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There is little unusual about the stretch of 116th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the middle of Harlem. It is a busy road, full of pedestrians, and lined by restaurants offering the African and Southern food beloved by Harlem's mostly black residents.
But it was on
this stretch of now innocuous street that one of America's most notorious drug lords ran an empire that spanned the globe.
Sitting in a beat-up old car he nicknamed Nellybelle, Frank Lucas considered this patch of road his fortress in the 1970s. It was from here he would deal narcotics and run his criminal gang, earning himself tens of millions of dollars in the process.
Three decades later, Harlem and America as a whole are set to revisit the shocking story of one of its most infamous sons. Lucas's tale has been turned into one of the most eagerly awaited movies for years, which will not only reignite debate over America's love-hate relationship with drugs but also might win one of Hollywood's most famous names a long-overdue Oscar for best director.
British director Ridley Scott has adapted Lucas's rise and fall from power into a film called American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington as Lucas and Russell Crowe as a detective, Richie Roberts, out to bring him down.
Released in early November, the film has already wowed critics and generated a flood of Oscar buzz. The film casts Lucas as part villain, part hero, a figure of black empowerment who wrested control of the drug trade from the Mafia.
The performance of the two leads and the style of the film has already got many wondering if American Gangster will finally land Scott an Oscar. Despite directing such classics as Bladerunner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator and Alien, Scott has never won the award. "He is one of the great Hollywood directors of all time. The length and breadth of his achievements show that he deserves some kind of reward," said Professor Toby Miller, a popular culture expert at the University of California at Riverside.
Certainly the story of American Gangster provides rich enough material to mine for Hollywood gold. Lucas was born into poverty in rural North Carolina. At an early age he witnessed a relative being brutally murdered by white supremacists in the Ku Klux Klan. He arrived on Harlem's mean streets as a country bumpkin, but through a combination of savvy and brutality, quickly rose to the top of the local drug trade.
He ended up commanding an international drug ring that notoriously smuggled heroin into America inside the coffins of dead Vietnam veterans.
That scam was known as the "Cadaver Connection". His operation was so lucrative that Lucas is thought to have at one time banked more than US$50 million ($65.5 million) in Cayman Island bank accounts.
But his high profile also brought police attention, and Lucas was finally caught and sentenced to 70 years in prison, which was dramatically reduced after he agreed to testify against fellow drug dealers. Eventually his evidence resulted in more than 100 convictions of other criminals.
His tale was revived in a 2000 New York Magazine article headed "The Return of Superfly", which chronicled Lucas visiting his old haunts in a much-changed Harlem.
But in interpreting Lucas's story, Scott is likely to court controversy as well as Oscars. The film depicts Lucas as an anti-hero rather than just a straight bad guy. Scott has certainly not shied away from Lucas's brutal side, but he has also included a strong sense of black power.
That means Lucas is likely to join a long list of gangsters and criminals that have been embraced by Americans who love a villain who snubs authority. To the long list of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, now add the name of Frank "Superfly" Lucas.
But, like other mythical anti-heroes, the real life story of Lucas is not as pretty as American Gangster portrays it. In the original New York Magazine story, Lucas boasts of killing his enemies and laughs when he describes hiding vast amounts of pure heroin in the coffins of young soldiers. At one point he talks about shooting a rival in the head. "The boy didn't have no head. The whole shit blowed out," he boasted.
That sort of brutal reality has not prevented others from becoming famous. Old West gunslingers like Billy the Kid were little more than psychopaths, and yet have long been embraced into America's national mythology.
Today, huge rap music names like 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg have long criminal histories, including dealing crack, that are now effectively a key part of their publicity machines.
But while Scott's film may stir memories of Seventies Harlem, it does not bear much resemblance to the neighbourhood of today. Harlem is now one of the most rapidly gentrifying areas of New York. Much of the film was shot there, but production workers had problems finding streets that looked sufficiently down-at-heel.
The loudest noise now on 116th Street where Lucas once held court is the jackhammers of builders renovating old homes.
Lucas may have been a real-life villain, but he is very much history.
Observer
