The Opperman Report'

Hollywood Godfather is Gianni Russo's over-the-top memoir of a real-life mobster-turned-actor who helped make The Godfather a reality, and his story of life on the edge between danger and glamour.

Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set her brother Sonny―played by James Caan―up for a hit. Russo didn't have to act―he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger for New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club.

Along the way, Russo befriended Frank Sinatra, who became his son's godfather, and Marlon Brando, who mentored his career as an actor after trying to get Francis Ford Coppola to fire him from The Godfather. Russo had passionate affairs with Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minelli, and scores of other celebrities. He went on to become a producer and starred in The Godfather: Parts I and II, Seabiscuit, Any Given Sunday and Rush Hour 2, among many other films.

Hollywood Godfather is a no-holds-barred account of a life filled with violence, glamour, sex―and fun.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Jack Pagano has always felt he is different. Smart and physically talented, the normal pursuits of youth―women and sports―have always come a little too easy to him and left him unfulfilled. At age seventeen, Jack is eager to leave high school and begin his college career.
But the schooling that lies ahead of him is of a far different variety than he could have ever imagined.
Albert Anastasia, the notorious leader of Murder, Inc., appears and claims Pagano as his son. But before Jack can make heads or tails of his new-found father, Anastasia is gunned down at the Park Sheraton Hotel.

Under the tutelage of his late father's associates, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello, Jack enters a world where crime and politics, money and murder, and the American way of life are all but a hand's breadth apart and inextricably linked.
Jack O'Halloran: Family Legacy

Actor, Boxer, author ...
At the same time, another father is grooming his son to further his plans: Joseph Kennedy, the patriarch of what will become American's ruling dynasty, has set his sights on the White House―and with the help of some old friends in Chicago, his son, also Jack, will rise to power.

Jack

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Business as Usual

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

A major figure behind his nephew Philip's marriage to Queen Elizabeth II and instrumental in the royal family taking the Mountbatten name, Dickie Mountbatten's career included being Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia during World War Two and the last Viceroy of India.

Once the richest woman in Britain and a playgirl who enjoyed numerous affairs, Edwina Mountbatten emerged from World War Two as a magnetic and talented charity worker loved around the world.

From the prize-winning and best-selling historian Andrew Lownie comes a nuanced portrayal of two very unusual people and their complex marriage to mark the 40th anniversary of Lord Mountbatten's assassination by the IRA.

From British high society and the South of France to the battlefields of Burma and the Viceroy's House, this is a rich and filmic story whose characters include all the key figures of the Second World War. From Churchill and Montgomery to Roosevelt and Eisenhower; the Royal Family, including the Duke of Windsor, George VI, the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles; to Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Salvador Dali, George Gershwin, Grace Kelly and Merle Oberon.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Second interview with Richard Kerr about his experience at the Kincora Home for Boys and his abuse t the hands of Roy Cohn

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Heather Braden told the BBC that she saw Trump in Miami at a party that included over 50 female models and only four men. "I felt like a piece of meat in a market," Braden said. She added that she felt like she could have been "auctioned off in some sort of a sex slave ring.""It was like a predator in action.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Ex-stripper Heidi Rikan was working for the mob in Washington, DC. White House Call Girl tells how a call girl operation she was running at the time led to the Watergate break-in, which brought down Tricky Dick Nixon himself.

Needless to say, this is not part of the usual Watergate story that has come down to us over the decades. It is also only fair to point out that this version of the story might be dismissed out of hand as being dangerous "revisionist" history. If you're not careful, you might end up being called a conspiracy theorist.

You can also be called crazy—which is what happened to a young lawyer named Phillip Bailley, one of the principal witnesses to this ignored bit of American history. When he was foolish enough to blow the whistle on Rikan and her call girl ring, he was locked up at St. Elizabeth's, the District of Columbia's mental hospital, in the ward for the criminally insane.

For forty years we've only heard the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein perspective on Watergate. Now we've got the photographs for the revisionist model. What's more, we've got Heidi's little black book.

White House Call Girl was published last season in an eBook edition only. The paperback edition includes new information on the murder of call girl—and playmate of Vice President Spiro Agnew—Pat Adams. With the help of newly-released FBI documents, we fill in more of the blanks in this long-suppressed story.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.