To: Martin Scorsese
FR: Tom Madden
Dear Martin, that’s the engrossing mystery in ‘The Mayor, The Mob & Me,’ an autobiography by 85-Year-Old Catherine Spitale that would make a movie to rival The Godfather.
My PR firm, TransMedia Group (www.TransMediaGroup.com), was hired to do some investigative reporting to confirm whether author Catherine was indeed the love child from a secretive romance with a New York mayor as told in her autobiography.
Martin, please read on as this could be another Goodfellas, one of your masterpiece movies.
As Catherine tells it, her uncle took her mother to dances in the 1930s sponsored by the Ship Ahoy Democratic Club where she met a rising figure in New York City politics and it was rumored they fell in love.
Her beautiful mom was estranged from her dad when she met the young Prince Charming who would later become the 100th Mayor of New York City, William O’Dwyer.
Catherine, who is still quite beautiful at 85, believes this is how she acquired her intoxicating blue eyes, her ravishing Irish red hair, milky-white skin and those freckles.
In her book she relates captivating stories her aunts and uncles would later tell her about her mom and the mayor.
Her appearance always made Catherine feel different from the rest of her dark-skinned Sicilian mob family, including her beloved uncle Salvy, a paisano of mafia boss Lucky Luciano, who ironically Mayor O’Dwyer would put into prison.
It’s an intimate story with striking corroborative details that we’ll investigate and promote into a movie.
She picked me for this assignment as I was an investigative reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer before I became the #2-ranked executive at NBC under TV wunderkind Fred Silverman, then a producer of my own TV shows like Shop Around The World With Elke Sommer and Video Newscasting Network, my behind the scenes look at the television business that TIME Magazine liked so much.
I can see a screenplay here that will make The Godfather so jealous he’ll order a hit on you, Martin.
Spitale writes passionately about her upbringing in an Italian family. Her book is available on Amazon and www.booksyoucantrust.com. In it she writes:
“My mother was 24 when her Uncle Ralph took her dancing. She had left her marriage and was living back on 12thStreet with her two babies in tow. She had become a beautiful, young woman and for the first time in her life, she went dancing at the Prospect Dance Hall with her uncle. She was vulnerable, I’m sure, and O’Dwyer was a handsome Irishman.
“Knowing my mom, I bet she never told anyone about her pregnancy. When her husband threatened to ruin her lover politically and take the girls from her, she must have felt she hadn’t any other choice.”
Martin, call me!
Madden is the author of “Is there enough Brady in Trump to win the inSUPERable BOWL?” available on Amazon.
I have always been an admirer of Mayor O’Dwyer. One of my earliest heroes.