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Born Calogero Mincore (Minacori) on Feb. 6, 1910 in the ancient North African port city of Tunis, when Tunisia was a French protectorate, Carlos Marcello arrived in New Orleans as an infant and later would rise from obscurity to become one of America’s most enduring and most beguiling celebrity gangsters of the 20th celebrity.

In his prime, Marcello was a Louisiana cultural icon and political deal-maker, a multi-millionaire real estate developer and entrepreneur, and, most notably, a notorious racketeer and powerful crime boss, reputedly serving as the head of the New Orleans Mafia (and controlling an empire that some say was worth billions) for nearly 50 years. 

Known as “the Little Man” because of his diminutive stature, the five-foot-three-inch Marcello was the subject of constant media coverage and the target of relentless investigation from 1951 until his death in 1993.