Friday, May 4, 2007

The Hat

My father worked for the infamous Hollywood gangster, Mickey Cohen, during the late 1940's. Despite the fact that my father quit organized crime in 1949 he and Cohen remained friends. Thus it was that when Cohen got out of jail in 1972 I got to meet him and spend time with him on a number of occasions. Cohen was the epitomy of respectability around women and children. In fact, he gave me a signed photograph addressed to "my little buddy Billy". And around the same time, he gave me the hat pictured above. Mickey had it made especially for me by Joy Lord Hatter of New York, with my name inscribed. Perhaps in a future blog I'll share a photo of Mickey in his own famed fedora.

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