Albert Anastasia - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• After the Anastasia assassination, the barber chairs at the Park Sheraton Hotel were repositioned to face away from the mirror. The Anastasia chair was later auctioned off for $7,000. In February 2012, the chair will be on exhibit at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.

• Anastasia's murder, as well as the 1957 Apalachin Meeting, were referenced in the 1999 film Analyze This, starring Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal.

• The fictional character Johnny Friendly (played by Lee J. Cobb) in the classic 1954 American film On the Waterfront was partially based on Anastasia.

• Mayra Montero's novel Son de Almendra (English Title: Dancing to "Almendra") is based on Anastasia's murder.

• In The Day of The Jackal, a 1973 novel by Frederick Forsyth, a detective considers Marco Vitellino, a fictitious bodyguard who was absent during Anastasia's assassination as one of several suspects who could be an assassin contracted to kill French President Charles de Gaulle. The bodyguard is ruled out because he doesn't fit the description of the assassin.

• In the TV series M*A*S*H, Season 5, Episode 3 "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," Hawkeye Pierce, temporarily blinded, bumps into an object, and discovers that it is an empty chair, and says, "Ah, Albert Anastasia's bodyguard." This is an anachronism, as the Korean War had already been over for four years when Anastasia was killed.

• In the TV series The West Wing Season 4, Episode 11 "Holy Night", Jules Ziegler, the estranged father of White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler, visits Toby at the White House. Following a query from the Justice Department, Toby asks his father, a former member of Murder, Inc. when Albert Anastasia was killed. Jules answers, "October 1957", and later tells his son, "You should know when Anastasia was killed." Toby, still angry at his father for having been involved in organized crime, retorts, "I know when Anastasia was killed!"

• In an episode of The Sopranos, Uncle Junior says that he wishes the mob were like they were in the 1950s when it was peaceful. Tony replies by saying he remembered seeing the picture of Anastasia "all amicably" in a pool of blood on the barbershop floor.

• Italian movie of 1973 with Alberto Sordi: "Anastasia mio fratello ovvero il presunto capo dell'Anonima Assassini".

• Anastasia's murder is mentioned in Harold Robbins book, The Raiders. Although in the book the hit is carried out by an obfuscated assassin known only by the pseudonym Milditesta (Italian for a greatly painful headache).

• MMG rapper Rick Ross entitled his 2011 mixtape, "The Albert Anastasia EP"