If not for the criminal and his endless bang-banging villainy on movie and television screens, in fiction and newspaper headlines, it is quite possible the U.S.A. I am far from alone in my concept of the criminal as a relaxing bed-time story. As he was in the tribal civilization of thirty thousand years ago, so he is in the civilization of, oil interests, hydrogen bombs, and the disintegration of human thought into political jabberwock. It is his pleasure to break laws and hold society in contempt. All other human matters change, grow complex and undecipherable-what is good, what is noble, what is pious, what is progressive. They represent a certain sanity in a lunacy-whirling world -the sanity of the criminal. Looking on what I know about this rambunctious law-breaker and headbreaker, I find myself diverted, relaxed, even pleased by Mickey Cohen and his fie-fo-fum activities. I feel I know him as well as I know Macbeth or the blonde Borgia. In addition to facts, I have a knowledge of this disorderly man that may be a deep one. How he preyed on society as a stick-up man and crooked gambler, how he corrupted its guardians and strutted for a long time in the nation’s headlines. How he shot, slugged, gouged and swindled his way from rags to riches. I am full of hair-raising information told me by an ex-underworld king-pin named Mickey Cohen.
It is published here by permission of his widow, Rose Hecht. Late author and screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote this account as part of an unfinished biography of Mickey Cohen in 1958-9.
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