I'm in showbiz," says the gangster Legs Diamond in Harvey Fierstein's musical of the same name. "Only a critic can kill me." That symbiotic relationship between the entertainment business and crime stretches back to the earliest days of the film industry and continues to this day, as Tim Adler recounts in Hollywood and the Mob (Bloomsbury £17.99)
Initially, the film business was a handy way to launder money - and still can be - but gradually the mutual fascination of mobsters and movie stars turned into a consuming sideshow for both sides. "All the movie people want to schmooze the hoods," said Brooklyn gangster Henry Hill, on whom the Ray Liotta character in Goodfellas is based. "The hoods are like some prized piece of jewellery you parade around with at a party."
This fascination has led to a long history of films in which the heroes were 'wise guys'. Indeed, gangsters have become everything from comedy (Some Like It Hot) to high-class soap (The Sopranos). The lines between the two worlds were often blurred. Frank Sinatra,
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on whom Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather was based, punched one reporter who made the connection between the singer and the Mob and supposedly urinated on his grave after the journalist died of a heart attack. Now the remnants of the old Mafia are trying to flog screenplays of their lives to Hollywood, and the Russian Mafiya has started to replace them in LA.
Adler acknowledges that his book is "just adding a grain or two of sand" on the subject, but it does so with brio and is an excellent primer for anyone wanting both to rub padded shoulders with George Raft or Little Caesar and discover how organised crime extorted money from the studios and tries to do so even now.
Some modern-day players on both sides of the divide emerge as eerily creepy, but you'll have to read the book to discover who they are - I certainly don't want anyone urinating on my grave. 
FIRST POSTED MARCH 8, 2007
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