Name: Sonny Gibson on Letterman, May 12, 1982
Uploaded: 2019-06-04T13:23:13.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Sonny Gibson on Letterman, May 12, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-06-04. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Sonny Gibson on Letterman, May 12, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-06-04. Transcript available.

welcome back to the show we we have quite a show for you folks here tonight a
little bit later on
if you're planning a wedding sometime in the month of june or any month on the
calendar stay with us
we have wedding day do's and don'ts with frank and fred also jerry seinfeld ken
murray and my
first guest who i'll just bring out right now it says here this is uh this is
hard to imagine we'll
find out if it's true uh he claims my first guest now to have killed 24 men uh
while he was employed
as a hitman for the mafia but now he says that his life has changed and he has
written a book and is
making a movie about that change here is a copy of the book right here please
welcome sonny gibson
so you now is that true uh you actually killed 24 people no i'm involved with
24 killed 14 during
my involvement with this to say in my feed day uh-huh but you uh in a prison
just a minute ago
i look at prison right was i in a prison just a minute ago yeah that smoke oh
no that was a
remind you of home did it sonny yeah right um
i found god inside prison yeah in 1974 and uh with the love of jesus christ i
changed my life around
with the help of a priest and a christian brother so that's the good side of
the story let's cover
the ugly stuff first okay uh you you were employed by the the mafia as a hitman
well not exactly employed
i took vials uh three and a half years in catania sicily and uh and uh went
through and became
assassin for them a robot and i talked to kids all over the country dave talked
about 600 000 young
people and i do scared straight programs i try to let young people know that
they get caught up in
their gangs or drugs they can become a robot yeah let's let's i want i've
always been fascinated by
somebody who was uh one of these guys who just you you killed for uh money
right no no it was a
uh uh royalty uh brainwash robotism the mafia told me do something i would have
done oh i see you felt
like to uphold their creed you would go out and whatever they needed done you'd
do it well it's a lot
of training that went through over the period of years and to get to that point
and it'd be hard to
we don't have enough time to talk about on on a program of course but um i
became the type of
animal that would have already killed uh anyone that they would have told me to
to assassin okay so
you you really don't want to get into the what i was looking for is you get up
in the morning the
phone rings they say sunny um gonna be a guy at the market his name's herb uh
unload him uh not
exactly dave that's what hollywood likes for you to believe of course it don't
work that way no uh
my assignments was knocking off 13 communists over a period of 18 months and i
don't praising that
because of that but my training went into many hours uh tape recordings of
listening to uh their
procedures uh their mo their multiple operation what they did what they didn't
do why why was the
the uh the organized crime the club that you were a part of why were they
interested in and erasing
communist leaders well the sicilian mafia have had a war against uh the entrusters
of communism since
mussolini and as you might recall his death was a was a mafia killing where
they had the violent way
they killed mussolini that was not just a crowd of angry people there were
mafia soldiers that executed
that man uh communism of course is is spreading over europe more than ever
today i think uh not too
long ago there was 40 red brigades that was killed last year by the sicilian
mafia your first question
was why would the sicilian mafia not that's not organized crime talk about the
mafia in sicily
have such a war communism there's no free enterprises and in the old days when
i was involved in the
uh early 60s it was a vendetta where today i would think more it's into uh
enterprises because of those
most of those old timers are dead now who had the vendetta you at one time uh
you were going to take
over the philippines you had a plan to do that yes i did what was uh why and
what happened i mean it
didn't happen did it you didn't take it over no no no um well you you get to a
point and i became
from 1964 to 1971 one of the most powerful men in this country as an
international carrier for the
mafia and i had a casino in the bahamas and i helped finance uh the frontier in
vegas and i did
i got to the point where i felt i was invisible and i needed 500 million
dollars to uh take over the
philippine government and make it a casino haven and uh and doing so of course
i got indicted in 71
for the largest mail fraud case in u.s history and refused to testify against
the mafia and i end up
going to the state penitentiary so what are you lost me there in the philippines
what happened when i
refused to take over well i never i went to the state pen and i thought my
attorney said oh go to prison
sonny we'll get you out in six eight months of course i went to prison and uh
there was no six eight
months getting out there if i went to the first parole board i was on a life
sentence they said they
would not look at me again to 1986. yeah uh i got other questions here i'm
interested in asking you
about this uh how long would you do this stuff before they put you away for
good i was in probably
in in 20 years of hard crime oh okay uh we're gonna find out more about the uh
career in hard crime to
be had for you kids out there no no we're just joking uh we'll be right back
with sonny gibson
hi welcome back sonny gibson is here and uh 20 years organized crime uh
shooting people killing
people when it happened when it took place uh do you have any remorse about
pulling the trigger or
whatever you did to that person is it tough to do that well it wasn't a period
of remorse i i've been
asked that question a lot of times dave and i don't think a man go to prison
and pay a debt to society
um so because of my change and an act of a miracle got me released and because
of my belief in
and god does not pay back the the debt to society uh one of the things that i'm
trying to do and i feel
is right to do a promise i made to god is when i ever got out of prison could
work as an actor i would go
around talking to young people let them know the harsh conditions of prison
life and and drugs and uh one
of the things that i'm getting involved in which i'm very proud to say i'm
trying to uh we're trying to get uh congress to go on this prayer put prayer
back in the school for for kids who want to pray and the reason for that
that in 19 years uh prayer been out of school your murder rate in a thousand
average students around
the country have gone up 220 percent so now this is you you believe that there's
a correlation there
between the prayer and school and the murder rate i yes i do for for this
reason not so much the the
religious standpoint of the fact but in prison when i change i got a group of
guys and we didn't bible
study but it was called bible study but what we did was fellowship and and i
got the all the hit men and we
started talking about each one's problems but what i'm trying to say is during
that time
during that time we we had this thing for a year and a half this workshop
fellowship type of thing
only two hits was done during that year and a half last year that same prison
had 47 killings
now i'm not saying that prayer will change the whole world what i'm saying is
since prayer been
taken out of school since 62 uh the the morals of young people have have degraded
uh tremendously more
than a thousand percent of pregnancies and drugs and so that's what i'm saying
i think there is a
uh my personal belief i think it is a strong standard but not forced prayer i
don't believe in forcing
uh people to to pray but i do believe that young people all have the right in
school i'd rather see
them out there praying and going down shooting drugs and armed yeah let me uh i
know you're very
interested in talking about the the change that you went through in prison i
would like to spend a
little more time here talking about uh the your earlier life okay you you got
into to organized
crime where are you from originally let's just start there well noblesville indiana
i was born uh
end up in indianapolis was a poor kid well you remember the old stinky part of
indianapolis where the
kingans plant was at uh there by the river you weren't around there okay well
that's where i was raised and
you you were in the nicer neighborhood i it wasn't stinky as i recall well
anyways what i was trying
to say i got the nickname stinky going to school in that river say and um i
took a ball bat at eight
years old to some kids and by the time i was there why what do you mean were
you provoked into or you
just yeah i was just uh uh one of those type of kids that uh that i believe uh
violence was a was
a way at an early age i was taken from the country put in a city being half sicilian
you know being
sicilian annapolis was like being black in georgia you know so i end up in the
crime and at 13 to 15
i pulled 50 armed robberies and committed my first murder at 16. 16. now what
how what were the
circumstances surrounding that an armed robbery and two of the other partners
wanted to take the money
and i killed him uh was this a fun life for you you were in it for i mean i i
know that sounds stupid
but for you you made your living this way for 20 years there must have been
some enjoyment or something
to be had excitement no uh rip around mazola my writer and and he'll be out
shortly but we went
over this many months working on the book and the film film uh screenplay and
the fact of it was i came
from such a poverty stricken neighborhood and i'm not making that as excuse but
right now 72 percent of
your convicts in american prisons come from ghetto or low-income neighborhoods
and i was determined not to
be in that two-room shack and be called stinky the rest of my life now if you'd
asked me this question
three years ago when i came out of prison i just said i was a bad kid yeah but
working for two years
with reparata had brought a lot of um insight out to where what started the
crime and it just like
again we don't have enough time to go into the basic i was made i was
determined to get my mother
and father out of this uh old area and going into bigger better things let me
um uh quickly here
now you if you were in organized crime for 20 years you must know an awful lot
why is it that
you're allowed to walk around free don't the boys think you know stinky is
getting too big for his shorts
well in 1971 when i refused to testify against six mafia families in this
country and i went to prison
and i tried to tell young people the mafia used me like a pimp uses a whore dave
they didn't care
about sonny gibson however being the way i was raised i didn't believe in rad
so you didn't rat on
them they knew you were okay did they leave you alone seriously well in the
book the names are changed
in the movie the names are changed and most of them are dead today but we did
have uh one of them
contact our agent while back and says i believe what sonny's doing for kids
telling him what we're glad
he keeps his mouth shut so okay i don't worry about them i let god handle those
people dave well that yeah
all right and we're going to meet uh your friend repper adam azola uh right
after this
thank you very much paul's paper ladies and gentlemen uh we're here with uh sonny
gibson
and uh we're going to meet now uh how do i how do you want to introduce her i
guess i we can read
this she uh has been a lead singer with a rock group she was one of barry manilow's
backup singers
she is now involved with making the film version of uh your life story the
mafia kingpin here now is
reparata mazola great how do you do that's uh is this an unusual name i've not
heard uh uh yeah my
mother had a very strange sense of humor uh how uh oh that's her idea of a joke
huh
uh what what now tell me how did you go from being with uh barry manilow to
sunny i mean uh
well they are quite different i'll never forget my mother's reaction when i
told her i was out of
work for a period there after i left barry and i was going to act and write
full time as everyone in
hollywood has that intention or other or that under being a producer so i told
her well mom i finally
got a job and she said oh that's good what is it you're going to work with uh
you know helen ready
or somebody no i'm writing a mafia hitman story and you know she after she
fainted her reaction was
fairly uh good fairly good uh now how did that come about you wrote this book
here right uh and you're
you're you're writing the screenplay the screenplay's finished it's my first
book i might add i've never
written a book i did work in television and i was a writer on talk shows like
this really what shows well
great shows am new york when it first went on the air a long time ago this is
back in the early 70s and
the pat collins show i was nominated for an emmy and i left that and everybody
thought i was crazy
because that was a good experience for writing a book about the mafia you're
not going to get better
training there and then um and you also worked with another uh rock and roll
group right right i had a
rock and roll group in the 60s called reparata mandela runs i was the second
lead of that group
that was uh that was also a good experience for that i also have a degree in
french which is terrific
for writing a book about a mafia hitman but um it was uh it was thanks to sonny's
notes in prison he
sat in for five years and wrote his notes and then i uh he told me the story
and i wrote it and wrote the
screenplay and we're about to do the film let me uh interrupt here a second and
ask sonny i understand
that other people norman mailer for one and somebody else wanted to write uh
this book and but you chose
uh reparata well there was a lot of fine writers that i was interviewed with
and had had come across
and the reason i went with rip not now these writers are great writers but they
they none of them knew
anything about the mafia but they thought they did in the way they want the
public to realize and this book
in this film is not to praise the mafia or crime or drugs like the godfather
did it's to show the real
harsh conditions of crime life and prison life uh and reparata who absolutely
was a total stranger
mafia and drugs and and prostitution and and prison life i read some of the
screenplays that she had
written and i we had met doing a picture with uh dino de laurentes and i knew
she was a fine actress
and uh after seeing all these platinum albums in her home and she was a lead
singer of mantel i said gee
this is a talented woman and i saw her screen uh play writing i uh decide that
uh i went back to my
sponsor i found the perfect person and they i said rip or write a mazola and
they said who and never wrote
a book no no so i went back to rip so i got 1600 bucks in the bank i says you
write my book we go 50 50 and
you write the screenplay the same time so it won't be way out of contents and i
says since you're fine
actors i i want you to play the part of teresa my ex-wife and so that's how we
got together yeah is
as anybody uh uh from here on back when you were trying to get the money for
the book and whatever
said gee sonny i don't this is stuff is uh is this all true i mean is anybody
you had any trouble
people being skeptical about this and then you you bring along someone named
reparata mazola no offense of
course uh well they documented there are lots of newspaper articles and about
sonny's past and i
did did his past frighten you assuming it's all true does it just frighten you
to be sitting and
you probably go to dinner with him and stuff well it did actually at first david
it did um i had to
disconnect at times um when i was interviewing him and i would say well when
sonny did that or what
did he do because it is the book is so realistic and that's the way the film
will be totally realistic
you see the godfather was total fiction they glorified the mafia this tells the
truth about the mafia
and uh the film that we're doing is the largest film in motion picture history
it's got 156 speaking
parts and is that uh out now soon to be out we're in pre-production right now
and uh we start principal
photography sometime at the end of the summer it'll be out in late 84 yeah so
it's a monumental
undertaking late 83 oh oh yeah i'm sorry yeah just play along with sonny right
uh well it was a very
interesting meeting you both of you folks sonny and good luck to you and reparata
nice meeting you
thank you very much for being here it's called the mafia kingpin and that's him
over there uh we're going
to give an applause for special identification we'll be back with wedding news
and don'ts from frank and fred
you

Sonny Gibson on Letterman, May 12, 1982

welcome back to the show we we have quite a show for you folks here tonight a
little bit later on
if you're planning a wedding sometime in the month of june or any month on the
calendar stay with us
we have wedding day do's and don'ts with frank and fred also jerry seinfeld ken
murray and my
first guest who i'll just bring out right now it says here this is uh this is
hard to imagine we'll
find out if it's true uh he claims my first guest now to have killed 24 men uh
while he was employed
as a hitman for the mafia but now he says that his life has changed and he has
written a book and is
making a movie about that change here is a copy of the book right here please
welcome sonny gibson
so you now is that true uh you actually killed 24 people no i'm involved with
24 killed 14 during
my involvement with this to say in my feed day uh-huh but you uh in a prison
just a minute ago
i look at prison right was i in a prison just a minute ago yeah that smoke oh
no that was a
remind you of home did it sonny yeah right um
i found god inside prison yeah in 1974 and uh with the love of jesus christ i
changed my life around
with the help of a priest and a christian brother so that's the good side of
the story let's cover
the ugly stuff first okay uh you you were employed by the the mafia as a hitman
well not exactly employed
i took vials uh three and a half years in catania sicily and uh and uh went
through and became
assassin for them a robot and i talked to kids all over the country dave talked
about 600 000 young
people and i do scared straight programs i try to let young people know that
they get caught up in
their gangs or drugs they can become a robot yeah let's let's i want i've
always been fascinated by
somebody who was uh one of these guys who just you you killed for uh money
right no no it was a
uh uh royalty uh brainwash robotism the mafia told me do something i would have
done oh i see you felt
like to uphold their creed you would go out and whatever they needed done you'd
do it well it's a lot
of training that went through over the period of years and to get to that point
and it'd be hard to
we don't have enough time to talk about on on a program of course but um i
became the type of
animal that would have already killed uh anyone that they would have told me to
to assassin okay so
you you really don't want to get into the what i was looking for is you get up
in the morning the
phone rings they say sunny um gonna be a guy at the market his name's herb uh
unload him uh not
exactly dave that's what hollywood likes for you to believe of course it don't
work that way no uh
my assignments was knocking off 13 communists over a period of 18 months and i
don't praising that
because of that but my training went into many hours uh tape recordings of
listening to uh their
procedures uh their mo their multiple operation what they did what they didn't
do why why was the
the uh the organized crime the club that you were a part of why were they
interested in and erasing
communist leaders well the sicilian mafia have had a war against uh the entrusters
of communism since
mussolini and as you might recall his death was a was a mafia killing where
they had the violent way
they killed mussolini that was not just a crowd of angry people there were
mafia soldiers that executed
that man uh communism of course is is spreading over europe more than ever
today i think uh not too
long ago there was 40 red brigades that was killed last year by the sicilian
mafia your first question
was why would the sicilian mafia not that's not organized crime talk about the
mafia in sicily
have such a war communism there's no free enterprises and in the old days when
i was involved in the
uh early 60s it was a vendetta where today i would think more it's into uh
enterprises because of those
most of those old timers are dead now who had the vendetta you at one time uh
you were going to take
over the philippines you had a plan to do that yes i did what was uh why and
what happened i mean it
didn't happen did it you didn't take it over no no no um well you you get to a
point and i became
from 1964 to 1971 one of the most powerful men in this country as an
international carrier for the
mafia and i had a casino in the bahamas and i helped finance uh the frontier in
vegas and i did
i got to the point where i felt i was invisible and i needed 500 million
dollars to uh take over the
philippine government and make it a casino haven and uh and doing so of course
i got indicted in 71
for the largest mail fraud case in u.s history and refused to testify against
the mafia and i end up
going to the state penitentiary so what are you lost me there in the philippines
what happened when i
refused to take over well i never i went to the state pen and i thought my
attorney said oh go to prison
sonny we'll get you out in six eight months of course i went to prison and uh
there was no six eight
months getting out there if i went to the first parole board i was on a life
sentence they said they
would not look at me again to 1986. yeah uh i got other questions here i'm
interested in asking you
about this uh how long would you do this stuff before they put you away for
good i was in probably
in in 20 years of hard crime oh okay uh we're gonna find out more about the uh
career in hard crime to
be had for you kids out there no no we're just joking uh we'll be right back
with sonny gibson
hi welcome back sonny gibson is here and uh 20 years organized crime uh
shooting people killing
people when it happened when it took place uh do you have any remorse about
pulling the trigger or
whatever you did to that person is it tough to do that well it wasn't a period
of remorse i i've been
asked that question a lot of times dave and i don't think a man go to prison
and pay a debt to society
um so because of my change and an act of a miracle got me released and because
of my belief in
and god does not pay back the the debt to society uh one of the things that i'm
trying to do and i feel
is right to do a promise i made to god is when i ever got out of prison could
work as an actor i would go
around talking to young people let them know the harsh conditions of prison
life and and drugs and uh one
of the things that i'm getting involved in which i'm very proud to say i'm
trying to uh we're trying to get uh congress to go on this prayer put prayer
back in the school for for kids who want to pray and the reason for that
that in 19 years uh prayer been out of school your murder rate in a thousand
average students around
the country have gone up 220 percent so now this is you you believe that there's
a correlation there
between the prayer and school and the murder rate i yes i do for for this
reason not so much the the
religious standpoint of the fact but in prison when i change i got a group of
guys and we didn't bible
study but it was called bible study but what we did was fellowship and and i
got the all the hit men and we
started talking about each one's problems but what i'm trying to say is during
that time
during that time we we had this thing for a year and a half this workshop
fellowship type of thing
only two hits was done during that year and a half last year that same prison
had 47 killings
now i'm not saying that prayer will change the whole world what i'm saying is
since prayer been
taken out of school since 62 uh the the morals of young people have have degraded
uh tremendously more
than a thousand percent of pregnancies and drugs and so that's what i'm saying
i think there is a
uh my personal belief i think it is a strong standard but not forced prayer i
don't believe in forcing
uh people to to pray but i do believe that young people all have the right in
school i'd rather see
them out there praying and going down shooting drugs and armed yeah let me uh i
know you're very
interested in talking about the the change that you went through in prison i
would like to spend a
little more time here talking about uh the your earlier life okay you you got
into to organized
crime where are you from originally let's just start there well noblesville indiana
i was born uh
end up in indianapolis was a poor kid well you remember the old stinky part of
indianapolis where the
kingans plant was at uh there by the river you weren't around there okay well
that's where i was raised and
you you were in the nicer neighborhood i it wasn't stinky as i recall well
anyways what i was trying
to say i got the nickname stinky going to school in that river say and um i
took a ball bat at eight
years old to some kids and by the time i was there why what do you mean were
you provoked into or you
just yeah i was just uh uh one of those type of kids that uh that i believe uh
violence was a was
a way at an early age i was taken from the country put in a city being half sicilian
you know being
sicilian annapolis was like being black in georgia you know so i end up in the
crime and at 13 to 15
i pulled 50 armed robberies and committed my first murder at 16. 16. now what
how what were the
circumstances surrounding that an armed robbery and two of the other partners
wanted to take the money
and i killed him uh was this a fun life for you you were in it for i mean i i
know that sounds stupid
but for you you made your living this way for 20 years there must have been
some enjoyment or something
to be had excitement no uh rip around mazola my writer and and he'll be out
shortly but we went
over this many months working on the book and the film film uh screenplay and
the fact of it was i came
from such a poverty stricken neighborhood and i'm not making that as excuse but
right now 72 percent of
your convicts in american prisons come from ghetto or low-income neighborhoods
and i was determined not to
be in that two-room shack and be called stinky the rest of my life now if you'd
asked me this question
three years ago when i came out of prison i just said i was a bad kid yeah but
working for two years
with reparata had brought a lot of um insight out to where what started the
crime and it just like
again we don't have enough time to go into the basic i was made i was
determined to get my mother
and father out of this uh old area and going into bigger better things let me
um uh quickly here
now you if you were in organized crime for 20 years you must know an awful lot
why is it that
you're allowed to walk around free don't the boys think you know stinky is
getting too big for his shorts
well in 1971 when i refused to testify against six mafia families in this
country and i went to prison
and i tried to tell young people the mafia used me like a pimp uses a whore dave
they didn't care
about sonny gibson however being the way i was raised i didn't believe in rad
so you didn't rat on
them they knew you were okay did they leave you alone seriously well in the
book the names are changed
in the movie the names are changed and most of them are dead today but we did
have uh one of them
contact our agent while back and says i believe what sonny's doing for kids
telling him what we're glad
he keeps his mouth shut so okay i don't worry about them i let god handle those
people dave well that yeah
all right and we're going to meet uh your friend repper adam azola uh right
after this
thank you very much paul's paper ladies and gentlemen uh we're here with uh sonny
gibson
and uh we're going to meet now uh how do i how do you want to introduce her i
guess i we can read
this she uh has been a lead singer with a rock group she was one of barry manilow's
backup singers
she is now involved with making the film version of uh your life story the
mafia kingpin here now is
reparata mazola great how do you do that's uh is this an unusual name i've not
heard uh uh yeah my
mother had a very strange sense of humor uh how uh oh that's her idea of a joke
huh
uh what what now tell me how did you go from being with uh barry manilow to
sunny i mean uh
well they are quite different i'll never forget my mother's reaction w