Mickey Cohen: The West Coast “Dapper Don”

Cohen first came to prominence as associate, trusted friend and so-called bodyguard of celebrity mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. He was nowhere to be found on the day Bugsy was shot in 1947. Who had the power to keep Mickey away from his beloved guru? Popular opinion says it was Meyer Lansky. Cohen may have bowed to Lansky, but he refused to kowtow to Jack Dragna. Once the top Mafioso in Los Angeles, Dragna had been forced into a subordinate position by Siegel. When Siegel died, Dragna resumed the leadership of local organized crime. Mickey, however, inherited Bugsy's Los Angeles gambling enterprises, and refused to cede any interests to the Dragna family, no matter how much they pressured him.

Cohen made the Dragna family uncomfortable, to say the least. Cohen's brazen style began to bring state and federal attention to the Dragna operations, and the five-foot-five-inch mobster was marked for death. But Dragna was soon to find that it would not be as easy as he thought to remove Cohen. The "Mickey Mouse Mafia" myth connected with Cohen would be around for years to come.

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