based partially on Luciano.
