The Movie Star, the Spies, the Mobsters, and the Murders

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction – particularly when organized crime and intelligence services intertwine

Dear subscribers, I have a confession: I intermittently read Crazy Days and Nights, the celebrity gossip website. It’s very old-fashioned, mimicking L.A. Confidential-esque salacious blind items posted on a clunky website that screams “1997!” Its author goes by the handle EntyLawyer (true name: John Nelson, he was recently outed by an ex-mistress in a messy saga that reads like a post on his website), and he’s exactly the sort of shady weirdo who you would think runs something like CDAN.

The website’s blind items, some of which are eventually revealed, run from the mundane to the deeply scandalous. Allegations of drug abuse and sex crimes of all kinds are commonly cited. When CDAN occasionally veers into my territory, spies and international intrigue, most of the content is bullshit (although once in a while it’s accurate, or close to it). That said, CDAN is running an impressive gossip collection machine, even though as a Gen-X-er I’ve never heard of half of the celebs the website mentions. However, Nelson called out A-List sex pests such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Matt Lauer long before the mainstream media noticed their sordid antics, which were no secret in celebrity circles. None can say that CDAN’s gossip is wholly made up.

Nevertheless, some celebrity stories are so convoluted and outlandish they would not be believed even by devoted CDAN readers. Allow me to share one with you.

I’m telling you this bizarre saga because yesterday brought news of the death of Alain Delon, the French film idol, at the age of 88. The dashingly handsome Delon, an international style icon, was one of the great European actors of his generation. I won’t dwell on his professional accomplishments since his movie heyday was before my birth, neither am a French film aficionado. Delon was basically a taller and much better-looking Joe Pesci: both men gained fame and fortune by playing gangsters in a compelling fashion, because they weren’t entirely acting.