“Crazy” Joe Gallo was a murderous gangster who has been portrayed many times in books, films, and television. For one year in the early 70s, he was welcomed into New York’s elite high society.
As a juvenile delinquent he’d been declared schizophrenic, hence his nickname. In 1957, Crazy Joe allegedly murdered prominent crime figure Albert Anastasia in a barbershop.
At a US congressional hearing in Washington about organized crime, he never removed his Ray-Ban sunglasses while repeatedly citing his Fifth Amendment rights.
In 1961, the Gallo crime family began a war with the Profaci mob family. Hostages were taken. Some of Gallo’s crew, including a brother, were killed. Joe Gallo never forgot that.
He was arrested and convicted on charges that included extortion and conspiracy.
Gallo spent almost all of the 1960s in prison.
He became a voracious reader while incarcerated. He studied Nietzsche and Camus. Education changed him… somewhat. But he was still running mob operations while in the penitentiary.
1962: Joe Profaci died. Joseph Colombo took over his operations, which became the Colombo family.
In 1969, while Gallo was still in prison, famed New York journalist Jimmy Breslin wrote a novel called The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Though Gallo had no part in writing it, the work of fiction was loosely based on his life.
In 1971, the book was made into a film of the same name. Broadway actor Jerry Orbach was cast as the lead.
Orbach had appeared in the original casts of The Fantasticks and Promises, Promises. Later, he originated the role of Billy Flynn in Chicago.
He would eventually become best known, however, as Detective Lennie Briscoe on the TV series Law and Order.
Gallo was released from prison on April 11, 1971.
While most mob figures maintained low profiles, Joe Gallo appeared in the society pages of New York newspapers and got invited to all the best parties.
Celebrities like actors Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk found the ex-convict to be unusually erudite, well-read, and cool.
Gallo and Jerry Orbach happened to be dining in the same restaurant one night, so the actor introduced himself. They became friends.
The mobster also befriended comedian David Steinberg.
Gallo met a woman named Sina and proposed marriage. She was a former nun.
When Gallo married Sina at Orbach’s Manhattan apartment, David Steinberg was his best man.
Meanwhile, Gallo still had a beef with the Profacis, which was now the Columbo gang. Colombo tried to broker peace, but Gallo wasn’t interested.
Then Columbo was shot at a public speaking event. Word spread through the underworld that it was orchestrated by Joe Gallo.
April 6, 1972: Roughly one year after his release from prison, Crazy Joe Gallo along with his new wife, his bodyguards, and several others went out on the town to celebrate his 43rd birthday.
They went to the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan, which Gallo operated at that time.
The headliner was comedian Don Rickles.
Jerry Orbach and his wife joined the Gallos.
A bodyguard warned Rickles before the show that Joe Gallo would be in the audience that evening and not to make fun of him.
Rickles, being no stranger to mobsters, took that as a challenge.
During his show, Rickles tore into Gallo in his inimitable comic style.
Gallo loved it.
After the show, he invited Rickles to dine with him and his entourage that evening at Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy.
Rickles found an excuse not to attend. So did Jerry Orbach.
Later that same night, four gunmen entered Umberto’s Italian restaurant and shot Joe Gallo to death, supposedly in retaliation for the shooting of Joseph Columbo.
If Don Rickles and Jerry Orbach had attended, they might have been killed, too.
Gallo’s year of celebrity status was over. But his fame — or infamy — has continued throughout the half century since his passing. He would have loved the notoriety.
ALSO:
Bob Dylan even composed a song about him called “Joey,” which critics lambasted for glorifying a mobster. But Dylan considered him “some kind of hero.”
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