January 20, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, America’s fascination with mob boss Al Capone is a century old. Here to tell his 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 Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (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. Copone is particularly
popular in countries like Japan and Eastern Europe, but his
legend is ubiquitous and these one of these very popular
(00:55):
figures who emerged in the nineteen twenties who became iconic.
Charles Lay the Aviator was another. He was really different
because as I got into Capon, I discovered that it
was like peeling an onion. And there was a lot
to say about him. He never sought to become a gangster.
(01:15):
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
eighteen ninety nine in Brooklyn, New York. His family was
(01:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Every year.
Speaker 3 (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):
They were the 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
(02:42):
for opportunity, 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.
(03:05):
The 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
(03:27):
to remind you, became the law of the land in
the early nineteen twenties when it 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,
(03:50):
and a lot of crime, and so alcohol was demonized. Well,
Colgress 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,
(04:59):
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 seen 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
(06:29):
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 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
(07:33):
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):
Andnger 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 loal 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
(08:57):
problem because of the machine gun 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 Bergreen 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.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
And what happens next is just a.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And there in the center.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Of it was this guy al Capone, with an organizing talent,
a distribution talent. And we'll learn about some of his
other talents when we come back here on our American stories.
(10:08):
And we continue with our American stories and with Lawrence Bergreen,
author of Capone, the Man and the era. Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (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 a 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 a 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 wore
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 Compone
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, soft 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 Alcapoone story, but that was the impression he made
on those who spend a lot of time with him.
(13:38):
At that time, syphilis maneial 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 of 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 in Compo's nervous system that at
one point was going to explode. People noticed a change
in Capone'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 Capone's temper.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Why they got the shipment, why they got the whole shipment?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
I changed with this, What am I alone in this world?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Did I asked you what you're trying to do? Did
I ask what I wanted you to find?
Speaker 4 (15:09):
This dancy boy Elliott nuts. I want him dead, I
want his family dead, I want his house puked in
the crowd.
Speaker 3 (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 4 (15:32):
I get nowhere unless the team wins.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It seemed very unlike the al capone that anybody ever meant. However,
that incident really happened, Well, what changed. The answer is
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
(17:16):
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 linked, 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 in a case involving component and other gangsters because
in those days newspapers publish the names and addresses and
sometimes even the photographs of a jurist. 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 berg Green, more of al Capone's
story here on our American stories, and we continue with
(19:38):
our American stories and we're telling the story of al
Capone here again his author, Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Before Caupole, there was no Alcatraz, 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 purecratized, and he was
one of the first people sent there. Now, he was
only in his late thirties when he went, and he
(20:08):
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, because
(20:31):
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 invention 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 silility, and it was pretty extreme.
His irrational 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 him,
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, and 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
(22:17):
or the warring 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
(22:39):
had given rise to, but in general it was different now.
It was a different world, so you couldn't really have
another Capone. 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
(22:59):
our culture and 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
elliot Ness, who was in the movie The Untouchables and
(23:20):
also the TV show. 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 er a plea of guilty.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Never stopped, never stop fighting til the fight is done.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Let me say, what are you saying? I said, never
stop fighting til the fight is done? Why no, herd,
you prepare it over ash.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
You're not a lot of talking about here under the lesson.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I'm not a parent.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Well, elliot ness in reality didn't have much to do
with putting component 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 in these events.
(24:27):
So how did this happen? He had a ghostwriter, a
collaborator who wrote a book about his adventures. This ghostwriter
was named Oscar Frehley. Fral E Y had this book,
which actually wasn't even that popular at that time, laurified
elliot ness and attributed all sorts of daring do and
(24:48):
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 TV show in the sixties
early sixties came along, it used the name Untouchables and
the Oscar Freiley book as the source material, and all
(25:10):
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.
Though people didn't realize that the real alien 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 Torreo 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 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.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
But he was the equivalent of viral as 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 live ordinary life as much
(28:02):
as he could. Another thing about Capone 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 were more and more popular,
so popular music, jazz especially, and gangster culture or the rackets,
(28:24):
whatever you want to call it, kind of grew up together.
So he inadvertently fostered what's now you know. Of course,
the major beloved American arn't force. So those are a
few thoughts about al Capone and the legend that he
gave rise to.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
His book Capone The.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Man in the Era is available at Amazon or the
usual Suspects.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Again, that's Capone the Man in the.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Era, a terrific read, a terrific writer and storyteller, and
telling a story about an age because without Prohibition was
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.
(29:23):
And then his death and how syphilis just tore apart
his mind and his body. 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
(29:45):
al Capone here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Dot Stop the fund boot Bound Bootstock Bus
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 Bergreen.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (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. Copone is particularly
popular in countries like Japan and Eastern Europe, but his
legend is ubiquitous and these one of these very popular
(00:55):
figures who emerged in the nineteen twenties who became iconic.
Charles Lay the Aviator was another. He was really different
because as I got into Capon, I discovered that it
was like peeling an onion. And there was a lot
to say about him. He never sought to become a gangster.
(01:15):
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
eighteen ninety nine in Brooklyn, New York. His family was
(01:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Every year.
Speaker 3 (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):
They were the 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
(02:42):
for opportunity, 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.
(03:05):
The 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
(03:27):
to remind you, became the law of the land in
the early nineteen twenties when it 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,
(03:50):
and a lot of crime, and so alcohol was demonized. Well,
Colgress 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,
(04:59):
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 seen 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
(06:29):
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 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
(07:33):
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):
Andnger 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 loal 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
(08:57):
problem because of the machine gun 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 Bergreen 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.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
And what happens next is just a.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And there in the center.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Of it was this guy al Capone, with an organizing talent,
a distribution talent. And we'll learn about some of his
other talents when we come back here on our American stories.
(10:08):
And we continue with our American stories and with Lawrence Bergreen,
author of Capone, the Man and the era. Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (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 a 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 a 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 wore
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 Compone
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, soft 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 Alcapoone story, but that was the impression he made
on those who spend a lot of time with him.
(13:38):
At that time, syphilis maneial 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 of 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 in Compo's nervous system that at
one point was going to explode. People noticed a change
in Capone'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 Capone's temper.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Why they got the shipment, why they got the whole shipment?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
I changed with this, What am I alone in this world?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Did I asked you what you're trying to do? Did
I ask what I wanted you to find?
Speaker 4 (15:09):
This dancy boy Elliott nuts. I want him dead, I
want his family dead, I want his house puked in
the crowd.
Speaker 3 (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 4 (15:32):
I get nowhere unless the team wins.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It seemed very unlike the al capone that anybody ever meant. However,
that incident really happened, Well, what changed. The answer is
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
(17:16):
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 linked, 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 in a case involving component and other gangsters because
in those days newspapers publish the names and addresses and
sometimes even the photographs of a jurist. 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 berg Green, more of al Capone's
story here on our American stories, and we continue with
(19:38):
our American stories and we're telling the story of al
Capone here again his author, Lawrence Bergreen.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Before Caupole, there was no Alcatraz, 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 purecratized, and he was
one of the first people sent there. Now, he was
only in his late thirties when he went, and he
(20:08):
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, because
(20:31):
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 invention 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 silility, and it was pretty extreme.
His irrational 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 him,
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, and 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
(22:17):
or the warring 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
(22:39):
had given rise to, but in general it was different now.
It was a different world, so you couldn't really have
another Capone. 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
(22:59):
our culture and 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
elliot Ness, who was in the movie The Untouchables and
(23:20):
also the TV show. 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 er a plea of guilty.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
Never stopped, never stop fighting til the fight is done.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Let me say, what are you saying? I said, never
stop fighting til the fight is done? Why no, herd,
you prepare it over ash.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
You're not a lot of talking about here under the lesson.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I'm not a parent.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Well, elliot ness in reality didn't have much to do
with putting component 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 in these events.
(24:27):
So how did this happen? He had a ghostwriter, a
collaborator who wrote a book about his adventures. This ghostwriter
was named Oscar Frehley. Fral E Y had this book,
which actually wasn't even that popular at that time, laurified
elliot ness and attributed all sorts of daring do and
(24:48):
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 TV show in the sixties
early sixties came along, it used the name Untouchables and
the Oscar Freiley book as the source material, and all
(25:10):
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.
Though people didn't realize that the real alien 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 Torreo 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 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.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
But he was the equivalent of viral as 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 live ordinary life as much
(28:02):
as he could. Another thing about Capone 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 were more and more popular,
so popular music, jazz especially, and gangster culture or the rackets,
(28:24):
whatever you want to call it, kind of grew up together.
So he inadvertently fostered what's now you know. Of course,
the major beloved American arn't force. So those are a
few thoughts about al Capone and the legend that he
gave rise to.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
His book Capone The.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Man in the Era is available at Amazon or the
usual Suspects.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Again, that's Capone the Man in the.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Era, a terrific read, a terrific writer and storyteller, and
telling a story about an age because without Prohibition was
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.
(29:23):
And then his death and how syphilis just tore apart
his mind and his body. 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
(29:45):
al Capone here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Dot Stop the fund boot Bound Bootstock Bus
Host
Lee Habeeb
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