It makes you wonder how much is true in regards to what the "experts" say. Because that story about the nickname is as well known as Rothstein fixing the world series.
You are so right about that.
Lucky himself confirmed in The Last Testament Of Lucky Luciano that Meyer gave him the name Lucky after the beating. Most 'experts' think the majority of that book is self serving and bs but when the man himself is saying it's true it's easy to see how it can be accepted as fact.
In the book The Real And Fake Gangster there is several different accounts of how he got the name as well as different accounts as who was responsible for 'the ride' he took.
It says in the book that biographer L. Kats quotes Frank Costello as saying that Luciano gave himself the nickname because he felt people were attracted to others who were viewed as Lucky. He had it tattoed on his arm and encouraged others to call him Lucky.
I've read elsewhere he got the name after a big win at a floating craps game.
Frank Costello's attorney later said that Frank Costello told him that Luciano hated the name and nobody would call him that even behind his back.
As far as the ride it's commonly accepted that Maranzano was responsible for 'the ride'. In the Last Testament Lucky confirms this.
In The Real and Fake Gangster Frank Costello again supposedly tells his attorney that it wasn't gangsters but the cops who picked up Luciano. He said it was basically a brutal police interrogation because they were trying to find Jack 'Legs' Diamond and they knew he and Luciano were associates.
Sal Vazzini a undercover narcotics agent who talked to Luciano in 1960 says that Luciano told him that plainclothes police picked him up outside his house put him in their car and beat him up again in an effort to locate Legs Diamond.
Obviously my point in all of this is most of the stuff we accept as fact probably isn't anywhere close to what really happened.
Especially in cosa nostra where the whole life is a big secret, at least in those days.
I realize this and understand it, but I still spend way too much time reading and researching about cosa nostra especially the old days. I want to know the truth as much as possible, but I think in all of us there is a little part that likes these stories and we like to believe things happened a certain way, truth be damned.
