Life With Mickey

The attempts on Mickey's life continued, but Dragna never succeeded in killing Mickey or taking over his rackets.Even when Mickey was sentenced to five years in prison on tax evasion charges, a major corruption probe cost Dragna the police protection he would have needed to take over Mickey's gambling enterprises. Saucy Mickey later resumed his career as celebrity mobster, continuing to keep himself in the limelight through endless publicity. In 1958, he even provided a hungry press with love letters written by actress Lana Turner to Johnny Stompanato. Stompanato was Mickey's bodyguard until Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed him to death. Part showman, part a parody, and part a symbol of the golden age of Hollywood, Cohen was able to survive attempts on his life and prison terms while carrying out his role as the Hollywood version of a crime boss. After serving a ten-year sentence for tax violations, Mickey declared himself reformed. By this time, he was partially paralyzed after a 1963 attack in which a fellow inmate nearly crushed his skull with a lead pipe. He continued to seek the limelight, appearing before the press in a 1974 campaign for prison reform. He continued to make public appearances throughout 1974, also claiming that he had made contact with certain people who knew the whereabouts of the then-missing Patricia Hearst. It was difficult to tell if the newspapers sought stories about Mickey any more than Cohen, himself, sought the publicity on his own. If anything concerned the world of crime it appeared that Cohen was the man to see or to seek information from. How much he was really involved many times would be questioned, but he was always was ready with a quotable quote. It was viewed as a fair exchange by the press. The legend of the colorful crime lord would be kept alive in exchange for the stories and quotes he would make available for print. For Cohen the spotlight was not a thing to be avoided but to use to maintain the image he had so carefully created for himself. "The Life" was presented in a bigger than life mode the same way the movies could take small events and enlarge them for the screen.

But sometimes his life expectancy was very much in question. Mickey Cohen, was perhaps the most shot-at gangster since Bugs Moran. Attempts on his life were constant and he always seemed to be in close proximity to violence. This was his real world not the one that existed in a Hollywood world of fantasy. For example he was But he was a witness to a hit. On the night of December 2, 1959, somebody put a bullet between the eyes of Jack (the Enforcer) Whalen, said by police to be the Valley's biggest bookie at the time. The night spot had the reputation for being the home of the L.A. mob. Cohen, the city's most quotable crook, was often in trouble at spots along Ventura. One time he and his lawyer brawled at Charley Foy's Supper Club. The night of the Whalen shooting, he was at Rondelli's, a cafe of notorious repute. Police had been trying to shut Rondelli's as a mob hangout, and the murder brought heat from Police Chief William Parker, who had been brought in to clean up crime in LA. Cohen at first told detectives he was sitting opposite Whalen when the gunfire erupted: ``I just ducked.'' Nonetheless, he was booked at Van Nuys headquarters. Later, guns linked to Cohen and his late bodyguard, Johnny Stompanato, turned up in a trash bin behind Rondelli's. A Cohen associate took the fall for the Whalen murder, but two years later Cohen was indicted on new evidence. Trial witnesses included comedian Joey Bishop, who said he was supposed to meet one of Cohen's codefendants for dinner that night but canceled because he was too tired. Jurors deadlocked 9-3 for acquittal. Cohen, beat the rap on Whalen. A pipe bomb planted in the Cohen home also was unable to hit its mark. The press loved it, not only did they have a colorful character to represent their West Coast elements of organized crime, but also the excitement of real beatings and gunfights to spice up the stories.