Adonis Joe. (born Giuseppe Antonio Doto; November 22, 1902 – November 26, 1971), AKA "Joey A", was a New York mobster who was an important participant in the formation of the modern Cosa Nostra crime families.
Adonis was born in the small town of Montemarano, Italy, near Naples.
In 1915, Doto stowed away on an ocean liner to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, New York. He was a cousin of Genovese crime family capo Alan Bono, who overlooked operations for Adonis in Greenwich Village in the 1940s and 1950s. Adonis fathered one son, Joseph A. Doto Jr.
Doto started supporting himself by stealing and picking pockets. While working on the streets, Doto became friends with future mob boss Charles Lucky Luciano and mobster Settimo "Big Sam" Accardi, who were involved in illegal gambling.
Doto developed a strong loyalty to Luciano that would last for decades.
At the beginning of Prohibition, Luciano and Adonis borrowed $35,000 from other mob associates and started a bootlegging operation in Brooklyn. This operation soon began supplying large amounts of alcohol to the show business community along Broadway in Manhattan. Doto soon assumed the role of a gentleman bootlegger, socializing with the theater elite.
In the early 1920s, Doto changed his name to "Joe Adonis", from the Greek god of love, Adonis. Doto allegedly received this nickname from a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl that he was dating at that time. However, another version states that Doto adopted the Adonis name after seeing it in a magazine article on Greek mythology. Extremely vain, Adonis spent a great deal of time in personal grooming. On one occasion, Luciano saw Adonis combing his thick, dark hair in front of a mirror and asked him, "Who do you think you are, Rudolph Valentino?" Adonis replied, "For looks, that guy's a bum!"
During the 1920s, Adonis became an enforcer for Frankie Yale, the boss of some rackets in Brooklyn. While working for Yale, Adonis briefly met future Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone, who was also working for Yale. Meanwhile, Luciano became an enforcer for Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria, who ran an organization loosely based on clans from Naples and Southern Italy.
After the 1928 assassination of Yale, Masseria took over Yale's criminal organization. Masseria soon became embroiled in the vicious Castellammarese War with his arch rival, Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano represented the Sicilian clans, most of which came from Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily. As the war progressed, both bosses started recruiting more soldiers. By 1930, Adonis had joined the Masseria faction. As the war turned against Masseria, Luciano secretly contacted Maranzano about switching sides. Since Adonis' loyalties were to Luciano, he followed him to Maranzano. On 15 April 1931, Adonis joined Bugsy Siegel, Vito Genovese, and Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia, all part of the Masseria organization, in an attack on Masseria at a Coney Island restaurant, killing him.
With the death of Masseria, the war ended and Maranzano was the victor. To avoid any future wars, Maranzano reorganized all the Italian-American gangs into families and anointed himself as the "boss of all bosses". Luciano and his loyalists quickly became dissatisfied with Maranzano's power grab. When Luciano discovered that the suspicious Maranzano had ordered his murder, Luciano struck first. On September 10, 1931, several gunmen, attacked and killed Maranzano in his Manhattan office.
With Maranzano's death, Luciano became the pre-eminent organized crime boss in New York City. However, unlike Maranzano, Luciano did not want to become the "boss of all bosses". Instead, he established a National Crime Syndicate that united all the Italian-American gangs across the country and allowed for shared decision-making. For his part in murdering Masseria, Adonis received a seat on the Syndicate "board of directors". He then changed his name to Joe Adonis.

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