ACConsig: My Great Discovery Channel Adventure

JFK Bust at Kennedy Plaza, Atlantic City Boardwalk
ACConsig: JFK Bust at Boardwalk Hall Atlantic City

My Great Discovery Channel Adventure – Bill Kelly

Early Summer 2012

They got to me through the internet.

It was a mid-level producer for a Hollywood film company calling from California who was subcontracted to the Discovery channel to make a documentary film on the history of booze in America. To be hosted by Mike Rowe, best known for his popular TV series “Dirty Work,” in which he takes on different, difficult jobs, it would be aired on the Discovery channel in the fall.

They were coming to film in Atlantic City and needed a “Kennedy-Mob specialist” to tie in Joe Kennedy and the mobsters during prohibition and how they helped get JFK elected president.

They had searched the internet and came across my [http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/] on the assassination and read an article I had done on Al Capone in Atlantic City in the Boardwalk Journal [http://boardwalkjournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/boardwlkjournal_oct2010.pdf,

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/07/1929-atlantic-city-organized-crime.html],

and said I fit the bill.

Did I have any talking head video clips, he wanted to know? And I just happened to have the American Legion video on the Repatriation of Richard Somers and the Intrepid crew from Tripoli, and sent him the link. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNk8ka8wySU ]

Shortly thereafter I got a call from a young women asking if I could be interviewed by Mike Lowe at Kennedy Plaza on the Atlantic City Boardwalk?

Well, I was now living an hour’s drive away, I was out of steady work, had just sold my car, and was in the middle of some unfinished dental work, but they offered me $100 if I showed up and go on camera to talk about the Kennedys and the mob. I countered $150 and a case of beer, and they agreed.

So I got my friend Robert to give me a ride, and got there at the appointed time – twelve noon, and then received a cell phone call from a women who said they were running late but would be there soon.

Kennedy Plaza is different now than when I was last there. In front of the old Convention Hall, now called Boardwalk Hall, Kennedy Plaza is a place where the boardwalk expands considerably from its normal street-wide length, and features a very accurate bust of JFK. But the area is now cluttered with other mini-monuments and tributes to less renown politicians, and there’s a large stage where free outdoor music concerts are held during the summer.

I sat on the edge of the stage with Robert, my driver and bodyguard who had once worked as a trainer and sparing partner for Mohammed Ali. He agreed to give me a ride for $20, lunch and all the beer he could drink. Robert is def, but not dumb. He usually wears a custom tee-shirt that features one of a dozen photos he has of him and Ali.

Sitting there looking at old Convention Hall, an attractive young women approaches, cell phone in hand, and as she greets me a van pulls up. She explains Mike Rowe will be along shortly, gets me to sign a release and hands me a copy of one page of the script, the part that the “Kennedy expert” talks about old Joe Kennedy’s bootlegging days and his mob connections.

While I’m reading it, another van pulls up and before long there’s a half-dozen guys putting up a couple of tents and three cameramen setting up their equipment.

The young women, an assistant producer, said they had a wonderful time in Atlantic City, as this was their last day. They were staying at the Madison, an old, non-casino hotel just off the Boardwalk, and had just completed a shoot at the Knife & Fork, one of the few, old classic restaurants left from the Nucky Johnson “Boardwalk Empire” days.

I read the script – my part is only half a page – and gives general directions, not exact words to say. It has the “Kennedy Expert” describe Old Joe Kennedy’s bootlegging days and how he got the mobsters to help get his son elected, though it is careful to note that there’s no “real evidence” of the mob ties.

While tents are going up and cameramen are positioning themselves and checking light meters, Mike Rowe comes bee-bopping down the boardwalk, dressed super casual and with a light air about him. He shakes my hand and sits down on the edge of the stage next to me.

While cameramen gage their light meters and prepare their angles, Rowe make small talk for awhile – he’s from Baltimore – and made it big with his hit cable TV show – “Dirty Jobs,” and was recruited to be the host and narrator for this semi-serious documentary they area calling “How Booze Built America,” a light hearted look at the history of the booze industry in the USA.

My part was about Old Joe Kennedy, his bootlegging days and his son President JFK.

The clipboard snaps, Lights, Camera, Action, Mike Rowe opens by saying, “I’m sitting in Kennedy Plaza on the Atlantic City Boardwalk with Billy Kelly, who invited me here to tell me about it.”

I say something like, “Well it’s called Kennedy plaza, named in honor of President John F. Kennedy because this was to be the site of his grand re-nomination as president – but of course that didn’t happen because he was killed in Dallas, and it was LBJ who was given the nomination.”

I forget exactly how it went after that, but this is the essence of what I said or wanted to say:

The 1964 Democratic National Convention was supposed to be the scene of the re-nomination of President Kennedy, a big party that would include Frank Sinatra, as he had organized the President’s 1960 inaugural party in Washington. It would be the place from where the president would position himself for four more years of power. But instead, because JFK was murdered in Dallas, the nomination was given to President Johnson. It was a much less festive occasion that included RFK’s moving tribute to his brother, the showing of a film tribute to the fallen president, the unveiling of this stature of JFK and the renaming of this area as JFK Plaza.

Convention Hall, now called Boardwalk Hall, was constructed in 1929 by Nucky Johnson, who has been made famous by the HBO TV series Boardwalk Empire, and who in April of 1929, hosted a convention of mob bosses from around the country.

It was at this meeting, shortly after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre that the mob bosses decided to put an end to violence by establishing a national commission to settle disputes. They also divided the nation into territories and decided to get into gambling in a big way after the end of Prohibition.

Atlantic City was selected to host the 1964 Convention because of Hap Farley, the Republican political boss who succeeded Nucky Johnson, and Skinny D’Amato, Frank Sinatra’s friend and owner of the 500 Club, who helped JFK win the critical West Virginia primary.

Frank Sinatra played a pivotal role in getting the gangster underworld to support Kennedy for president, but so did his father, Joe Kennedy, Sr., who knew many of the mob bosses from prohibition days.

Old Joe Kennedy, Sr. wasn’t a bootlegger, he owned the liquor companies that made the booze, primarily top shelf Canadian and Scotch whiskey and sold it to whoever wanted to buy it, with the bootleggers being among his biggest customers.

Old Joe was into a lot of things, not just booze, - he also produced films in Hollywood and made a lot of money in stocks – President Roosevelt appointed him to head the Security and Exchange Commission before he became Roosevelt’s ambassador to the Court of St. James in England.

With his son was running for President, Joe Kennedy tapped into his connections with his old bootlegger associates, especially Sam Giancana, who is known to have helped JFK win Chicago and Illinois over Nixon, but less known is the role played by the mobsters in the West Virginia primary, which Kennedy had to win in order to get the party’s nomination.

Giancana and Joe Kennedy were reported to be partners in the Cal-Neva Lodge and casino in Nevada, where Giancana had hired Skinny D’Amato to be the manager. D’Amato owned the 500 Club in Atlantic City, where Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin got their start and many other stars performed in the pre-casino era, including Sinatra and the Rat Pack.

When it became apparent that the West Virginia primary was critical for Kennedy to win the nomination, they pulled out all the stops and according to Sy Hersh in his book “The Dark Side of Camelot,” D’Amato was sent there with a suitcase full of cash that he distributed liberally to the various West Virginia County Sheriffs, who he knew from their yearly convention in Atlantic City.

So after Kennedy won the West Virginia primary, got the nomination and won the election by only a few hundred thousand votes, Sinatra played a major role in the inaugural parties, and Atlantic City was selected to be the site of the 1964 Democratic Convention.

By 1964 however, everything had fallen apart. JFK had appointed his brother RFK attorney general, and he went after the mob even though the President shared a women with Giancana, who was also involved in the CIA plots to kill Castro. But instead of Castro, it was Kennedy who was killed and it was LBJ who came to Atlantic City as President to be nominated at the Democratic Convention.

When he was here, LBJ was officially registered at a boardwalk hotel, but he actually stayed downbeach at the Margate home of Carroll Rosenbloom, the owner of the Baltimore Colts football team. Rosenbloom was a big gambler and had purchased Meyer Lansky’s interest in Havana’s Hotel Nacional Casino with Mike McLaney, one of JFK’s Palm Beach, Florida neighbors and golf partners. A month later Castro came to power and closed the casinos, so Rosenbloom was a big loser there, but he was good friends with LBJ.

During the half-hour or so on-camera interview, I knew it would be edited down to only a few minutes that would be in the film, and one of the parts edited out was when Rowe asked me the name of the guy LBJ stayed with, and I momentarily couldn’t think of Carroll Rosenbloom’s name.

After it was over, and they began to disassemble the tents and put away their equipment, I mentioned to Rowe and one of the producers that next year – 2013 was the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, it would be a big media event and they should consider doing a similar documentary on the assassination. I said that I would put together a proposal and outline a tour, similar to what they did with the history of booze, except on the assassination.

And as I was leaving, I overheard two of the producers talking about the assassination and I knew that at least I had them hooked on the idea.

While I don’t get Discovery and haven’t seen the “How Booze Built America” show, I know it was on and they used some of the footage of me because a half dozen friends called and texted me to say they saw it. Here’s some links to some outtakes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU2bXnTIVeo