December 29, 2023 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, America’s fascination with mob boss Al Capone is a century old. Here to tell the story is the biographer of the definitive work on Al Capone, Laurence Bergreen.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. America's fascination with
mob boss al Capone is a century old. Here to
tell the story is the biographer of the definitive work
on Capone, Lawrence berg Green. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Al Capone is, of course America's most notorious and famous,
celebrated outlaw and criminal, not only in the United States
but in many countries around the world. Components particularly popular
in countries like Japan and Eastern Europe. But his legend
(00:51):
is ubiquitous and these one of these very popular figures
who emerged in the nineteen twenties who became iconic. Charles
Lenburg the Aviator was another. He was really different because
as I got into Capone, I discovered that it was
like peeling an onion. And there was a lot to
(01:11):
say about him. He never sought to become a gangster.
He came off as a very soft spoken. He seemed
to be more like a banker than a gunman, and
I think that was part of the reason for his success.
But again it was all accidental. He was born in
(01:33):
eighteen ninety nine in Brooklyn, New York. His family was
from Naples. His father was a barber, His mother was
a seamstress. He had seven siblings, all brothers except for
one sister, Mafalda, whom apparently everybody was terrified of. They
were here in Brooklyn, like so many other immigrants. Every year.
(01:56):
Almost fifty thousand Italian immigrants arrived in this country in
the year of his birth. That's a huge number, and
that's just from Italy. And they encountered a great deal
of prejudice. Italians were not very popular for hiring, and
it was difficult for them to make their way in
this country, so they were often hard up looking for work.
(02:20):
There were various reasons for that. Part of it was
the fact that they were Italian. Part of it was
the fact that they were Catholic. There was at that
time a strong anti Catholic prejudice, so the odds were
stacked against them. You may wonder, well, why did people
like the Capone family even come here to the United States.
It's because the old story they came here for opportunity,
(02:44):
because things were even worse where they came from. Naples
in southern Italy was very poor and the prospects were
not great. And here so the myth ran. The streets
were paved with gold Capone came of age here. The
(03:05):
school records show that he was an indifferent student in
Brooklyn and left school as soon as he could and
had various odd jobs around. He was known as being diligent.
He was not a child robber or anything like that.
What changed everything was prohibition, and prohibition, just to remind you,
(03:28):
became the law of the land in the early nineteen
twenties when in outlawed all the consumption of liquor was
an example of the tyranny of the minority. Perhaps alcoholism
was seen to be a big social evil that led
to the deterioration of morality, the destruction of families, and
(03:50):
a lot of crime, and so alcohol was demonized. Well,
Colger's passed a law and it was outlawed. However, just
passing the law doesn't make it so, and in this
case it had the opposite effect. It backfired. What it
did was it put a huge segment of the population
(04:12):
which was used to drinking alcohol, not because they were alcoholics,
but because that was part of their daily life, and
made them outlaws. They didn't really think they had done
anything wrong. It was normal to drink wine or beer
or something similar. Suddenly they were demonized and could get
into very serious trouble. Well, that also gave rise to
(04:35):
a whole underground economy of liquor production and consumption and
what I call the trinity of vice, which was booze gambling,
and then that went along with it prostitution, and because
it was secret or semi secret, it made it harder
to prosecute. You know, they say sunlight is the best disinfectant,
(05:00):
but this turned off the sunlight. Also. Capone, of course
was Catholic, and a large part of the country was Catholic.
They felt discriminated against because wine was part of the
holy sacrament in communion. Suddenly their wine was illegal and
they felt this was discrimination against Catholics. Again, was not
(05:25):
really into this kind of crime. However, by accident, some
family members and some friends of the family pulled him
into small time criminal activities such as bedding and things
like that, and Capone himself then began to see an opportunity.
(05:46):
He left New York. He went to Philadelphia. He became
the protege of a more sophisticated criminal named Johnny Torrio,
who saw the possibilities of an underground or sea great
criminal organization based on this prohibition, which had suddenly given
(06:06):
the rackets, as it was sometimes called, a gift of
making what they were doing illegal. So Capone became involved
in the importing of alcohol, often from Canada and from
other places in the Caribbean, in Rum and you know
it's seen as now, you know, very colorful activity. It
was that, but it was also led to a great
(06:30):
deal of danger. Capone was very good at doing this
and organizing this. He discovered a gift for arranging deliveries,
finding places to conceal alcohol, and to form alliances with
other gangs and people who were doing the same sort
(06:51):
of thing, especially some were Polish, some were Jewish. They
also became famous or notorious. And again this was not
his first choice. His first choice was to be an accountant,
and I'm not joking. Instead, he found himself married with
the child and then several children, and he also became
(07:12):
suddenly more successful than anybody ever imagined. Now he was
very young, he was still in his twenties, and by
the time he was in his late twenties, he had
gone to Chicago, where Johnny Torreo had summoned him, and
he became the most powerful person in Chicago, which at
the time was the second most important city in the
(07:34):
United States. This was incredible. You say, how could this happen? Well,
it happened for two reasons. One was Prohibition and the
other one was that the Chicago infrastructure, law enforcement, and
government was extremely corrupt and Prohibition had undermined it. Even
more so. Capone and others like him were able to
(07:54):
capitalize on it. And because they were making so much money,
they were able to bribe politicians, and that way they
were able to control politicians. You may ask, what about
the government, what about the federal government, Well they were
very slow to get into the act. When the federal
government felt they had nothing to do with this, j
(08:15):
Ander Hoover eventually became head of the FBI. It was
only when the Saint Valentine's Day massacre came to his
attention that Hoover and other people began to wonder and
worry about it. The Saint Valentine's Day massacre, which was
on February fourteenth, nineteen twenty seven, should have been, in
(08:37):
the oal course of things, a minor dust up in Chicago. Instead,
it led to the deaths of several people, and it
suddenly made the front page of newspapers all around, and
people realized for the first time that there was either
a crime problem or a violence problem, or a gun
(08:58):
problem because of the machine guns that were involved. And
suddenly outlaws and gangsters and what they represented became a
topic of urgent national concern.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And you're listening to Lawrence berger and tell one heck
of a story about al Capone, the family's migration from
Naples to seek a better life and finding themselves in Brooklyn,
Italian and Catholic and not loved because they were Italian,
and because of Catholic discrimination in America at the time
fifty thousand Italian immigrants arriving annually in this country. And
(09:33):
what happens next is just a story of well, just
accident in serendipity, prohibition driving everything, and of course the
government thinking they were going to stop a problem, and
if anything, probably exacerbating it. And there in the center
of it was this guy al Capone, with an organizing talent,
a distribution talent. And we'll learn about some of his
(09:54):
other talents when we come back here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories and with Lawrence Bergreen,
author of Capone, the man and the era. Let's pick
(10:17):
up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
The FBI was playing catch up. When Jaegar Hoover first
heard about al Capone, his initial reaction was who's that
he had never heard of him? Well, eventually they found out,
and it was difficult to prosecute them. It was difficult
to get people to testify against al Capone and other
people for two reasons. First of all, in Chicago, he
(10:43):
had made himself into sort of a local hero, if
that's the way to put it. He was very clever.
He kind of worked both sides of this. On the
one hand, he was exploiting prohibition and selling alcohol and
related activities. On the other hand, he ran the equivalent
of the soup kitchen and gave a lot away to charity.
(11:05):
He was a robin Hood figure, robbing from the rich
and giving to the poor. There was no such thing
as welfare in those days, so the state, you know,
federal government was much much weaker. That left a valcuum
for Capone and others to fill, and so they did.
Now Capone wasn't the only one doing this. There were
(11:28):
Irish gangsters, there were Jewish gangsters, there were Polish gangsters,
and on and on. You get the idea. But he
became the most visible because he was articulate. He was
very well spoken. He didn't shun the limelight like some
others did. Now when you think of the visual image
of Capone, you think of the hold king man. In fact,
(11:52):
the reality was somewhat different. He was always extremely well dressed.
He wore a fedora, he wore a tie he wanted
it to be, and looked like banker rather than a gangster.
He did not go around with machine guns or pistols.
Eventually he hired some gunmen or guards to do that
(12:12):
for him. But he was known as more of a
broker and businessman than anything else. When I was researching
this book, I got to know a number of Copone
family members who lived in the area and in the Midwest,
especially around Lansing, Michigan, where he spent some summers. Two
(12:32):
things were striking. First of all, none of them was
any kind of outlaw. This was not like The Godfather,
where they were a generational dynasty. They had all moved
on to other things. They were doctors, they were lawyers,
they were in the military, generals, they were homemakers and
things like that, and they didn't really want any association
(12:54):
with the stigma of the name Compone, so that was
very striking. The other thing that was striking was that
they all remembered. When I asked the inevitable question, what
was al really like, they all pretty much had the
same thing to say that he was very considerate, seft spoken,
(13:15):
not violent, did not seem like the kind of gangster
that you saw on TV, and was a valued family member.
Of course, his victims were dead, might have had a
different story, and you know, there were other sides to
the Alcopold story, but that was the impression he made
on those who spend a lot of time with him.
(13:38):
At that time, syphilis, venereal disease was a major scourge.
I also did a lot of research on syphilis, and
it's sort of like the common cold in the sense
that it's very common and it's, as they say, self
healing ninety percent of the time. So if you get
it ninety percent at the time, it actually goes away
(14:00):
on its own. Ten percent of the time it doesn't.
Capone was in the unlucky ten percent. When he visited
some brothels or prostitutes he acquired it. It went underground
as syphilis can do became neurosyphilis. He was unaware of
(14:20):
the fact that he had it. For example, one of
his brothers, or at least one had it, but it
just went away on its own and didn't affect the
brother at all. But it was like a time bomb,
if you will, lodged and composed nervous system that at
one point was going to explode. People noticed a change
in Compone's behavior as he was getting into his thirties.
(14:43):
I think he may be remember the moving the Untouchables
with the very very explosive, compelling performance showing Compone's temper.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Why they got the shipment, why they got the whole shipment?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I'm in this What am I alone in this world?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Did I asked you what you're trying to do? Did
I ask what I wanted you to find?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This dancy boy elliot?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And that I want him dead, I want his family dead,
I want his house bright in the ground.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
And the famous scene that sounds like it was made
up where he suddenly blew a stack and when two
people were threatening him, he took a baseball bat and
bashed their heads out.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I get nowhere unless the team was.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
It seemed very unlike the al capone that anybody ever meant. However,
that incident really happened, Well, what changed the series neurosyphilis
had violently distorted his behavior. By the way. The cure,
of course for syphilis has been for a long time,
ever since World War Two, penicillin or something related to that,
(16:13):
but that did not exist at that point. The cures
that were around were things like mercury, which was basically poisoned,
or other ineffective cures, so there was no medicinal cure
for it. So people didn't know or understand why component
had become suddenly out of control, but in fact he did.
(16:34):
Eventually the government found a way to catch up with him,
and that wasn't through his murders or violence. It was
through the fact that he didn't pay taxes. If you
were a criminal and you had a huge income that
was off the books, you were not going to report it.
You know that you made a million dollars from illegal activities.
(16:56):
So the government eventually put together a case that didn't
have to deal with with people associated with compone violence.
It was simply the fact that he didn't pay his taxes.
That was also an argument that they felt rightly that
they could get a jury to understand. Because everybody had
(17:17):
to pay taxes, they could relate to it. It was
sort of simple in the sense basic. Rather, although it
didn't seem as horrible as his other indiscretions and activities
with which he was late, this was one that the
ordinary potential juror could get a hold of and understand. Now,
it was actually tough to get a jury to sit
(17:39):
down on a case involving component and other gangsters because
in those days newspapers publish the names and addresses and
sometimes even the photographs of a jurorist. And when I
say addresses, I mean home addresses. Well, if this was
a dangerous case and you were dealing with dangerous people,
you are very reluctant to serve on a jury. So
(18:01):
that also, because it was something it sounded rather mundane,
not paying taxes, they were able to find some jurors
to do that. So Capone became the kind of test case.
Could they convict a gangster for violating prohibition related activities
on this basis? And the answer with Capone was yes.
(18:24):
At first he was said to Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta,
and then he was moved to a brand new federal
prison made for so called super criminals that had just
opened called Alcatraz, notorious Alcatraz.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And you're listening to Lawrence berg Green, author of Capone,
the Man and the Ear or what a story he's
telling and what an image he's casting. We can almost
see Capone, and we also understand why he wanted to
be seen as he was seen as a banker, not
as a mobster. The fedora, the suit and tie. And
then come syphilis, this scourge that mosts recovered from, but
(19:04):
not Capone, and this led to the change and his behavior.
Neuro Syphilis had that ability. And then came, of course,
the prosecution for tax evasion and his journey to jail,
first in Georgia and then to Alcatraze. When we come
back more of Lawrence burg Green, more of al Capone's story.
Here are our American stories, and we continue with our
(19:39):
American stories, and we're telling the story of al Capone.
Here again his author, Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Before Caupol, there was no Alcatraz. He didn't have these
kinds of you know, super prisons. It was no federal
prison system at that point. But now there was. As
the government was becoming more sophisticated and yourocratized. And he
was one of the first people sent there. Now, he
was only in his late thirties when he went, and
(20:08):
he was already then the most notorious, best known criminal,
not only in the United States but in the world.
There had been tons of newsports about him, there were
movies being made about his life, and so he had
become famous at a very young age. If Capone hadn't
had syphilis, it's really difficult to imagine what would have happened,
(20:31):
because he probably just would have kept going and going,
unless somebody actually assassinated him, which was a constant problem. Anyway,
he went to Alcatraz, and that was helpful for people
wanted to know about him, because the Bureau of Prisons
made an effort to keep detailed medical records about Capone
(20:53):
and other prisoners. So that's how we wound up knowing
about his medical condition and other facts about his life
and family. Also, by the time he got there, the
neurosyphilis emerged, which is what happens. It follows a pattern
and then it becomes more and more predominant. It's like
an infection that suddenly breaks out and takes over your body. Again,
(21:16):
there was no pedicillin, and within the space of not
many months, he began to exhibit signs of dementia. You
might want to call it soilility, and it was pretty extreme.
His rational outbursts kind of faded away, and instead he
was reduced to not comprehending what was going on in
(21:36):
the world, to seeming that he was walking through a dream,
to reverting to almost childlike behavior, which was kind of grotesque.
Other prisoners in Alcatraz wanted to take advantage of the
stamp him, pick on him, or something like that. The
guards tried to keep him safe. He eventually died of
(21:57):
the effects of neurosyphilis in nineteen forty seven. By then
he had been said to out of prison. He was
in living in Miabbi and again in a fog of dementia.
Nobody really knew what to do with him. Once World
War Two started, he seemed like a relic from another era.
The difference between the early nineteen twenties or the warring
(22:18):
twenties and then the Depression and then the beginning of
World War two made composed seemed like something you know
from long ago and far away. Also, prohibition was repealed
eventually when FDR was elected. So there were some lingering
traces of the illegal economy that prohibition had given rise to,
(22:40):
but in general it was different. Now, it was a
different world, so you couldn't really have another capoone. But
you know, by then, the idea of gangs organized gangs
of different kinds had become pretty entrenched in American society,
and you know, has become embedded in our culture and
(23:01):
in the kind of a folklore. And Capone now has
become a symbol of lawlessness, and it's sort of a
Robin Hood syndrome. Also, some of the people around him
have also become famous, thinking particularly of eliot Ness, who
was in the movie The Untouchables and also the TV show.
(23:21):
Elliot Ness is popularly portrayed as Al Capone's nemesis and
the law man who finally got Capone. Your honor, we
would like to withdraw our plea of not guilty and
enter a plea of guilty.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Never stopped, never stop fighting until the fight is done.
Let me say, what do you say? I said, never
stop fighting til the fight is done?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Why no, herds, you're not a lot of talking about
here ended.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
The lesson.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Talking to her well, elliot ness in reality didn't have
much to do with putting Capone in jail or getting
him convicted. The real eliot ness was charmy, loved the limelight,
was sort of hapless, ironically enough, became an alcoholic in
later life and was not really considered a major player
(24:25):
in these events. So how did this happen? He had
a ghostwriter, a collaborator who wrote a book about his adventures.
This ghostwriter was named Oscar Freeley fra l e. Y,
and this book, which actually wasn't even that popular at
that time, laurified elliot ness and attributed all sorts of
(24:47):
daring do and heroic activities to him, which were wild exaggerations.
The book itself was fairly popular and seemed to be overdone,
to put it mildly. However, when the TV show in
the sixties early sixties came along, it used the name
Untouchables and the Oscar Frehley book as the source material,
(25:09):
and all the episodes tended to be highly fictionalized, and
Robert Stack, who played the part you know, was very convincing.
So the folklore wound up supplanting the reality, which sometimes happens.
The people didn't realize that the real eliot ness hadn't
had that much to do with Capone. He had then
got involved in politics. He had run unsuccessfully for mayor
(25:34):
in Cleveland. His political career was derailed there because he
was involved in a car accident because he was drinking
too much, ironically enough, and so that was the real
eliot ness was not that particularly admirable or effective. But
you know, that's what happens with myth making. It sometimes
(25:55):
really takes off from a reality and then you know,
goes off into a whole different reaction. Thanks for Capone.
He died in nineteen forty seven at a young age,
and then he was buried, and you know, people were
surprised to hear that by that time that al Capone
was still alive, because, as I said, he had belonged
(26:16):
to a figure from another era. So in a sense,
there's two alcohols. There's the reality of what he did
in his life. Then there's the legend, which goes on
and on and on and is still influential almost any country.
If you go and you mentioned al Capone, people know
who you're talking about. It's both trembling but understandable because
(26:39):
Robin Hood type outlaws have an appeal, and his ears
of fame, which ten or twelve years, he really made
a huge impression. He liked the live light, He gave
a lot of interviews, so he made himself into his
celebrity in the nineteen twenties because of that. So that's
why we hear about the name Al Capone. We don't
(27:00):
hear about the name Johnny Torrio or Jake Guzik or
other lesser known gangsters who were in some ways more
powerful or just as dangerous or menacing as Capone. Anyway,
his ability to promote himself left the lasting impression. Also,
the nineteen twenties was a time when publicity and public
(27:23):
image and image making really became an important element of
American society, which continues to this day. And if a
component lived in the era of the Internet, I can
only imagine what would have happened to his reputation. He
would have become viral, viral, viral, viral, there's no doubt
about it. But he was the equivalent of viral as
(27:43):
much as you could be in those days. And yet
it was a pretty private person. When he wasn't giving interviews,
as I said, he often retreated to Lansing, Michigan, where
he has some friends and some relatives who shielded him
from the public and tried to an ordinary life for
as much as he could. The other thing about Capone
(28:05):
was that he was very fond of music, especially jazz,
and at that point jazz musicians got their start essentially
in nightclubs, and because of Prohibition, which they're more and
more popular, so popular music, jazz especially and gangster culture
or the rackets, whatever you want to call it, kind
(28:26):
of grew up together. So he inadvertently fostered what's now
you know, of course, the major beloved American art force.
So those are a few thoughts about al Capone and
the legend that he gave rise to.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Lawrence berg Green for sharing the story of al Capone
with us. His book Capone The Man in the Era
is available at Amazon or the usual Suspects. Again, that's
Capone the Man in the Era, a terrific read, a
terrific writer and storyteller, and telling a story about an
(29:05):
age because without Prohibition, there's probably not an al Capone
and without Chicago. Chicago's location, as we learned from the
Great Chicago Fire, in Chicago's rise to become the second
biggest city in America, had a lot to do with
its location as a distribution point. And then his death
and how syphilis just tore apart his mind and his body.
(29:28):
By nineteen forty seven, he's in Miami and in the
fog of dementia and just well a shadow of the man.
He was a product of the nineteen twenties, of the
jazz age, of Prohibition, and of the beginning of modern famdom.
The story of al Capone here on our American stories.
(30:00):
Don't und don't bound, don't stop us
And we continue with our American stories. America's fascination with
mob boss al Capone is a century old. Here to
tell the story is the biographer of the definitive work
on Capone, Lawrence berg Green. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Al Capone is, of course America's most notorious and famous,
celebrated outlaw and criminal, not only in the United States
but in many countries around the world. Components particularly popular
in countries like Japan and Eastern Europe. But his legend
(00:51):
is ubiquitous and these one of these very popular figures
who emerged in the nineteen twenties who became iconic. Charles
Lenburg the Aviator was another. He was really different because
as I got into Capone, I discovered that it was
like peeling an onion. And there was a lot to
(01:11):
say about him. He never sought to become a gangster.
He came off as a very soft spoken. He seemed
to be more like a banker than a gunman, and
I think that was part of the reason for his success.
But again it was all accidental. He was born in
(01:33):
eighteen ninety nine in Brooklyn, New York. His family was
from Naples. His father was a barber, His mother was
a seamstress. He had seven siblings, all brothers except for
one sister, Mafalda, whom apparently everybody was terrified of. They
were here in Brooklyn, like so many other immigrants. Every year.
(01:56):
Almost fifty thousand Italian immigrants arrived in this country in
the year of his birth. That's a huge number, and
that's just from Italy. And they encountered a great deal
of prejudice. Italians were not very popular for hiring, and
it was difficult for them to make their way in
this country, so they were often hard up looking for work.
(02:20):
There were various reasons for that. Part of it was
the fact that they were Italian. Part of it was
the fact that they were Catholic. There was at that
time a strong anti Catholic prejudice, so the odds were
stacked against them. You may wonder, well, why did people
like the Capone family even come here to the United States.
It's because the old story they came here for opportunity,
(02:44):
because things were even worse where they came from. Naples
in southern Italy was very poor and the prospects were
not great. And here so the myth ran. The streets
were paved with gold Capone came of age here. The
(03:05):
school records show that he was an indifferent student in
Brooklyn and left school as soon as he could and
had various odd jobs around. He was known as being diligent.
He was not a child robber or anything like that.
What changed everything was prohibition, and prohibition, just to remind you,
(03:28):
became the law of the land in the early nineteen
twenties when in outlawed all the consumption of liquor was
an example of the tyranny of the minority. Perhaps alcoholism
was seen to be a big social evil that led
to the deterioration of morality, the destruction of families, and
(03:50):
a lot of crime, and so alcohol was demonized. Well,
Colger's passed a law and it was outlawed. However, just
passing the law doesn't make it so, and in this
case it had the opposite effect. It backfired. What it
did was it put a huge segment of the population
(04:12):
which was used to drinking alcohol, not because they were alcoholics,
but because that was part of their daily life, and
made them outlaws. They didn't really think they had done
anything wrong. It was normal to drink wine or beer
or something similar. Suddenly they were demonized and could get
into very serious trouble. Well, that also gave rise to
(04:35):
a whole underground economy of liquor production and consumption and
what I call the trinity of vice, which was booze gambling,
and then that went along with it prostitution, and because
it was secret or semi secret, it made it harder
to prosecute. You know, they say sunlight is the best disinfectant,
(05:00):
but this turned off the sunlight. Also. Capone, of course
was Catholic, and a large part of the country was Catholic.
They felt discriminated against because wine was part of the
holy sacrament in communion. Suddenly their wine was illegal and
they felt this was discrimination against Catholics. Again, was not
(05:25):
really into this kind of crime. However, by accident, some
family members and some friends of the family pulled him
into small time criminal activities such as bedding and things
like that, and Capone himself then began to see an opportunity.
(05:46):
He left New York. He went to Philadelphia. He became
the protege of a more sophisticated criminal named Johnny Torrio,
who saw the possibilities of an underground or sea great
criminal organization based on this prohibition, which had suddenly given
(06:06):
the rackets, as it was sometimes called, a gift of
making what they were doing illegal. So Capone became involved
in the importing of alcohol, often from Canada and from
other places in the Caribbean, in Rum and you know
it's seen as now, you know, very colorful activity. It
was that, but it was also led to a great
(06:30):
deal of danger. Capone was very good at doing this
and organizing this. He discovered a gift for arranging deliveries,
finding places to conceal alcohol, and to form alliances with
other gangs and people who were doing the same sort
(06:51):
of thing, especially some were Polish, some were Jewish. They
also became famous or notorious. And again this was not
his first choice. His first choice was to be an accountant,
and I'm not joking. Instead, he found himself married with
the child and then several children, and he also became
(07:12):
suddenly more successful than anybody ever imagined. Now he was
very young, he was still in his twenties, and by
the time he was in his late twenties, he had
gone to Chicago, where Johnny Torreo had summoned him, and
he became the most powerful person in Chicago, which at
the time was the second most important city in the
(07:34):
United States. This was incredible. You say, how could this happen? Well,
it happened for two reasons. One was Prohibition and the
other one was that the Chicago infrastructure, law enforcement, and
government was extremely corrupt and Prohibition had undermined it. Even
more so. Capone and others like him were able to
(07:54):
capitalize on it. And because they were making so much money,
they were able to bribe politicians, and that way they
were able to control politicians. You may ask, what about
the government, what about the federal government, Well they were
very slow to get into the act. When the federal
government felt they had nothing to do with this, j
(08:15):
Ander Hoover eventually became head of the FBI. It was
only when the Saint Valentine's Day massacre came to his
attention that Hoover and other people began to wonder and
worry about it. The Saint Valentine's Day massacre, which was
on February fourteenth, nineteen twenty seven, should have been, in
(08:37):
the oal course of things, a minor dust up in Chicago. Instead,
it led to the deaths of several people, and it
suddenly made the front page of newspapers all around, and
people realized for the first time that there was either
a crime problem or a violence problem, or a gun
(08:58):
problem because of the machine guns that were involved. And
suddenly outlaws and gangsters and what they represented became a
topic of urgent national concern.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And you're listening to Lawrence berger and tell one heck
of a story about al Capone, the family's migration from
Naples to seek a better life and finding themselves in Brooklyn,
Italian and Catholic and not loved because they were Italian,
and because of Catholic discrimination in America at the time
fifty thousand Italian immigrants arriving annually in this country. And
(09:33):
what happens next is just a story of well, just
accident in serendipity, prohibition driving everything, and of course the
government thinking they were going to stop a problem, and
if anything, probably exacerbating it. And there in the center
of it was this guy al Capone, with an organizing talent,
a distribution talent. And we'll learn about some of his
(09:54):
other talents when we come back here on our American stories.
And we continue with our American stories and with Lawrence Bergreen,
author of Capone, the man and the era. Let's pick
(10:17):
up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
The FBI was playing catch up. When Jaegar Hoover first
heard about al Capone, his initial reaction was who's that
he had never heard of him? Well, eventually they found out,
and it was difficult to prosecute them. It was difficult
to get people to testify against al Capone and other
people for two reasons. First of all, in Chicago, he
(10:43):
had made himself into sort of a local hero, if
that's the way to put it. He was very clever.
He kind of worked both sides of this. On the
one hand, he was exploiting prohibition and selling alcohol and
related activities. On the other hand, he ran the equivalent
of the soup kitchen and gave a lot away to charity.
(11:05):
He was a robin Hood figure, robbing from the rich
and giving to the poor. There was no such thing
as welfare in those days, so the state, you know,
federal government was much much weaker. That left a valcuum
for Capone and others to fill, and so they did.
Now Capone wasn't the only one doing this. There were
(11:28):
Irish gangsters, there were Jewish gangsters, there were Polish gangsters,
and on and on. You get the idea. But he
became the most visible because he was articulate. He was
very well spoken. He didn't shun the limelight like some
others did. Now when you think of the visual image
of Capone, you think of the hold king man. In fact,
(11:52):
the reality was somewhat different. He was always extremely well dressed.
He wore a fedora, he wore a tie he wanted
it to be, and looked like banker rather than a gangster.
He did not go around with machine guns or pistols.
Eventually he hired some gunmen or guards to do that
(12:12):
for him. But he was known as more of a
broker and businessman than anything else. When I was researching
this book, I got to know a number of Copone
family members who lived in the area and in the Midwest,
especially around Lansing, Michigan, where he spent some summers. Two
(12:32):
things were striking. First of all, none of them was
any kind of outlaw. This was not like The Godfather,
where they were a generational dynasty. They had all moved
on to other things. They were doctors, they were lawyers,
they were in the military, generals, they were homemakers and
things like that, and they didn't really want any association
(12:54):
with the stigma of the name Compone, so that was
very striking. The other thing that was striking was that
they all remembered. When I asked the inevitable question, what
was al really like, they all pretty much had the
same thing to say that he was very considerate, seft spoken,
(13:15):
not violent, did not seem like the kind of gangster
that you saw on TV, and was a valued family member.
Of course, his victims were dead, might have had a
different story, and you know, there were other sides to
the Alcopold story, but that was the impression he made
on those who spend a lot of time with him.
(13:38):
At that time, syphilis, venereal disease was a major scourge.
I also did a lot of research on syphilis, and
it's sort of like the common cold in the sense
that it's very common and it's, as they say, self
healing ninety percent of the time. So if you get
it ninety percent at the time, it actually goes away
(14:00):
on its own. Ten percent of the time it doesn't.
Capone was in the unlucky ten percent. When he visited
some brothels or prostitutes he acquired it. It went underground
as syphilis can do became neurosyphilis. He was unaware of
(14:20):
the fact that he had it. For example, one of
his brothers, or at least one had it, but it
just went away on its own and didn't affect the
brother at all. But it was like a time bomb,
if you will, lodged and composed nervous system that at
one point was going to explode. People noticed a change
in Compone's behavior as he was getting into his thirties.
(14:43):
I think he may be remember the moving the Untouchables
with the very very explosive, compelling performance showing Compone's temper.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Why they got the shipment, why they got the whole shipment?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I'm in this What am I alone in this world?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Did I asked you what you're trying to do? Did
I ask what I wanted you to find?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This dancy boy elliot?
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And that I want him dead, I want his family dead,
I want his house bright in the ground.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
And the famous scene that sounds like it was made
up where he suddenly blew a stack and when two
people were threatening him, he took a baseball bat and
bashed their heads out.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I get nowhere unless the team was.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
It seemed very unlike the al capone that anybody ever meant. However,
that incident really happened, Well, what changed the series neurosyphilis
had violently distorted his behavior. By the way. The cure,
of course for syphilis has been for a long time,
ever since World War Two, penicillin or something related to that,
(16:13):
but that did not exist at that point. The cures
that were around were things like mercury, which was basically poisoned,
or other ineffective cures, so there was no medicinal cure
for it. So people didn't know or understand why component
had become suddenly out of control, but in fact he did.
(16:34):
Eventually the government found a way to catch up with him,
and that wasn't through his murders or violence. It was
through the fact that he didn't pay taxes. If you
were a criminal and you had a huge income that
was off the books, you were not going to report it.
You know that you made a million dollars from illegal activities.
(16:56):
So the government eventually put together a case that didn't
have to deal with with people associated with compone violence.
It was simply the fact that he didn't pay his taxes.
That was also an argument that they felt rightly that
they could get a jury to understand. Because everybody had
(17:17):
to pay taxes, they could relate to it. It was
sort of simple in the sense basic. Rather, although it
didn't seem as horrible as his other indiscretions and activities
with which he was late, this was one that the
ordinary potential juror could get a hold of and understand. Now,
it was actually tough to get a jury to sit
(17:39):
down on a case involving component and other gangsters because
in those days newspapers publish the names and addresses and
sometimes even the photographs of a jurorist. And when I
say addresses, I mean home addresses. Well, if this was
a dangerous case and you were dealing with dangerous people,
you are very reluctant to serve on a jury. So
(18:01):
that also, because it was something it sounded rather mundane,
not paying taxes, they were able to find some jurors
to do that. So Capone became the kind of test case.
Could they convict a gangster for violating prohibition related activities
on this basis? And the answer with Capone was yes.
(18:24):
At first he was said to Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta,
and then he was moved to a brand new federal
prison made for so called super criminals that had just
opened called Alcatraz, notorious Alcatraz.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And you're listening to Lawrence berg Green, author of Capone,
the Man and the Ear or what a story he's
telling and what an image he's casting. We can almost
see Capone, and we also understand why he wanted to
be seen as he was seen as a banker, not
as a mobster. The fedora, the suit and tie. And
then come syphilis, this scourge that mosts recovered from, but
(19:04):
not Capone, and this led to the change and his behavior.
Neuro Syphilis had that ability. And then came, of course,
the prosecution for tax evasion and his journey to jail,
first in Georgia and then to Alcatraze. When we come
back more of Lawrence burg Green, more of al Capone's story.
Here are our American stories, and we continue with our
(19:39):
American stories, and we're telling the story of al Capone.
Here again his author, Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Before Caupol, there was no Alcatraz. He didn't have these
kinds of you know, super prisons. It was no federal
prison system at that point. But now there was. As
the government was becoming more sophisticated and yourocratized. And he
was one of the first people sent there. Now, he
was only in his late thirties when he went, and
(20:08):
he was already then the most notorious, best known criminal,
not only in the United States but in the world.
There had been tons of newsports about him, there were
movies being made about his life, and so he had
become famous at a very young age. If Capone hadn't
had syphilis, it's really difficult to imagine what would have happened,
(20:31):
because he probably just would have kept going and going,
unless somebody actually assassinated him, which was a constant problem. Anyway,
he went to Alcatraz, and that was helpful for people
wanted to know about him, because the Bureau of Prisons
made an effort to keep detailed medical records about Capone
(20:53):
and other prisoners. So that's how we wound up knowing
about his medical condition and other facts about his life
and family. Also, by the time he got there, the
neurosyphilis emerged, which is what happens. It follows a pattern
and then it becomes more and more predominant. It's like
an infection that suddenly breaks out and takes over your body. Again,
(21:16):
there was no pedicillin, and within the space of not
many months, he began to exhibit signs of dementia. You
might want to call it soilility, and it was pretty extreme.
His rational outbursts kind of faded away, and instead he
was reduced to not comprehending what was going on in
(21:36):
the world, to seeming that he was walking through a dream,
to reverting to almost childlike behavior, which was kind of grotesque.
Other prisoners in Alcatraz wanted to take advantage of the
stamp him, pick on him, or something like that. The
guards tried to keep him safe. He eventually died of
(21:57):
the effects of neurosyphilis in nineteen forty seven. By then
he had been said to out of prison. He was
in living in Miabbi and again in a fog of dementia.
Nobody really knew what to do with him. Once World
War Two started, he seemed like a relic from another era.
The difference between the early nineteen twenties or the warring
(22:18):
twenties and then the Depression and then the beginning of
World War two made composed seemed like something you know
from long ago and far away. Also, prohibition was repealed
eventually when FDR was elected. So there were some lingering
traces of the illegal economy that prohibition had given rise to,
(22:40):
but in general it was different. Now, it was a
different world, so you couldn't really have another capoone. But
you know, by then, the idea of gangs organized gangs
of different kinds had become pretty entrenched in American society,
and you know, has become embedded in our culture and
(23:01):
in the kind of a folklore. And Capone now has
become a symbol of lawlessness, and it's sort of a
Robin Hood syndrome. Also, some of the people around him
have also become famous, thinking particularly of eliot Ness, who
was in the movie The Untouchables and also the TV show.
(23:21):
Elliot Ness is popularly portrayed as Al Capone's nemesis and
the law man who finally got Capone. Your honor, we
would like to withdraw our plea of not guilty and
enter a plea of guilty.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Never stopped, never stop fighting until the fight is done.
Let me say, what do you say? I said, never
stop fighting til the fight is done?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Why no, herds, you're not a lot of talking about
here ended.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
The lesson.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Talking to her well, elliot ness in reality didn't have
much to do with putting Capone in jail or getting
him convicted. The real eliot ness was charmy, loved the limelight,
was sort of hapless, ironically enough, became an alcoholic in
later life and was not really considered a major player
(24:25):
in these events. So how did this happen? He had
a ghostwriter, a collaborator who wrote a book about his adventures.
This ghostwriter was named Oscar Freeley fra l e. Y,
and this book, which actually wasn't even that popular at
that time, laurified elliot ness and attributed all sorts of
(24:47):
daring do and heroic activities to him, which were wild exaggerations.
The book itself was fairly popular and seemed to be overdone,
to put it mildly. However, when the TV show in
the sixties early sixties came along, it used the name
Untouchables and the Oscar Frehley book as the source material,
(25:09):
and all the episodes tended to be highly fictionalized, and
Robert Stack, who played the part you know, was very convincing.
So the folklore wound up supplanting the reality, which sometimes happens.
The people didn't realize that the real eliot ness hadn't
had that much to do with Capone. He had then
got involved in politics. He had run unsuccessfully for mayor
(25:34):
in Cleveland. His political career was derailed there because he
was involved in a car accident because he was drinking
too much, ironically enough, and so that was the real
eliot ness was not that particularly admirable or effective. But
you know, that's what happens with myth making. It sometimes
(25:55):
really takes off from a reality and then you know,
goes off into a whole different reaction. Thanks for Capone.
He died in nineteen forty seven at a young age,
and then he was buried, and you know, people were
surprised to hear that by that time that al Capone
was still alive, because, as I said, he had belonged
(26:16):
to a figure from another era. So in a sense,
there's two alcohols. There's the reality of what he did
in his life. Then there's the legend, which goes on
and on and on and is still influential almost any country.
If you go and you mentioned al Capone, people know
who you're talking about. It's both trembling but understandable because
(26:39):
Robin Hood type outlaws have an appeal, and his ears
of fame, which ten or twelve years, he really made
a huge impression. He liked the live light, He gave
a lot of interviews, so he made himself into his
celebrity in the nineteen twenties because of that. So that's
why we hear about the name Al Capone. We don't
(27:00):
hear about the name Johnny Torrio or Jake Guzik or
other lesser known gangsters who were in some ways more
powerful or just as dangerous or menacing as Capone. Anyway,
his ability to promote himself left the lasting impression. Also,
the nineteen twenties was a time when publicity and public
(27:23):
image and image making really became an important element of
American society, which continues to this day. And if a
component lived in the era of the Internet, I can
only imagine what would have happened to his reputation. He
would have become viral, viral, viral, viral, there's no doubt
about it. But he was the equivalent of viral as
(27:43):
much as you could be in those days. And yet
it was a pretty private person. When he wasn't giving interviews,
as I said, he often retreated to Lansing, Michigan, where
he has some friends and some relatives who shielded him
from the public and tried to an ordinary life for
as much as he could. The other thing about Capone
(28:05):
was that he was very fond of music, especially jazz,
and at that point jazz musicians got their start essentially
in nightclubs, and because of Prohibition, which they're more and
more popular, so popular music, jazz especially and gangster culture
or the rackets, whatever you want to call it, kind
(28:26):
of grew up together. So he inadvertently fostered what's now
you know, of course, the major beloved American art force.
So those are a few thoughts about al Capone and
the legend that he gave rise to.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Lawrence berg Green for sharing the story of al Capone
with us. His book Capone The Man in the Era
is available at Amazon or the usual Suspects. Again, that's
Capone the Man in the Era, a terrific read, a
terrific writer and storyteller, and telling a story about an
(29:05):
age because without Prohibition, there's probably not an al Capone
and without Chicago. Chicago's location, as we learned from the
Great Chicago Fire, in Chicago's rise to become the second
biggest city in America, had a lot to do with
its location as a distribution point. And then his death
and how syphilis just tore apart his mind and his body.
(29:28):
By nineteen forty seven, he's in Miami and in the
fog of dementia and just well a shadow of the man.
He was a product of the nineteen twenties, of the
jazz age, of Prohibition, and of the beginning of modern famdom.
The story of al Capone here on our American stories.
(30:00):
Don't und don't bound, don't stop us
Host
Lee Habeeb
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