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Bonanno, last one left from a way of life January 9, 2008 |
I did my first radio
interview with Bill Bonanno in 2001. I was impressed
with his candor and sense of humor after his radio
interviews with the late Bert Lee, and as a guest at
Joe Bonanno’s 95th birthday party in 2000. Bill was
the MC and reminded everyone that a Bonanno was the
architect for the Leaning Tower of Pisa. “Even then
we weren’t on the level,” he quipped.
He thought most mob movies were fake. He particularly despised “The Sopranos” as demeaning to both Italians and the mafioso of which he was part. We did discuss one flick featuring Joe Pesci as a wannabe in Philly. Flipped the keys by the Don, Pesci walks out on the street and stares at a parked black Caddy. Somebody says “he’s gonna start the car” followed by a great sight gag of a speeded camera showing blocks of downtown Philly emptying in a few seconds. Bill’s response was “we used to start the cars with remote control.” After the interview we talked for a while in the parking lot. Bill got into his white Lincoln and then looked back at me as we both simultaneously said “he’s gonna start the car.” The Bonannos came to Tucson in the early ‘40s and left New York permanently in 1968. Like many others, they bought land here and did well legitimately. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, once chief of detectives for TPD, told me he didn’t know what the family was doing elsewhere but there was nothing he knew about going on here. Not quite — Bill admitted to running a bookie operation on East Broadway in the ‘60s. The sign on the door read “Tucson Bookmaking Inc.” The outer office had a real bookbinder, the inner was the phone room for taking bets. A couple run-ins with the law over relatively minor items cost Bill some hard time along the way. This was accounted for in Gay Talese’s book and the movie derived from it, “Honor Thy Father.” He further illustrated this including personal foibles in his own memoir “Bound By Honor — A Mafioso’s Story.” Among the many insights it gives us is the opening portrait of the tall man from back East walking out of church in Tucson after Mass with his old friend — Joe Kennedy and Joe Bonanno in 1954. Bill claimed that no one got to be president for about 40 years without the help of the original five New York families. The 1960 Democratic Convention in L.A. saw LBJ as their favorite, per Bill. The convention was close to deadlock when Tommy Luchese said it was time to cut the deal with Old Man Kennedy. They’d done business with him for years, he could be trusted and Lyndon would be V.P. Bill rode along as his dad’s consigliere as the impromptu delegation went to Joe Kennedy’s hotel room and finalized the deal. Influence with the Kennedy’s waned after Joe’s paralyzing stroke and Bobby’s aggressive prosecution of certain connected folks. Bill claimed that the JFK assassination was done by the Chicago, New Orleans and Miami families without the knowledge of the others, and that the big clue was Jack Ruby, a Giancana Chicago hanger-on who was conveniently dying of cancer. Bill was as good a writer as he was a raconteur. His last published work was The Good Guys, a novel co-written with Joe Pistone, the real Donny Brasco, in which the FBI and the Mafiosos end up working together against the Russian mob. Bill Bonanno passed away of a coronary at age 75 last week. He was the last of a way of life. Americanization and the drug trade have reduced what we call “The Mafia” to what we saw on “The Sopranos.” We will never see his kind again because the culture that produced him no longer exists. I will miss him as both a great radio guest and a good friend.
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BUT WATCH WHAT YOU SAY! |
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