About the Play

Write Act Repertory continues its 2010 mainstage season with

Brooklyn, USA

Based on true events of Murder, INC. in New York City during the 1930's - 1940's.
 
Write Act Repertory and Producing and Artistic Directors John Lant and Ken Cosby with producer Anne Mesa in association with CRC Entertainment and Lois Shaffer Oda, proudly announce their production of Brooklyn, USA as the Write Act Rep 2010 Season continues. This compelling bio-play chronicles the infamous principle characters of Murder, INC. and will have an extended engagement at the Write Act Repertory Theatre officially opening Saturday May 15th to Saturday July 31st, 2010.
 
This is a true story based on real events of Murder Incorporated, the enforcement arm of America's crime syndicate. With mobsters like Bugsy Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Albert Anastasia, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, "Pittsburgh" Phil Strauss, Frank "Dasher" Abbandando, and Harry "Happy" Maione. They formed the firing squad of a national underworld cartel that controlled gambling, unions, loan-sharking and narcotics from the end of Prohibition through the 1950's across America. Centered in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, at the height of its efficiency under Lepke and Anastasia, "Lord High Executioner", Murder, INC. was responsible for thousands of killings coast to coast. Even though guns and knives were used, more imaginative methods like live cremation, slow strangling, quicklime, and live burials were the killing methods that each man made his MO mark with. Some victims were serenaded with a chorus of "Oh bury me not, in old Canarsie," or were tortured with unbelievable brutality by skillful killers like "Pittsburgh" Phil, expertly inserting an ice pick into a "bum's" ear, scrambling his brains, making it appear like a cerebral hemorrhage to the most seasoned coroner.
 
This is a story of crime by remorseless killers committed in the name of greed, against those who had run afoul of the cartel and anyone who threatened its existence, and of those good people who would stand up against the Syndicate. Those few individuals who refused to live in fear, dreaming of a better life at a time when their families fleeing from the tightening strangle hold of the Nazis in Europe was peaking. At its climax, a world broken by one stool pigeon whose first-hand knowledge of dozens of killings would send four men directly to the electric chair, including the biggest fish of all, Lepke Buchalter.

About the Authors

John Bright, Playwright, was born in 1908 in Baltimore.  He began his career at age 13 as a newspaper copy-boy; later becoming a crime reporter and biographer. Bright first teamed with writing partner Kubec Glasmo as co-author of gangster stories.  The pair penned films with the landmark crime melodrama The Public Enemy (1931) that also launched the career of James Cagney. Other Warner Bros. movies of the period on which Bright and Glasmon collaborated include: Blonde Crazy (1931), Taxi (1932), The Crowd Roars (1932) and Three on a Match (1932). With Glasmon, Bright helped form the Screen Writers Guild, now Writers Guild of America.  Then Bright teamed up with New York newspaper writer, eventual wartime correspondent, and playwright Asa Bordages to write Brooklyn USA, a story inspired by the real life assassination of a union leader by the syndicate.  Bright’s final screenwriting credit before being blacklisted in the 1950s was The Brave Bulls (1951). After years of self-exile in Mexico, Bright returned to the U.S. and worked as literary advisor for Bill Cosby's production company and continued to advocate for writers until his death in 1989.

Director's Notes

  When I first met Rico Simonini I couldn't help think how much he reminded me of  Tommy Udo, the ruthless killer portrayed by Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death (1947, Fox) whose signature moment in the film occurred when Udo giggled sadistically as he pushed a wheel-chair bound old woman down a flight of stairs. The role earned Widmark an Oscar nomination for the role which essentially launched his career. I immediately pegged him as Smiley Manone and was inspired to bring Brooklyn USA back to the stage and to its Hollywood premiere. When the play was first produced in 1941, opening in December at the Forrest Theater (later renamed the Eugene O'Neil Theatre), Brooklyn was a hit. It was heralded as "a harsh, lurid, truthful, tough-talking drama that was a stark, ruthless exposition of homicide, larceny, usury, strikebreaking and racketeering" and featured long time stage veteran Eddie Nugent as Smiley and a novice actor (later director) named Sydney Lumet as Willie Berg. I directed its second production in North Hollywood some 40 years later after receiving the play from author John Bright, a former newspaper man and screenwriter at Warner's who had been black-listed during the McCarty witch hunts. Brooklyn USA ran for over a year winning Dramalogue awards featured several actors who launched their careers from the play. The key to the play's success then as with other plays I've directed is creating the perfect atmosphere and finding actors who can emote the essence of and easily inhabit the characters they portray. I am truly excited about this cast telling you this story which I feel still has relevance, doesn't pull any punches, and is a good old-fashioned hard-boiled melodrama about my native Brooklyn, the gangsters of Murder Incorporated, the lives they touched and destroyed and those who would oppose them. I hope you enjoy.
T.J. Castronovo
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