Sherry’s restaurant, at 9039 Sunset Boulevard was one of the Sunset Strip nightspots of the late 1940s, not just popular with movie stars, also with mobsters. In July of 1949, those movie stars learned that mixing with the mob was dangerous to their health when, in the wee hours of the 19th, an assassination attempt was made on the head of the national crime syndicate’s gambling and vice operations in Southern California. Mickey Cohen and his party were leaving Sherry’s at 3:55 a.m. when shots rang out across Sunset Blvd. It was a scene from a real-life Warner Bros. picture! Cohen survived the assassination attempt but I pity the owners of the car in the foreground with five bullet holes. Or maybe it was a story they dined out on for years.
That site is now occupied by a live music venue called 1 Oak. This image is from May 2019.
The attempt was orchestrated by my great grandfather Jack Dragna. Mickey was never as big as the media and books made him out to be. I definitely wouldn’t call him the boss…unless you mean the boss of a hat shop.
Thanks for stopping by. If you’re Dragna’s great grandson then you’d know more about this than I, but didn’t Dragna attempt to take Cohen out a whole bunch of times? Like maybe 9 or 10? If that’s the case, I wonder if he he’d have taken the trouble for a minor guy who ran a shop.
Mickey was a gopher and a bookmaker who ran errands for Jack Dragna and Ben Siegel during their partnership in the racing wire. After Ben Siegel’s murder; however, Mickey became a bit too ambitious and tried to fill the gap. Suffice to say, he wasn’t capable. His actions in the courtroom around the time of the Brenda Allen scandal and his statements to the press brought about an investigation which resulted in a change of the guard within the police force and in the mayor’s office. Many of the vice arrangements that had long been in place with law enforcement were nixed, making it very difficult for anyone to do business in LA. After that, folks on both sides of the law had it in for Mickey and attempts on his life began. Read his FBI files. They illustrate just how fictional his autobiography was.