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Back in the late Thirties and ealy Forties, a young District Attorney from Brooklyn named Burton Turkis succeded in prosecuting a number of prominent gangsters for murder-for-hire; seven men were executed at Sing Sing, including Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and second-in-command Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss.
Turkis, who was to live to a very ripe old age, wrote a rather-sensationalistic book about the case, which was turned into a feature film starring Stuart Whitman as Turkis and a young Peter Falk as stool-pigeon Abe Reles.
Much of the story centers on an anonymous "candy store"; the owner was a middle-aged woman named "Rose Corsi" according to the credits. The role was played by a one-time actress named Helen Waters, who never made another appearance in film or TV, and died in obscuity some 25 years later.
I'm wondering if anyone out there knows if a woman named Rose Corsi actually existed, and might have testified in the three Murder, Inc. trials; Turkis' book makes no reference to her.
One of my reasons for asking is that I worked for many years for a company which produced "candy store"-related merchandise, and quickly acquired two new "distributorships" in greater New York not long after a fire destroyed the plant (which was then rebuilt at much larger capacity, and under World War II rationing constraints).
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 05-29-2012 at 07:23 AM..
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