The Making of The Mob

Previously on "The Making

of the Mob: New York"...

All right, this is how it's gonna work.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano

takes control of the New York Mafia...

and with his crew--

Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel,

Frank Costello and Vito Genovese...

Easy, Joe, easy.

...Luciano establishes

a powerful commission of five families

to rule the underworld...

The five New York families.

They will have the final say in all matters,

even life and death.

...enlisting notorious

hit squad Murder, Inc.

to enforce its power.

You guys'll be like ghosts.

Nothing gets left behind.

Nothing.

But a threat to Luciano's organization

emerges from within...

Get another bottle of vino over here for the ladies.

...as rogue gangster Dutch Schultz...

...plans to assassinate the man

on a mission to take down the Mob,

New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey.

I don't care how much it costs.

Get me Dutch Schultz!

Dewey launches a crusade against organized crime...

and to save the Mafia,

the New York kingpin orders a hit...

on one of his own.

In a single move,

the New York Mafia

has eliminated the greatest threat to its power:

uncontrollable gangster Dutch Schultz.

With Schultz out of the picture,

the Mob is back in business.

He doesn't have anything in-- that's all natural.

It's all natural-- I'm Sicilian, come on.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel,

Frank Costello and Vito Genovese are living the high life.

Guys like Lucky

came up from the bottom,

clawed their way up, and wind up being on top,

and when they became the boss,

it was almost like their "Man of La Mancha" dream.

This is what they wanted.

All right? Drink up.

A salute!

Salute!

God bless.

In my neighborhood growing up,

we didn't have money,

and now all of a sudden you see these guys,

they have a diamond pinkie ring, gorgeous suits,

beautiful women with them.

They were gods to us.

By 1935,

Luciano and his crew had built an empire

pulling in the modern-day equivalent

of over $100 million a year.

Meyer Lansky is leading the charge,

revolutionizing their gambling rackets,

turning their low-rent gambling dens

into high-class establishments.

Well, Lansky saw opportunities

where other people saw nothing, and he saw treasure

where other people saw trash.

He was the first guy to take craps, which was a street game,

and put it up on green felt on a table

and thereby make it respectable and fancy.

As Lansky is inventing the first modern casinos...

Look, I want all these collected today!

Collected today.

...Vito Genovese has a heroin racket

that's pulling in millions of dollars a year,

but he decides to diversify,

and begins running high-stakes poker games...

Three of a kind.

...luring in unsuspecting wealthy businessmen

and fixing the outcome to make sure he always wins.

Full house.

Jacks over nine.

Gambling was the strength of the American Mafia.

The reason gambling was appealing to Mob guys

was because their life was a gamble,

and it was only a reflection of the way they lived.

While business is booming,

Bugsy Siegel makes sure the money is collected...

and that the Mob's authority is understood.

And as part of the Mob's hit squad, Murder, Inc.,

Siegel carries out orders sent down by the Commission.

Frank Costello keeps the authorities at bay,

using his connections

with corrupt politicians and law enforcement

to ensure the Mob's business runs smoothly.

Now that they were running these criminal organizations,

very profitable ones,

they had to pay off police and politicians

to continue thriving,

because they didn't want any outside interference,

you didn't want to be arrested.

"The Godfather"

was based on Frank Costello

with all the judges and all the politicians in his pocket.

At the top of the operation is 38-year-old Lucky Luciano.

The best way to describe Lucky Luciano

was that he was a creative genius,

but a criminal creative genius.

He knew entrepreneurship.

He knew how organizations should function

and how to get rid of rivalries and competition.

In effect, he was an early equivalent,

a criminal equivalent,

of a Warren Buffett or a Steve Jobs.

(orchestra playing, people talking and laughing)

Hey.

Where are you going?

None of your business.

You know who I am?

Everybody knows who you are.

Am I supposed to be impressed?

Hey.

You haven't given me the chance yet.

Well, goodfellas are sexy guys.

They got money, they got power,

they have, uh, new cars, they have the best clothes,

and they're notorious and they're bad boys.

I think certain women are attracted to that.

He's mesmerized over here, huh?

And soon... soon we can go traveling together.

Go to Paris, take you shopping.

You like that?

Lucky Luciano lived in the Waldorf-Astoria.

Normal people with normal lives don't live in fancy hotels.

That's for rock stars and gangsters.

From his residential suite at the Waldorf-Astoria,

Luciano begins to build a life with his new girlfriend,

a 20-year-old Broadway dancer named Gay Orlova.

Luciano's relationship with women

was similar to the relationship of a lot of these guys.

One-night stands.

Occasionally you met someone.

He had a longer relationship with a woman named Gay Orlova.

Well, she was an entertainer, she was fancy.

I'm gonna take care of you, you understand?

No matter what happens to me, you'll be taken care of.

Do you understand?

While his girlfriend's at home,

Luciano looks to diversify his business

into the seedier side of the underworld.

All right, fellas, well, it's pretty self-explanatory.

As you see, the man in the middle...

What do you have on Luciano?

For years, Luciano

has been New York special prosecutor Thomas Dewey's

number-one target...

but Luciano's rackets are so well-organized,

pinning a crime on him will be nearly impossible.

Well, being a prosecutor,

you come up in a tradition

in which you're here to do the right thing.

You're constantly reminded

that the correct result in America is justice

and the government wins when we achieve justice.

But what Dewey doesn't know

is Luciano is about to play right into his hands.

At the height of his power,

Lucky Luciano is determined to expand his criminal operation

and take advantage of the oldest profession in the world...

prostitution.

In the 1930s, prostitution is illegal in the United States,

but Luciano knows underground brothels are still thriving...

and he wants a cut of their profits.

Luciano realized that crime could cash in

on free enterprise.