Author reveals father’s mobster history
BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. >> It took more than twenty years for Luellen Smiley to write the story of life with her mobster father. It has taken her a lifetime to come to terms with it.
Her memoir, “Cradle of Crime, A Daughter’s Tribute,” is Smiley’s way of reconciling a childhood punctuated by both precious and painful memories. As a young child, she lived through her parents’ separation and loss of the only home she had known since birth. A few short years later, she went through the trauma of losing her young mother prematurely to cancer and moving back with her father, whom she had not lived with since she was seven years old. She spent her teens growing up in a house cloaked in secrecy and living with her and her father’s constant anxiety over the known – and unknown - dangers of life in the mob.
Born Aaron Smehoff, Allen Smiley was known in Hollywood, Florida and Las Vegas for his dashing good looks and charm. But he was also known as right hand man to – and close friend of – the no-
torious Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.
Smiley immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine with his orthodox Jewish parents when he was five years old. According to Luellen, Allen was addicted to adventure from an early age. While Allen’s father had dreams of his son growing up to become a rabbi, young Smiley had other plans.
At age 15, Smiley ran away from home and stowed away across the border into the United States. By age 17, he and some other boys were nabbed for robbing a local store and were sent to Preston Reformatory for Boys in Ione, CA. It was there that the young, charming and exceedingly handsome Smiley met the director, Cecil B. DeMille.
DeMille was there filming for his movie, “The Godless Girl,” the last completely silent film he directed.
“My dad’s looks were phenomenal and he was also very confident and direct,” said Luellen. “He asked DeMille for a job, and DeMille’s answer was, ‘Absolutely!’”
Once Smiley was out of reform school, he made his way to Hollywood, where he worked for DeMille until he and Bugsy Siegel crossed paths.
What followed was a deep and long one-way journey into the world of the Mafia. During that time, Smiley met and married Luellen’s mother, whom he divorced when his daughter was eight years old. By the time she was 13 years old, her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and died. It was then, that Luellen went to live with her father until she turned 18 years old. During those years, she learned some hard truths. She also learned how to never speak of things like the Mafia or anything related to Bugsy Siegel and her father’s activities.
Luellen says the deeply-ingrained rule of never speaking of the mafia is what prevented her from finishing her book years ago. When she finally began to let go of her fear of giving voice to her reality, she wrote an 800-page novel, which was promptly rejected by every publishing house she submitted it to. She continued to struggle with finding the right genre and voice for her book for several more years.
Her eventual success came about partly as a result of attending Skidmore College’s annual summer writer’s conference in 2000. During her time in Saratoga Springs, she also fell in love with the area, eventually purchasing and renovating an old Victorian on East High Street in the village of Ballston Spa, where she lived for three years. Ms. Smiley rapidly made lasting friendships during her time there, and her entry, “A Village of Friends,” was chosen as the village’s phrase during a village-wide contest.
A Californian by birth, the region’s cold winters eventually became too much for her, and she moved back to San Diego, where she wrote weekly columns for the Del Mar Times and regularly contributed to several magazines, while also continuing to work on her book.
About two years ago, she fractured her foot and couldn’t walk for six months. While she was recuperating, it finally came to her to write the book as a memoir.
“I just wrote it by instinct,” she said.
While her story talks about the pain and emotional hardships her father’s illegal activities created in her life, Luellen hopes that readers will consider her uniquely personal perspective about men in organized crime.
“They bear a life-and-death burden as fathers,” she said. She also recognizes that her youth was filled with both privilege and punishment as a direct consequence of her father’s chosen profession.
“Cradle of Crime” was published in 2016 and is available at Amazon online. Luellen Smiley will return to Ballston Spa and Saratoga Springs this coming summer, when she plans to rekindle old friendships and schedule book signings across the Capital Region.