Mob
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Business of the Year” in 2003 if it hadn’t sold a surprising number of lipstick pens and belt-buckle cameras. While the Mob Museum will have a sense of humor—that was evident early on with the unveiling of the museum’s redacted logo—but, like Spy, it’s an otherwise serious cultural endeavor. “This is not an attraction, it’s a museum—a very engaging museum,” Dennis says. “It’s designed to take you into a different world when you walk off the street, because you want people to start thinking in a different way. That was our goal with Spy, and I hope when you walk into the Mob Museum you’ll walk into the world of crime and law enforcement.” The tough part is distilling a librarysize subject into a two-hour tour. The Barries have been working on the storyline since they were hired three autumns ago, and the editing conundrums have been many. How do you condense, for example, the Bureau of Narcotics story? How interesting is it anyway? And how do you balance the good guys and the bad guys to help make the museum “legit” and live up to its proper name? Focusing on human nature and valor seems to be the answer. While visitors can look up details about such events as the 1935 grand jury investigation into vice and racketeering in New York, the real engagement with history is meeting someone like Eunice Carter. “She was an African-American prosecutor in Tom Dewey’s office,” Kathy says, “and they put her on the prostitution detail—I think it was Lucky Luciano’s outfit that ran the ring. But here she was, the first woman in that office and the first AfricanAmerican in the office. I’m thinking, Whoa, what would it have been like to have been Eunice Carter?” There will be stations for listening to wiretapped phone calls, and you’ll hear guys getting “made” at a big crime family conference. There will firsthand video testimonies by living participants about their mob connections, “so you can see the person’s face and emotions,” Kathy says. “That dimension helps a great deal in getting the point across that this is a real story, not a cartoon. These are real people.” And the Barries like to show sides of famous characters that museum visitors don’t know about. At the Rock Hall, for example, across from all the Jimi Hendrix memorabilia is a wall of drawings from the late guitarist’s childhood. At the Mob Mu-
seum, alongside, let’s say, an image of the dapper Moe Dalitz sparring with Senator Kefauver, you might see a photo of him on horseback during one of his hunting trips in Montana or the home movie he filmed along the early Las Vegas Strip. “What people will be really excited about are the personal things that are going to be in there,” Dennis says. “Maybe it’s somebody’s cuff links, their prayer card or their family photos. It shows their human side. I always find those things fascinating.” It’s the Barries’ mission to tell it like it is, out of respect for accuracy and in effort to gain respect for the project. “One of our great satisfactions,” Dennis says, “is that the CIA uses the Spy Museum for its historical training.” And they’d like to achieve that level of respectability in Las Vegas, where law-enforcement agencies would come to learn from the Mob Museum. “It’s got to be that important,” Kathy says. Telling it like it is in a world with so many versions of reality is the best way to understand American culture. If this sounds obvious, consider that the Rock Hall, pre-Barrie, was going to be a museum that was all “happy days and sock hops,” Dennis says. “I thought, This is B.S. How can you talk about rock and roll with no sex or drugs?” To his great satisfaction, the museum included the mood-setting film Rock Is, starring a very forthright Pete Townshend of The Who. “That place wouldn’t be the same without it,” Kathy says. It was post-Mapplethorpe proof of Dennis’ commitment to pulling no punches when dealing with a provocative subject. There’s bound to be another shock wave of controversy when the Mob Museum opens, and the Barries are braced for it. “The Spy Museum was only open about 10 minutes,” Kathy recalls, “and we had people walking up to us saying, ‘Jonathan Pollard is not a spy. Jonathan Pollard is a patriot!’ And you’re like, OK, he pled guilty. With Moe Dalitz, charges were dropped both times he was arrested, so … There’s always going to be something controversial.” “Wait till I whip out photos of naked mobsters!” Dennis interjects. He’s just joking, of course. But if he changes his mind, this time he’ll have an experienced defense attorney on the team—one who very much appreciates Barrie’s nose for controversy. “I have only one regret about him now,” the mayor says. “That I didn’t represent him in that Mapplethorpe case myself.” DC
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