On Crime
Mortimer served as a first lieutenant in the Signal Corps from 1942 to 1943, then returned to New York City and began a collaboration with Jack Lait that produced several bestselling crime books. Following that success, Mortimer began lecturing on crime and communism, and at one point attempted to tie popular singer Frank Sinatra to the Mafia and the Communist Party. The two men had a confrontation in Hollywood on April 9, 1947 outside Ciro's restaurant, resulting in the arrest of Sinatra the following day on a battery complaint, after Mortimer accused Sinatra of throwing a punch.
Read more about this topic: Lee Mortimer
Famous quotes containing the word crime:
“Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that specieas alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)