“American Godfathers: The Five Families”, premiering on the History Channel on August 11, has a Maplewood connection.
Not the crime families, that is, but the writing and the production.
The series is based on Selwyn Raab’s New York Times best-seller “Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires.” The series, which is narrated by Emmy Award-winning actor Michael Imperioli of “Sopranos” fame, is produced in part by Ridge Street Productions, headquartered at 111 Dunnell Road in Maplewood and founded by Maplewood’s own Marian Raab.
“I founded it in early 2023 and named it Ridge Street in honor of my father Selwyn Raab who grew up on the actual Ridge St. in the lower east side in the 1930s and ‘40s,” the younger Raab told Village Green.
The three-part, six-hour documentary series explores “the inception, rise, and fall of New York City’s five Mafia families who over a fifty-plus-year period had a hand in every facet of organized crime in America from bootlegging and drug trafficking to extortion and gambling,” according to the History Channel:
“American Godfathers: The Five Families” traces the extensive history of the Mafia beginning with its early ties to Sicily. The history and subsequent breakdown of the “omerta” code coupled with the ever-changing violent power struggles within each of the five families is vividly chronicled throughout each two-hour episode. Through investigative archival images, footage, audio recordings, and recreation as well as new, candid on-camera interviews with authors including Raab himself, historians, experts, law enforcement, witnesses, and former mafia affiliates, viewers will get an inside look at the inner workings of the most powerful criminal organization of the twentieth century.
Raab and her dad enjoyed a premiere party with Imperioli at the The Williams Hotel in Manhattan last week, complete with mafia-themed drinks.
Find out more about the series and where to watch here: https://www.history.com/shows/american-godfathers-the-five-families
Selwyn Raab and Michael Imperioli
Marian Raab and Michael Imperioli
