originally posted by
Wig Wag.
By sheer coincidence I am reading a book on movie actor Lyle Talbot by New Yorker staff writer (and Talbot's daughter) Margaret Talbot.
Last night I came across this paragraph.
"Then there was the time that Countess di Frasso and Bugsy Siegel tried to peddle a new kind of explosive to the Italian military. Siegel had met a couple of chemists who'd developed something they called
Atomite, which Siegel was convinced would replace dynamite and make him a fortune. Di Frasso arranged to have the stuff demonstrated at Villa Madama for a contingent of Italian military. As it happened, her husband's other guests at the villa that weekend included Josef Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, and Hermann Goring, the head of the Luftwaffe. Siegel evidently didn't have a problem consorting with Italian Fascists, but he did bristle at the Nazi bigwigs. In fact, he told Dorothy (the Countess) he was going to kill that "fat bastard Goring" and "that dirty Goebbels," too. "It's an easy setup the way they're walking around here." Di Frasso talked him out of it, fearing what would happen to her count if his Nazi houseguests ended up dead. The explosive test (
Atomite) was a bust, and di Frasso and her mobster headed for the French Riviera. Thanks to the countess, Siegel had missed out on making the one defensible hit he'd ever have committed."
This made me wonder; ....Does
Wig Wag's Atomite have any connection with Siegel's Atomite? Perhaps the chemists tweaked the formula and developed it into something less volatile.
(Siegel was living in Hollywood when he came in contact with the chemists) -and the cleanser was developed in Los Angeles area.
Stranger things have happened.