“Cut his dick off”: Did Frank Sinatra really save Johnny Carson from a mob hit?
It’s well reported that Frank Sinatra had several supposed ties to the Mafia, and while sources close to the singer like to refute these claims, there are plenty of incidents that have unfolded in his presence that go a long way to suggest he had some sort of connection.
Growing up in Hoboken, New Jersey, where there was a significant mob presence in the years between the two world wars, Sinatra would first become connected to organised crime when it was discovered that his own godfather was Willie Moretti, a mobster who had worked as Sinatra’s agent in the late ‘30s, and allegedly held a gun to the head of his then performing partner Tommy Dorsey in an effort to get him to leave a contract.
If that doesn’t make it apparent that Sinatra and his associates weren’t the sort of people to be messed with, then it ought to also be noted that the FBI held a file on him and his alleged connections for over 40 years. Considering this is the level of surveillance that is usually reserved for the most reprehensible individuals in society, the authorities must have had plenty of reason to suspect that he was worth keeping tabs on.
That being said, Sinatra didn’t necessarily use these connections for nefarious purposes, and would quite often flex his power in ways that were beneficial to those close to him, and helped them out of trouble in certain situations. In fact, the famous television host Johnny Carson would have been thankful for Sinatra bailing him out of a sticky situation, where he could have lost a significant amount in a skirmish with some local gangsters.
Unbeknownst to Carson, he’d found himself attempting to court a young woman in New York, but had unfortunately laid eyes on the wrong individual, inadvertently trying to flirt with the partner of Colombo crime family member, ‘Crazy’ Joe Gallo. Now, flirting with anyone who is already in a relationship is probably something you’d consider risky business, but doing so with the girlfriend of a mobster is something that will land you in grave danger.
According to comedian Tom Dreesen, who revealed on an episode of The Friars Club Podcast while discussing his relationship with Sinatra, the singer was the one who stepped in to save Carson after Gallo had ordered his goons to “find him, beat him to the ground, cut his dick off, and stick it in his mouth.” Supposedly, he got in touch with his mobster friend to alleviate the situation, with Gallo uttering words to the extent of “you go tell Johnny Carson he breathes ‘cause he knows Frank Sinatra.”
Whether any of this is true will forever remain a mystery, and because of the nature of Sinatra’s involvement with the mob being something of an urban legend as it is, tales such as this can’t exactly be taken as gospel. However, if Carson did indeed find himself in such a predicament, then he, for one, would have been overjoyed to have a friend with such connections in Old Blue Eyes.
