More New York mob dons are slated to get the Hollywood treatment in Martin Scorsese’s heavily-hyped upcoming movie, The Irishman, the story of the friendship between historic organized labor leader Jimmy Hoffa and east coast mafia muscle Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran. A laundry list of legendary actors like Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel are starring in the flick.
Albert (The Mad Hatter) Anastasia and Carmine (The Snake) Persico will have characters bearing their names and likenesses appear in The Irishman, tracking towards a 2019 release date and currently in production in New York, New Jersey and Delaware. Pacino is playing Hoffa and DeNiro has taken on the Sheeran role. While Anastasia, who led what is now the Gambino crime family in the 1950s, has been dead for 60 years, Persico remains one of the bosses of New York’s Five Families today.
Sheeran claimed to have killed Hoffa in the book The Irishman is based on, I Heard You Paint Houses (2004), authored by Sheeran biographer and personal attorney Charlie Brandt. Teamsters boss Hoffa disappeared in the summer of 1975 following butting heads with the mob — his remains have never been found and nobody has ever been arrested for his kidnapping or murder. Before he died of natural causes in 2003, Sheeran was a Delaware Teamsters official and hit man for mob powers in New York and Pennsylvania.
Carmine Persico
Anastasia, famously assassinated in his barber chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan in the fall of 1957, is being played by Garry Pastore. Persico, incarcerated for most of the past five decades, will be portrayed by Craig DiFrancia.
Pastore just portrayed deceased Genovese syndicate heavyweight Matthew (Matty the Horse) Ianniello on the HBO series The Deuce about the seedy side of Times Square, Ianniello lorded over in the 1970s. DiFrancia co-stars in the Amazon original show The Life, scheduled to premiere this year.
Last year, it was announced that character actor Domenick Lombardozzi will play former Genovese crime family Godfather Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and DeNiro-film regular John Polce is cast as Joe Colombo. Persico has run the Colombo crime family from behind bars since the mid-1980s. He’s serving what amounts to a life sentence for a 1986 racketeering conviction.
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