Exclusive video: Real mobster tales on AMC

Tony Soprano wasn't the first mob boss to visit a therapist. An actual crime kingpin did it decades earlier.

Real-life gangsters get the spotlight in AMC's The Making of the Mob: New York (June 15, 10 p.m. ET/PT), an eight-part, documentary-style series that details a half-century of organized crime history.

"When I was first getting into the research, the thing I found most surprising was that (Frank) Costello, when he was the mob boss, went to a psychiatrist. And I was like, 'Are you kidding me? That's true?' I've watched every Sopranos episode more than one time and I've seen Analyze This," executive producer Stephen David recalls. He realized that "all the things I'd seen in these movies, a lot of it was taken from real stories."

USA TODAY offers an exclusive look at video clips from the series, starting with one that details the real-life story of the mobster and the shrink.

Mob tells the story of such organizations as the Mafia and Murder, Inc., focusing on a group of famed criminal masterminds, including Costello, Vito Genovese, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

David describes the series as "a docu-drama, a mix of dramatic scenes, archives, visual effects, talking heads and voiceover." By focusing on the real-life mobsters, as depicted by actors, the hope is that viewers will become invested in their stories and the accompanying high stakes.

The pièce de résistance may be the narrator, Ray Liotta, star of one of most acclaimed mob films, Goodfellas. "I've seen Goodfellas about a million times. I love Ray Liotta," David says. "The thought of hearing that voice as the narrator, it just felt good."

In the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category, another clip – couched with the phrase, "Legend has it" – tells the story of how famed gangster Siegel planned to kill two top Nazis, Joseph Goebbels and Herman Göring, when they were staying at the same villa in Italy in 1939. His Italian countess mistress talked him out of it, saying he would create an international incident.

David says that's only one of numerous fascinating stories discovered during research for the series, which covers roughly a 50-year period ending in 1963. Save for diehard mob researchers, "I think that people will be surprised in the first two minutes," he says. "I do not think people know this whole story."

Mobsters have long been features in movies and television and fans aren't the only ones who have picked up on gangster style. Organized crime figures took note of the clothing and attitudes sported by such silver-screen icons as James Cagney in 1931's The Public Enemy and Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in 1939's The Roaring Twenties.

Interview subjects include former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman; Lansky's grandson, Meyer Lansky II; former mob associate Sal Pelosi; singer Frankie Valli; and actors Chazz Palminteri (A Bronx Tale); Joe Mantegna (The Godfather, Part III, The Simpsons); and Frank Vincent (Goodfellas). Sopranos stars Vincent Pastore and Drea De Matteo also are featured.

David has a theory as to why some people seem perpetually fascinated with cold-blooded criminals, whether factual or fictional. "I think it's a male fantasy to live that way. There's some sort of freedom," he says, while acknowledging a down side. "Of course, you're probably going to go to jail or get killed eventually."