The Goat Pen

And, while not widely known in the "broader community," black women generally don't swim for vanity reasons.

The performers that worked for these men held no illusions. "The clubs were owned by bootleggers and even a few killers," explained actor George Raft, who worked as a dancer in New York supperclubs. "In my time I knew or met them all. Al Capone, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Dutch Schultz, Machine Gun Jack McGurn, Lucky Luciano, Vinnie Coll - most of them were around. That didn't bother the patrons. We all worked the same places. The clubs were fun and a proving ground for talent. They're part of the history of this country." But somewhere along the way things changed. Remarkably, the Mob would lose its grip on show business. The Mob was once an untouchable entity and friendly with politicians. A revolving door of money and handshakes ensured cooperation. With the advent of the nineteen seventies, a paradigm shift occurred. Soon it was corporate America that proudly held the mantle of being above and beyond the law. A new kind of criminal exchanged money and handshakes with the political establishment. The Mob was replaced.

After a successful decade as Joey Bishop's prodigy, comedian Lou Alexander observed the power shift. "When I was working Vegas the Mob ran Vegas," he explains. "Then it became corporate. Today it's corporate! Today it's like Disneyland! But in those days all the people that ran Vegas loved show people. They were great to us and they would give us everything - whatever you wanted." Despite the fact comedians were often surrounded by Mob violence, today's survivors are steadfast in their preference of Mob dominance over corporate rule. In many ways this is astonishing. Comedians ran afoul of the Mob more than other performers, inevitable, as a comic's vocation was ridicule. Every comedian of the era has a hairy story. Comedian Jack Carter managed to escape Mob hitmen in four separate cities. Shecky Greene was relentlessly beaten by contract killers. Sammy Shore and Rusty Warren managed to power through their respective acts while a Mob hit took place in the club during their shows. And yet, despite such bloodletting, Shore conforms to the opinion of his peers when he says, "Working for those guys, you knew they were the Mob... and they were just the greatest guys in the world."