Jul 06 2007
Film bio of Lucky Luciano in the works
Producer Joseph Isgro nails the rights to a legendary mobster’s life story.
BEFORE Tony Soprano or Don Corleone or Tony Montana there was Lucky Luciano — the real-life patriarch of modern organized crime.
Luciano was the Sicilian immigrant who rose to power in the Mafia in the U.S. in the 1920s and transformed it into a flourishing enterprise based on legitimate economic models. He ordered gangland killings, consolidated warring crime factions and began laundering profits from narcotics and prostitution through lawful businesses.
Criminals paid attention. So did the cops. Even the White House deferred to Luciano during World War II, imploring him to marshal the Mafia to help the Allies crush the enemy — a covert intervention that earned him a presidential pardon. Major studios struggled for decades to secure the rights to the mobster’s life story but failed because Luciano’s family was reluctant to bring his crime-filled saga to the screen.
Finally, a movie about Luciano is in the works, and the driving force behind the project is Joseph Isgro, a producer once branded a Mafia soldier by the FBI. Isgro was a producer on the 1992 film “Hoffa” while under indictment on racketeering charges.
How Isgro secured the rights remains a mystery — one he will not discuss except to say that he got them legitimately. Isgro says he was dogged by the same type of skepticism decades ago when he beat out Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and the studios to lock down the Jimmy Hoffa life-story rights.
“Listen, I was 15 years old when Luciano died,” the 60-year-old Isgro said in a recent interview. “If someone wants to try to associate me with Luciano, then so be it. The government has wasted millions of dollars of taxpayer money chasing me. You know what those guys say about me, right?”
Here’s what they say: In a 2000 affidavit, the FBI singled out Isgro as one of 192 identifiable members of the Gambino crime family — a mob soldier who has been under federal investigation for many years.
Isgro scoffs at those charges.
“I’m a soldier all right,” Isgro said. “A decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, and a proud member of the Isgro family.”
Isgro broke into Hollywood 15 years ago, producing “Hoffa,” a 20th Century Fox film about the mobbed-up union leader, which starred Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito. He and Gary Arnold are co-executive producing “Baby-O,” a movie starring Theresa Russell and David Proval that began shooting recently in Las Vegas.
For “Luciano,” Isgro has approached a specific A-list actor to play the lead role (whom he cannot yet publicly identify) and is wooing several actors from “The Sopranos” to join the cast. Isgro and his associate Dan Michaels, chief of Full Force Films, have also interviewed a number of writers and directors, including Charles Matthau, son of the late actor Walter Matthau. Isgro already signed hit music producer Scott Storch to score the soundtrack and is in talks with New Line Cinema to distribute the movie, according to New Line’s Joseph Khouri.
Corporate-style boss
Charles “Lucky” Luciano was born on Nov. 24, 1897, in a tiny, sulfur-mining town in Sicily called Lercara Friddi. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 1906.
Before he was 21, Luciano had established himself as a deft criminal, helping to consolidate the mob’s bootlegging operation on New York’s Lower East Side. He worked his way up into the inner circles of the nation’s biggest mobsters, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano — and then orchestrated the assassinations of both men.
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New York Post
August 12, 2007–THE life story of Lucky Luciano is finally coming to the big screen. Producer Bob DeBrino - who holds the movie option to “The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano,” by the late Martin Gosch and former N.Y. Times reporter Richard Hammer - is pitching studios a film about the Sicilian-born mob boss who helped the U.S. win World War II from his prison cell by ensuring labor peace on the docks. The crime kingpin, who was freed and exiled in 1946, collaborated with the authors on the condition that the book not be published until a decade after his 1962 death. New interest in Luciano was sparked by Joe Isgro, a former music promoter who in 2000 was sentenced to 50 months in jail for extortion and loan- sharking. Isgro surfaced in Hollywood claiming he had the rights to the Luciano story. “Rights to what?” Hammer sputtered. “There are no rights.” Luciano has no surviving relatives. Isgro created some confusion around Tinseltown, says DeBrino, but he’s pressing on. Being Italian is not a prerequisite for the lead role - DeBrino’s wish list includes George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.
This is incorrect. There are relatives.
Lucky Luciano has living relatives in Italy and the U.S. Luciano discovered that he had a cousin in Lercara Friddi, Sicily when he was deported in 1946. The cousin’s name was Calcedonia Lucania (male). Calcedonia had a son, Francesco, and Luciano became Francesco’s godfather. Francesco Lucania is still alive, as well as a relative named Giussepe Lucania who both still live in Sicily or Italy. And let’s not forget that Luciano had 4 siblings.