RISE OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA—NARRATION
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General) North American (US New York, New Jersey, Bronx, Brooklyn)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
New York City, home to more than 10 million people and one of the major centers for commerce and business in the world. Back in the day, believe it or not, nothing happened in this city without the okay of five men, men with little to no formal education who sat on one of the most powerful boards of directors in the entire world, the Commission of the Sicilian American Mafia. At the turn of the century, men like Charles Lucky Luciano and Salvatori Marinzano outlined the structure and hierarchy of what we now know to be the modern American Mafia. The boroughs of New York City were controlled by five families, each with its own boss. And these are the guys, not the politicians and Wall Street. Big shots who called the rial shots in New York construction restaurants, nightclubs, labor unions, the garment district, you name it. They had their hands in all of it in the 19 sixties and seventies, the man who ran the commission, the Capo di Tutti copy or the boss of all bosses with Carlo Gambino can be no, let a modest life and ruled the rackets with an iron fist until his death of natural causes no less. In 1976 Gambino broke protocol. Oh, by naming his cousin Paul Castellano, new boss of the family rather than his under boss, Neil Dellacroce. This angered the blue collar wing of the family who saw Castellano is nothing but a Wall Street wannabe who never got his hands dirty. Within a few years, Castellana would build himself a mansion in the Todd Hill neighborhood of Staten Island, rarely venturing out to visit the guys in the streets and demanding bigger and bigger cuts of their scores. Castellano, a savvy businessman with a wide array of legitimate enterprises, preferred to spend his days at home reading the Wall Street Journal and wearing velvet slippers. As we all know, things came to a head in December 1985 when Big Paul was gunned down in front of Sparks Steak House by a crew loyal to John Gotti. The rest, as they say, his history