Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 75 | Living The American Dream: Growing Up in Gangland

Episode Date: April 13, 2019

Jeffy goes to Florida and sits with daughter of a King. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Saturday's version of Chewing the Fat, you know, the American Dream segments that I like to do. Today is an American dream based on crime, really. It's fascinating. I had an opportunity to talk to Gary Rappaport and his mom, Sandra Lansky, daughter of Meyer Lansky. And we'll talk to her about her book and daughter of the king and growing up in gangland. They live in Florida And so we were just out in the Florida room Having a little chat about what it was like to grow up in gangland

American Dream based on crime Really kind of for some The book Daughter of the King Growing Up in Gangland Written by William Stadium and Sandra Lansky Sandra the daughter of the king Who was the king you ask? Well the king was The Mob's accountant

Meyer Lansky. You figure you may have heard of before. He was associates with Lucky Luciano. Instrumental in the development of the national crime syndicate here in the U.S. And if you remember it all, the Godfather movies, Hyman Roth, the character in the godfather, based on Meyer Lansky. Joining me today is the daughter of the king,

Miss Sandy Lansky-Lombardo And the grandson of the king Gary Rappaport Hello, welcome to chewing the fat How are you today? Good, Jeff, how are you doing today? I am so good. Sandy, how in the world are you?

I'm fine. Very good. Listen, I... Elderly, but fine. We're all on our way to that. That's okay. So I'm fascinated by you know, you're the early years of your life as, you know, the book states, you know, daughter of the king.

You were, I mean, for lack of a better way, I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you were the, the, the, the, you were the star of the day as you were growing up. Is that right? Not necessarily. Really? No. No. No. No.

we were the children, their children, you know. But that meant that you were treated, looking back on it now, that meant that you were treated perhaps a little bit more special than others? Well, maybe if she got a little bit older, Jeff, she got out on town a little bit more. But as she was young, she was kind of the pet. She was there all the time. And he took me every place with him.

the theater I started going to legitimate theater when I was like six years old, seven years old. And one of the first shows I saw was Carousel. And now he didn't leave me in the theater because when Billy Bigelow's eyes, I let out such a screen because I really thought he died. Right. That's fascinating. So when after you, at what point, all right, so you're the little kid, you're going everywhere with dad, of course, and you're the pet and you're the daughter.

I was the baby of the baby. Yeah. And then you started to get a little older, and, you know, I'm reaching that age in my own life with my daughter and, you know, things, you start to, and not necessarily drift away, but you're becoming your own kind of person, and you're kind of opening up to what's going on. Then what happened? What? When you started dating.

Oh, I didn't date. I didn't date until I married your father. I wasn't dating. I didn't date. How about when you went out with Dean Martin? Oh, that was later. No, Dean Martin came later. That was after the divorce and at the time.

So amazingly, you were, you got married and you got married without, were you, what, did he court you at all? I was 16 years old when I got married. Were you courted or was it just a done deal you were going to, this was the person you were going to get married to? No, they wrote horse. in Central Park together and they are becoming friends and what thing I met I met his father when I was six years old six seven years oh wow that's great at the stable at the stable in New York which is now part of I think it's ABC television has one half of the building on 66th Street or Central Park right because that was that ran through the block they were on

66 and 67th Street. You had a big rain on 66th Street. A lot of horse manure there. Yeah, no kidding. That's still true today. Absolutely. So, okay, so you, you get married

and you, things don't go well, and then you, you had Gary, how many other children did you have with? I'm 17 years apart. Okay. Okay. Okay.

While she was married, you know, they went on the world tour honeymoon. Of course. And, of course, they got to go to Italy. No, that was after I was born. That was after I was born. Wow. Did you take Gary with you or did he stay with the nanny? No.

No, they just left me home all. I didn't even get a stinking t-shirt, Jeff, you know? Right, nothing. Wow. So, so. That's what we ended up in Naples and Marvin made sure that we got a hold of Charlie, Uncle Charlie, you know, lucky. Yes. When we went in the restaurant, I swore to God that I thought my dad was there.

They were so similar. You know, it was unbelievable, really unbelievable. The mannerisms, everything about him was like my band. They were more like brothers. and my dad and his own brother. Amazing. So you ended up getting a divorce then, and then that's when things started spiraling out of control,

when you could just do what you wanted and you weren't up. Yeah, with me. Yeah, because my dad was down in Florida, and I was in New York. Right. And then when I was getting a divorce in Florida, he was in Havana. And I wasn't permitted to leave. I couldn't leave the state. so I did my own thing

and that night life yeah and within that night life that meant that meant alcohol and drugs and partying and just doing what you wanted to do right no drugs no

I did take I did get addicted to diet oh that doesn't count then you're right that's not that's not drugs no that kept jump at night you know you can stay awake for days you have no doubt she had that Jackie O

look at back in those days. Yeah. Great figure, beautiful hair, style, the big glasses. And she was hitting the town with all that. Nice. And at what point did you say or realize did someone sit you down and say that enough is enough

or did you realize that yourself? That I found out myself. Yeah. Plus the fact, some of the places she would go to at night were owned by friends of my grandfather. No, then I stayed away from that. Let me tell you something. El Morocco,

well, I became friendly with Danny Stadella, Danny's Hideaway, and there were always big groups that would end up with the co-book for the midnight show. Right. And everybody was Danny's guest, right? So I would end up there.

No, the thing is that San Castro was a part. partner in the culpr. So everything went back to my dad. I had to stop going to the culprit because the reports went back. Right. So I ended up, I went to these different places, so Morocco.

A lot of the places. But I never paid a check. The checks were always picked up. Of course. That would be how that's insulting to think that you'd have to I wanted to know I ended up to get to the owners and everything. Right. And so now that you've had, you know, many years of looking back and, you know, it's sad that

your, you know, your father has passed away now since, you know, early 80s. And you've had time to reflect on having such a really great life, but a lot of it appeared to be based on, you know, ill-gotten gains. I don't know that that was ever proven. I mean, not from your dad. He never got into any big trouble about that or never was found guilty with any of that. But... Victimless crimes, Jeff.

Victimless crimes. Right. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what it was. Do you miss anything? Do you wish for more? Are you happy with where you're at?

I miss my husband. Yeah. When they came up here, we were going to do kind of the book release tour from up here. We had her lined up on all the usual talk radio shows and some of the talk TV shows, a couple of book signings. And they came up. They were going to start on that Monday, and Sunday, my stepdad passed away. Oh, boy. And this is kind of something they had both been working on together for a long time to get the book done.

No, we actually had a different book. Originally there's another book that's as much, I like it. a lot better than myself. But, and I'm saving that one. I'm going to do that one. It's going to be called the Generation Too Late. Oh, wow. A generation too late.

Yeah. Part of all that. But anyway, my stepdad was a great storyteller. And we were kind of worried because he was the motivating factor when my mom goes up. Right. After a glass of wine, she's pretty talkative. But we had to decide at that point, was she going to be willing to go out and still do this? We had a lot of forward work done.

We begged, borrowed, and stole a lot of favors. And so I asked her, I said, this was something that Daddy always wanted for you. Are you, do you want to do it? And she said, okay, let's try it. So I went out and I tried to be the front man, which I'm nowhere near the storyteller he is. And she did a great job. I mean, you know, she sucked it up. She was truly the king's daughter because she realized something had to be done.

and we went out and we did it. Excellent. Excellent. So, go ahead, Gary. I'm sorry. And that was kind of the kickoff for it all. We kind of got things going. And she's done a lot of shows like this and done some great TV shows.

Well, America is fascinated with that lifestyle. And the lifestyle that you grew up with, Sandy. I mean, we've been fascinated with that for years. I was with a follow Gandino. Yeah. That's kind of an interesting story about how he had to propose to my mom. No, he proposed to your grandfather. And he had to give up that lifestyle, more or less.

Like, there was no income, really, anyway. Which back then, that wasn't one of those type of positions. You could just give your two weeks notice. Right. Yeah, no kidding. I don't think it is today either. Grandpa had to get a little involved in that. But meanwhile, his uncle was better.

Nick knew his uncle, Nick Halejee, you know, knew the uncle. At any rate, we were, here I was with my dad, I was with a higher restaurant. And then when I went with Vinny's family, I was in the lower echelon. And I don't know. No, and I would kick every, I would kick them under the table, don't talk, you know. know right because you never knew where you were you know yeah yes I I know yeah yeah it's everywhere you know so at any rate no so what is we did he's he starts staying away you know you can't how are you gonna stay away from your

relative yeah you can't right yeah you have to unless you just completely disassociate yourself Caracas. Uncle Buster was a total, total character. And a very messy cook. All right. All those good stories will be in the second book, Chess. It's possible we have a movie deal coming. Oh, nice.

I like that. That would be great. That would be great. Now, listen, let's give you a couple of names and you tell me what, you know, the first thing that pops into your head. Dean Martin Yes First thing that comes here by

Martin No Dean and I Were very close Very close Super close All right But that was in New York

And it was also down here It's Florida Okay And I was very friendly With Oh Charlie Redston You know from Rebellon? Yes.

What about Frank Sinatra? No, Frank? In the book, there's a story about the ice. Yeah, I got, I ended up with us, you know, the ice buckets with the ice all over me. But he's got it in the wrong place. It originally, the true story is it happened in Florida at the Colonial Inn, and not at the Riviera in New Jersey. Now, that's where it really happened.

Her co-writer was a little off base on some of the stuff. Oh, he's got something in here, you know, with, you know, New York City? I do. Okay. You know where Texas Avenue is? I do. 50th and fifth avenue. You tell me how a woman in high heels is only to walk from there to West End Avenue

on 82nd Street. It's impossible. It's impossible. It's not going to happen. No, no, no, when I mentioned it, because they refused to change a lot of this stuff in this book, you know. One picture, they changed. At any rate, when I mentioned it to Bill Stadium, he says, oh, what's the big deal? I used to walk from Columbia University to Wall Street.

I said, that's you. Yeah. Yeah. That's you. That's not. Any New Yorker knows that's an impossibility. Yeah, there's no sense in doing it. You're not doing it.

no no that's that and that's just one thing in there you know i could go through a whole i never read the whole book i got so ratified some of the stuff but i never i never read it they had been so excited to get a book deal and uh nick pellege who wrote um good fellows and casino and a couple of the other great movies um and who is still out writing some really good stuff yeah he and his wife nora afron um they kind of like my mom a lot, so they kind of push for the deal a little bit. Excellent. And that's nice.

The publisher put a quick deal together, found this Bill Stadium guy to kind of help tow right at the move things along. And that was really about the end of where the support was in the particular book. And that's kind of why. So it took a couple of liberties here and there and then you get lost a little bit in the weeds. It's okay. Yeah. I mean, the main pieces are there.

Exactly. Yeah. As long as he's not involved with the movie. When I told Nick, I said, because Nick is involved. So he says, dear, dear friends, he's very, very close. You know, it's a matter of fact, Gary eats his fruit every month. Through the month club, yeah. So, all right, so let's move to today for a little bit.

Let's talk a little bit about today. And maybe that's, you know, it could be more Gary, if not said, but you can chime in Sandy any time. What's happening in Cuba? We still have the Riviera hotel there that obviously relations are starting to or have war at one time seeming

to loosen up a little bit between Cuba and the United States. And there was word that you were trying to at least gain a little bit of control of that hotel back since that was your father's hotel or your grandfather's, your husband and your grandfather's hotel. where are we at with that?

Well, we kind of got excited about it when it first started, the push came around, and of course every newspaper and a lot of the radio talk shows all called about it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know,

who wouldn't want it? And it's still a beautiful hotel. My grandfather ended up being pretty good at producing. That hotel was built in six months, by the way. It took a year for them to. level of the ground. He always paid people right.

He always respected people. He was a nice guy. And a lot of the coming from a lot of the working class of Cuba. Well, yeah, when the revolution came, my grandfather was the kind of guy to do that, you know, we lost that one. Yep, we're out. We want the next project and not pry over spilled milk. He was very, very good at watching the policy. He was really a great reader of current events and really followed things.

So he probably figured that it wasn't going to be much of a chance to ever retrieve that property. Right. Well, our government and its infinite wisdom back in the 60s, if you hadn't filed for a property that was lost due to the revolution, you really didn't have any support from America, from the government. Interesting. So everything gets all stirred up again, and I try to contact Kathy Kaster, who's, you know, our representative over here. And I get, I get the political wash, you know, run around.

And basically they finally come back and say, well, you know, if you did file in the 60s, and I explained to them, I said, in the 60s, my grandfather didn't think there was a chance of ever getting it back. So then we go into, you know, Obama making friends with Castro and going down there. Right. We get a little more excited. You know, you get a couple of phone calls. And they got the waterfront. Yeah, we get some phone calls from some people that, you know,

you know, they're fly by night attorneys that just want you to give them money. Go down and fight for it. Right. You know, he wants to roll the dice with you. Of course. During that time, I was working at a local bank, and I get a phone call from a professor at USF who studies waterfronts and Marina, title charts so that way he can see if you could do a build marinas there

if people could participate in it and we thought he found out from looking in the Cuban records that the Marina del Hemingway is also in my grandfather's name was Frank Sinatra oh nice so there's a little bit more hope there yeah a little more property going yeah so um you know Obama's was kind of a lost leader. But during this whole time, you know, I talked to my mom and my uncle Paul, who's still alive, by the way. And we are the estate. We're the representatives of what's left of the estate.

Okay. And, you know, do we really want to take on a project that's going to be multi-million dollars to to renovate it, to bring it up the style, and to really bring it back to what that lifestyle was back then? And besides that, besides that question, I mean, are you going to ever get it done? Well, you've got to see the lobby. You can go online and look at it. Okay. Anyhow, we kind of figured out that it would probably be a better move for us to find somebody,

somebody big in the hotel business, you know, like Donald Trump. And get a little serious handshake money to try to keep the, the image alive, the name alive. And the hotel is still a beautiful hotel. Cuba, of course, they leased it out to somebody else to run it. Of course. And anybody that Cuba does business with, I mean, they don't really get a whole lot of the money. Really?

They get the work. They get a little bit of the profit, and the rest stays with the state. That's a surprise. Yeah. So we kind of backed off on it all. on me. And besides, I got a really big mouth, Jeff. You know, you might remember me from a.m. Tampa Bay. But I say a lot of things that I probably, if I was my grandfather, I wouldn't say. Yeah, your mom's kicking you under the table telling you stop talking. Yeah. So anyway, we kind of

slowed down on the whole chase of it. And then recently when Donald Trump kind of opened up the whole package again and and he wants to open it up where people can file again and try to take them to the world court or try to prosecute it here in the United States. So I have a friend for the last 40 years that's an attorney and we talked about it a few times and he researched it with some worldly attorneys that you know cases in the world courts and they kind of look at it the same way I do, you know, until things really get going. There's nothing that you you could really do one way or the other. How do you do the whole?

That wasn't a time where, you know, people shook hands back then and did a million-dollar deals. Right. Nowadays, you spend more time with attorneys than you do with the guys who are doing deals with. Right. And on top of which, let's say you get the, you know, I mean, you haven't even got the deal done yet to start thinking about what's going to happen after that. I mean, the process of getting it is years. down the line as well. That's why I was so surprised that, you know,

it would be even close to being possible. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't even estimate how much money it would cost you to actually send some attorneys down there and subpoena the records of the few of us so that way you can see what you're truly used with. And on top of which, you know, you, look, Sandy mentioned how the beautiful lobby. Okay, well, it was beautiful. I mean, it was gorgeous back in, you know, the 50s. or early 60s, but I mean...

Someone that's in the building business here went there. And he couldn't believe how old the hotel is. Right. He says it's in such great shape, you know? Well, okay. I mean, people say that about Cuba all the time that is in such great shape, but they're driving 55 Chevys. So I don't know.

I don't know that I buy it. But I believe, you know, sure, the hotel is still sturdy and structurally sound because people are still using it. You're talking about some serious money to re- Yeah, but if you love it at the hotel rooms, so the hotel rooms are the 50s. Let me tell you, that they have the furnishings are the same.

Right. And that's attracted to some people. I mean, maybe first of, I would think you'd have to go in and bump up the Wi-Fi and bring it up to today's standards, but still capture that, that essence of the 50s. I mean, that's when Cuba was in a day day.

Yeah, that's true. always going to be a beautiful island always going to have the best people in the world as far as i'm concerned um except for their government and uh it's i mean i've had so many friends from here in tampa before that when i lived in miami and i worked at some of my dad my grandfather's hotels they would run something in the newspaper about my grandfather and you could go sit in the back and nobody knew who i was i was just some dumb kid parking cars out front. The plant. You listen to the guys that worked with him in Cuba, these waiters and cooks and people,

and they just, they reveled him with appreciation that he was such a great guy. And I, that's what always excited me. So when I moved up here and I became friends with a lot of, a lot of Cuban folk, because it's pretty easy to find you. Yeah, it sure is.

It sure is. It's funny how that happens in Tampa. Yeah. That's a great. Cuban food, by the way. They still have that same type of opinion of him because he really worked hard to make everything first class there in Cuba. And that's, look, that's what made it so special with the growth of the other industries that he was helping grow. The industries that maybe weren't all on the up and up.

But daughter of the king growing up in gangland. Let me tell you, he and Dad and Charlie ended up, Charlie got a contract from the Waldorf Astoria with a glassware. All right? Right. The two of them ended up with a factory up in Corning, New York, and they made all the glasses. Yeah.

And was Joe Kennedy the one that shipped it down there? No, no, I'm talking about the wall. of the story of the door because Charlie was living there, you know? They shot off to a lot of different industries. They did a lot of things. And he remembered his friend

Joe Kennedy when it came to election time for John Kennedy. I'm sure he did. I showed up at the war too early. I was meeting him for lunch and Kennedy was there. So, for power, they're asking to the boat, you know.

Gary Rappaport and Miss Sandy Lansky-Lombardo. Yes, do you want it to say something else? No, Joe Kennedy was, that was Frank Arcello's partner. But that's for the next book, Jeff. Yes, I'm looking forward to the next book as well. Thank you very much for coming on and talking today. I appreciate it. It was a great time.

I appreciate your time. Fascinating. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Chewing the Fat any addition the American Dream segment the daily chewing the fat segments the talking series talking walking dead talking thrones talking whatever we're talking uh subscribe rate and review i need your subscriptions and then of course you can rate and review you know once you subscribe thanks a lot see you see you