The AMC docu-drama Making of the Mob: New York (June 15 – August 3, 2015) gave its viewers an inside look at the origins of organized crime in New York – and added compelling live-action color to our static, sepia images of legendary gangsters Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese.
While it was not unexpected that some deformities would result from compressing 50 years of history into eight hour-long episodes, there were at least 10 areas in which Making of the Mob simply got it wrong, in the sense that what was depicted onscreen ran contrary either to provable fact or to the accepted consensus of those who’ve studied the history of organized crime in America.