Iannone was born in New York and was a former prize-fighter and Sergeant in the US Army during WWII. He was said to have been a POW during the war. His father was an immigrant from Montanago, Campobasso, Molise Region, Italy who arrived in New York in 1903. Two years before moving to L.A. Iannone had escaped from a patrol wagon in Brooklyn after being arrested for robbery and had vanished from the New York scene where he also allegedly operated an extortion racket.