

The above picture of Frank Lucas and his wife Julie was taken on the night of the fight. Specifically, Richie is speaking of the flamboyant mistake that Frank made when he wore the chinchilla coat and hat to the MaFrazier vs. You don't go around showing that kind of money when the people who are trying to arrest you are making in those days $25,000 a year, and you're showing a coat that's like five years salaries. But certainly it brought a lot more attention onto him, that coat. Frank doesn't believe that, but law enforcement certainly knew of him and his people. "No," Richie Roberts said in an interview. In real life, Lucas also spent $140,000 on a couple of Van Cleef bracelets.
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The movie uses the $50,000 chinchilla coat and $10,000 matching hat in an attempt to show the pitfalls of being an over-flamboyant gangster. Frank is convinced that the chinchilla coat was what led the police to take note of him. According to the American Gangster true story, it was Frank's wife, Julie Lucas, who bought him the fur coat, which he at first thought was her new coat (BET, American Gangster). HOT 97 FMĭid detective Richie Roberts' partner really become a junkie?ĭid Frank Lucas' wife really buy him the fur coat and hat?

In an interview, the real Richie Roberts said that he did get some heat for turning in the money, but he didn't become a "pariah" around his fellow officers like he does in the movie. Philadelphia Daily Newsĭid detective Richie Roberts really turn in $1,000,000 in drug money? Bumpy had never been out of prison for fifteen years. Quinones, points out in her book Harlem Godfather that Bumpy was released from prison in 1963 and died in 1968, leaving only a possible window of five years that Frank Lucas could have been Bumpy's driver. Former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Karen E. In an interview, Bumpy's widow, Mayme Johnson, said, "Bumpy never had nobody drive him for 15 years." She admitted that Frank may have driven her husband a few times, but she said that her husband never saw Frank as anything more than someone he might have allowed to carry his coat.
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In the movie American Gangster, Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas states that he had been Bumpy Johnson's driver for 15 years. Was Frank really Bumpy Johnson's driver for 15 years? All of his talk is lies." -Philadelphia Daily News "I don't want to see it because it's not true," she said in a 2007 interview. Mayme Johnson does not plan to see the movie American Gangster. She said that Bumpy passed away in the arms of his childhood friend, Junie Byrd.

Bumpy's widow, Mayme Johnson, also stated that Bumpy's heart attack occurred while he was dining at Wells Restaurant, but she said that he was not with Frank Lucas. The real Frank Lucas said that he and Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson were at Wells Restaurant when "Bumpy just started shaking and fell over" ( New York Magazine). Was Frank Lucas present when Bumpy Johnson died?
