Why did the Rat Pack open Giancana’s Villa Venice?

Gangland Wire

Gary Jenkins: Mafia Detective

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 623 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gary tells about Giancana's Villa Venice. In the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Sam Giancana opened a fancy supper club called the Villa Venice. This club opened to great reviews at Christmas time, 1962. The club sold out for a week because Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra put on a floor show. The Villa Venice was a beautiful place with an illegal gambling casino nearby. Outfit mobsters took gamblers back and forth to the Villa Venice. During the show, Dean Martin made jokes about playing the joint for free. Later when Sammy Davis Jr. was interviewed by FBI agents, he stated, “Baby, let me say this,” explained Davis, who lost his left eye years earlier in a car accident. “I got one eye, and that one eye sees a lot of things that my brain tells me I shouldn’t talk about. Because my brain says that, if I do, my one eye might not be seeing anything after a while.” The club was open until it burned to the ground in 1967. Venmo me @ganglandwire Click here to "buy me a cup of coffee" To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup click here To go to the store or make a donation or rent Ballot Theft: Burglary, Murder, Coverup click here To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here. To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here To buy my Kindle book, Leaving Vegas: The True Story of How FBI Wiretaps Ended Mob Domination of Las Vegas Casinos. To subscribe on iTunes click here, please give me a review and help others find the podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire, same thing
0:04.8	over and over again, expect different results. But anyhow, I got a story for you, another one of those
0:12.7	kind of shorty stories I'm doing for YouTube. Let's go back in 1962, Chicago, North Side Chicago, Sam Giancana.
0:23.6	Sam Giancana was the boss and Johnny Roselli was, you know, really powerful.
0:28.8	He was really had all the West Coast stuff for the mob, if you remember, worked closely with Giancana
0:34.9	because Giancana was really interested in Las Vegas and Roselle was the man in Las Vegas and LA.
0:42.0	Jen Conna had been a silent backer partner of a really fancy hot spot,
0:50.6	a new restaurant in Northbrook called the Villa Venice. And it was going to be,
0:57.6	try to maybe compete a little bit with some of the really nice restaurants and several
1:02.0	clubs in Las Vegas. He probably would end up with a game in the back, don't you imagine. Anyhow,
1:09.0	and these two guys, you know, they were always working a scheme. If you think about it,
1:14.6	they're the ones that tried to do this thing with the CIA and really scam them, but act like
1:20.0	they were going to kill Bidale Castro for the CIA. And they also thought that get him to get out of jail free card, which in some ways
1:30.0	it probably would have if they'd have been able to get it done. And they also got involved
1:34.5	with the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in, I believe it was 1960. And that didn't work out
1:42.9	so well for them either particularly because JFK's brother, RFK, Bobby Kennedy, he hated the mob, he hated Teamsters.
1:52.2	And he was kind of a little man with the inferiority complex, I always thought, because he went after these guys big time.
1:59.2	He made it personal, especially with Hoffa.
2:02.0	And with Giancana, he made it real personal with Giancana.
2:05.5	If you remember that, there's video out there on YouTube that he calls, he says he's like
2:11.0	is giggling like a little girl.
2:13.4	So now in the separate club, this was this was kind of Jen Connus.
	...

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