JOE JEANS SOCIALITE MOVIE
JOE JEANS SOCIALITE TV

Here was a guy, a violent maniac, who went to prison for a decade, learned the speed-reading technique of Evelyn Wood, and read, and read, and read. The beats came to call on him, smoke dope, and discuss how the cold war was a hoax. He wrote jazzy poetry and the kids with Van Dyke beards snapped their fingers instead of clapping their hands in appreciation.

He’d taken up painting, colorful images of raw emotion, and the normally snobby art-world aristocracy was smitten. His new penthouse apartment had a section set aside for his easel. Plus, he was an intellectual, a guy who could sip a cocktail and discuss the commonalities between film noir and German expressionism. His fashion sense was both daring and impeccable. Joey Gallo was the only mobster in New York who showed up on the society pages. When Joey went to parties, and he went to many parties, everyone remembered him-not big, but tough, and so, so cool. He’d sit on the floor of a Lower East Side flat, one with the tub in the kitchen, and talk beatnik shit, how he’d seen the great balls of his generation blown out by hot lead. Joey could mix with that crowd in a way other hoods couldn’t even comprehend. He dug jazz and wanted to manage bass player Charles Mingus. Not to perform, but to get his cut, just like he got a cut of so many bars and restaurants. Joey could rap about poetry and life’s great mysteries. Her first husband had been the sax legend Gerry Mulligan.

Jeffie had lots of contacts in the jazz world. Joey and Jeffie met in a beatnik pad and he started hanging out there, the first indication to the President Street boys that this bohemian shit had an appeal to Joey, that he didn’t just think about juke boxes and scores. She lived in Bohemian Central-that is, Greenwich Village-on Eighth Street, a tenement building with a garden in the backyard.

Joey’s first wife, the former feathered Vegas show girl Jeffie Lee Boyd was best known for her exceptional tits and ass. Marta wrote a book proposal and reportedly got an offer from Viking Press, but by that time Joey’s days were numbered. The real story needed to be told so when Marta expressed an interest, Joey jumped at it. The book and the film pissed off everybody on President Street because it made us look like clowns. Joey figured he needed to tell his own story on account of newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin had written a “novel” about us called The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, which was turned into film starring Orbach, Robert De Niro, Jack Kehoe, Paul Benedict, Lionel Stander, and-making his feature film debut-Herve Villechaize. Joey, on the other hand, liked the book idea a lot. Orbach saw Joey as a money-making opportunity. Plus, Greek didn’t like the idea that Mrs. First, that struck Greek as a bad idea, because everything in Joey’s life that would be worth reading about was also a forbidden topic. She wanted to co-write Joey’s autobiography. Joey’s longtime best friend Peter “Pete the Greek” Diapoulos thought that Marta Orbach might be the biggest user of all time. They quickly became real friends, Jerry and his socialite and literati wife Marta. Joey and the Orbachs both happened to be eating at Queen, a restaurant on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn.

JOE JEANS SOCIALITE MOVIE

Jerry first sought out Joey because he was playing a part in a movie based on Joey, and considered Joey research.

JOE JEANS SOCIALITE TV

Jerry at that time was best known for playing gangsters in Broadway musicals-he’d played Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera and Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls-but would later be famous for playing Detective Lennie Briscoe on several Law & Order TV series, and as the voice of Lumiere, the candelabra in Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast. They met when they happened to be eating in the same restaurant (Queen on Court Street in Brooklyn). Legendary New York City gangster Joey Gallo’s closest friends in the show biz world were actor Jerry Orbach and his wife Marta.

Joe jeans socialite