Tonight in 1949 just before 4 a.m.—i.e. early in the morning of July 20—L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen was ambushed by unknown gunmen outside a Sunset Boulevard eatery called Sherry’s. The above photo diagram and close-up shows where his assailants hid behind a billboard across the street from the restaurant and opened fire with shotguns. Cohen was hit in the shoulder, three others were seriously wounded, and New York Daily News reporter Florabel Muir was bruised by a ricochet (or shot directly, according to some accounts). The photo just below shows the view the gunmen had from underneath the billboard. And the last two show the immediate aftermath of the shooting, with a surprising number of bystanders and/or restaurant patrons present considering the late hour, and Cohen henchman Edward Herbert on the ground. He would later die from his wounds. The Sherry’s ambush was the second of several attempts on Cohen’s life. None were successful, though as usual, the members of his circle did not fare well. For a look at a cool collection of photo diagrams and an explanation of their use, see here. 

More from the USC digital photo archive. It looks like just another black Cadillac, but no, this one belonged to mobster par excellence Mickey Cohen and it’s parked outside the L.A. eatery Sherry’s, where he was the target of an assassination attempt in July 1949. Gunmen shot Cohen in the shoulder (or arm, depending on the telling), fatally wounded one of his friends, seriously wounded two others, and managed to hit journalist Florabel Muir in the ass with a non-penetrating ricochet. Having learned a lesson, Cohen had his next Cadillac bulletproofed (bombproofed as well, by some accounts). Below are a couple of photos of that car and the two-inch-thick glass that was installed (all well and good to be sealed inside an armored hotbox, but what if your driver ate broccoli with dinner?). Anyway, Cohen sold the Caddy in 1951 for $12,000, supposedly because it wasn’t street legal. He died of natural causes in 1976.