Category: LIFESTYLE

SINGLE, UNMARRIED

LIVING ON THE EDGE

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Fifteen years ago, the summer of 1993, I was having lunch in a restaurant in Los Angeles. Across from me was the only other woman of importance in my father’s life, besides my mother, that I had known. Sandy Crosby, a leggy brunette with bark brown eyes, arched brows, and a showcase smile.

She always had a response that outwitted her opponent, including my father, who relied heavily on, ‘don’t be so smart.’  Half-way through the first course at Jimmy’s, she looked at me and grinned.

“You’re so much like your father.”

“I am?”

“Oh yes.”

“Your father loved living on the edge, he really did.”

I rested on that thought for a long time. I was temporarily living with a friend in Los Angeles. I lived out of a suitcase, with a broken down Cadillac, and a folder of resumes.  My dad  never lived out of a suitcase, or needed a resume to find a job. After he met Benny Siegel, he had multiple offers in organized crime.

What I discovered, is Dad didn’t truly settle down until he had to raise my sister and I. He was 56 years old when Mom died, and we were tossed into his lacquered bachelor pad in Hollywood. The same age I was two years ago.

Living on the edge is a term used to describe infinite lifestyles. The momentum, or ignition that fuels that lifestyle, is uncertainty. We live by impulse and imagination. Our plans are last minute, we never buy in bulk, and we are always dreaming of the voyage. We run from stationary life because at heart, we are gamblers.

This time, the edge is the very place I spent two years creating, the photography gallery and home in Santa Fe. Up until this winter, it operated as a gallery by appointment, while I polished my memoir proposal. After several months, I went to the edge and decided to convert the gallery into a vacation rental. I needed to roam; I longed to gather new material.

The winter climbed back into bed, and then spring ripped through the ground, and the roses and poppies bloomed. The memoir remained unpublished, and the house began to transform from gallery to a real home. The long uneventful winter punctured my prudent habit of writing, remaining secluded, and avoiding everything but the essentials. By May, I made a silent vow under a stream of sunlight, to enlist into the human race.

The reinvention resembled nature, like today. The day began with  a feverish sky of culminating clouds, a long dreary silence, and an absence of light. The street was empty, just the valet from La Posada running to the garage to fetch the cars. They were bundled in winter coats, while the party rental truck loaded the furniture from last evening’s wedding. The storm struck with impetuous force. The valet’s ran with umbrellas, small children yelled for cover, and I took a seat on the back porch. Suddenly, the storm rescinded, and the sun burst through the cloud cover.

My emancipation back into the flow of mixing strangers and friends was alchemy to the house. Now it’s a home; to cook, entertain, and fill with music, laughter and conversation.  I can see the faces of the people I’ve met, imagine the next meeting, and anticipate the next outing. The windows and doors are opened, the people who pass by look in. I was cooking dinner one night this week, and noticed a man peeking in the window. He looked like Harrison Ford, just back from the Lost Arch.

“ Is this a museum?” he asked when I went to the door.

“ No. It’s a gallery, a home. Well come in, and take a look around.”

Opening the door to a stranger returned the affirmation that impulse socializing is still possible in the banal and sterile world of FACEBOO.   You don’t have to be a teenager to recognize a good time, but you need to be an adult to recognize a good fellow.

Some of us lone roamers cannot reverse the inclination to retreat from life; because we find too much confusion, agitation and adversity in the world. Between all of those elements, there are treasures waiting to be discovered: opportunity collaboration, adventure, and most of all companionship.

Even though the comfort of this home has replenished my spirit and temporarily produced a yawn of security, I am preparing to go to the edge. Though I imagine it is another place of endearment, another address, and another gamble, it may be the inner voyage that will transcend.

When I tell people we’re renting the house, they ask me where will you go?

I don’t know yet. Sandy was right; I am like my father. The edge I picked wasn’t a green felt jungle of dice and chips, it’s an artists’ life.

Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com

 

MY MOTHER-A RACKETEER’S WIFE

~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

How could I have known 15 years ago?  Back then I had but a fingerbowl of resources, a blue chair, a desk, and a typewriter.  Everyday I wrote into the flame of discovery looking for my mother.  My notebooks were sketches of a  woman I never knew.   The absence of the most ordinary information, like where she grew up in Newark, what sort of neighborhood, what her father did for a living, what schools, she attended, and later on, what experiences she had modeling in New York.

The closest I got was by reading John Robert Powers, The Powers Girls,  about the modeling agency he started in 1923.   He assigned unemployed Broadway talent to his advertising agency to promote American products.  According to John he was the innovator of the modeling agency concept- beautiful women and men will sell products, the public never would have thought of buying.

I found her name in the index, Lucille Casey, and she joined the agency when she was 16 years old.   John groomed the models; they were assigned disciplinary perfection in dialect, manners, appearance, character, and intellect.  Powers Girls married anyone they wanted.  They were invited to all the important society events, they were given card blanche at the Stork Club, and the Morocco and they were transported to celebratory city functions. They met men of all means, character, and class.

After I read the book, I thought about what my father used to say,  ‘Your mother could have had any man in the world, but she picked me. Don’t you make the same mistake. “  That is a complex summons for a teenager to understand.

I sat in the blue chair and waited for flares of information to come down to earth.   After two years, I had very little to fill one page.  My mother’s history was lost, her friends had vanished, or would not talk to me.  She did not leave a diary.  Her photo album as a model was all I had.  What could I see in those eyes, and smile?   I gave up the search, and switched over to my father. The government documented his daily activities, and what they didn’t hear or see, was exploited in newspapers, documentaries, and books.

There was one woman who was alive, that knew intimate details of my mother, because I had met her, and she made it known to me she knew. That was Meyer Lansky’s wife, who went by the name Teddy.  Women have a distinctive look when they are withholding secrets.  Teddy always had that look when she brought up my mother.  I told her I was writing about my father and mother and she said, “Let them rest in peace.”    I didn’t take her advice.

SIDEWALKING TO BREAKING MY SILENCE

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

SIDEWALKING TO BREAKING MY SILENCE

 

This is the beginning of the journey, to write my way home.

“The fall was impulsive. All the misguided messages and warnings tumbled over me. When I finally found the bottom of self-defeat, the shelves of my soul empty, I was 43 years old.   Beyond getting married and having children, career, or stability, there were the untold stories of my gangster father and glamour girl mother. The struggle to break my silence began to erupt.  The problem was, they were both dead, and no one knew their stories.

The journey began one day in 1994. I was standing on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Barrington, in West Los Angeles.  This was the crossroads of my adolescence; a few blocks from my high school, where I learned to survive silently.

I was in the phone booth, the same booth from which I used to call my father, and report where I was going after school. The fellow next to me was talking on the phone to his agent, about a script.  I was dialing UCLA, Emergency Psychiatric Counseling, inquiring about treatment.  Choking on my tears and the lopsided humor of our juxtapose conversations, I screamed silently.  The next week I found myself inside the UCLA center, seated next to a woman with a clipboard ready to document what I said.  I kept looking out the window. The Hilgard House, where I lived with my mother, was visible from where I sat. I remembered the days we would all go swimming and would later walk in the village, eat cheeseburgers and shop at Bullocks.  I remembered my cats, my friends, my records and my joy.

“You have sadness and pain, how would you describe that?” the counselor asked.

“What do you mean?”

“How do you handle your sadness?” she said, leaning forward.

“By myself, I just live with it.”

“Do you feel pitiful?” she asked.

“Yes. I have nothing.

“Are you eating and sleeping properly?” she asked making a note.

“No, I ‘m not hungry and I can’t sleep. Today’s my birthday.” I said.

“You’ve made a conscious decision to change haven’t you?”

“I suppose.”

She put the notebook away, and with appeasing eyes assured me she would find a therapist suited to my problems.  I walked outside into the light of day. Across the street from the building was where the Hasty House used to be. We used to have dinner there with my grandmother.  I didn’t know if my grandmother was even alive. We had lost touch.  I lost touch.

There were two people to call, Rudy, my ex-boyfriend and Florence, my adopted Jewish mother, whom I had known fifteen years.  My choice was guided by instinct.

“Hi Florence, its Luellen.”

“Darling, how are you? Oh for heaven’s sake it’s so good to hear your voice. What are you doing?”  I didn’t have an answer.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, fine. Well, you know since the earthquake, the place is a mess and I don’t have time, I’m so busy. Oh, everyone keeps asking me if I’m all right, the girls think I should go to a therapist… did I tell you I was pinned under my oil painting for three hours before the paramedic arrived.”

“You feel all right though?” I asked.

“Well, to be honest, I’m scared– who wouldn’t be all by herself.”

“What are you doing, you haven’t told me a thing?” she said.

“Florence, I quit my job at the Terraces, and moved out of the condominium.  I was supposed to take over an Art Gallery in Laguna Beach; it’s not working out well.  Do you think I could stay…..?”

“Oh would I love it, come right over. I’ll be home.”
That’s how I ended up at Florence’s home in the summer of 1994. We hadn’t spent much time together since I moved back to San Diego from Los Angeles.  Though 30 years separated us, she was the friend that could be mothering one minute and girlfriend the next.

***

“Oh darling you look wonderful,” she cooed.

“You do too Florence.”

“You think so… really?” she said glancing down at her waistline.

“Yes, you look gorgeous.”

“You’re so skinny? Have you lost more weight?”

“A little, you can fatten me up.”

We sat in the dining room, drinking coffee and I answered questions.  I told her selected chapters from the last scene in my life.  I left out the part about PJ’s alcoholic binges and his partner Aaron’s daily dosage of marijuana.  There was the twisted, anti semantic charge between PJ and all Jewish people, and why I fell into a hole with all the alarms of dysfunctional behavior ringing at once.   Florence told me how she survived the earthquake, and how her daughter Madeleine had sensed she was in trouble, and sent the paramedics.  We were both afraid; we needed daily encouragement to face the unsteadiness. Florence put me upstairs in Sam’s old room, her husband who had passed away several years prior.  I flopped on the fold out bed. I was as close as I’d ever come to giving up on myself.”

 

CHRISTMAS WITH A JEWISH GANGSTER

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

It you were to ask my father, a man of Jewish faith, raised in a strict Orthodox home, why he celebrated Christmas, this is how he would answer.

“You can’t get away from it, what are you going to do, hide your head in the sand?”  He didn’t voice resentment or personal humiliation celebrating Christmas. My father ignored regulations and conventions for a living, so a religious variance was no different. Half his associates were Jewish, and the other half were Italian. This may account for his interpretation of the Holidays.

In the first weeks of November, I would get a call asking to meet my father in Beverly Hills and pick out the Holiday cards. The meeting began like this every year.

“Is that all you have to wear to go shopping?” examining   my unmatched jeans, and pull over sweater.

“What’s wrong with this outfit?”

“For crying out loud! You look like a gypsy.” After we finish here go to Saks and pick out something for the holidays, you can’t go to Arthur’s like that!”
Then I would follow behind him, twitching with scorn until we sat down to look through the sample books. First, we looked over the messages suited to both Jewish and Catholic faiths. Then we chose a card, a font style, a color, and then he began editing the message. It usually took several hours. He wore his thick reading glasses and studied each sample card, and asked the sales clerk many questions. I remember showing signs of waning interest, and then he’d take off his glasses, stare  directly in my eyes, and say,

“What is it Luellen, am I asking too much of you again?”

“No, I answered. He could feel my impatience with the assignment.

“Which color do you like?” he asked.

“I like the gold.”

“We did gold last year, this year should be different.”

Once he settled on all the details, he ordered two-hundred cards. It never occurred to me that he wanted my participation because I had something to offer. I thought he just wanted company. He could not stand to be alone during the holidays.

Once the cards were delivered, I was told to come over and help address the envelopes because he liked my handwriting. We sat on the same blue and green crushed velvet sofa he had since he moved into the Doheny Towers.  While I crouched over the glass coffee table, he held his guarded black telephone book, and watched me write out each envelope. He compared all the cards he had received from the previous year against his own list, to avoid missing anyone. Sometimes I did not finish until after midnight, and left him sitting there studying and counting the envelopes. Every year, the completion of the cards, was the event that signified the beginning of the holidays.

The next phone call would be to come over and wrap the Christmas presents. I failed in this category, and my sister took over. It was worse than the cards because if her wrapping was unsatisfactory, she had to do it all over.

The next ritual was the outfit, the one I would wear to Arthur’s Thanksgiving party. This had to be classic and colorful. He always said to avoid black, because I should save that for when I’m older. He had to preview the outfit before, and if he disapproved, he would accompany me back to the store to select something else. Appearances were not every thing he used to say, they were number one in making an impression.

All through my twenties, I had to maintain two wardrobes, one for him, and one for me. I’m still dressing one part Al Smiley’s daughter and one part Loulou.

On Thanksgiving Day, the tradition was to arrive at his home at noon to walk.  Like the cards, and the outfit, the walk, wasn’t negotiable, it was part of my tutorial. We walked two hours along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. He walked with his head a notch above everyone else, to diffuse any interference. People often greeted him, and he kept walking. If I asked who that was he would say, “A lot of people think they know me, just keep walking.”  He walked with his eyes, as much as his legs. He walked with the intention of continuing to school me on human relationships, right down to meeting a stranger in the street.

“Now, be at my house at 3:00 sharp for Arthur’s.”

“Same crowd going this year?” I asked

“Why? Does the same crowd bore you?”

“No, I’m just asking.”

“Well don’t ask silly questions. Arthur can have any crowd he wants, who the hell cares. He saved my life– many times. He asked us to be a part of his family, you should be grateful; one day you’ll figure it out. Not everyone gets invited to Arthur Crowley’s home.”

Every year we were greeted by Arthur’s slightly tipsy blond bombshell wife, who opened the front door and cooed, “Allen dawling, where have you been?”  She kept us standing there;  as long as her routine lasted. My father said she was a showgirl. When I knew her, the shocking pink skintight outfits were Vegas outdated.  She was Ziegfeld Follies beautiful, and always at least two scotches ahead of everyone else. My father wowed her with compliments; I could tell she needed desperately.

We headed to the bar, where the Crowley crowd was admiring Arthur, dressed in a black tuxedo with a red rose, and mixing cocktails. He beamed like a Christmas bulb.  The home was Beverly Hills garish luxury: sunken living room facing the pool, and heavily decorated with dead animals head, Arthur’s trophies, from big game hunting in Africa. I was informed the display was, strictly for show.

At every party there was at least a handful of token celebrities, a comedian to keep the party alive, old clients that became friends, and mutual friends of my father. Dad was in control of the party. If someone dipped too far into obscenity, or tasteless cynicism, he would close in with a subtle reprimand, and remind them, “Careful, my daughters are here.” He was not a big drinker, but he held his glass up, as if he were, and I watched while all the others got drunk, and my father was the only one left with sober humor.

Each year, as I matured, the people became more transparent and likeable. There was one woman in particular I remember. A woman in her fifties, with a face recently chiseled of time by a surgeon. She hovered over me, with her diamond encrusted hands on my shoulders, and unwound the lament of the rich, older, divorced woman. She was envious of my youth, my uncluttered life, my complexion, and my father. Mostly, she was disturbed by her loss of innocence; there was not any trace of it left.  While I sat there, self-conscious of my inexperience and sheltered life, she symbolized a life of bad experiences, ones she could not take back, and ones that were mixed up in greed, power and money. I asked my father who she was, and he warned me to keep a distance. I tried to explain what I felt, but I did not know how. All these years later, I understand that woman.

Then there was the stainless scrubbed beauty that had been discovered in Hawaii and married a wealthy tycoon. She appeared in the Hawaii Five O series for a few years.  She never spoke; she just sat on the bar stool, smoking and wore her clothes with ornamental style.

During the dinner at the formal dining table, all the guests ate with minimal appetites and talked with dragging dry tongues.  After dinner, we returned to the bar for nightcaps. Gradually the cajoling and antics turned into literary chopped liver.  I left the gathering and sat on the sofa with their young daughter, Princess. She was blonde and fair skinned as albacore. She sat on my lap in silence and apprehension. I tried to influence her mood, but she just stared back at me, in the same manner I had with the divorced woman in diamonds.

The Crowley parties were dreaded every year, except when there were no more. Like my father once said, be thankful you are invited, and understand that they will not always be there.

MOB MEN AS ROLE MODELS

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

 

 

I was marinating chicken breasts and watching the cherry blossom pink sunset splinter into a montage of broken clouds. In that instant, the men whom I now consider close irreplaceable friends — as much as my girlfriends — surfaced all at once.  They hung down like a shadow over the men my father brought home, the gangsters that formed my first impressions of men.

How different these groups are. Do children with fathers who are doctors or stockbrokers perpetrate the same associations as adults? It is a lot more complicated to find characters as defiant, vocal and audacious as the men my father brought home to dinner. That is where my love for men started, and today I still delight in characters larger than life.

Doc Stacher was one I loved. He was right-hand bodyguard for Abner Zwillman, aka Longy, meaning the tall one in Yiddish, the head of the New Jersey outfit. Longy managed Newark all through Prohibition and on up until the 1950s. He and Doc were rumrunners and then became associated with Joseph Reinfeld, who allied himself with the Canadian Brofman Brothers’ distillery. They ran the largest bootlegging operation in the United States.  For protection, they used Benny Siegel. For tactics, they consulted Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. Doc was just over 5 feet tall, bald as an egg and so heavy lidded he looked like he was on dope. I remember him in white deck sneakers, without laces and bathing trunks, a Cuban Cigar sprouting from his lower lip and a permanent growl forming in his throat.  He saw only one person, delighted in only one person, and that was his daughter, Joanne. She was my childhood buddy, the girl who would walk up to Frank Sinatra and demand that he take notice of her.

Doc was appointed headman at The Sands in Las Vegas. Joanne led me into pranks and casino sprees that drove everyone in the hotel nuts, except Doc. He rarely smiled and was forcibly tolerant of the world when Joanne was in his presence.  I loved him for that. Without Joanne, he was gruff, cantankerous and he made me repeat every word, “Louder, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

Doc showed no interest in non-threatening surroundings. He had the eyes of a man who’d seen everything. He was always looking down to the ground, lost in some private thoughts, his hands pinned behind his back. He paced the hotel lobbies and pool grounds waiting for Joanne.

The government tracked him all his life. In 1963, they caught up to him with an IRS tax bill. He settled and, instead of prison, Doc had himself deported to the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv.

The next man to make a lifelong impression on me was Johnny Roselli. He came into my life on the day of my mother’s funeral. He was a man who filled the entire room. Everyone else vanished, even conversations stopped when he walked in the door. It wasn’t the fear, like I’d felt with other men, Johnny’s aura was electric, like a wire ran the perimeter of his body, and if you got too close, you’d be shocked. His power was his defense against the world leaders he managed in politics and crime. He got tangled up with the Kennedys, Castro, Hollywood and Hughes. Because of his high-wire act, he landed in the bottom of Biscayne Bay.

I searched for my own Johnny-style man for many years. I didn’t know he was all wrong for me, for any woman with sensitivity to extravagance and danger. He was my father’s protector, against the inevitable death threat of rival gangsters. I wanted someone like him in my corner.

When I think of how these men filled in the open spaces of my impressionable mind and took shape, it makes me laugh. I didn’t know they were gangsters. What I witnessed was the fearlessness, the enormous generosity between them, the loyalty and trust, and the respect for each other’s families. I thought the ones outside our circle were the losers. They didn’t have the privileges, the money, the connections that we did.

When I finally woke up from the long sleep, it was all right. I walked out of the dream with the same bottomless love for men, but now I choose the good guys,  as long as they’re not too good.

 

CHILDHOOD CHAINS REMAIN

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

My family history was brought to life in an unpublished memoir.   The stories lived on during a long arduous game of trying to get published.   Sometimes I read pages to get close to my parents.  I squeeze in between them like a ghost, hear their voices, and see their expressions.  If I remove the outside world, the motor on the clothes dryer, the cat’s tail flapping up and down, I can remember swimming in the pool with my mother.  I see her bathing cap strap pulled down across her chin, her red lipstick, and her one-piece strapless bathing suit. I can see her freckles, and her long slender arms backstroking as she swam.

Early in 1960 my father decided to build a swimming pool in the backyard of our house on Thurston Circle.  I had just completed swimming lessons and asked my father for a pool. Years later he told the story: “My little girl asked for a pool, and I built her one.”   I think he built the pool for my mother.   He was under investigation with the FBI and Department of Justice, and spent most days in court defending himself against a deportation order to Russia.   Subpoenas, arrests, and trials were routine events that tied my parents together against a world of misunderstanding.  After 11 years of nail biting suspense, my mother just wore out.  The pool was built with the intention of removing my mother’s anxiety and sadness.   My father designed the shape of the pool around the original pool at the Garden of Allah, a highly scandalous Hollywood hotel apartment that attracted starlets and gangsters in the early 30’s.  I know this tiny detail from photographs I’ve seen of the Garden pool.   More obscure details surrounding the building of our pool were found reading his FBI files.

My father accused the pool contractor of being an informant for the government.  One sunny afternoon he marched him out of the house. I was hiding behind a drape when the confrontation broke out.  I recall the big shouldered contractor running from my father’s threats.  Most likely an FBI agent was parked outside and  followed the man after he scampered out.

The pool was finally completed in mid 1961.   There are photographs of my mother and I in the pool; her smile is radiant and naturally composed.  She and I swam everyday while my father watched.  He loved to swim too, but he was busy with court proceedings, and meetings.  Before the year ended my mother filed for divorce, the house burnt down, and I was released from childhood. I don’t regret those events any longer.  They were steps that shaped my character, and what brings me back to the topic of growing up with gangsters.

The best memories of my childhood are in swimming pools and restaurants with gangsters and gamblers.  They were part of the family, and when they were around my father was on very good behavior, and my mother defenseless against their irresistible humor, pranks, and generosity.   She just sort of glided in and out of activities, and helped me ride the vibrations.   She didn’t laugh out of herself like I do, and she rarely yelled.   The older I get, the less I seem to be like her.  Maybe the passage of life experiences determines which parent you will take after. Had I married and had children, maybe I’d be more like her. Since I get into all kinds of tricky situations, and throw the dice, I need my father’s strength more.

Over the years, I have forgotten some of the dead reckoning discoveries I made about our family history.  Still nothing compares to reading about my Aunt Gertie.  She was my father’s sister. Until I read about her in the FBI file, I didn’t know she existed. I haven’t figured out why my father left her out of our life. According to the FBI files she was a remarkably loyal sister. Gertie was the one who confronted the federal agents when they arrived at the family home in Winnipeg, Canada.  She pushed my grandmother out of the interview, and spoke for the family.  The agents showed her a recent photograph of my father.   She told them that her brother left home when he was twelve and they had not seen him since.  She could not verify the identity of the photograph because almost twenty years had passed.  The agents left without any evidence and continued to search for the birthplace of my father. Every time he was arrested, he entered a different birthplace.  He named Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles.  His origins were discovered through a letter that his mother had written when he was fifteen and confined to a boys reformatory.  The letter was turned over to the FBI, and that is how they discovered his parents lived in Winnipeg.  The government could not deport my father to Russia without verification from his family. Eventually my father won the battle. He was granted citizenship in 1966, two weeks after my mother died.

Gertie died after my father. I don’t know if they corresponded over the years.  I have learned enough about my father to know he was protecting her from further harassment.  Maybe if my father lived longer they would be coming after me.

RADIO INTERVIEW

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

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GUEST ALERT: Daughter Of Reputed Mobster, Making The Radio Rounds

THE MOUTH, NOVEMBER 8TH, 2011 — Luellen Smiley is the daughter of reputed mobster, Allen Smiley. Smiley’s dad was a close friend and confidant of famous Las Vegas mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and he was sitting on the couch just feet away from Siegel the night he was murdered. While Luellen Smiley hadn’t been born at the time of the shooting, she’s conducted research on her father’s life and the events leading up to the shooting and wants to dispel the common belief that her father might have been involved in the shooting. Luellen Smiley has contributed artifacts to the Las Vegas Mob Experience and she joins us to discuss her family history. She’s out promoting the fact that the gangsters of old were not trigger-happy murderers and that J. Edgar Hoover was someone who was out to get them in a big way. Not letting them go straight, etc. She also believes that J. Edgar Hoover was behind the killing of Bugsy Siegel. (Bugsy’s killing was never solved). This week, she joined KNPR for chat. LISTEN TO AUDIO HERE To set up, contact Scott Segelbaum HERE

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DAD IN COURT 1951

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

ALLEN SMILEY IN COURT

Demons and Dramas

~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

Ben Siegel

To a drama-whore like myself, uncertainty is a cocktail. If my life isn’t wrinkled with folds of conflict, I will invent them. These past recollections were the building blocks of my future; I lived on the edge with my father.
Ann, my therapist, asked me about my mother but there was so little to tell. She was restrained to her secrecy, some vow she gave my father, and the personal veil of repression that cloaked all of her past. I told Ann that I was adopted into my friend’s homes by their mother’s, the ones who had met mine.
My best friend Denise lived in Brentwood with her divorced mother and siblings. We hooked in the dark unfamiliar and confusing imbalance of a broken home life.
Her mother was suffering depression after a recent divorce and I was dangling from my father’s fingertips, helplessly.
After my mother died, Denise wouldn’t let a day go by without calling me. “Are you all right,” she’d say. She didn’t like my father, and her reasons were mature beyond her years, “He frightens me.” Denise wouldn’t spend the night at my house, but once, and she said that I could stay at hers anytime I needed to get away.
After school one afternoon we stopped in the Brentwood Pharmacy. Denise was looking at the book rack and I was following along.
“ Luellen, my mother told me your father is in a book, The
Green Felt Jungle. It’s about gangsters. Want’a see if they have it?”
I agreed to look because Denise was interested, but it meant nothing to me.
Denise twirled the book rack around, and I stood behind her watching.
“That’s the book! Let me look first and see what it says,” Denise whispered. She tensed up; I could feel it in her arm, as I grasped her.
“Oh, my God, there he is,” she said, and we hunched together over the book and read the description of my father, “Allen Smiley, one of Ben Siegel’s closest pals in those days, was seated at the other end of the sofa when Siegel was murdered.” Denise covered her mouth with her hand, and kept reading silently.
“What does that mean? Who is Ben Siegel?” I asked.
“Shush, not so loud. I’m afraid to tell you this, Luellen. It’s awful. ”
“What’s awful? Tell me.”
“Bugsy Siegel was a gangster. He was in the Mafia. He killed people. Your father was his associate.”
“I don’t think I should see this,” I said and started to leave the drugstore. Denise followed me out.”
“ Why did Bugsy kill people?” I asked.
“Because that’s what gangsters do. Luellen, you can’t tell your father you saw this book. Please don’t tell him I told you.”
“Why not?”
“My mother told me not to tell you. Swear to me you won’t tell your father!”
“I won’t. Don’t tell anyone else about this Denise, all right?”
“Luellen, have you met any of your father’s friends?”
” Yes, I’ve met them. I love his friends.”
A short time after that I waited until my father left for the evening, and then I opened the door to his bedroom.
I walked around the bed to a get closer look at the photographs on the wall. It was the first time I could read the
inscription: To Al, my dear friend, Your pal, Ben.
I stared at his eyes, droopy heavy-lidded sexy, and a gleaming boyish smile. It was a different photograph, but it was the same man in the “Green Felt Jungle.” The photograph placed next to it, was of Harry Truman, with a similar inscription dated 1963. The disparity of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel alongside Harry Truman wouldn’t mean anything to me for another thirty years. At that moment I was driven with curiosity and anticipation of what Denise had told me.
I opened the top drawer of his dresser. It was fastidiously organized with compartment trays for rolls of coins, a jewelry tray of diamond cufflinks, rings and watches, and another tray of newspaper clippings. The next drawer was stacked with neatly folded shirts in tissue paper. Under that was a drawer with a lock on it.
“What are you doing in my bedroom?” I slammed the drawer, muted by his stern expression. He pulled a key from his pocket, and locked the drawer.
“ HOW DARE YOU GO INTO MY THINGS! His hands shook, the veins in his neck inflamed.
“What is it you’re looking for? Luellen. Tell me, or else you will not step out of this apartment for a month. LUELLEN! Speak up! What are you looking for?”
“ I was looking for pictures?” I stammered.
“ What kind of pictures?”
“ Photographs. Of…Mommy.”
“ You’re lying to me! Don’t think you can fool me, you can’t. You want to see photographs, have a look at this one.” Then he pointed to the picture of Ben Siegel. Every vein of his neck swelled. He reminded me of a snarling wolf about to rip my head off. I looked down at the ground, and held my breath.
“Now you listen to me and don’t forget this for the rest of your life. This is Benjamin Siegel! He was my dearest and closest friend. You’re going to hear a lot of lies and hearsay about him. They call him “Bugsy,” but don’t let me ever catch you using that term. ” I  have not forgotten.

MY HOODLUM SAINT- A COMPLETED SCREENPLAY

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

SCREENPLAY:  My Hoodlum Saint is the story of a woman whose survival is wedged between love and fear of her father. It exposes my struggle to survive adolescence while growing up in my father’s secret and terrifying world, where only family could be trusted.

For more information contact me: folliesls@aol.com

SMILEY’S DICE Is a terrifying, yet loving first look inside the emotional life of a gangster’s daughter, and my fight for understanding and acceptance of our family’s dark legacy. Email for further information on the script.

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

DREAMS OF A FLAMINGO HOTEL WEDDING

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On Sunday afternoon, while I was sitting in the bridal room at Neiman Marcus, I was in a head on collision with the past and the present. I was not in the bridal room to buy a wedding dress; I was there to store my mink coat. While I waited for a sales clerk, I imagined myself in the chic trench coat with diamond buttons hanging from the rack. If I did have to choose a bridal gown, it would have to be something unconventional, like my mother chose. She wore navy blue taffeta to her wedding. If I did get married, I would have to save my coins for a long time to pay for the reception. Where would I get married? At one time, I dreamt of the Bel Air Hotel, but that was in the 1970s. With inflation, the wedding would cost no less than $100,000 today. By the time, I saved that much, I would be 100 years old! Besides the hotel is not the same. The last time I dropped by, I was chased out of the river walk for taking photographs of the swans. Just before my father took ill in 1982, he told me my wedding would be at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I remember it, as if it was yesterday. We were walking together in Holmby Park, where he walked his five miles everyday. Very often, he stopped at the public phone booth and made a few calls. He whispered so I could not hear his conversation. I know now he was laying his bets for the day. I waited on the green lawn watching the older men and women playing Croquette. When my father returned from the phone booth, he looked perturbed. That meant he lost money on that day’s sporting event. We walked a long time in heavy silence until he decided to break it.

“You know, I’m very proud of you.” He said looking straight ahead.

“You are?” I was stunned.

“Of course I am! I hope you don’t think any different. I have not said it often, because I’m coaching you all the time, so you will be independent, and know how to look after yourself, after I’m gone. I don’t want you to fall into a rut with the wrong fellow, like so many women. It can ruin your whole life.”

“But I haven’t accomplished anything really great…. like you.”

“What the hell are you talking about!” he stopped in the middle of the path. “I made more mistakes than you ever could. Are you kidding sweetheart, I broke all the rules, and made some new ones, and I’ve paid. Like I’ve always said, you make your bed, and you lie in it. I’m proud of the career you made in real estate, without any help from me. Now you have to concentrate on the right fellow. When you do get around to finding the right one, we’ll have the wedding at the Flamingo.

“The Flamingo? Do you still know people there?” I asked timidly.

“Of course, I was a major stockholder … at one time.” Then he cleared his throat, and I wondered if he was choking on the memories. “That’s where Mommy and I had our wedding reception.” I thought of the photographs of Mommy cutting the white cake. It was the first time he ever mentioned my wedding. It was the first time, he seemed to say, okay find a fellow, and I’ll let you go. I sensed his detachment from everything around us except for me.

“I would like that. How long has it been since you were there?”

“I didn’t want to set foot in that place after Benny… (Benjamin Siegel) I didn’t care if the whole place burnt to the ground. There’s no reason why you can’t have your wedding there. I can still arrange a few things.”

The vision of father, my future husband, and me was an aberration without incident or purpose at that age. However, he was dreaming that the day would come soon. When the sales clerk finally appeared, I was glazed over, in some marbled state of melancholy, clutching the mink coat on my lap. The mink is the oldest garment in my closet. My father gave it to me in 1978.

It’s as if it happened yesterday. My father called one Saturday and asked me to meet him at Mannis Furs in Beverly Hills. When I arrived, my father was seated in a chair, facing a three-way mirror. Manny rushed over to greet me. “This is my daughter, Luellen, “Manny bowed and kissed my hand. In the other hand, he was holding a mink jacket. “Try it on for size,” my father ordered. I hesitated, and looked at him for explanation. It never occurred to me I would be trying on mink coats. He was always asking me to meet him in shops, and restaurants. He held meetings wherever he knew people, so I assumed he had a meeting with Manny.

“Go on—try it on. I didn’t say I was buying it, I just want to see what it looks like.” Manny tucked me into the mink coat, and pulled the waist sash through. He stroked the fur up and down, and then I did the same. The coat was solid, like a cloth wall that buried my body in warmth. I stood before the mirror and watched the transformation.

“Turn around, “my father ordered. I took a few steps in a half circle and slipped my hands into the pockets, and turned around slowly as I’d seen my mother do. Suddenly his eyes welled up with tears and he took out his handkerchief.

“If you dressed in a proper outfit and not those silly jeans all the time, you might look like something!” he barked.

“Well I didn’t know I’d be trying on minks today.”

“What the hell did you think you’d be trying on, pianos? For crying out loud! “I don’t know what you’re thinking sometimes. Take it off.” Manny untied the sash and took the coat. My father was in a mood, it was my fault again. I shouldn’t have worn jeans. Why did he start crying? Manny disappeared, and my father stood in front of the mirror to affirm his reflection. After he took off in his Cadillac, I stood in front of Manny’s and looked at the mink coats. He never mentioned it again, but I knew the coat was going to show up one day. Six or seven months after that first meeting at Mannis, the mink appeared at Chanukah.

“Daddy, this is so extravagant, I won’t have any where to wear it.”

“Oh yes you will! Just wait and see. If you quit going out with those misfits and find yourself a decent fella you’ll have numerous occasions. That’s the reason why I gave it to you, so don’t misuse it!”

When I left Neiman’s I was drenched in his memory. The mink coat has outlived all of my possessions. Every time I put it on, I’m reminded of his wisdom. It’s not the expense or signature status. When I put it on, I feel transformed. I discovered the bill of sale from Manny’s, and the balance due, after my father died. I called Manny and asked him for more time, to pay it off. He told me to forget about it, my father had brought in so much business to the store.

Last year I called Manny to see if I could have the coat remade into a vest; as the sleeves were too short.   ” It’ll cost you the same as the mink,”  he told me.  I had the holes repaired, and the coat glazed and will pack it in the suitcase for the trip to New York, now thrity two years later with a decent fella.