May 27, 2021 • 33 mins
Al Capone is rightly remembered as of the most notorious gangsters in US history -- but for a time residents of Chicago also thought of him as a benefactor. As people struggled to survive the Great Depression, Capone, in an apparent act of benevolence, founded a free, no-questions-asked soup kitchen to feed the hungry. In today's episode, Ben and Noel explore how the kitchen came to be, how it functioned -- and what Capone's true motivations might have been.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super
producer Casey Pegram and our super producer Max Williams. Oh,
we just had to get that one out of the way.
No oh yeah, we mean it was only right and natural. Ben,
(00:49):
I'm no, um you said that? Um? Ben? How do
you feel about a soup? Are you a super person? Yeah?
I was. I was thinking about this because too much
soup can have this we're sort of I don't know.
It always felt like a had a comedic implication to me,
even before the infamous soup Nazi of the Seinfeld days.
(01:11):
But I, um, yeah, I like a good soup. I
make a I make a pretty mean soup myself. But
to me, soup is like you've probably heard people talk
about this before, guys, but some people feel like soup
is either a poor person's meal or not a real meal,
just soup by itself. I tend to disagree with the
latter point. But what do you think? No, well, it
(01:33):
certainly is a good use of leftovers. All you needed
a little bit of stock, uh, and some vegetables and
a meat of some sort, perhaps just like some leftover
ham or or b or something like that. You got
yourself a stew going baby. To quote Carl Weathers from
the rest of development. But I just want to bring
up really quickly while we're on the specifically the soup
(01:54):
part of this discussion. I mean, we're gonna get more
into into soup discussions. But there was something called perpet
chewel stew that was a staple of medieval ends back
in the day, and it was literally just like you
see it in in movies and stuff, the giant cauldron
of bubbling stew over the fire like in an in
an end. It was called perpetual stew because it was
(02:15):
just always going, uh, and they would just add more
stuff to it and replenish it as needed. But it
was never really got like started from scratch, and I'm
sure it led to some food born illness, but it
was definitely something that probably contributed as well to the
notion of soups or stews being kind of a poor
(02:35):
person's meal, um, because you know, it is very much
something that you can just use whatever is laying around.
It also is of course a staple of institutionalized feeding
of the homeless, for example, in what is known as
soup kitchens, where you you know, line up and you
get your stuff, a cup of soup and then that's
you know, we'll hopefully sustain you for a little while.
(02:56):
But those things kind of combined have led to this
reputation that soup has is sort of like a lower meal.
Yeah yeah, And don't get us wrong, there are definitely
soups that have been considered historically fancy turtle soup. We
did an episode on that lobster bisco as well. But
you're right, you know, it turns out that people have
(03:18):
been making soup for an estimated twenty thousand years. It's
by no means a new idea. It's uh, trying not
to say super too much in this episode and all
it's extraordinarily practical. And today's story is it just about
the history of soup kitchens. Don't worry. You're probably still
gonna leave hungry. But don't worry, this story is about
something else too. We're going through a bit of a
(03:40):
crime phase this week on the show, and the star
of today's episode in many ways is a guy named
al Capone, the quintessential American gangster. He was so successful
during his time that it's difficult for a lot of
people nowadays to described the full extent of his criminal empire.
(04:03):
Like we know, we know he did a ton of
dirt Noll, but we also know that the crimes that
eventually brought him down had nothing to do with his
bootlegging or anything like that. It was tax evation. The
I R S will get you back, then the I
R S it will absolutely get you. I actually just
got done um watching the full run of Boardwalk Empire,
(04:25):
and Alphonse Capone plays a huge role in that show
because the history of organized crime is very much entwined
in the history of prohibition, because when the Volstead Act
was passed, it made alcohol illegal and opened up this
entire new black market that did not exist before. And
(04:46):
when you have a black market, of course you're gonna
have violence and and turf wars and things that all
stem from the fact that something is made illegal. It
is often the argument for like say, legalizing drugs, because
if you do that, then you don't have have a
need for things like Cartel's to come in and fill
that vacuum um of legal sales of things. You know,
(05:06):
with this black market. So basically the impetus for striking
down the voltstead actor repealing it was because of a
couple of things. It was because of this you know,
burgeoning organized crime world that kind of sprung up around it,
but also all of this unclaimed tax revenue that was
just going down the tubes, you know. And this all
(05:27):
happened in the face of the Great Depression. And like
many crime lords in their own hometowns or their own
home territory, it's often quite popular, quite a popular choice
diplomatically to sort of paint themselves as sort of Robin
Hood esque figures. We know, Pablo Escobar did that in
his home turf of median Um in Colombia, and al
(05:47):
Capone was no different. Even though he was absolutely an
unhinged psychopath who would you know, bludge into death with
like paper weights and baseball bats anyone that crossed him
or even offended him mildly, but he still wanted to
curate this image of himself not just as public enemy
number one in his hometown of Chicago, but also as
some sort of benevolence overlord that looked out for the
(06:09):
little people and was really just kind of sticking it
to the man, but as we know, he was much
much more than that and absolutely a terrible, terrible person.
How's your mother doing? She get the Uh? Yeah, she
get the soda? Popeye sent al right, being a good kid,
Be a good kid, run along exactly. No, it's true.
So it's you're right. This robin hood image, while demonstrably
(06:34):
false in many ways, is an important piece of gardnering
local support, community support, and when the official government steps in,
new power structures can rise. This is what components saw
during the stock market crash that would set off what
we call the Great Depression today. He said, you know,
(06:55):
I could do a little pr how's your mother? So
he so he opened a soup kitchen in Chicago. Again,
if you've listened to our previous episodes about this time period,
you know that life was fundamentally rocked and shaken to
the core for so many people living in the US
(07:15):
at the time. People who had homes literally no longer
had those homes. They no longer had jobs, they no
longer had any economic opportunities. They were, in a very
real way worried about what they and their families would
eat every day. So this this soup kitchen was a
brilliant move, and the big question is how much of
(07:40):
it was his It was actual, you know, concerned for
his fellow human beings, how much of it was concerned
for his deteriorating public image. We have views on that
that I think we could give you with the course
of this show. But first, let's let's talk a little
bit about Capone pre Boardwalk Capone, believe it or not,
he was not born a middle aged crime boss. He
(08:02):
was born in relative to relatively modest means, son of
poor Italian immigrants who moved to Brooklyn. He got expelled
from school for socking uh female teacher, and then he
joined a street gang. And he was, by all means
a pretty smart dude. You can't rise to this level
of organized crime without being, you know, a fairly bright crayon.
(08:27):
He could have maybe pursued his educational There might be
a world just to the left of hours where he
is like a very well known criminal defense attorney. How
hilarious would that be. That's not what happened. He took
over Chicago's leading crime syndicate, and just four years after
taking over Chicago's organized crime he was a multi millionaire.
(08:50):
I believe yeah, and as he's portrayed in Boardwalk Empire
by the fantastic actor Steven Graham, who you might remember
from some early guy Ritchie movies like I believe he
is in Snatch or lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
I think we both often confused those two. Uh no,
I think he was in I think he was in Snatch. Um.
But he is a British actor who does a damn
(09:12):
fine Brooklyn accent as al Capone. You know, he's he's
very really disappears into that role. He had the nickname
Scarface because he did have these like very large scars
on his face from when he was attacked with a
blade and and uh kind of disfigured um. And he
was very insecure about it and actually wore makeup to
cover these scars, like some kind of like a pancake makeup. Um.
(09:35):
So you see that in the show. But he also
was so successful and so let's just say, kind of
self possessed that he didn't want to play nice with
any of the other crime families or any of the
other you know, members of the syndicate, and that ultimately
led to his downfall as well, because he was, you know,
kind of a little too big for his bridges, as
folks would say, and he didn't want to kind of
(09:57):
cut other people in, so that ultimately led to his
rivals kind of helping in his downfall a little bit
as well. But you're right then he made around forty
million dollars throughout the course of his career, primarily from
selling illegal alcohol during Prohibition, like I said, with that
vacuum um left by the outlawing of of booze and
(10:18):
it was distributed to more than ten thousand speakeasies and
houses of ill repute through this massive operation that he
was at the heart of, this kind of network of
of bootleggers that you know, distributed all throughout the Midwest.
And because of the way prohibition was viewed in that
it was like, you know, there were obviously teetotalers and
(10:40):
folks that thought prohibition was kind of saving the soul
of America. There were an equal, if not much greater
number of people that looked at it as being deprived
of their civil liberties. So even the average person felt
like it was their god given right to drink alcohol
and that Alcopoland was just giving the people what they wanted. Yeah,
and what they wanted was boo just to run this
(11:02):
through the inflation calculator. As we said, four years after
he joins these after he heads these crime syndicates, he's
making forty million. So if we can get our inflation calculator,
boo booper doopoop makes uh, it's around five hundred and
fifty million dollars. This guy is not hurting for money
(11:25):
at all, and he's got m He is very conscious
of the fact that he needs this public support. He's
doing all sorts of dirt behind the scenes, but he's
also very publicly launching programs to give milk to all
the Chicago school children, which also has its own sketchy backstory,
(11:45):
and he's donating tons of cash to local charities. This
is this all happens before the stock market crash on October.
By the way, when the stock market crash occurs, he
sees the writing on the wall. As we said, banks
are failing, businesses are shuttering, Millions of people are unemployed.
(12:06):
They don't know where they're going to eat. And that's
where we see the rise of breadlines, the rise of
things like soup kitchens. I'm throwing my arms around, even
though this is an audio podcast. It's just a big
this is a huge social change, and just for perspective,
In November, more than seventy five thousand people in Chicago
(12:30):
without jobs lined up to register their names while they
would wait for some kind of government assistance, whether that's
a free meal program or whether that's a a work
program of some sort. And the Chicago Tribune notes that
unless anybody feels, you know, kind of classes, these aren't,
(12:53):
you know, stereotypical hoboes with bendals waiting in line. These
people are dressed. They're dressed like they're going to church,
where they're dressed like they're going to work in an office.
And that's when in such a in a very short span,
hundreds and hundreds of soup kitchens pop up all around
the country. And one of those soup kitchens literally belonged
(13:15):
to the man himself, Scarface al Capone. He didn't even
have a name for his charity, which I thought was interesting.
But there was a sign over the door of the
kitchen that said free soup, coffee and donuts for the unemployed.
(13:36):
And they served around people every day with no questions asked,
no need to prove that you qualified or whatever. They
even would doll out second helpings because again, I mean, look,
sorry to keep going back to this. Clearly probably you know,
hyperbolic and fictionalized portrayal of al Capone in Boardwalk Empire,
but he does this is accurate. He did have a
(13:58):
son who was as disabled he was deaf, and you
do see the character kind of struggling with how to
you know, literally communicate to his son and keep him
from being bullied and all of that. But you did
get a sense that he very much loved his son
and he was a family man, but he you know,
was also an unhinged kind of sociopath. So it's an
(14:19):
interesting dichotomy that you see. So whether it was pure
optics or pure politics that he was playing, or if
he actually did have a soft spot in his heart
for the kind of disenfranchise, I think the jury is
still a little bit out. But breakfast was a cup
of hot coffee that was sweetened with sugar and sweet rolls,
which would be kind of like a cinnamon roll type situation.
(14:40):
And then lunch and dinner you could get a bowl
of soup and a loaf of bread or a slice
of bread. And every day three hundred and fifty loaves
and a hundred dozen sweet rolls were consumed by the
folks that frequented this kitchen, and thirty pounds of coffee
that was sweetened up with around fifty pounds of sugar
(15:02):
were also in play. It cost around three hundred dollars
a day, which, in you know, nineteen thirties dollars, that's
a lot of money. It's a little less than five
grand exactly every single day. But it was clearly worth
it to him, whether politically or whether it gave him
a sense of purpose and made him feel like less
of a monster. But he didn't strike me as the
kind of guy that was particularly self aware of his
(15:23):
status as being, you know, kind of a monster. But
we do know that even though he didn't have his
name on the building, he was connected to it in
stories that were printed in the local papers. Yeah, and
his associates went on record. Someone who knew Capone, it
was like an open secret that this was a Compone operation.
(15:44):
One of his colleagues said, he, meaning Capone, couldn't stand
it to see those poor devils starving. Nobody else seemed
to be doing much, so the big boy decided to
do it himself. They're clearly leaning into this sort of
anti hero image. But then that image brings with it
its own complications. Thanksgiving Campone soup kitchen is planning to
(16:11):
have a traditional Thanksgiving meal for people in need, and
they had, you know, they were serving at this point,
like five thousand Chicago residents a day. Here's his problem though,
his his criminal he's aware of his criminal past might
affect public image. Someone in the city had done a
turkey heist right four things, because they still a thousand
(16:33):
turkeys from this department store. And Capone was not involved
with this crime. He was above turkey theft at this point.
But he said, I would think he would hope and
he said, you know, well, we don't want to be
blamed for this caper. So at the very last minute,
they said, look, we run a clean soup kitchen here.
We're not serving turkey and cranberry. We're serving beef stew,
(16:54):
just to keep the heat off. Yeah, and I understand
why he did that optically speaking, but it also is
kind of a cheap o move. They could have pivoted
to something like a nice ham, you know, something a
little more festive beef stew. I don't really associate that
with the holidays very much. I would imagine that that
came from stuff they already had lying around, because well,
they didn't want to be seen is having uh, you know,
(17:14):
participated in any kind of Turkey heist. They also didn't
want to have to go and you know, buy a
whole another however, many thousand hams they would have had
to buy. And you know, I'm gonna be honest, Uh no, Max,
if I had to choose between the two, I would
choose beef stew. I'm a beef stew guy. I don't know,
I love a beef stew. I do love a beef stew.
It's true. Um. So, you know, he really cared about,
(17:37):
at the very least this image of being this kind
of benevolent you know, criminal, and you know he this
included widows and orphans and the homeless of course, you know,
but it was a big swath because at this point,
because of the unemployment and the absolute disaster that was
the Great Depression, a lot of these folks were mixing.
You know, it was not just one particular type of
(18:00):
individual that would have been standing in line at these
at this kitchen and the Bismarck Tribune reported on this,
and they noted that quote, a hungry man is just
as glad to get soup and coffee from Al Capone
as from anyone else. Very true, very true. And there's
there's an excellent piece of writing in Harper's magazine that
(18:21):
shows the irony of this situation in Chicago, because, of course,
not everybody approved of Capone's charity here. And I think
this is just my opinion. I think it's because he
had some other motives at play. I think that's pretty
obvious anyway. In Harper's, the writer Mary Borden, she notes
(18:42):
this image that really stuck with me. Says, you know,
picture this. There's a line of people without jobs that
are waiting for a handout from Capone's soup kitchen. He's
the most wanted man in Chicago. And picture, if you will,
the line for his soup kitchen stretching past the very
front door of the city's police headquarters, which held evidence
(19:06):
of the incredibly violent crimes that Campone committed or had committed.
And the press was desperate to uh to get more
info on this. He got a lot of pr from
having a soup kitchen. The press was always trying to
like send somebody in to catch Capone there in person,
(19:28):
but they never did. You won't find a photograph of
him at the kitchen today. Uh. And some newspapers were
negative in their press, like the Daily Independent in Murphysboro, Illinois,
who said, if anything were needed to make the farce
of gang Land complete, it is the Al Capone soup kitchen.
It would be rather terrifying to see Capone running for
(19:50):
mayor of Chicago. We're afraid he would get such a
tremendous vote. It's even conceivable that he might be elected
after a few more stunts like his soup kitchen. But again,
and he's just feeding people. You know, people are eating
at the end of the day. He's not poisoning them.
You know, he's not forcing them to commit crimes for him.
But it is a battle of hearts and minds, and
(20:11):
at this point he is very much winning. That's right.
And it wasn't even his idea. Uh. And speaking of politics,
you know, I mean he was very closely embedded in politics.
And we know about the you know, the political machines
of Chicago and all that, and the you know, Boss
Tweed and all of that stuff. I mean, it really
is a historically corrupt political city and has has maintained
(20:34):
that reputation even up until the modern day. But this dude,
Daniels Sarah Tella, who was a pal of Campones, and
he was also a political ally. He got elected to
the Illinois State Senate in nineteen thirty and he's the
one who suggested to Campone that he do this soup
kitchen stunt. For lack of a better word. Harry Reid,
(20:55):
who was a newspaper reporter at the time, claimed to
have been present in an apartment with Capone and Sarah
Tella when this idea kind of came up, and he
says that on November nineteen thirty November two, nine thirty,
Capone said, quote, there are so many people hungry in
the First Ward because of the depression, that Dan asked
me to back a free hand out joint. I'm gonna
(21:17):
try to do the Al Capone voice. He's got more
starving people down there than he can handle. All the
bums that land in Chicago go to the First War.
That makes it tough for the people who lived there,
and so we figured if we could feed the drifters,
it would lighten the load for the regular charity rackets,
the charity rackets, and uh, the city editor there says,
(21:38):
you know, Campone, this will make a great story, and
Compone didn't like it. He for owed his brow and
he said, nothing, do it, nix on that, no story.
I'd only be panned for doing it. And he was right.
Some newspapers were inevitably gonna pan him. But also, lest
we paint this man is too much of a saint,
he did not invest a ton of his own money
(21:58):
into the soup kitch, and instead, as reported in biography
on him, Campone his life, legacy and legend, he bribed
and extorted other businesses to supply the food. Like there's
a ninety two trial with Sarah Tella over whether the
guy conspired with grocers to cheat customers. And in the
course of that trial, the court discovered a load of
(22:22):
ducks had been donated by this chain store to Christmas
baskets for the poor, but they disappeared along the way
and Capone's soup kitchen ended up with a lot of ducks. Yeah,
I mean, even that turkey heist that he supposedly had
nothing to do with. I wouldn't be surprised if you
know some of that could have ended up in his
kitchen at some point circuitously, right like you know, fell
(22:43):
off a truck. That whole situation. And in addition to
bootlegging alcohol and making a fortune off of that enterprise,
he also was hugely involved in illegal gambling and his
underground casinos would do about twenty five thousand dollars of
off at every month. Yeah, so he wasn't hurting for money.
(23:04):
He totally could have paid for this and not miss
the meal himself. It would not have impacted his life
in a meaningful way to do so, but he still
didn't pay as we as we clearly outlined, he was
making other businesses foot the bill and provide the supplies.
(23:27):
You may be familiar with the city of Chicago, and
you might want to, you know, give this piece of
obscure history an in person visit. But if you go
to nine thirty five South State Street in the South
Luke neighborhood today, you are not going to see the
Soup Kitchen because it closed abruptly in n two In April.
(23:52):
The owners of the kitchen claimed that it was no
longer needed because the economy was finally on the way
back up. But that's a little bit weird because from
one to nineteen thirty two the number of unemployed people
in the country had increased by four million. Not four
million total, just four million newly jobless people. And I
(24:14):
just want to backtrack, ever so quickly and slightly. You
may well have heard of the St. Valentine's Day massacre
in ninety nine on St. Valentine's Day. That was a
hugely public slaughter of many of Capone's competition in the
crime world, and it was squarely pinned on him in
the press. So this whole Soup Kitchen thing was also
(24:37):
an effort to kind of get the public opinion back
on his side, right, Yeah, absolutely, this was that was
ultimately his motive. You think, just two months after the
Soup Kitchen closes, component is indicted on those crimes we
mentioned before, not bootlegging, not gambling, twenty two counts of
(24:58):
income tax, the shil And this is so crazy. I
think about this kind of stuff sometimes, man. I know
it's very self centered, but Capone is this huge He's
like an international figure at this point, and his career
is over when he's only thirty three years old. He
eventually gets locked up in Alcatraz while he is on
(25:20):
trial leading to his incarceration. He is pledging left and right,
I'm gonna reopen my soup kitchen. But that never happens.
And as you know, Capone is eventually released from prison
in nineteen thirty nine, but he is suffering from the
complications of syphilis. He is mentally and physically incapable of
(25:44):
operating the way he once did. In fact, just a
year before his death, Campone's psychiatrist would go on to
conclude that he had the mentality of a twelve year
old child. He spent the last years of his life
at his mansion and paul I in Florida, and he
died of cardiac arrest and suffering a stroke in nineteen Yeah,
(26:07):
that's right. And um, obviously we still think of al
Capone today and really associate him as one of the
kind of, you know, top figures in American organized crime.
And that's because he wanted it. You know. Like there's
a scene in Boardwalk Empire where he, uh and his
cronies are all kind of gathered in a hotel suite
and he forces them to repeatedly watch this newsreel kind
(26:29):
of dramatizing his rise to prominence in the crime world
and referring to him as a public enemy number one,
and he literally makes them watch it like three times
in a row. He's also like always high on cocaine
in the show, which I didn't realize was a thing.
But again, they did a pretty good job at sticking
to mostly true historical things when it comes to the
(26:49):
characters in Boardwalk Empire. But it's true, he definitely had
this reputation that lived on far after he passed away.
The Soup Kitchen, however, did have that same longevity. Yeah,
it's right, It's absolutely true. If you trace the life
of the Soup Kitchen after it gets closed down, you'll
(27:10):
see that it also ends not with a bang, but
with a whimper. The building eventually became a flophouse, and
then in nine the authorities in Chicago said, hey, this
is a fire hazard. They shut it down permanently. So
if you go there today where it stood, you'll find
a parking lot. You know, maybe you could be the change,
(27:32):
fellow ridiculous historian. Maybe you could just park there with
some soup, like a big tureen of soup or or
a cooler of soup, a thermos. I don't know. You
probably have to have a permit though, unless you're also
a crime boss. Yeah, you would think. And it's interesting too,
just like the kind of nuances of of how Capone's
(27:55):
reputation sort of affected his care at the end of
his life. Right. Um, we know that he spent the
last year of that prison sentence in the hospital for syphilis.
After that, he was trying to get the best care
because obviously he had the money to do it and
had not been completely wiped out by the I R. S.
I'm sure he had some cash stored away and some
mattresses or safe deposit boxes or what have you. So
(28:18):
he was trying to get help at Johns Hopkins University
because his primary care physician was an associate professor of
medicine there at Johns Hopkins, and this personal doctor was
trying to pull some strings to get him to be
admitted to Johns Hopkins, which, as we know, is a
very illustrious university known today as being one of the
top medical schools in the world, um, in the country
(28:41):
at the very least. But the board of trustees of
Johns Hopkins were not having it. They did not want
their reputation tarnished by having one of you know, the
most notorious gangsters ever to be, you know, hanging out
in their hospital, so they refused treatment to him, or
at the very least, they refused to have him be
admitted for a long term stay. So he had to
(29:03):
go with Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital, who I guess had
slightly lower standards, and they did admit Capone for treatment,
and they even took it a step farther and allowed
his entourage bodyguards, a barber, personal barber, and massur also
food tasters. I mean, it's crazy, dude. Capone really was
like gangster royalty, you know, and he was super paranoid.
(29:25):
He always thought people were out to get him. He
didn't trust anybody, and he employed food tasters to protect
him from being poisoned by his enemies, of which numbered
in the you know, incalculable right. Yeah. Yeah. Capone also
had a soft side. He wrote a love song in prison,
which I feel like could be its own episode. And
(29:47):
he and he's the he is the reason that the
phrase money laundering is popular the modern days. So yes,
was he criminal? Absolutely? Was he ruthless? Absolutely? Did he
run a soup for self serving reasons, you bet you.
But he also left us with tons and tons of
(30:07):
things of ideas, concepts, and pieces of history that remain
with us in the modern day. So I gotta tell you,
you know, I think it's just because of the culture
I grew up in. But I've always been one of
those people who digs the anti hero vibe. You know,
if I were in Chicago at that time, I might
think it is a plus that the guy who sells
(30:29):
me underground booze has also given me free soup, you
know what I mean? Totally And just to backtrack a
split second to his uh you know status is like
a huge music buff. He did write that song UM
entitled Madonna Mia. But he also he actually kidnapped the
famous jazz musician Fats Waller Thomas Wright Fats Waller, who
(30:51):
was a very prominent jazz musician at the time in
ninety six. They basically black bag the guy UM at gunpoint,
forcing him into the back of a limb some of
his associates. He wasn't present because he was at his
seven Good Lord seven birthday party. Uh And and basically,
you know, this is just the other way he does business.
(31:12):
He doesn't ask he tells, and he had Fats Waller
to do a non consensual birthday performance, a private showing
at his party, And of course is a final bit
here to wrap up the money laundry. Think. The reason
we're mentioning that the phrase does come to us in
the modern day because when al Capone needed to funnel
(31:32):
his illegal cash, his ill gotten gains, its literal ill
gotten gains, he would use laundromats because it was hard
for the Johnny law of the day to keep track
of how cash was flowing into those businesses. So the
you know, some people still use laundromats today. But more importantly, folks,
tell us what you think. What do you What do
(31:54):
you think about the career of al Capone? And I
think you can call it a career he was running
in an empire. What do you think about the idea
of criminals or organized crime stepping in to assist the
public when it feels like the ordinary governing structures have
not or are incapable or unwilling to do so. We'd
(32:15):
love to hear all these thoughts. Please let us know
at our officially hopefully working email address Ridiculous at I
Heart radio dot com. No, we gotta test that one
too when we get off air, just to make sure
we definitely do bead. But hopefully all is right in
email world and we will be hearing from you shortly.
Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams and his brother
(32:38):
Alex Williams who composed our theme. Huge thanks to sup
producer Casey Pegram, Jonathan Strickland Quister should be seeing him
against soon one of these days, and Christopher haciotis here
in spirit yes, as well as Eve's Jeff Coach. Check
out our Turbentine episode and all the other great shows
Eaves creates, and of course thanks to our own our capone,
(33:01):
Gay Bluesier, who is entirely working as our research associate
as a very complex money laundering scheme which does, as
far as I understand, does involve regular heist of ducks,
turkeys and beef stew. Stay safe out there, Gabe, We'll
see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts for my
(33:27):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super
producer Casey Pegram and our super producer Max Williams. Oh,
we just had to get that one out of the way.
No oh yeah, we mean it was only right and natural. Ben,
(00:49):
I'm no, um you said that? Um? Ben? How do
you feel about a soup? Are you a super person? Yeah?
I was. I was thinking about this because too much
soup can have this we're sort of I don't know.
It always felt like a had a comedic implication to me,
even before the infamous soup Nazi of the Seinfeld days.
(01:11):
But I, um, yeah, I like a good soup. I
make a I make a pretty mean soup myself. But
to me, soup is like you've probably heard people talk
about this before, guys, but some people feel like soup
is either a poor person's meal or not a real meal,
just soup by itself. I tend to disagree with the
latter point. But what do you think? No, well, it
(01:33):
certainly is a good use of leftovers. All you needed
a little bit of stock, uh, and some vegetables and
a meat of some sort, perhaps just like some leftover
ham or or b or something like that. You got
yourself a stew going baby. To quote Carl Weathers from
the rest of development. But I just want to bring
up really quickly while we're on the specifically the soup
(01:54):
part of this discussion. I mean, we're gonna get more
into into soup discussions. But there was something called perpet
chewel stew that was a staple of medieval ends back
in the day, and it was literally just like you
see it in in movies and stuff, the giant cauldron
of bubbling stew over the fire like in an in
an end. It was called perpetual stew because it was
(02:15):
just always going, uh, and they would just add more
stuff to it and replenish it as needed. But it
was never really got like started from scratch, and I'm
sure it led to some food born illness, but it
was definitely something that probably contributed as well to the
notion of soups or stews being kind of a poor
(02:35):
person's meal, um, because you know, it is very much
something that you can just use whatever is laying around.
It also is of course a staple of institutionalized feeding
of the homeless, for example, in what is known as
soup kitchens, where you you know, line up and you
get your stuff, a cup of soup and then that's
you know, we'll hopefully sustain you for a little while.
(02:56):
But those things kind of combined have led to this
reputation that soup has is sort of like a lower meal.
Yeah yeah, And don't get us wrong, there are definitely
soups that have been considered historically fancy turtle soup. We
did an episode on that lobster bisco as well. But
you're right, you know, it turns out that people have
(03:18):
been making soup for an estimated twenty thousand years. It's
by no means a new idea. It's uh, trying not
to say super too much in this episode and all
it's extraordinarily practical. And today's story is it just about
the history of soup kitchens. Don't worry. You're probably still
gonna leave hungry. But don't worry, this story is about
something else too. We're going through a bit of a
(03:40):
crime phase this week on the show, and the star
of today's episode in many ways is a guy named
al Capone, the quintessential American gangster. He was so successful
during his time that it's difficult for a lot of
people nowadays to described the full extent of his criminal empire.
(04:03):
Like we know, we know he did a ton of
dirt Noll, but we also know that the crimes that
eventually brought him down had nothing to do with his
bootlegging or anything like that. It was tax evation. The
I R S will get you back, then the I
R S it will absolutely get you. I actually just
got done um watching the full run of Boardwalk Empire,
(04:25):
and Alphonse Capone plays a huge role in that show
because the history of organized crime is very much entwined
in the history of prohibition, because when the Volstead Act
was passed, it made alcohol illegal and opened up this
entire new black market that did not exist before. And
(04:46):
when you have a black market, of course you're gonna
have violence and and turf wars and things that all
stem from the fact that something is made illegal. It
is often the argument for like say, legalizing drugs, because
if you do that, then you don't have have a
need for things like Cartel's to come in and fill
that vacuum um of legal sales of things. You know,
(05:06):
with this black market. So basically the impetus for striking
down the voltstead actor repealing it was because of a
couple of things. It was because of this you know,
burgeoning organized crime world that kind of sprung up around it,
but also all of this unclaimed tax revenue that was
just going down the tubes, you know. And this all
(05:27):
happened in the face of the Great Depression. And like
many crime lords in their own hometowns or their own
home territory, it's often quite popular, quite a popular choice
diplomatically to sort of paint themselves as sort of Robin
Hood esque figures. We know, Pablo Escobar did that in
his home turf of median Um in Colombia, and al
(05:47):
Capone was no different. Even though he was absolutely an
unhinged psychopath who would you know, bludge into death with
like paper weights and baseball bats anyone that crossed him
or even offended him mildly, but he still wanted to
curate this image of himself not just as public enemy
number one in his hometown of Chicago, but also as
some sort of benevolence overlord that looked out for the
(06:09):
little people and was really just kind of sticking it
to the man, but as we know, he was much
much more than that and absolutely a terrible, terrible person.
How's your mother doing? She get the Uh? Yeah, she
get the soda? Popeye sent al right, being a good kid,
Be a good kid, run along exactly. No, it's true.
So it's you're right. This robin hood image, while demonstrably
(06:34):
false in many ways, is an important piece of gardnering
local support, community support, and when the official government steps in,
new power structures can rise. This is what components saw
during the stock market crash that would set off what
we call the Great Depression today. He said, you know,
(06:55):
I could do a little pr how's your mother? So
he so he opened a soup kitchen in Chicago. Again,
if you've listened to our previous episodes about this time period,
you know that life was fundamentally rocked and shaken to
the core for so many people living in the US
(07:15):
at the time. People who had homes literally no longer
had those homes. They no longer had jobs, they no
longer had any economic opportunities. They were, in a very
real way worried about what they and their families would
eat every day. So this this soup kitchen was a
brilliant move, and the big question is how much of
(07:40):
it was his It was actual, you know, concerned for
his fellow human beings, how much of it was concerned
for his deteriorating public image. We have views on that
that I think we could give you with the course
of this show. But first, let's let's talk a little
bit about Capone pre Boardwalk Capone, believe it or not,
he was not born a middle aged crime boss. He
(08:02):
was born in relative to relatively modest means, son of
poor Italian immigrants who moved to Brooklyn. He got expelled
from school for socking uh female teacher, and then he
joined a street gang. And he was, by all means
a pretty smart dude. You can't rise to this level
of organized crime without being, you know, a fairly bright crayon.
(08:27):
He could have maybe pursued his educational There might be
a world just to the left of hours where he
is like a very well known criminal defense attorney. How
hilarious would that be. That's not what happened. He took
over Chicago's leading crime syndicate, and just four years after
taking over Chicago's organized crime he was a multi millionaire.
(08:50):
I believe yeah, and as he's portrayed in Boardwalk Empire
by the fantastic actor Steven Graham, who you might remember
from some early guy Ritchie movies like I believe he
is in Snatch or lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
I think we both often confused those two. Uh no,
I think he was in I think he was in Snatch. Um.
But he is a British actor who does a damn
(09:12):
fine Brooklyn accent as al Capone. You know, he's he's
very really disappears into that role. He had the nickname
Scarface because he did have these like very large scars
on his face from when he was attacked with a
blade and and uh kind of disfigured um. And he
was very insecure about it and actually wore makeup to
cover these scars, like some kind of like a pancake makeup. Um.
(09:35):
So you see that in the show. But he also
was so successful and so let's just say, kind of
self possessed that he didn't want to play nice with
any of the other crime families or any of the
other you know, members of the syndicate, and that ultimately
led to his downfall as well, because he was, you know,
kind of a little too big for his bridges, as
folks would say, and he didn't want to kind of
(09:57):
cut other people in, so that ultimately led to his
rivals kind of helping in his downfall a little bit
as well. But you're right then he made around forty
million dollars throughout the course of his career, primarily from
selling illegal alcohol during Prohibition, like I said, with that
vacuum um left by the outlawing of of booze and
(10:18):
it was distributed to more than ten thousand speakeasies and
houses of ill repute through this massive operation that he
was at the heart of, this kind of network of
of bootleggers that you know, distributed all throughout the Midwest.
And because of the way prohibition was viewed in that
it was like, you know, there were obviously teetotalers and
(10:40):
folks that thought prohibition was kind of saving the soul
of America. There were an equal, if not much greater
number of people that looked at it as being deprived
of their civil liberties. So even the average person felt
like it was their god given right to drink alcohol
and that Alcopoland was just giving the people what they wanted. Yeah,
and what they wanted was boo just to run this
(11:02):
through the inflation calculator. As we said, four years after
he joins these after he heads these crime syndicates, he's
making forty million. So if we can get our inflation calculator,
boo booper doopoop makes uh, it's around five hundred and
fifty million dollars. This guy is not hurting for money
(11:25):
at all, and he's got m He is very conscious
of the fact that he needs this public support. He's
doing all sorts of dirt behind the scenes, but he's
also very publicly launching programs to give milk to all
the Chicago school children, which also has its own sketchy backstory,
(11:45):
and he's donating tons of cash to local charities. This
is this all happens before the stock market crash on October.
By the way, when the stock market crash occurs, he
sees the writing on the wall. As we said, banks
are failing, businesses are shuttering, Millions of people are unemployed.
(12:06):
They don't know where they're going to eat. And that's
where we see the rise of breadlines, the rise of
things like soup kitchens. I'm throwing my arms around, even
though this is an audio podcast. It's just a big
this is a huge social change, and just for perspective,
In November, more than seventy five thousand people in Chicago
(12:30):
without jobs lined up to register their names while they
would wait for some kind of government assistance, whether that's
a free meal program or whether that's a a work
program of some sort. And the Chicago Tribune notes that
unless anybody feels, you know, kind of classes, these aren't,
(12:53):
you know, stereotypical hoboes with bendals waiting in line. These
people are dressed. They're dressed like they're going to church,
where they're dressed like they're going to work in an office.
And that's when in such a in a very short span,
hundreds and hundreds of soup kitchens pop up all around
the country. And one of those soup kitchens literally belonged
(13:15):
to the man himself, Scarface al Capone. He didn't even
have a name for his charity, which I thought was interesting.
But there was a sign over the door of the
kitchen that said free soup, coffee and donuts for the unemployed.
(13:36):
And they served around people every day with no questions asked,
no need to prove that you qualified or whatever. They
even would doll out second helpings because again, I mean, look,
sorry to keep going back to this. Clearly probably you know,
hyperbolic and fictionalized portrayal of al Capone in Boardwalk Empire,
but he does this is accurate. He did have a
(13:58):
son who was as disabled he was deaf, and you
do see the character kind of struggling with how to
you know, literally communicate to his son and keep him
from being bullied and all of that. But you did
get a sense that he very much loved his son
and he was a family man, but he you know,
was also an unhinged kind of sociopath. So it's an
(14:19):
interesting dichotomy that you see. So whether it was pure
optics or pure politics that he was playing, or if
he actually did have a soft spot in his heart
for the kind of disenfranchise, I think the jury is
still a little bit out. But breakfast was a cup
of hot coffee that was sweetened with sugar and sweet rolls,
which would be kind of like a cinnamon roll type situation.
(14:40):
And then lunch and dinner you could get a bowl
of soup and a loaf of bread or a slice
of bread. And every day three hundred and fifty loaves
and a hundred dozen sweet rolls were consumed by the
folks that frequented this kitchen, and thirty pounds of coffee
that was sweetened up with around fifty pounds of sugar
(15:02):
were also in play. It cost around three hundred dollars
a day, which, in you know, nineteen thirties dollars, that's
a lot of money. It's a little less than five
grand exactly every single day. But it was clearly worth
it to him, whether politically or whether it gave him
a sense of purpose and made him feel like less
of a monster. But he didn't strike me as the
kind of guy that was particularly self aware of his
(15:23):
status as being, you know, kind of a monster. But
we do know that even though he didn't have his
name on the building, he was connected to it in
stories that were printed in the local papers. Yeah, and
his associates went on record. Someone who knew Capone, it
was like an open secret that this was a Compone operation.
(15:44):
One of his colleagues said, he, meaning Capone, couldn't stand
it to see those poor devils starving. Nobody else seemed
to be doing much, so the big boy decided to
do it himself. They're clearly leaning into this sort of
anti hero image. But then that image brings with it
its own complications. Thanksgiving Campone soup kitchen is planning to
(16:11):
have a traditional Thanksgiving meal for people in need, and
they had, you know, they were serving at this point,
like five thousand Chicago residents a day. Here's his problem though,
his his criminal he's aware of his criminal past might
affect public image. Someone in the city had done a
turkey heist right four things, because they still a thousand
(16:33):
turkeys from this department store. And Capone was not involved
with this crime. He was above turkey theft at this point.
But he said, I would think he would hope and
he said, you know, well, we don't want to be
blamed for this caper. So at the very last minute,
they said, look, we run a clean soup kitchen here.
We're not serving turkey and cranberry. We're serving beef stew,
(16:54):
just to keep the heat off. Yeah, and I understand
why he did that optically speaking, but it also is
kind of a cheap o move. They could have pivoted
to something like a nice ham, you know, something a
little more festive beef stew. I don't really associate that
with the holidays very much. I would imagine that that
came from stuff they already had lying around, because well,
they didn't want to be seen is having uh, you know,
(17:14):
participated in any kind of Turkey heist. They also didn't
want to have to go and you know, buy a
whole another however, many thousand hams they would have had
to buy. And you know, I'm gonna be honest, Uh no, Max,
if I had to choose between the two, I would
choose beef stew. I'm a beef stew guy. I don't know,
I love a beef stew. I do love a beef stew.
It's true. Um. So, you know, he really cared about,
(17:37):
at the very least this image of being this kind
of benevolent you know, criminal, and you know he this
included widows and orphans and the homeless of course, you know,
but it was a big swath because at this point,
because of the unemployment and the absolute disaster that was
the Great Depression, a lot of these folks were mixing.
You know, it was not just one particular type of
(18:00):
individual that would have been standing in line at these
at this kitchen and the Bismarck Tribune reported on this,
and they noted that quote, a hungry man is just
as glad to get soup and coffee from Al Capone
as from anyone else. Very true, very true. And there's
there's an excellent piece of writing in Harper's magazine that
(18:21):
shows the irony of this situation in Chicago, because, of course,
not everybody approved of Capone's charity here. And I think
this is just my opinion. I think it's because he
had some other motives at play. I think that's pretty
obvious anyway. In Harper's, the writer Mary Borden, she notes
(18:42):
this image that really stuck with me. Says, you know,
picture this. There's a line of people without jobs that
are waiting for a handout from Capone's soup kitchen. He's
the most wanted man in Chicago. And picture, if you will,
the line for his soup kitchen stretching past the very
front door of the city's police headquarters, which held evidence
(19:06):
of the incredibly violent crimes that Campone committed or had committed.
And the press was desperate to uh to get more
info on this. He got a lot of pr from
having a soup kitchen. The press was always trying to
like send somebody in to catch Capone there in person,
(19:28):
but they never did. You won't find a photograph of
him at the kitchen today. Uh. And some newspapers were
negative in their press, like the Daily Independent in Murphysboro, Illinois,
who said, if anything were needed to make the farce
of gang Land complete, it is the Al Capone soup kitchen.
It would be rather terrifying to see Capone running for
(19:50):
mayor of Chicago. We're afraid he would get such a
tremendous vote. It's even conceivable that he might be elected
after a few more stunts like his soup kitchen. But again,
and he's just feeding people. You know, people are eating
at the end of the day. He's not poisoning them.
You know, he's not forcing them to commit crimes for him.
But it is a battle of hearts and minds, and
(20:11):
at this point he is very much winning. That's right.
And it wasn't even his idea. Uh. And speaking of politics,
you know, I mean he was very closely embedded in politics.
And we know about the you know, the political machines
of Chicago and all that, and the you know, Boss
Tweed and all of that stuff. I mean, it really
is a historically corrupt political city and has has maintained
(20:34):
that reputation even up until the modern day. But this dude,
Daniels Sarah Tella, who was a pal of Campones, and
he was also a political ally. He got elected to
the Illinois State Senate in nineteen thirty and he's the
one who suggested to Campone that he do this soup
kitchen stunt. For lack of a better word. Harry Reid,
(20:55):
who was a newspaper reporter at the time, claimed to
have been present in an apartment with Capone and Sarah
Tella when this idea kind of came up, and he
says that on November nineteen thirty November two, nine thirty,
Capone said, quote, there are so many people hungry in
the First Ward because of the depression, that Dan asked
me to back a free hand out joint. I'm gonna
(21:17):
try to do the Al Capone voice. He's got more
starving people down there than he can handle. All the
bums that land in Chicago go to the First War.
That makes it tough for the people who lived there,
and so we figured if we could feed the drifters,
it would lighten the load for the regular charity rackets,
the charity rackets, and uh, the city editor there says,
(21:38):
you know, Campone, this will make a great story, and
Compone didn't like it. He for owed his brow and
he said, nothing, do it, nix on that, no story.
I'd only be panned for doing it. And he was right.
Some newspapers were inevitably gonna pan him. But also, lest
we paint this man is too much of a saint,
he did not invest a ton of his own money
(21:58):
into the soup kitch, and instead, as reported in biography
on him, Campone his life, legacy and legend, he bribed
and extorted other businesses to supply the food. Like there's
a ninety two trial with Sarah Tella over whether the
guy conspired with grocers to cheat customers. And in the
course of that trial, the court discovered a load of
(22:22):
ducks had been donated by this chain store to Christmas
baskets for the poor, but they disappeared along the way
and Capone's soup kitchen ended up with a lot of ducks. Yeah,
I mean, even that turkey heist that he supposedly had
nothing to do with. I wouldn't be surprised if you
know some of that could have ended up in his
kitchen at some point circuitously, right like you know, fell
(22:43):
off a truck. That whole situation. And in addition to
bootlegging alcohol and making a fortune off of that enterprise,
he also was hugely involved in illegal gambling and his
underground casinos would do about twenty five thousand dollars of
off at every month. Yeah, so he wasn't hurting for money.
(23:04):
He totally could have paid for this and not miss
the meal himself. It would not have impacted his life
in a meaningful way to do so, but he still
didn't pay as we as we clearly outlined, he was
making other businesses foot the bill and provide the supplies.
(23:27):
You may be familiar with the city of Chicago, and
you might want to, you know, give this piece of
obscure history an in person visit. But if you go
to nine thirty five South State Street in the South
Luke neighborhood today, you are not going to see the
Soup Kitchen because it closed abruptly in n two In April.
(23:52):
The owners of the kitchen claimed that it was no
longer needed because the economy was finally on the way
back up. But that's a little bit weird because from
one to nineteen thirty two the number of unemployed people
in the country had increased by four million. Not four
million total, just four million newly jobless people. And I
(24:14):
just want to backtrack, ever so quickly and slightly. You
may well have heard of the St. Valentine's Day massacre
in ninety nine on St. Valentine's Day. That was a
hugely public slaughter of many of Capone's competition in the
crime world, and it was squarely pinned on him in
the press. So this whole Soup Kitchen thing was also
(24:37):
an effort to kind of get the public opinion back
on his side, right, Yeah, absolutely, this was that was
ultimately his motive. You think, just two months after the
Soup Kitchen closes, component is indicted on those crimes we
mentioned before, not bootlegging, not gambling, twenty two counts of
(24:58):
income tax, the shil And this is so crazy. I
think about this kind of stuff sometimes, man. I know
it's very self centered, but Capone is this huge He's
like an international figure at this point, and his career
is over when he's only thirty three years old. He
eventually gets locked up in Alcatraz while he is on
(25:20):
trial leading to his incarceration. He is pledging left and right,
I'm gonna reopen my soup kitchen. But that never happens.
And as you know, Capone is eventually released from prison
in nineteen thirty nine, but he is suffering from the
complications of syphilis. He is mentally and physically incapable of
(25:44):
operating the way he once did. In fact, just a
year before his death, Campone's psychiatrist would go on to
conclude that he had the mentality of a twelve year
old child. He spent the last years of his life
at his mansion and paul I in Florida, and he
died of cardiac arrest and suffering a stroke in nineteen Yeah,
(26:07):
that's right. And um, obviously we still think of al
Capone today and really associate him as one of the
kind of, you know, top figures in American organized crime.
And that's because he wanted it. You know. Like there's
a scene in Boardwalk Empire where he, uh and his
cronies are all kind of gathered in a hotel suite
and he forces them to repeatedly watch this newsreel kind
(26:29):
of dramatizing his rise to prominence in the crime world
and referring to him as a public enemy number one,
and he literally makes them watch it like three times
in a row. He's also like always high on cocaine
in the show, which I didn't realize was a thing.
But again, they did a pretty good job at sticking
to mostly true historical things when it comes to the
(26:49):
characters in Boardwalk Empire. But it's true, he definitely had
this reputation that lived on far after he passed away.
The Soup Kitchen, however, did have that same longevity. Yeah,
it's right, It's absolutely true. If you trace the life
of the Soup Kitchen after it gets closed down, you'll
(27:10):
see that it also ends not with a bang, but
with a whimper. The building eventually became a flophouse, and
then in nine the authorities in Chicago said, hey, this
is a fire hazard. They shut it down permanently. So
if you go there today where it stood, you'll find
a parking lot. You know, maybe you could be the change,
(27:32):
fellow ridiculous historian. Maybe you could just park there with
some soup, like a big tureen of soup or or
a cooler of soup, a thermos. I don't know. You
probably have to have a permit though, unless you're also
a crime boss. Yeah, you would think. And it's interesting too,
just like the kind of nuances of of how Capone's
(27:55):
reputation sort of affected his care at the end of
his life. Right. Um, we know that he spent the
last year of that prison sentence in the hospital for syphilis.
After that, he was trying to get the best care
because obviously he had the money to do it and
had not been completely wiped out by the I R. S.
I'm sure he had some cash stored away and some
mattresses or safe deposit boxes or what have you. So
(28:18):
he was trying to get help at Johns Hopkins University
because his primary care physician was an associate professor of
medicine there at Johns Hopkins, and this personal doctor was
trying to pull some strings to get him to be
admitted to Johns Hopkins, which, as we know, is a
very illustrious university known today as being one of the
top medical schools in the world, um, in the country
(28:41):
at the very least. But the board of trustees of
Johns Hopkins were not having it. They did not want
their reputation tarnished by having one of you know, the
most notorious gangsters ever to be, you know, hanging out
in their hospital, so they refused treatment to him, or
at the very least, they refused to have him be
admitted for a long term stay. So he had to
(29:03):
go with Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital, who I guess had
slightly lower standards, and they did admit Capone for treatment,
and they even took it a step farther and allowed
his entourage bodyguards, a barber, personal barber, and massur also
food tasters. I mean, it's crazy, dude. Capone really was
like gangster royalty, you know, and he was super paranoid.
(29:25):
He always thought people were out to get him. He
didn't trust anybody, and he employed food tasters to protect
him from being poisoned by his enemies, of which numbered
in the you know, incalculable right. Yeah. Yeah. Capone also
had a soft side. He wrote a love song in prison,
which I feel like could be its own episode. And
(29:47):
he and he's the he is the reason that the
phrase money laundering is popular the modern days. So yes,
was he criminal? Absolutely? Was he ruthless? Absolutely? Did he
run a soup for self serving reasons, you bet you.
But he also left us with tons and tons of
(30:07):
things of ideas, concepts, and pieces of history that remain
with us in the modern day. So I gotta tell you,
you know, I think it's just because of the culture
I grew up in. But I've always been one of
those people who digs the anti hero vibe. You know,
if I were in Chicago at that time, I might
think it is a plus that the guy who sells
(30:29):
me underground booze has also given me free soup, you
know what I mean? Totally And just to backtrack a
split second to his uh you know status is like
a huge music buff. He did write that song UM
entitled Madonna Mia. But he also he actually kidnapped the
famous jazz musician Fats Waller Thomas Wright Fats Waller, who
(30:51):
was a very prominent jazz musician at the time in
ninety six. They basically black bag the guy UM at gunpoint,
forcing him into the back of a limb some of
his associates. He wasn't present because he was at his
seven Good Lord seven birthday party. Uh And and basically,
you know, this is just the other way he does business.
(31:12):
He doesn't ask he tells, and he had Fats Waller
to do a non consensual birthday performance, a private showing
at his party, And of course is a final bit
here to wrap up the money laundry. Think. The reason
we're mentioning that the phrase does come to us in
the modern day because when al Capone needed to funnel
(31:32):
his illegal cash, his ill gotten gains, its literal ill
gotten gains, he would use laundromats because it was hard
for the Johnny law of the day to keep track
of how cash was flowing into those businesses. So the
you know, some people still use laundromats today. But more importantly, folks,
tell us what you think. What do you What do
(31:54):
you think about the career of al Capone? And I
think you can call it a career he was running
in an empire. What do you think about the idea
of criminals or organized crime stepping in to assist the
public when it feels like the ordinary governing structures have
not or are incapable or unwilling to do so. We'd
(32:15):
love to hear all these thoughts. Please let us know
at our officially hopefully working email address Ridiculous at I
Heart radio dot com. No, we gotta test that one
too when we get off air, just to make sure
we definitely do bead. But hopefully all is right in
email world and we will be hearing from you shortly.
Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams and his brother
(32:38):
Alex Williams who composed our theme. Huge thanks to sup
producer Casey Pegram, Jonathan Strickland Quister should be seeing him
against soon one of these days, and Christopher haciotis here
in spirit yes, as well as Eve's Jeff Coach. Check
out our Turbentine episode and all the other great shows
Eaves creates, and of course thanks to our own our capone,
(33:01):
Gay Bluesier, who is entirely working as our research associate
as a very complex money laundering scheme which does, as
far as I understand, does involve regular heist of ducks,
turkeys and beef stew. Stay safe out there, Gabe, We'll
see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts for my
(33:27):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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