Charles "Lucky" Luciano, born Salvatore Lucania on November 24, 1897, in Sicily, Italy, remains one of the most infamous figures in the history of organized crime. Known as the father of the Italian-American Mafia, Luciano's life was filled with violence, intrigue, and a series of events that solidified his place in underworld lore. Among the many stories surrounding him, two aspects often pique curiosity: how he got the nickname "Lucky" and the story behind his permanently drooping right eye.
Charles "Lucky" Luciano
The Enigma of the Nickname "Lucky"
It is not clear how Luciano earned the nickname "Lucky". Some sources claim that Lucania got his nickname from surviving a severe beating in 1929, after which he was dumped on a Staten Island beach and left for dead.
Biographer L. Katz quotes Frank Costello as saying it was Lucania himself who adopted it: “he felt that people are attracted to a guy when he’s lucky. Everyone wants to be with a winner.” It was Lucania who pushed others to use it, he says, and had “Lucky” tattooed on his arm.
People close to him say he hated it, claiming there was no luck in what he did. “I never heard nobody call him Lucky,” said Frank Costello to his attorney, “not even behind his back.”
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In the light of seeing the actual court transcript of Luciano’s statement just two weeks after the ride, and the New York Times article the day after, this all now seems wrong. Luciano was already known as “Lucky” and was happy to use the name.
The nickname may also be attributed to his luck at gambling, or to a simple mispronunciation of his last name.
The Drooping Eye: A Mark of Survival
Many sources claim that Lucania got his nickname from surviving a severe beating in 1929, after which he was dumped on a Staten Island beach and left for dead.
“Charles Luciano earned the name Lucky when he was taken for a ride and came back alive, although a knife wound gave him a permanently drooping right eye.
Luciano told many stories over the years about the identity of his abductors - two different criminal gangs were mentioned, as well as the police, who were trying to find out about an impending drug shipment, but the most likely version is that he was tortured and mutilated by the family of a cop whose daughter he seduced.
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“Someone has said that in his garb, with his swart, sinister features and his droopy eyelid, Lucky looked like Dracula.
In October 1929, Luciano was forced into a limousine at gunpoint by three men, beaten and stabbed, and strung up by his hands from a beam in a warehouse in Staten Island. He survived the ordeal, but was forever marked with a scar and droopy eye.
The identities of his abductors were never established. When picked up by the police after the assault, Luciano said that he had no idea who did it.
Vincent Piazza as Lucky Luciano in Boardwalk Empire
From Young Hoodlum to Mafia Kingpin
His parents moved their five children to New York City in 1906, hoping to find a better life. Though Charles attended school, he was immediately in trouble and was arrested for shoplifting when he was just ten years old. At age 14, Luciano dropped out of school and was arrested several more times as a teenager for minor theft. By 1915, he had become a teenage hoodlum running a gang on the Lower East Side of New York City.
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During this time, he met and befriended Jewish gang members Meyer Lansky and his associate Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who would later become two of his most important allies. He also became affiliated with Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria’s criminal operation. Luciano was soon involved in dealing drugs and pimping and had his first major run-in with the law in 1916. He was caught selling heroin and sent to a reformatory for several months.
Afterward, Luciano, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, and Frank Costello committed simple robberies to make ends meet, but when Prohibition began in 1919, they became involved in selling illegal alcohol. However, he continued with his bootlegging business and soon controlled plants, distilleries, trucks, and warehouses for the sale of illegal alcohol. Rothstein, a racketeer, businessman, and gambler who had become a kingpin of the Jewish mob in New York City, financed the operation and educated Luciano on running bootleg alcohol as a business.
By 1925, Luciano and his partners ran the largest bootlegging operation in New York. He imported Scotch whiskey from Scotland, rum from the Caribbean, and other alcohol products from Canada. He was also involved in illegal gambling, prostitution, and other illegal enterprises. In the meantime, Luciano had risen in Giuseppe Masseria’s criminal organization.
By the late 1920s, Masseria’s main rival was boss Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to run the Castellammarese clan. Maranzano refused to pay commissions to Masseria, and their rivalry escalated. Both leaders, who had started their criminal careers in Italy, believed in upholding the supposed “Old World Mafia” with principles of honor, tradition, and respect. They refused to work with non-Italians and preferred to work only with Sicilians.
Luciano, along with several other younger Italian mobsters, thought working only with Italians limited the growth of their personal careers and the potential growth of the criminal empires. These men, known as the “Young Turks,” wanted to work with Jewish and Irish gangsters as long as the money was to be made. Luciano knew these men could be trusted and were great assets to any business from working with Meyer Lansky and Arnold Rothstein.
Luciano’s vision was to form a national crime syndicate in which the Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangs could pool their resources and turn organized crime into a lucrative business for all.
The war between the two mafia bosses continued, referred to as the Castellammarese War, because Salvatore Maranzano was from Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily. The rivalry became a violent and bloody power struggle to control the Italian-American Mafia. On April 15, 1931, Giuseppe Masseria was killed while eating dinner at a Coney Island restaurant in Brooklyn. Afterward, Salvatore Maranzano declared himself the leader of the Mafia in New York.
Marazano soon viewed Luciano as a threat and ordered a hit on him. With the help of his longtime friend, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano established a power-sharing arrangement called “The Commission,” a group of five Mafia families of equal stature, to avoid such wars in the future. The other leaders of the commission included Joseph Bonanno, Joseph Profaci, Tommy Gagliano, and Vincent Mangano.
These top crime bosses became popular society figures, and Luciano was often seen at restaurants and theaters with well-known civic leaders, entertainers, and other notable people.
In 1936, New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey brought charges against Luciano for running a prostitution ring. In April, when Luciano was visiting Hot Springs, Arkansas, he was arrested and sent to New York for trial. Though Luciano insisted that he was not involved in prostitution, a series of witnesses testified against him, and the district attorney won his case. Luciano then received a 30 to 50-year prison sentence, the longest ever handed down for such a crime.
His sentence was commuted in 1946, and he was deported back to Italy. Luciano died of a heart attack in Naples, Italy, on July 26, 1962. After a large funeral in Naples, Luciano’s body was returned to the United States, and he was buried in the family’s vault at St.
The criminal empire that Luciano created continues.
Lucky Luciano - Mastermind of the Mob Documentary
Lucky Luciano