More on Owney's pal Jeandemange

'Big Frenchy' was a memorable New York gangland figure

George Emile “Big Frenchy Demange” Jeandemange is a memorable figure from New York's Prohibition Era gangland. Fans of the 1984 film, The Cotton Club, surely remember Fred Gwynne's portrayal of Frenchy as the tough but endearing partner of “Owney the Killer” Madden (played by Bob Hoskins).¹ Crime historians remember him for a couple of peculiarities: his survival of an underworld kidnapping by Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll and his French ancestry.

Frenchy (Gwynn), left, and Owney (Hoskins) in a scene from The Cotton Club (imdb.com)

Jeandemange was mentioned in our recent article, “Did ‘Charlie Lucky’ threaten ‘Owney’?” But he deserves more of our attention.

George Emile Jeandemange was a native New Yorker. He was born in Manhattan on March 28, 1892, to Auguste and Marie Rochel Jeandemange.²

George Jeandemange birth certificate.

His parents were both from France. Auguste was born in Cirey-sur-Vezouze in the Meurthe-et-Moselle section of northeastern France. He made his way to New York by 1891, settling at 22 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan and finding work as a polisher in a mirror factory. Marie was born in the French-German region of Alsace. She reached New York several years before Auguste and was a resident of 103 Sullivan Street, just east of Sixth Avenue.³ Auguste and Marie married in a civil ceremony in June 1891. They were residents of 22 Sixth Avenue when their first child George was born.⁴ That address sat below Canal Street on Manhattan's Lower West Side.

The family changed addresses four times through the next dozen years or so, never straying from the Lower West Side. All their homes were within easy reach of Sixth Avenue, with none north of Fourth Street or south of White Street.