I was invited to read and review this biography by Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press; it’s the story of Johnny Rosselli, known as “the gentleman gangster.” Sometimes I enjoy a good gangster story; my great-uncle (whom I didn’t really know) was Sherman Billingsley, the thuggish owner of the New York Stork Club, and so when I read about others, it sparks my imagination. Usually.

I didn’t engage with the book’s beginning when I sat down the with digital review copy, and eventually I got bored and set it aside for something more compelling. But often, the galleys that land on the back burner become more interesting once I can get an audio copy. After avoiding this book till publication, I found an audiobook at Seattle Bibliocommons, and I began listening to it in the evenings when I prepared dinner. In this way I found it more interesting. There’s a fair amount of background provided, because the writer (perhaps wisely) doesn’t assume his audience is proficient in American history, Prohibition and so on. I didn’t hear anything I didn’t know already, but it was okay. Gradually it took on the flavor of a documentary, not riveting but not bad. I listened to the first 25% and thought I would probably finish it this way.

Unfortunately, a deal breaker came up somewhere in the next ten percent. Rosselli has gone to Los Angeles because there was no mob out there yet. He figured he’d pioneer vice and leg-breaking on the West Coast. Fine, fine. He meets Al Capone, who is being harassed by cops and told he can’t stay in L.A., and Rosselli does Capone a favor and thereby comes into the Capone orbit. Okay, fine. But then we get into the women.

Now, I understand that mobsters were about as far as anyone can get from feminism, and of course in the 1940s and 50s, there wasn’t any women’s movement to speak of. The problem is that Server doesn’t differentiate Rosselli’s point of view from his own. I get the distinct impression that the two aren’t very different. There’s only one quality worth reporting in women, and that’s their physical appearance. So Rosselli falls for Jean Harlow, who is perfect. Completely perfect. What makes her perfect? Well, she’s got great legs. They are described. Breasts too; we hear about that. And she is a virgin! Every middle-aged mobster loves to get a virgin in the sack, right? At age seventeen she’s barely legal, but nobody worries about that. Oh, and also she’s very, very white. Porcelain skin. Just wonderful.

By the time Server is done explaining all of Harlow’s best qualities, and the misery that that bastard put her through (though he doesn’t describe it this way; in fact, the reader has a kind of bemused smirk to his voice throughout,) and oh how sad about her suicide at age 27, I am seeing red.

I’m not chopping bell peppers now. I’m standing stock still in my kitchen, glaring at my tablet. Dinner may be a little late.

I try to continue with the book, but I am pissed. Finally, I decide life is too short. I’ve tried this book twice, but I don’t finish it. In fact, I consider that second star in the rating to be generous.

This book is recommended to misogynistic assholes. Everyone else should give it a miss.

Handsome Johnny by Lee Server is a really interesting book. The concept is great as is the story however, for me it's a bit of a slower read. Though I really enjoyed it. I am fascinated with the mafia, Hollywood history and so much more, and Handsome Johnny fits into my type of reading. There were moments where even thought I know this is a biography, my mind wandered and thought this would be a great basis for fiction.

This is one book that is made for the big screen. The author takes you through his life starting from a humble background and how he made his way from Boston to Chicago. Once becoming a low-level gangster and then moving on to the West Coast. Here is where the book starts gaining momentum in the L.AL. The scene first in the prohibition time and the runs that were made to Mexico and back up the coast in Central California. To the floating gaming boats in the harbor outside of Long Beach and such. Growing up in the area the names and places were all familiar along with the different elected officials from the 20s, 30s, and 40s since I have read other books with their names being in them. When you get to the strike and labor issues I have read about those as well in other gangster books. Here in this one, you are really given more of a back story and how Johnny was working with The Outfit in Chicago as well as studio executives. The men that ran the studios and in the other books I read those authors never went into that much detail. You also see all of the famous people he was around in Hollywood and his marriage to an actress. How he really before Bugsy greased the right people in Nevada to have legalized gambling once their floating gaming boats got shut down and then the racing wire that the mob was using. After going to prison he comes back to California and actually produces two movies that make money. He goes on to help run things at different casinos in Vegas for the Outfit. One thing I had always wondered when Howard Hughes bought The Desert Inn was who made the introduction and here you have Johnny who met him many years earlier in Hollywood help with the deal. It would a nice payday for him. What was said about his role or the role of the mob and the Bay of Pigs, and with Old man Kennedy I have either hearing about or reading about from the late 70s and it is always the same story, so that part I believe. The break into the Watergate Hotel by Nixon staff makes more sense since what a lot of people don’t know or forgot was that night two Cuban Nationals were arrested. That is not talked about in this book, but it goes along with why Watergate happened. The sad part was as the old mob was leaving the new guys wanted to get rid of the old guys that were still alive and Johnny fell into that category. His life and this book are made for the movies though. A very good book.

Having read previously abut Johnny Rosselli. I was very glad to read this book. Very interesting and well written. Mr. Rosselli is a very interesting character. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book. Although I received the book in this manner, it did not effect my opinion of this book nor my review.

Who is Handsome Johnny? He is the man who had his hands in a little but of everything. He led a pretty exciting life. Even though he was not camera shy he still lived behind the shadows. This was very interesting learning about things that went on behind the scenes in the mob world.


I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot about history that I would have never seen in the streamlined history books.

** I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a honest review**

Johnny Rosselli is the closest thing to a Zelig of the underworld, a figure always involved with the biggest names like Capone and Siegel while never drawing the same level of scrutiny. The charismatic, elusive kingpin finally gets the biography he deserves from Lee Server. Meticulously researched, evocatively written, and often scabrously funny, HANDSOME JOHNNY reads like a shadow history of 20th century America.

Having read Martin Short's "Crime Inc" many times, I could not for the life of me remember coming across Johnny Rosselli's name in any context. In fact, I picked up the book again to ensure that I hadn't missed it - I hadn't - he's not listed or mentioned.

So who was this shadowy figure? From Server's well-researched and vivid biography, Rosselli is hardly camera shy, being involved in some of the biggest Mob activities from the 1920s to the 1960s. Server does well to tease out the little that is known about Rosselli's life, particularly his early life in Boston, which he himself endeavoured to keep secret - changing his name to ensure that it was. He moved in notable crime circles with the likes of Capone, Siegel, Lansky, Luciano, Giancana; produced two Hollywood films; was a mover and shaker in the early Las Vegas casino era of the 1940s & 1950s, where he hob-nobbed with the likes of Hollywood's Rat Pack, aspiring politicians and dodgy union bosses.

Yet nearly everything about Rosselli was cloaked in mystery; that is, until the FBI had him in their crossfire, and his wheeling and dealing was revealed, via a snitch. This investigation by the FBI opened up old wounds and long kept secrets, and eventually involved the CIA. Even in death, another mystery; why was Rosselli killed (or rubbed out) and by who - the Mob, the FBI, the CIA? Theories still abound.

Quite frankly, you can't make this stuff up - even if it does read like fiction. Rosselli lived through some of the most fascinating events and decades in history: the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Second World War, McCathyism, JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Server research stands him in good stead in bringing to the fore a man who had his finger in many pies - and yet, Rosselli still somehow manages to remains an enigma. If the Mob history is your genre, then add this to the shelves of your library.

Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin


This is a deeply researched book about the mob figure Johnny Roselli – also spelled Rosselli – who started life as Filippo (Philip) Sacco. This man had quite an unbelievable life and quite a long one for a gangster of that time. After his father died in 1918 of the Spanish flu epidemic, the boy stopped going to school and started hanging out on the streets looking for ways to make money to help his mother. She had 5 children to feed and no man to help. He was soon looking up to the guys with money, the gangsters in fancy clothes who would pay him to run errands. After getting into legal troubles several times he took on the name Roselli after an Italian sculptor supposedly and took off to make a new start. He also claimed to be American while he was at it hoping that he couldn’t be deported, saying that his birth certificate had been lost in a fire in Chicago.


After traveling around the country for some time he got on his feet in Los Angeles and began making money. John, or Handsome Johnny, as he was known, eventually made the acquaintance of Al Capone and became his West Coast affiliate looking after his interests, and thus was involved with the Chicago Outfit. Roselli had a hand in a lot of various activities, such as bootlegging, casino boats, and bookmaking. He also had to take some time out for downtime in a TB sanatorium for many months while he laid completely still so he could heal his lungs. He eventually did recover luckily while many did not. He would send his brother here too under a similar name. The TB would later come back and he would spend more time in a sanatorium.


He was also active around the Hollywood scene and became close to platinum-haired actress Jean Harlow for a while after mobster Longie Zwillman asked him to keep an eye on her for him when he had to go back east. He also became best friends for a time with Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, often going to the studio for lunch with him and knew many others in the industry.

Later he was put in charge of picking up the mob’s collections (the skim) in Las Vegas. He was involved with the CIA and the attempted assassination of Castro and testified about it before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence twice in 1975. Then there is the whole thing about him and the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, he’s been named as the primary hitman in Kennedy’s death by one source. He testified in front of the Committee on the subject, and they wanted to recall him to testify again, but by that time he was missing. ** For more on Kennedy's killing, read The Inheritance: Poisoned Fruit of JFK's Assassination by Christopher Fulton, coming out Nov 22, 2018.

Federal investigators suggested that he may have been killed by Chicago mobsters for keeping an unfair share of the mob’s money in Las Vegas. That just seems like a crazy amount of things for one man to have been involved in, to me. He was born July 4, 1905, in Esperia, Italy and died August 9, 1976.  My thanks for the advance electronic copy that was provided by NetGalley, author Lee Server, and the publisher for my fair review.

Wow! This book blew me away. Handsome Johnny Rosselli is the most fascinating gangster I never heard of,

His saga makes him out to be a sort of shady Forrest Gump, who was involved in the shadows of nearly everything interesting that happened in 20th Century America. He came up on the streets of Boston, heading west to help bootleg booze in California during Prohibition, impressed Al Capone into making him an LA rep for his crime outfit, did some movie producing during Hollywood's Golden Age, dated movie stars in Hollywood, was involved in the ground floor of building Las Vegas, worked with Howard Hughes, possibly helped arrange an unsuccessful hit on Fidel Castro (which may or may not have triggered Cuban involvement in the JFK assassination), and even may have known a few things about Watergate. His business card referred to himself as a "strategizer." He knew everyone and was well-regarded as a suave, well-dressed businessman around LA, yet he had deep ties to organized crime. And then he was found chopped up in an oil drum that washed up near Miami.

It was really amazing to see how the author made connections between Rosselli and all this fascinating history, legit and otherwise. Colorful gangsters come to life in this telling, such as Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano, and many others. The author employs a prose style that is a lot more gritty than most biographies, which is why I won't be purchasing it for my high school library, but for grownups the salty language and sordid descriptions really add appropriately to the overall atmosphere.

I would recommend this to anyone who loves The Godfather, Elmore Leonard, Public Enemies, secret history documentaries, conspiracy theories, or tales of classic Hollywood, Which is pretty much everyone. It's kind of a guilty pleasure, but it's one of the most fun biographies I've read in a long while. Since I read the galley, I don't know if the published version will contain photos, but I hope so. I looked him up, and Rosselli really was handsome. He also knew a lot of beautiful women. Photos would add greatly to the value of the book.

Handsome Johnny was a mafia super-star from the 1920s through the latter 1960s. Lee Server has written a well researched and written biography that allows the characters to leap off of the pages to tell this story.

Johnny was Al Capone's protegee' and became the man on the forefront of the mob from prohibition, to Los Angeles to helping create Las Vegas as a gambling haven. The nickname "handsome" came from Johnny's good looks and role as a ladies' man. In Hollywood he was involved with many movie stars including Marilyn Monroe. He was high society, drank the finest champagne and traveled in the top circles. He corrupted unions and blackmailed Hollywood moguls.

After a stint in jail, Johnny went to Vegas and helped build the gambling industry with all of its' glamor such as Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack and all of the corruption. Johnny is rumored to have been involved in the assassination of John Kennedy and wrapped up in the CIA in what was an attempt on Fidel Castro's life.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is as complete a biography as I can imagine. Really. What more could you want?