Sonny Grosso

Who is Sonny Grosso?

Salvatore "Sonny" Grosso is a movie and television producer and former New York City Police Department detective, noted for his role in the case immortalized in the book and movie versions of the French Connection. He was born in 1932 or 1933 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Grosso and his partner Eddie Egan, and other NYPD detectives, broke up an organized crime ring in 1961 and seized 112 pounds of heroin, a record amount at the time. This seizure is mentioned as a throwaway line in the 2007 Feature American Gangster, but is portrayed as the very drugs taken out of the Evidence Room by corrupt police officers, cut and resold to the mobsters from whom it was stolen. The investigation was the subject of a book by Robin Moore and an Academy Award-winning motion picture.

Egan and Grosso were technical advisers to the movie and played small roles. The movie was highly fictionalized, and a character based on Grosso, called "Buddy Russo", was played by actor Roy Scheider. Like the character, Grosso's nickname as a detective was "Cloudy." This was due to his pessimism, as well as the fact that "Cloudy" is the opposite of "Sonny."