Popular Culture
- Costello has been portrayed in several movies by actors James Andronica in Gangster Wars (1981), Carmine Caridi in Bugsy (1991), Costas Mandylor in Mobsters (1991), and by Kirk Baltz in the television movie Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long (1995).
- The character of "Vito Corleone" in the book and 1972 film The Godfather is based on a composite of mid-20th Century New York Mafia figures, perhaps chief among them Frank Costello. The Corleone character featured similar mannerisms (including a raspy voice) and political connections, as well as many events from his real life. (Like Costello, Don Corleone voices disapproval of the drug traffic, which he labels a "dirty business"). Marlon Brando, who played Corleone, apparently used tapes of Costello from the Kefauver hearings as the basis for the character's accent.
- Costello was the godfather to ABC News reporter and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Assistant Director for the Office of Public Affairs John Miller. Miller's father and Costello were close friends.
- Referenced in Allen Ginsberg's poem, "Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox". The line is written, "It had to be FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover / and Frank Costello syndicate mouthpiece / meeting in Central Park, New York weekends, / reported Time magazine". The poem was later performed live (with music) by the band Rage Against The Machine on the album Live & Rare.
- The film The Departed features an Irish mob boss named "Frank Costello" (played by Jack Nicholson) in present-day Boston. Nicholson's character is not related to the real-life Costello except in name; the character was based on Boston mobster "Whitey" Bulger.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.”
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“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
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