Excerpt:
From West Philadelphia to West of Arizona
Like so many immigrants before him, Rudolph Guterman survived the long arduous ocean journey from Eastern Europe to the United States and managed to endure all the indignities of Ellis Island with everything but his name intact. Upon entering the country from Lodz, Poland, the Guterman name became Americanized as Goodman. After moving to Philadelphia, Rudolph worked as a bartender and eventually owned a shot-and-a-beer joint at Third and Lombard streets at a time bootleggers associated with Meyer Lansky ran the city’s liquor racket. Philadelphia’s working-class army marched on Prohibition whiskey and bathtub gin. The hootch not only quenched the thirst of a suppressed nation, but funded the rise of organized crime as a force in society.
Rudolph’s bar was a narrow dimly lit room where working men could forget their troubles with a boilermaker, a shot of whiskey dropped into a glass of draft beer. Rudolph’s young family lived in an apartment above the bar. He watched as another branch of the Goodman family grew wealthy after opening a bathhouse. People from miles around went there to take a schvitz in the hot steamy waters. In future generations, family members distinguished each side as either the “bathhouse Goodmans” or the “saloon Goodmans.”
Somewhere in that milieu, Rudolph Goodman realized his American Dream. This immigrant owned his own business, but decided his young son, Allan, was destined for greater things. Though Allan Goodman displayed a strong work ethic, pickling eggs and sweeping the floor of the bar after hours, he focused most on his education. Thanks to a father who sacrificed and saved, the saloonkeeper’s boy attended academically exclusive Central High School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the Wharton School of Business. At that time, few Jews managed to be admitted to prestigious Wharton.
Allan Goodman married Laura Baylin on June 15, 1933. His bride’s family had come to America the previous generation from Mongolia. Laura’s father started in the new world with a pickle barrel and had turned kosher dills into a small fortune before losing lock, stock, and barrel in the crash of ’29. Laura was a modern woman, two generations ahead of her time. Far from submissive, she was an artist and actress who spoke her mind and challenged her husband. Allan realized early in his adult life that he would be nowhere without his education and his Laura. Their marriage, although at times tempestuous, would provide a strong example for their own children.
The Goodman name might have been only one generation old in America, but Allan was determined to ensure it was respected. He took a job in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office and focused his energies on the law and raising his family.
Oscar Baylin Goodman was born on July 26, 1939, to doting parents. Family photographs depict a cherubic infant with curly blond hair and bright eyes. Allan and Laura would have two more children, Lona in 1942 and Erica in 1945, but their first-born son was their golden child. Oscar seemed to have been born with an innate ability to work a crowd: Years later his mother recalled neighbors being drawn to him not long after he learned to walk.
In those early years, the Goodman family lived in a tough working-class section of West Philadelphia, first on Catherine Street, then two blocks away on Christian Street. Their house on Christian Street was a narrow brick building with a front stoop leading to a small entry. Many years later, when he revisited the neighborhood as part of a documentary on his life as a Mafia attorney, Goodman required a police escort. (He was overcome by a sense of nostalgia at the diminutive home that held such a large place in his memory.)
Christian Street near 61st was a crossroad in ethnically stratified Philadelphia. A Jewish kid learned young that he was different—not only from the blacks who lived a few blocks away, but from the Irish who lived just down the street. The taunts started early. His Jewishness was as plain as the nose on his face. Goodman’s schnoz and typically Jewish surname made him an easy target for bigots and bullies. So did his slight frame and bookish appearance.
Goodman prospered inside his family circle, but when he ventured outside he faced the reality that being a Jew set him apart from other children. Anti-Semitism manifested in many ways. First, in the loss of childhood innocence.
Laura Goodman remembered the first time her son came home with the painful question: “What’s a dirty Jew?”
The epithets stung less than the shoving and battering at the hands of bullies, but they had an effect on young Oscar. They made him angry and street tough. His nose was bloodied often and broken several times on the street and ballfields, but in time, the scuffles with the scrawny kid ceased. No bully likes a victim who won’t back down. In light of the schoolyard fights and anti-Semitic catcalls on the street, it’s no wonder that, years later, his few fond memories of public school were of classmates with names like Glickman and Gladstone, Jewish boys who were next to him through the grace of an alphabetical seating chart. Although young Oscar was not afraid to mix it up on the street, the only gang he joined was the Boy Scouts.
“When we lived in West Philadelphia as youngsters and my father was an assistant district attorney, it wasn’t a good neighborhood,” Lona Goodman Livingston recalled. “We had friends outside the family, but we were closest with family.”
In fact, there was little time for outsiders. Laura had four sisters in Philadelphia and Allan had two; their children had cousins galore. The large extended family kept the Goodmans somewhat insulated even in their own neighborhood. Religious holidays were observed with the extended family in crowded celebrations teeming with children.
Although Oscar at times had difficulty taking his education seriously, learning was stressed to the extreme in the Goodman household. Oscar and Lona attended school together for a short time at William Cullen Bryant Elementary. They were accompanied by their grandmother Elizabeth Baylin, an immigrant who learned to speak English by sitting in a classroom with first-graders. With such an example set for them, how could the children of Allan and Laura Goodman not succeed in school?
The pressure to succeed was great and young Oscar wasn’t always successful. When he received an unsatisfactory citizenship notice in music class, he was so ashamed he marched home, went into his bedroom, and decided to take his own life. Lacking a pistol, sharp knife, or noose, he attempted to poison himself by eating a mothball, which only made him sick and incurred the wrath of his mother, who despite her diminutive size gave him the beating of his young life. For years he wondered whether it was for the poor grade or the amateurish suicide attempt.
As a boy, Oscar Goodman toyed with the idea of becoming a rabbi, doctor, or artist. The dream of becoming a doctor ended when he failed organic chemistry and art was replaced by more mainstream pursuits. The law, however, scriptural and societal, was almost as much a part of his young life as breathing. Although he would remain close to his faith throughout his life, one day becoming president of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, he eventually gravitated toward the work of his father.
Allan Goodman set a daily example of how a professional comported himself. He was respected by his peers and admired by his neighbors.
“I’d walk down the street with him in Philadelphia,” Oscar Goodman said. “It stayed with me forever. Everybody would say, ‘Good morning, counselor.’ ‘Hello, counselor.’ And they said it with love and affection. Because he cared. He was a very caring guy. As a DA for many years back there, he used to take me on Sunday down to the police station and to see him in court. And he didn't get his just due. I think that’s part of the reason I have no respect for the system. Because hard work and being a good person don’t necessarily add up to success.”
A dignified conservative man who voted Republican, the elder Goodman kept abreast of city politics and was a stalwart deputy prosecutor. Although his personality was suited for the law, not the caprice of politics and the Philadelphia DA’s office, he was exposed to both. He eventually went into private practice, where he dreamed of one day teaming up with his son.
After entering private practice, Allan Goodman successfully defended Billie Holiday, the singing legend, on a charge of heroin possession. In later years, he garnered headlines for saving a mentally ill woman who suffered from nightmares of the Holocaust, whether asleep or awake. Her family wanted to have her lobotomized.
At one point, the family story goes, Allan Goodman refused to grease the wheels of the system by paying a cash tribute to local powerbrokers in order to obtain a coveted federal judgeship that his son angrily declares would have cut his stress and added years to his life. The elder Goodman felt entitled to the judgeship, and he’d been a good Republican party man, but the powerbrokers still insisted on a payoff. But Allan had something money couldn’t buy. The respect of common men.
It was a kind of respect Oscar Goodman would crave in years to come.
Description:
Milwaukee Phil. The Wizard of Odds. The Brain. Nicky Crow. Tony Ripe. Cork. Uncle. King Rat. Tony Ducks. DeBe. Tuffy. Mad Sam. Vinny Nip. The Rifleman. Jimmy the Weasel. Billy Jack. The Midget. Crazy Phil. Joey the Clown. Toots. Vinnie Ocean. Charlie the Moose. Richie the Fixer. Big Chris. The Count. Little Pussy. Fat Vinnie. Chicken Man. Chicken Wing. The Ant. Jimmy Blue Eyes. The Mad Bomber.
Minor characters from the "Sopranos"? Forgotten roles from the Godfather series? Hardly.
More like Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman's former clientele and cohorts. Find out about these colorful figures and many more in John L. Smith's Of Rats and Men.
For more than 35 years, Oscar Goodman was the country's pre-eminent defense attorney for alleged gangsters. His endless client list included Meyer Lansky, Nick Civella, Anthony Spilotro, Frank Rosenthal, Jimmy Chagra, Natale Richichi, Nicky Scarfo, and Vinny Ferrara, along with many others. Though no further connection between Goodman and the Mafia has ever been proved, the famous litigator has often been accused of being more than just a mouthpiece for organized crime.
Was Oscar Goodman only what he claims, an attorney who defended his clients based on the simple principle that they, too, have constitutional rights? And if so, how did he manage to mingle with the mob for decades without becoming part of it?
After scores of unlikely courtroom victories, Goodman pulled off an even more unlikely career change. Twice elected mayor of Las Vegas, he went from legal spokesman for the most notorious crime figures of our era to political spokesman for the most notorious city in the country.
Of Rats and Men is the story of Mafia informants, made men, over-zealous government agents, a courtroom wizard, and the "happiest mayor in America." It's the biography of Oscar Goodman.
Reviews/Media Mentions:
Kansas City Star, Las Vegas Review Journal, Las Vegas City Life, Las Vegas Mercury, Las Vegas Weekly, Blackjack Confidential, USA Today
"Required reading for law school students and practicing lawyers."
—Las Vegas Mercury
"Of Rats and Men is a first-rate profile of one of our most unusual public figures. This Las Vegas book deserves attention far beyond those interested in gambling."
—John Grochowski, Chicago Sun-Times
Huntington Press
