By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
BOSTON – Paul Posti may not be a household name but his decorated career as a war hero and then later chef makes him worthy of being so. In 2023, close friend George Mather of Raynham honored the former World War II B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner by writing and publishing the memoir “Posti: War Hero, Hollywood Insider, Chef to Celebrities, and Redemption.”
Wartime exploits
Before kicking a young, hungry relatively unknown man named Elvis Presley out of his kitchen at the Knickerbocker Hotel, Posti was a soldier who was born in Walpole but grew up in Boston’s North End neighborhood. Posti earned a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest decoration for heroism, by accomplishing a feat that has not been repeated since. He shot down a German Flocke-Wolfe fighter plane with a Smith and Wesson 38-caliber service revolver in 1942. The weapon used was given to Posti by his father, who was allegedly a member of the Boston mob The Black Hand.
According to a 2003 Air Force newsroom report, the act of heroism was disputed by officials until Captain Clark Gable presented proof. The report stated, “Gable, who left his movie career to become an aerial photographer with the U.S. Army Air Force, took Posti into a darkroom and ran off a strip of movie film. The captain had operated a gun camera aboard another bomber during the mission and filmed the German plane in its death dive.”
That same year, the family of Paul Posti donated the revolver and his leather bomber jacket for display at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The war hero, who lost an eye due to a shrapnel explosion, flew about five missions with the Golden Age of Hollywood star Clark Gable.
Chef to the stars
Upon leaving the military, Posti became an executive chef and close friends with celebrities like Clark Gable, Bugs Bunny voice actor Mel Blanc, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. Along with his employer and owner of The Brown Derby, Robert Howard Cobb, Posti created the now-famous Cobb salad on the spot to appease a demanding Cecil B. DeMille, a founding father of American cinema. Another version is that he made the salad using a mixture of leftover ingredients for his famished boss, for which it is named since he had not eaten all day.
Most movie stars from the 1940s to the 1970s knew Paul Posti. Crooner Frank Sinatra befriended Posti after the chef helped him out by serving him free meals. This led to Posti being Sinatra’s friend and personal chef for over 24 years at the singer’s restaurant Villa Capri. Posti once claimed Sinatra added the lyrics about his popular meatballs to his song Isle of Capri because he loved them that much.
According to the memoir’s introduction, “Posti was part of the greatest generation.” Mather further stated, “Paul Posti was very protective of his relationships with well-known celebrities. He felt that to do things for his own advantage would betray his friendship with them. If I had asked him to introduce me to Frank Sinatra, he would cease being friends, he would have perceived me as trying to use him to get to see Frank Sinatra.”
Posti lived in the North End until age 13 when his father sent the boy to Italy to begin culinary training under George Escoffier, who was thought of as “the greatest chef who ever lived.” Mather recalled that he and his wife would visit Posti and his wife in Van Nuys where the famed chef would give the couple cooking lessons that would end up being served as dinner.
The couples often discussed their bond with Massachusetts over Italian coffee and biscotti. According to Mather, Posti loved to talk about Boston, the North End, St. Joseph’s Day, and Cape Cod. Paul Posti died at age 89 in 2002.
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