He Performed at the Wrong Club — The Mob Slashed His Throat 

November 9th, 1927. Early morning, Commonwealth Hotel, Chicago. Joe Lewis, sleeping in his 10th floor room after performing to packed houses all week, heard knocking at his door. Half awake, he stumbled over and opened it without thinking. Three men pushed past him into the room. Two carried revolvers.

 The third held a 10-in hunting knife. Just one favor, Joe. The man with the knife said, “Don’t yell.” Then he punched the blade into Lewis’s jaw and started carving. The knife slashed across his throat. It cut into his tongue, partially severing it. The blade carved his face and head at least 12 more times.

 One of the other attackers smashed a revolver into Lewis’s skull repeatedly, fracturing it. Blood poured from his throat, pooling on the floor. The three men left Joe Lewis lying in his own blood. They assumed he was dead. He wasn’t. But his singing voice was gone forever. His career as one of Chicago’s brightest young kuners was destroyed.

 All because one week earlier he’d made a decision. He’d left the Green Mill cocktail lounge to perform at a rival club. And the Green Mills part owner was machine gun Jack McGurn, one of Al Capone’s most feared hitmen. Before we dive into this story, if you’re enjoying these deep dives into mafia history, hit that like button and subscribe.

 We drop a new documentary every week and drop a comment letting us know where you’re watching from. New York, Chicago, somewhere overseas. We love hearing from you. Now, let’s get into it. This is the true story of Joe E. Lewis, the comedian who survived one of the most brutal mob attacks in Chicago history. A singer who refused to back down when gangsters threatened him.

An entertainer who lost his voice but found a new career making people laugh. And a warning to anyone who thought they could say no to Al Capone’s organization and walk away unscathed. But here’s what makes this story different. This wasn’t about money or territory or betrayal. This was about ego and respect.

 Joe Lewis didn’t steal from the mob. He didn’t inform. He didn’t insult anyone. He simply chose to work at a different nightclub when his contract expired. And in Chicago’s mobcrolled entertainment world in 1927, that choice nearly killed him. Joseph Clewan was born January 12th, 1902 in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.

 He added the middle initial E to distinguish himself from boxer Joe Louie who would become famous in the 1930s. Young Joe dropped out of Dwit Clinton High School after 2 years. At age 15, he lied about his age and enlisted in the Marine Corps. The military discovered he was underage and discharged him.

 By 1923, at age 21, Lewis had entered third rate burlesque and vaudeville. He performed in small venues, developing his singing voice and comedic timing. His big break came when he moved to Chicago and found work in the city’s thriving speak easy scene during prohibition. Chicago in the 1920s was wide open.

 Alcohol was illegal, but speak easys operated openly under mob protection. The entertainment industry thrived in these illegal clubs. Singers, comedians, jazz musicians, and dancers found steady work performing for crowds who came to drink bootleg liquor and forget about the depression. Lewis made his breakthrough as a nightclub star at the Green Mill Gardens, a popular night spot located at 4,8002 North Broadway in Uptown Chicago.

 The club attracted celebrities and gangsters alike. Charlie Chaplan, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, and Texas Gynan frequented the venue. So did Al Capone. The Green Mill was partly owned by machine gun Jack McGurn, one of Capone’s favorite hitmen and bodyguards. McGurn, born Vincenzo Antonio Gibbaldi on July 2nd, 1902 in Likata, Sicily, had immigrated to the United States as a child.

 His stepfather, a grosser, was murdered by the Jenner gang in 1923 for refusing to pay protection money. McGurn avenged the killing by hunting down and murdering the three men responsible over 8 days in February 1926. After that rampage, MG joined the Capone organization. He quickly became one of their most prolific and successful hitmen.

 He allegedly killed at least four would-be assassins who’d come to Chicago to collect the $25,000 bounty that rival Joe Ielo had placed on Capone’s head. McGurn was suspected of involvement in the street Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929, though he was never charged. This was the man who owned part of the Green Mill, and Joe Lewis worked for him.

Lewis performed at the Green Mill for approximately one year. He was the main attraction, a young kuner whose voice packed the house nightly. He earned $650 per week, excellent money for a nightclub singer in the 1920s. The audiences loved him. The club prospered. Everything was working. Then Lewis received a better offer.

 The new rendevous cafe located at North Clark Street and West Diversity Parkway offered him $1,000 per week plus a percentage of the cover charges. That was a significant raise. More money, better terms. The new rendevous wasowned by a rival gang, but that shouldn’t have mattered. Lewis’s contract at the Green Mill was expiring.

He had the right to work wherever he wanted. Lewis went to McGurn and explained his decision. His contract was ending. He’d been offered more money elsewhere. He wouldn’t be renewing at the Green Mill. It was business, nothing personal. McGurn saw it differently. In mob culture, loyalty meant everything. The Green Mill had made Lewis a star.

They’d given him the platform to build his career. Audiences came to see him because the Green Mill promoted him. and now he was leaving to work for a rival. That was disrespect. That was humiliation. McGurn tried to persuade Lewis to stay. He offered incentives. He made promises. But Lewis’s mind was made up.

 The money at the new rendevous was too good to pass up. That’s when McGern issued a warning. You’ll never live to open at the rendevous. He allegedly told Lewis. It wasn’t subtle. It was a direct threat. Stay at the Green Mill or face consequences. Joe Lewis ignored the threat. He opened at the New Rendezvous Cafe on November 2nd, 1927. The club was packed.

 Lewis performed to enthusiastic crowds. For one week, everything seemed fine. He was making more money. The audiences loved him. Maybe McGurn’s threat had been empty. It wasn’t. On the morning of November 9th, 1927, three men came to Lewis’s room at the Commonwealth Hotel. The sources identify the attackers as including Sam Gian Conor, who would later become boss of the Chicago outfit in the 1950s and60s and Leonard Needles Geianola.

 The third man’s identity remains uncertain. The attack was methodical and brutal. They didn’t just want to kill Lewis, they wanted to destroy him. The man with the knife carved his throat from ear to ear. He slashed Lewis’s tongue, partially severing it. He cut his face and head repeatedly, inflicting at least 12 knife wounds.

 Another attacker smashed a revolver into Lewis’s skull, fracturing it. His right arm was paralyzed from the blows. His left arm was badly damaged. They left him lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his hotel room. Hotel staff discovered him hours later and called for medical help. Doctors who examined him documented the extent of the damage.

 Fractured skull, severed throat, partially severed tongue, over a dozen knife wounds to the head and face, massive blood loss, paralyzed right arm, brain damage from the skull fracture. Lewis couldn’t speak. His mind was cloudy. Doctors weren’t sure he’d survive. If he did survive, they doubted he’d ever speak again. His singing career was definitely over.

 The attack had destroyed his voice permanently. The assault shocked even hardened Chicago, a city accustomed to mob violence. This wasn’t a gangster killing another gangster. This was three men mutilating an entertainer for changing jobs. The brutality was excessive, even by mob standards. Jack McGurn was never positively connected with the crime.

 No charges were filed, no witnesses came forward, but everyone in Chicago knew who’d ordered it. McGern’s reputation as Capone’s primary enforcer made the connection obvious. Interestingly, Al Capone himself was reportedly displeased with the attack. Capone had been fond of Lewis.

 He’d enjoyed his performances at the Green Mill. And while Capone understood sending a message, the severity of the assault drew unwanted attention and bad publicity. Several months after the attack, Capone personally gave Lewis $10,000 to help pay his medical bills and living expenses during recovery. It was an unusual gesture.

 Capone rarely showed such generosity to non-members of his organization. But Lewis had been a quality entertainer who’d brought prestige to Capone’s club. The attack, while demonstrating the consequences of disrespect, had gone too far. Joe Lewis spent years recovering. He had to relearn how to speak. Speech therapists worked with him daily, teaching him to form words again with his damaged tongue and throat.

 His singing voice, once clear and strong, was gone forever. The scar tissue in his throat made singing impossible. But Lewis refused to give up. He’d lost his voice, but he hadn’t lost his timing or his wit. He reinvented himself as a stand-up comedian, using his new raspy voice as part of his act. He joked about his scars, his recovery, his close call with death. Audiences found it darkly funny.

The singer who’d survived a mob hit and come back as a comedian had a compelling story. Lewis pioneered the adaptation of stand-up comedy for intimate adult nightclub environments. He delivered razor-sharp wise cracks interspersed with drinking, emphasizing a raw conversational style suited to barroom audiences rather than vaudeville theaters.

 He’d clutch a whiskey tumbler while ad livinging routines, soliciting sips from patrons tables. His style was vulgar but never explicit, skirting obscenity without using four-letter words. By the 1930s and4s, Lewis had become one of America’s most famousnightclub comedians. He performed in major cities across the country. Las Vegas casinos hired him regularly.

 He made good money, though he gambled and drank most of it away. His act became legendary in entertainment circles. Frank Sinatra, who’d grown up in New Jersey and had his own connections to organized crime figures, became friends with Lewis. Sinatra admired Lewis’s resilience and his refusal to be broken by the mob attack.

 In 1957, Sinatra starred in The Joker is Wild, a biographical film about Lewis’s life. The movie depicted Lewis’s rise as a singer, the mob attack, his recovery, and his reinvention as a comedian. The film introduced the Oscar-winning song All the Way, which became one of Sinatra’s signature tunes. But the Joker is Wild sanitized the story significantly.

 There was no Al Capone in the movie, no machine gun Jack McGurn, no graphic depiction of the throat slashing. Hollywood’s version featured unnamed cafe owners vying for Lewis’s talents, removing the explicit mob violence that had nearly killed him. Still, the film brought Lewis’s story to mainstream audiences. It cemented his legacy as a symbol of resilience, a man who’d been destroyed by the mob but refused to stay down.

 An entertainer who lost his voice but found his purpose. Lewis’s later years were difficult. His chronic alcoholism, compulsive gambling, and heavy smoking, habits that had intensified during his recovery from the attack, took their toll. By the 1960s, his health was failing. He curtailed performances and relied on residuals from past work.

 On June 4th, 1971, Joe E. Lewis suffered a fatal heart attack at age 69 in his apartment at the Hotel Street Moritz in New York City. He’d outlived machine gun Jack McGurn by 35 years. McGern had been gunned down in a Chicago bowling alley on February 15th, 1936. Victim of a street Valentine’s Day massacre revenge killing 7 years after the fact.

 Lewis had survived the mob, survived the throat slashing, survived decades of self-destruction, and died of natural causes in his own bed. In a life defined by violence and defiance, that was its own kind of victory. So, what does Joe E. Lewis’s story reveal about mobcrolled entertainment in Prohibition era Chicago? It shows that the mob didn’t just control illegal activities.

They controlled legitimate businesses, too. Nightclubs, restaurants, theaters. If you worked in entertainment in Chicago in the 1920s, you worked for the mob, whether you wanted to or not. Refusing their terms had consequences. The attack on Lewis also demonstrates how mob ego operated. McGern didn’t slash Lewis’s throat because Lewis stole money or informed to police.

 He did it because Lewis’s decision to leave the Green Mill was public. Everyone in Chicago’s entertainment world knew Lewis had gotten a better offer and taken it. That made McGern look weak, like he couldn’t control his own talent, like other entertainers might follow Lewis’s example.

 The brutality was meant to send a message. Don’t disrespect us. Don’t think you can leave when we want you to stay. Don’t assume your contract expiring means you’re free. In the mob world, you’re never free unless they allow it. But the attack backfired in some ways. It drew massive publicity. It made McGurn and Capone look unnecessarily cruel.

 And it created a folk hero in Joe Lewis, the singer who defied the mob and survived. That wasn’t the message they’d intended. Lewis’s reinvention as a comedian also proved that the mob could hurt you, but they couldn’t destroy you if you refused to be destroyed. He turned his trauma into material.

 His scars became part of his act. The voice they’d ruined became his trademark raspy delivery. He took what they’d done to him and built a career from it. That resilience inspired other entertainers who found themselves in similar situations. The mob could threaten you. They could hurt you, but if you survived, you could come back. Lewis proved it was possible.

 Today, the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge still operates at 4,8002 North Broadway in Chicago. It’s a historic landmark known for its Prohibition era architecture and its connection to Al Capone. Tourists visit to see where Joe Lewis performed before the attack. The building looks much as it did in the 1920s.

 a time capsule of Chicago’s mobcontrolled entertainment era. The Commonwealth Hotel where Lewis was attacked no longer exists. The building has been demolished or converted, but the story of what happened there on November 9th, 1927 remains part of Chicago’s dark history. Joe E. Lewis’s legacy is complicated. He was an entertainer who defied the mob and paid a terrible price.

 A singer who lost his voice but found new success. A comedian whose act was built on the trauma of surviving attempted murder. A man whose resilience inspired a generation of performers but whose personal demons nearly destroyed him multiple times. His story is a reminder that in prohibition era Chicago, entertainment and crime wereinseparable.

 The mob controlled the venues. They decided who worked and who didn’t. And if you cross them, they didn’t just fire you. They tried to kill you. But Joe E. Lewis survived. He rebuilt. He thrived. And when machine gun Jack McGurn died in that bowling alley in 1936, Lewis was still performing, still making audiences laugh, still living the life McGurn had tried to take from him.

 That’s the real victory. Not that Lewis survived the attack, but that he refused to let it define him. He took the worst thing that had ever happened to him and turned it into his life’s work. He made people laugh about the night three mobsters tried to kill him. He turned tragedy into comedy, trauma into art, victimhood into defiance.

 If you found this story powerful, hit subscribe. We drop a new mob documentary every week. Drop a comment. Was Joe E. Lewis brave or reckless for defying the mob? Could entertainers today even imagine working under those conditions?