Luellen Smiley is a creative nonfiction writer, author, columnist, and historian whose writing is deeply rooted in a controversial personal history. She is the daughter of Allen Smiley, a close friend, associate, and business partner of notorious Las Vegas gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Her father was sitting only feet from Siegel when Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills on June 20, 1947.
That extraordinary childhood history became the foundation for Smiley’s first book, Cradle of Crime: A Daughter’s Tribute, published in 2017. The memoir explores what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a man connected to organized crime while trying to reconcile her love for her father with the secrecy, fear, and criminal world surrounding him.
Smiley’s work has appeared in publications including the New York Post, MORE Magazine, Southern California newspapers, and Authorlink. She wrote the newspaper column Smiley’s Dice—Adventures in Livingness, which earned a Blue-Ribbon Award from the California Newspapers Association for her Growing Up With Gangsters columns.
Her interest in her father’s history also led her to become a researcher and commentator on organized crime history. She has participated in television, radio, and documentary interviews.
Smiley’s next book, Gaslighting Greta, will be published this year. A personal story that reads like fiction. Her own website describes the project as exploring a woman whose life is destabilized by gaslighting and psychological manipulation.
Her writing career reflects a recurring theme: using personal experience and research to uncover the truth behind complicated relationships and extraordinary lives. From the secretive world surrounding her father and Bugsy Siegel to the deeply personal territory of Gaslighting Greta, Smiley’s work transforms difficult experiences into stories of survival, discovery, and ultimately reclaiming one’s voice.
Luellen Smiley is an author whose life has given her an unusual perspective on secrecy, manipulation, family loyalty, betrayal, and survival—and she uses that perspective as the raw material for her nonfiction storytelling.
Friends are bookends that bind our stories; some are novellas, some are poems, some are cinematic, and each friend serves as a bookend to our personal history. When I’ve lost my way and need direction my friends motorize me, and when I fly without wings, they ring the bell to come down to earth. At times, arguments arise and my friendships stray, but true-life friends never leave you behind. Sometimes, years may pass, and then one day you receive a call or an email, or send one yourself, and the memory of that particular squabble in history fades away. You can start anew; at the same time, it is not.
The essence of friendship never burns out; it is our galaxy, a kind of celestial agility. Are you experiencing a startling outpouring from friends who’ve left your life only to suddenly show up on your social media or a personal email? Are your friends calling and writing more often? I’m always examining some unfamiliar events in life, a new trend, a cultural change. Seems like every topic can be mixed with politics, sometimes the mixture is explosive. I’ve halted the political discussions, and so have my friends, as they are more important to my livingness than politics. With one exception, antisemitism, those are excluded!
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s immigrant neighborhood map highlights 30 NYC neighborhoods but has sparked controversy for omitting historic Italian, Irish, and Jewish communities.
Overview of the Map
The map, released by Mayor Mamdani’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, is part of the “NYC Immigrant Enclaves” guide tied to the city’s World Cup tourism initiative. It identifies neighborhoods with substantial foreign-born populations, including Chinatown, Little Palestine (Bay Ridge, Brooklyn), Little Egypt (Astoria, Queens), and Little Pakistan (Newkirk Plaza, Brooklyn)NewsNation+1. The guide highlights 30 neighborhoods in total, aiming to showcase New York City’s diverse international communities NewsNation.
Controversy and Omissions
The map has drawn criticism for excluding historically significant immigrant communities, particularly:
Little Italy (Manhattan) and other Italian-American neighborhoods such as Arthur Avenue (Bronx), Bensonhurst (Brooklyn), Howard Beach (Queens), and South Staten Island IJR.
Irish-American neighborhoods, including Woodlawn Heights (Bronx) and the western Rockaway peninsula (“Irish Riviera”) in Queens IJR.
Jewish enclaves, including Borough Park, Midwood, Williamsburg, Crown Heights (Brooklyn), and parts of Far Rockaway (Queens), as well as Bukharian Jewish communities in Queens The Jewish Chronicle. Italian-American and Jewish groups have accused the administration of “cultural erasure”, arguing that these omissions ignore communities that historically shaped New York City The Jewish Chronicle+1. The Italian-American Civil Rights League stated that Little Italy is “sacred ground” and called for the map to be corrected and for an apology from the mayor IJR.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
A momentary connection occurred to me last night after watching, “There Will Be Blood” about drilling for oil. The oil derrick is the outline, or the notes scribbled in a journal. Then the pipes are set in place, like words in a sentence, then paragraphs. Our characters come into view some muscular and brazen like the drillers, welders, rig workers and mud loggers. Once those elements are configured in the oil field or in sensory perception the story begins. The paragraphs build into pages and the pages build a story.
The writer digs for substance for soulful spiritual contemplation and he builds on it. Sometimes it comes like a gush of oil. Other times it bubbles at the surface and goes nowhere. When the bubbles recede, we move on to another location internally and externally and we begin to dig for a new well story.
These ruminations came to me after watching the film, especially poignant to me as my father at the age of fifty left a life of gambling and mafia assorted activities and learned to be an oil producer. He was introduced to Howard Hughes through Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello and Howard introduced Dad to a wildcatter in Houston named Lenoir Josey. My mother and father moved to Houston from Los Angeles in 1949 and into the Shamrock Hotel, that being the hotel used in the film Giant, and Edna Ferber’s book, about Glenn McCarthy, played brilliantly by James Dean. He built the Shamrock, and it opened on St Patrick’s Day 1949 (the pool was so large you could water ski across) Glenn became close friends with my father. I met him once in Los Angeles at a lunch with Dad. He was broken, by his loss of fortune. and friends. I recall a face withered by disappointments.
Josey as my father referred to him took my father under his wing and tutored him in the business of oil engineering and oil production It was a gamble and my father a life long gambler on everything loved being in the oil business. I didn’t intend to wave my father’s story into this but intentions in writing as many things in life surprise us.
If J. Edgar Hoover hadn’t refused my father’s request to reside in Houston to continue the oil business I would have been born in Texas. My father was forced to move back to Los Angeles and as Hoover predicted he went back to gambling. During his time with Josey, he amassed twelve oil leases in states across the Southwest and Midwest and when he died that part of his life was handed down to his children in royalty leasehold interests. That was when oil was $17 a barrel. But Josey had passed and his son no longer honored the handshake agreement between his father and mine and forced us to sell our leasehold interests for a shameful amount.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
FEEL, THINK, AND REACT. Tumbling through all the transitory advice forces me to examine more closely whom to believe. I’ve never been a leader, nor a follower, I walk in between, trying to pave a pathway to peace of mind. Maybe that is unattainable as I am in a cultural, political, medical, financial, and socially reimagined world. It reminds me of being a teenager when life was questionable, and confusion was like a stinging bee we couldn’t swap away. So, in my senior year in high school I started writing in a notepad. Gradually, almost supernaturally I withdrew from my gang, and spent the weekends in a Cafe with adults, or in the library. The loner label pleated my pants.
Loners were portrayed in film, books, and art as mysterious, untouchable icons. They even became romanticized as people of superior cerebral awareness. I’ve met and gained friendships with several over the last few decades. It may be that loners have thin skin, they absorb the ethereal and reality, so in many situations the absorption is too weighty and the loner cuts loose before the party is over, cancels at the last minute, and doesn’t answer the phone. Talking, engaging, evaporating into another person feelsherculean for me sometimes.
Does isolation relate to the intensification of rancorous physical assaults in streets and shops, which is my pestering pursuit today. Are all these perpetrators unloving, and live amongst the unloved? People are shot because their hamburger wasn’t properly served on time, or they have a different opinion. I was living in Los Angeles in 2018, and one day driving down Pico Blvd I noticed a sign, “Walk in Anger Management.” Maybe we need to convert a few drive-thru food diners to Anger Management centers. It sounds amusing. If I was financially able, I’d open one in every major city.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS CULTURE is unimaginable for a woman who grew up in the Love and Peace generation, or even into the eighties and nineties. We didn’t shoot one another, maybe a fist fight, or a shouting match, but not murder in cold blood.Could this macabre movement be abated by friends who love you more when you are gentle and kind? It cannot be that simple, or could it? When I used to rage about some occurrence that tattered me personally, Dodger would come to me and say,
‘Greta put your guns down,’ that always made me laugh, and then we’d talk out what triggered my fury.
THE COMFORT OF EXHIBITINGlife on paper. It is not the act of writing with pen and paper moving along at a steady rhythm; it’s the activation of the heart and mind, collaborating to unravel the relevant from the irrelevant. To reach this state of matrimony, a writer doesn’t need a Tuscan Villa or an English Castle, but experiences that flake off the skin and shake out relevance. What I’ve rediscovered is that without a lot of stuff to organize, the mind is free to think, more time to create and effect essential decisions. Narcissism is sacrificed and replaced with more visceral makeup. Minimalist living has erased my past, and that is as transforming as day to night.
PUZZLE OF SOLITUDE will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are puzzled by too much solitude, or not enough. There is an inner exploration happening, unfolding like spreading new sheets on my bed, that solitude has befriended me all my life, in the best of times and the tedious. I have to find the frolic and follies in the world that I created. I have to laugh alone, so I watch screwball comedies, seek humor in my irregularities; wearing a sweater inside out, pouring coffee into a wine glass for a cocktail, and chuckling when I keep forgetting where I left my phone. Laughing at myself is a funnel that leads to writing.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
My pal since 2007 when I asked him to exhibit in my gallery. He advises, humors, and inspires me on every phone call. Today he is still exhibiting his photographs worldwide.Photographer and filmmaker Jerry Schatzberg, almost 99 years old, looks back at Edie Sedgwick in a new show at the Ki SmithGallery.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
The first gallery opening I attended. Smashing art by Hunt Slonem, photography by Tim Hardy. Conversation, champagne, and what we all need, social engagement. Unlike a concert, or theater performance where you are seated next to someone you know, art galleries are a sensory of interaction with the artwork, the guests, and the elan of the space. Madison gallery was a warehouse, exposed twenty-foot ceilings, enormity of space, and minimalism in furnishings. It feels like an indoor park.
Once a gallery lover, then a gallery owner, and now seeking a job in a gallery. I joined the mailing list of a dozen galleries, realizing resumes are sifted through by AI and not the owner.
My love of photography began at a museum observing the work of Edward Weston. I used this line when selling my photography in Santa Fe” Photography are stories on the wall., not just the photo, the photographer. Of course you can say the same about a painter, but for me, catching a moment in time, that will never be repeated is poetic.
One guest that visited my gallery said this to me, ” Photography isn’t art.” He was famous, not as an artist but the son of John Huston. I cannot recall his explanation, but I have heard this statement several times and that is why there are so few photography galleries.I’d open one again when the if’s are removed.
One of my favorites by Jim Marshall. Jim caught Bob in a private moment, and let him publish it. An early concert, 1963, with already famous Joan Baez.Fuzziness is my fault.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
ED CARAEFF PHOTOGRAPHER- He came out for the opening, a really nice guy. We played Hendrix every day for 6 months.
PHILIP TOWNSEND AT HIS EXHIBITION IN SANTA FE, NM. A PRINCE OF A MAN. WE SOLD ALL HIS STONES, BUT 4 THAT I KEPT.
JIM MARSHALL-Only he could get Dylan to smile. Jim, the legend rocked the gallery, the most eccentric man I ever met.
JIM MARSHALL.
BARON WOLMAN. The man who ignited Gallery Loulou with his introductions and faith in my passion.
LEFT TO RIGHT. MAN, unknown, my pal Blair Sabol, Jim Marshall, Ali McGraw. I get chills looking at this adventure. OPENING NIGHT IN TAOS, NM.2007
JERRY SCHATZBERG, ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILM MAKER WHO DID MORE THAN PUSH THE ENVELOPE. HE PUNCHED IT. I JUST SPOKE WITH HIM, 99 YEARS OLD, CLEVER, HUMOROUS, ALL THERE.He exhibited in the gallery and we became confidants.
AND OF COURSE FAYE. WHOM HE ADORED AND TOOK HER TO HIS CAMERA.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
After several summers in Saratoga Springs, I discovered I loved thoroughbred horseracing. All my life I’ve been a performing arts spectator. I never watched any sports on television and only attended baseball games when my father needed a companion. The art of performance led me to experience the racetrack as live theater.
The racetrack is a stage, the jockeys are the actors, and the men and women that fill the bleachers, the picnic grounds, the Turf Club, and the private boxes are the audience. The racehorse is the star celebrity.
The tickets for admission, like any show, are based on your seating. You can walk through the gates for $3.00 or buy a box for $100,000 a year. The collage of human emotions, drama, suspense, and danger are key components to good theater.
Gambling personifies the Shakespearean twist of the racetrack. High rollers and drugstore cowboys wager to win. Some men walk out with a grocery cart of recycled cans; some walk out with enough money to buy a racehorse. They leave by the same gate, and the next day, they return for more. But why, I ask, is thoroughbred racing not considered an all-around American sport? Why don’t jockeys get athletic respect? These two spheres of lightning truth struck me while I trampled through the mud one rainy August day at Saratoga Racetrack.
I asked around for opinions. The Governor’s bodyguard remarked that it was a good question. He did not think gambling was the reason because people always bet on sports. He thought maybe that it was because, as kids, we don’t learn to race horses, like baseball and football. The public is naïve about jockeys because they have never raced. Another answer I heard was that 200,000 fans fill a ballgame on any given day and that those numbers don’t compare with horseracing.
I’m not a gambler, and I don’t ride very well, but I am a drama whore. I took my notebook to the jocks’ room to ask the jockeys what they thought about this irregularity in sports. Jose Santos had a few minutes to spare.
“Jose, do you feel like America thinks of you as an athlete?”
“We don’t get the respect that we should. I think it’s the gambling. This is the greatest racetrack in America, and there is gambling in every sport, but when you come to the track, you see it right there, and people cannot avoid it. Pound for pound, we are more fit than most athletes.”
I asked Jose what he does aside from riding. He jogs three miles every day and walks for a mile. He reminded me that if he goes down with the horse, his strength is what gets him back up again. Another misconception is that jockeys only ride for 2 minutes. Well, the race is 2 minutes, but they ride every day of the year. They do not take breaks.
“How does the public perceive you?” I asked.
“In Europe, they are treated like movie stars. Over here the jockey is just another person, and in sports, the jockey is low. I wish we had more respect, but we don’t get the publicity.”
This feels like the guts of the truth; our little minds like to align with other like minds. The leaders of the pack go to football and baseball, and the media follows behind.
Jose remarked that he only felt real enthusiasm and support when he won the Triple Crown. Otherwise, they get a little column in the paper with the results. “The Racing Form is 100 pages, and nothing is written about us.”
“What if there was a Jockey Magazine?”
“Well, that would be great. Then, the companies would be interested, and we’d get sponsors. When I go out to the park and run, I wear Nikes too.” He chuckled.
“Have they ever approached you for sponsorship?”
“No, I don’t expect they will.”
A few days later, I found Jerry Bailey before a race. It was a cinch to get into the jocks’ room in those days. That was before Elliott Spitzer sipped all the fizz out of Saratoga Race Track. These days the Press can’t walk inside the Jocks’ room. Jerry hopped onto a counter and extended his hand.
“How are you?”
“Great, Jerry, thank you for meeting me.”
“Sure.”
“Jerry, I’m very interested in the lack of sports sponsorship offered jockeys. Why do you think that is?
“Because no one is promoting us. If you don’t do anything to promote us, how does anyone know? They have bobbleheads and gimmicks like that, but there isn’t even a Jockey Calendar. Excuse me now; I’ve got to ride a race.”
Of all the risk-takers and entrepreneurs in the world, horse racing is the champion in all categories. If I decided to understand the business, attend every race, meet every owner, jockey, and trainer, there’s no chance I’d understand anything more because I do not love the horse the way a jockey does, and you can’t fool the horse!
During the Hall of Fame Induction presentation at Saratoga a few years back, D. Wayne Lucas made a speech that drew a full house of gregarious applause. This is an excerpt:
“You ride a great horse, and the owner wakes up the next day and decides to switch to Bailey. The adversity is gut-wrenching, bringing you to your knees and humbling, whether you’re a rider, trainer, owner, or breeder. There’s one thing that will keep you going, and that is simply your attitude. Attitude is the most important decision you make every day. Make it early, and make sure you make the right one. You will have a very full and very peaceful life.”
Maybe it’s time for a Jocks Nike, call it the Two Minute Nike.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Truth is out of style, it rather went the way of 600-page novels, bicycles built for two, print magazines, street theater and many other authenticates we don’t have the will or patience to seek. We take shortcuts and improvise our way through the encrypted labyrinth of electronic modernism. We are in revolution, it’s been coined Cancel Culture, that’s just a tagline. Our Democrats and Republicans, are trafficking disinformation. Not a day goes by that a political analyst or news anchor doesn’t say it. They wand me up.. and I line it down with opera and wine. Be creative, I say is the best booster.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
THANK YOU WORDPRESS. My odyessy of love stories have reached readers in Egypt, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Mexico, South America, the Soviet Union and the USA. I cannot find time to read all the books on my shelves because I am reading the poetry, literature, and memoirs on WORDPRESS.
“As a dancer and prancer at heart, my feet are my hands, and my hands are my heart.” 2014
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
IF YOU DON’T SHARE YOU DON’T CARE. I’ve just started recommending a few of my wordpress pals, and their writings. I still resist the word blogging because it sounds like slobbing. Web writers are amazingly talented, from all over the world, and all ages. I’ve learned about the cultures through their stories from: India, Russia, Brazil, Ireland, Scotland, Europe, and the Middle East.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
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