MANNERS & MORALS: Lawyer Knows Best

MANNERS & MORALS Lawyer Knows Best

At their frequent Eight-Ball dinners, members of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club like to rub elbows with men of distinction. President Truman addressed the club once; so did Vice President Alben Barkley and General Mark Clark. The guest speaker at the next dinner, the members decided, should be Manhattan’s urbane and ubiquitous Frank Costello, sometime bootlegger and big-time gambler.

But last week the Press Club received a polite refusal. “While I deeply appreciate the great honor conferred on me . . .” Costello wrote, “I cannot accept … I never made a speech in my life and the very thought of it almost scares me to death. Even the idea of facing members of the press gives me the shivers, although not nearly so much now as before November last, when you loused up the election situation and the betting odds.

“. . . Evidently you folks are not satisfied with the countless crimes that have been laid at my door; but you are now egging me on to commit the most serious of all crimes—murder—of the English language. That is one charge to which I would have no defense—so my barrister advises me.”