Kennedy, Sinatra and the Mafia (2023)

I suppose that if you are looking for all the ingredients for a good conspiratorial story, then you could do much worse than try to connect the Chicago mob with legendary crooner Frank Sinatra and the ill-fated US President John F. Kennedy. What now ensues tries to establish a link between organised crime and Kennedy by way of some facilitation from Frank. It’s basic premise is that Kennedy Senior (Joe) wanted Sinatra to use his long-suspected underworld connections to help ensure his son was elected to the White House. Once there, though, the building blocks for his presidential bid began to crumble with his old allies as JFK and his tenacious brother Bobby started to root out the corruption and evil that dominated in cities like Chicago. Using a collection of oft-seen archive and still photography but bringing very little new by way of contributors, we embark on a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. Everything is touched upon from the womanising to the money laundering to the eventual role (or not) of the mafia in events in Dallas in 1963. The contributors are a rather dry collection of academics who offer nothing new, and go to prove that books can be written on just about anything where there is no definitive answer for their enjoyable but superficial speculation. The fact that they all existed at the same time, in the same country, and mixed in the same social circles doesn’t require a rocket scientist to explain to us. What we could have done with here was something more scientifically constructed and evidenced. A smoking gun rather than a water pistol. As it is, it’s gossip substantiated with a few press photos and some bourbon. Disappointing, but then what chance this was ever going to deliver something revelatory?