The Wilmington morning star., 1947-12-08

| zAS l. OSANA WV ~
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1947, by King Features
Syndicate, Inc.)
NEW YORK, Dec 7. - From time to
time these dispatches have disclosed and
commented on a strange liaison between
our journalism and the underworld n
communist fronts of the amusement indus
try That this industry in all three OF its
major phases, movies, radio and night
clubs, is infested with police characters,
socially and professionally, was disclosed
last winter through Frank Sinatras' choice
of friends in Florida and Cuba and later
through the assassination of Bugsy Slegal
in Beverly Hills.
Siegal was the good companion OF many
prosperous artists of the awkward sprawl
and the noisy repartee. His most vociferous
horn of rapturous personal publicity was
little Hollywood publication of the un-
derworld for which Sinatra has been known
to bespeak advertising favors from the
studios. Its incorporators include Hank
Sanicola, Sinatra's partner in the music
business, and Barney Ross, the former well
terweight champion fighter. Its editor is
semi illiterate police character fr o m
Orange county, N j., with record of
three entries, accompanied by the standard
front and profile portraits, named James
Tarantino.
| Tarantino spent some time in that dubi-
GUS area of midtown New York known as
Jacobs Beach, near Madison Square Gar
| den, where the fighters managers and fix
ers hang out. His own special interest in
that region was money-lending in amounts
| of S. and $40 at vigorous interest. Follow
| ing his transfer to California as a protege
of Sinatra in the field of night club and
underworld journalism he became involv-
ed in scandal over mysterious and
apparently spurious kidnapping of men,
ber of his family. He tried to attribute this
to Gerald L. K. Smith, the anti-Jewish prop
agandist, but the effort to make Mr. Smith
the fall-guy for queer exploit in heroics
failed even though Sinatra had the pre-
sumption to telegraph the district attorney,
as the leader of long list of indignant
taxpayers, demanding that justice be done
He seemed to think his name carried
special weight.
| The district attorney, meanwhile, h a d
checked Tarantino's record on his old home
grounds, just as later district attorney
was to wire east for Sinatra's record and
picture in the Lee Mortimer slugging case
last spring. Since then. the editors de-
votlon to Bugsy. Siegal and George Raft,
another unblushing underworld celebrity,
-George Evans, Sinatra's manager, has
tried to disown him on Sinatra's behalf.
Barney Ross recently said he had pulled
out of the publication for fear of impli-
| catlon Out without recouplng his original
stake ana was now promoting project
| to strike the editor blow of the fist on
| the nose.
But notwithstanding Mr. Evans effort to
brush off Tarantino, insisting that he was
| only one OF many street-corne parasites
who had "latched onto' Sinatra, the fact
remains that Sinatra has solicited adver-
tlsements for the publication in recent
weeks.
Ed Sullivan, of the New York Daily
News does column about his own great
contributions to the heartsease of "our
brave boys" in the hospitals and to 'tol-
erance." Years ago, the voluntarily as
sumed the role of apoligist for Frank Mar
low, man of wicked ways whose own
pastor would have been embarrassed to
slft good word onto his box with the
crumbled clay of the last farewell Again
this season Mr.. Sullivan took it upon him
self to cast out of the good society all citizens
who are deficient in admiration of Sinatra.
This attitude, he said, bespoke the intolerant
mind and cowardly disposition to make
hideous childhoods happy hour of little
boys and girls born of Latin parents.
Whereat, the night-walking pastor of the
black sheep 'solemnly sloshed himself from
the front and went his rounds, dewy with
beads of piety and self acknowledged vir-
| tue.
There has been strident controversy as to
o1IldtraS S real opinion OF the nasty little
chits who used to loiter late into the night
around night clubs, theatres and other in
appropriate haunts for children, where Sina-
ira was earning his living or taking his ease
with the Fischetti freres of the Chicago
underworld and Lucky Luciano, the exiled
Sicilian prostitutioneer. Mortimer called
them little morons This was outlandish
flattery in the reckless tabloid manner, and
Sinatra caught him when his head was turn
ed and slugged him. In Chicago, Ashton
Stevens, pugnacious brute of 80 years and
about as many pounds, wrote about the same
opinion and might have got his needing, too,
but put himself away in dry-dock for his an
nual scraping with the Mayos in Rochester
In a study of this matter at the time I
wrote that Mr.. Evans, the manager and
press agent, had expressed the same onin;on
of these sinister little tramps, but bv arror
these expressions were attributed to NJ
Stevens instead. I should like to saw tbera.
FORE that, while Mr.. Stevens dmbtless
agrees with him, it was neverthe1ess NJ
Evans. Sinatra's own manager and nrona.
|gandist. the man who formented tho ev.
citement over this exaggerated roadho1sa
moaner, who spoke to me of frankie Rov's
following as excited jailbait, a million ' of
Them, squealing like animals and, as Mr..