Beschreibung
This archive consists of five items: 1) an autographed program from the McGuire Sisters' 1960 engagement at the Las Vegas Desert Inn where Phyllis McGuire first met Sam Giancana, 2) a press photos of Phyllis when she testified at the 1965 Federal Grand Jury investigating Giancana, 3) a press photo of Giancana at the same investigation, 4) a 1962 postcard of Frank Sinatra's Neva-Cal Lodge where a McGuire-Giancana rendezvous ignited that investigation, and 5) a lobby card from the 1961 Noonan & Marshall film Double Trouble (released as Swingin' Away). The wholesome McGuire Sisters singing act hit the bigtime after they nearly blew the needle off the applause-o-meter during an Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts television show in December 1952. By the time the trio headlined at the Las Vegas Desert Inn along with the Noonan & Marshall comedy team in June 1960, they had a string of gold records including two #1 hits, Sincerely and Sugartime. While performing there, Phyllis caught the eye of the unstable, vicious, and violent boss of the Chicago underworld, Sam 'Momo' or 'Moony' Giancana. It is unclear how the couple were introduced, possibly by Frank Sinatra or a casino pit boss. Regardless, the pair hit it off and began a relationship that, except for a few gossipy scandal-sheet photos, was hidden from the public, although Phyllis's sisters and long-time friend Peter Marshall, at that time a comedic straight-man and fellow headliner, were well aware. Long afterward in a Barbara Walters interview, Phyllis related that "When I met him I did not know who he was, and . . . I didn't find out until sometime later really who he was, and [by then] I was already in love." Perhaps that realization came when in the early 1960s when the couple traveled to Chicago, and they were met at the airport by the FBI who coerced Phyllis into an interview where she was either unable or unwilling to divulge anything about Giancana's illegal activities. However, as other agents waited with Sam while the interview was conducted, he exploded, "I know all about the Kennedys and Phyllis knows a lot more about the Kennedys and one of these days we are going to tell all." It is likely Giancana was boasting about his well-documented (but vehemently contested by Camelot apologists) vote-fixing efforts in West Virginia and Illinois in 1960 that gave John F. Kennedy the presidency over Richard M. Nixon. Some, including the premier investigative journalist of his time, Jack Anderson, have claimed that the deal, probably cut by the family patriarch, Joseph, whose long-time mob-related investments built the family's fortune, required the future president to turn a blind-eye underworld operations in Chicago and allow Giancana to assassinate Fidel Castro who had shut down his lucrative Cuban operations. Later, Frank Church's Senate investigation discovered that follow-on secret Kennedy-Giancano discussions were conducted using messages passed between the president and the mobster by their shared mistress, Judith Campbell Exner. Yet, the above information was not known until later, and the couple's romantic relationship didn't explode in the press until Giancana's visits to Phyllis's chalet, used while she performed at Frank Sinatra's Neva-Cal Lodge (which he may have bought with the assistance of Joseph Kennedy), were discovered by a disabled state gaming commissioner in 1963. By that time, Giancana had been placed on the Nevada blacklist that forbade known gangsters from entering casinos. Upon his discovery, Giancana exploded at the "crippled Son of a Bitch" who confronted him, and the couple's romance could no longer be hidden after Sinatra was forced to give-up his gambling resort and sell his interest in the landmark Las Vegas hotel, The Sands. Worse for Giancana, in an apparent double-cross, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president's brother, directed the FBI to investigate his Chicago Unit perhaps, as suggested by several historians and journalists, in an attem. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 010192
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