When Syphilis Ran The Mob: The Mae & Al Capone Story

Before Italian-American mobster Al Capone became Public Enemy #1, he fell in love with an Irish girl named Mae, and defied cultural customs by marrying her. They had a son named Sonny, and Al wanted to provide for his family as a legitimate businessman. But (spoiler alert) he fell into a life of crime. And an undiagnosed case of syphilis wreaked havoc on his brain and made him even more ruthless as the years went by!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What are we supposed to do? There's two things in
life that I want to small talk about right now. Yeah, well,
there's two things I can talk about right now because
they're all of my focus is either you doing Fringe
Festival or Succession, and it's like nothing else exists, I
mean basically, or you know this research that I've been doing.

(00:21):
So it's like that's it, that's all I got, and
I don't want to. I don't want to just always
open up and talk about the TV we're watching.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I will say, what's a very funny two shows to
watch at the same time is Succession and The Good Place,
Oh Watching, Yeah, which we just did a rewatch of
because sometimes, you know, around fringe festival time, my brain's
a little full of stuff and things and I'm just like,
I cannot be following this.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Oh yeah, you need something you've seen before, right, I.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Need something comforting and warm on in the back that
I can ignore if I need to.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
And I asked if maybe we could hold off on
the fourteenth you watch a Brooklyn nine nine and maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Just switch it up this time, right, And so I said, fine,
let's rewatch good plays. But it was so funny to
be watching like all these people be like, how can
we be a good person? And then switch on over
to Succession, whether they're not even asking that they don't
even know to ask that.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Imagine imagine asking Kendall Roy, what do we owe to
each other? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I imagine asking Roman Roy Kendall get a real crazy answer.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Kenda will be like, well, I think it's like Socrates said, uh, yeah,
you know, uh gotta get those metrics, right, good money
to get those metrics.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yesterday, Eli turned at me and said, well, you gotta
you gotta think w W S R D. And I
said what would Steve Rogers do? And he was like,
oh no, I was thinking what would Shimroy do? Would
which is essentially the opposite of whatever Steve Rogers.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well, all right, we're alienating everyone who doesn't watch Succession.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
True, but it's totally works that we're talking about Succession
or leading into this episode is so true. Basically organized crime.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Basically organized crime, that's right. Whether it's like you know,
the people who run the world or the people who
used to run the world, the underworld. That point is
we're talking about al Scarface Capone, Like, I don't need
to tell you he is one of the most notorious
gangsters in US history. This guy made a fortune in bootlegging, racketeering, bribery, murder,

(02:37):
and I mean, of course the worst of all tax evasion, disgusting.
This guy's life is wild and exciting and terrifying. He's fascinating.
Many adjectives could be used to describe al Capone. But
of course we're not here to go over all the
stories you've heard before, like the Saint Valentine's Day massacre,

(02:57):
or you know, him getting chased down by Elliott new
or any of that stuff. That info is all over
the place. People are going to do a better job
than we would at summarizing the crime life of al Capone.
And you can just go watch The Untouchables if you
want to. It's so good, awesome movie. Today we are here,
it's ridiculous romance. We're gonna talk about al Capone and
his wife May, who were a couple of star crossed

(03:19):
lovers from different cultures who actually defied their Catholic families
by getting together. They had an out of wedlock child.
Al had a bunch of affairs, of course, and his
case of undiagnosed syphilis might have had a huge impact,
not just on his family, but on Prohibition, the mob,

(03:39):
and American history itself. So today we're a couple of
stories and we're gonna sing like a canary about all
the sexy details in the life of Public Enemy number one.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Let's go your Moook's Hey, their friends come listen. Well,
Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no
match making o romance tips. It's just about ridiculous relations shift.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
I love.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
There might be any type of person at all, and
abstract concept or a concrete wall. But if there's a story,
we we're the second Glance Show. Ridiculous Romance.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
A production of iHeartRadio January seventeenth, eighteen ninety nine, in Brooklyn,
New York. I can never hear eighteen ninety nine. I'll
want musical theater. Folks out there are gonna be with
me on this without thinking of Newsies, which opens up.
But I'm a movie fan of Newsies. The musical's fine,
but it's all about the movie for me.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Maxicus really Christian Bale Well, I.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Mean, he's phenomenal, he's amazing. But Max Casella opens that
movie in eighteen ninety nine. The streets in New York
City echoed with the voices and newsies, So I can't
ever hear the word eighteen ninety nine without anyway, we're
not talking about newsies.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
All the newsies were echoing through this.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
The newsies were striking. Al Fonse Capone was born to
Italian immigrants, and they had moved to the US from
Naples just a few years before he was born. He
was one of nine children, and of course he attended
Catholic school right near where they lived in Park Slope.
In terms of his studies, Al was actually a great student.

(05:18):
He just had a real problem with authority, and that
doesn't really fly at a Catholic school. Al missed a
lot of classes and in sixth grade a teacher got
angry with him and started hitting him. Al was big kid,
and he did not take kindly to this, and he
smacked the teacher back right in the face, and that

(05:39):
day he was expelled and he never went back to
school again. At this point he starts hanging around with
questionable wise guys. In fact, one of his classmates and
buddies was Salvatore Luciana, better known later in life as
Lucky Luciano, one of America's most notorious gangsters. Just give
you an idea of like who his buddies were. Oh yeah,

(06:02):
I don't think you've seen you ever seeing hoodlum No,
it's Laurence Fishburne and Andy Garcia plays Lucky Luciano. That's
how I first learned about him. I remember that being
a really good movie mid nineties, so who knows.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
But yeah, yeah, Well, when he was only ten years old,
Al was picking fights with full grown men twice his size.
He's ready to fight if he wants you to catch
these hands. And he got involved in boys gangs around
the neighborhood as a teenager, with a direct funnel to
larger criminal organization. But despite that, I didn't really seem
to be heading towards a life of crime. His older brother,

(06:37):
Ralph was his hero, and Al tried to follow in
his footsteps. First as a baseball player, the two of
them played really well in the semi pro leagues. Al
actually made headlines in local newspapers as this like impressive
pitcher who could totally go pro one day. You know, crazy,
I mean, this is like Hitler painting sort of situation.
We're like, well, if he has.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
It, just let him paint. If you'd just let Al
Capone play, like, imagine, we're in a different world today,
and who knows how different it would be, But to
be like, oh, I got the I got an Al
Capone rookie card from nineteen twenty two when he when
he first got signed to the Cubs.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Right, weird, crazy, very weird. Yeah, But of course baseball
did not pan out, and when Ralph settled down, got married,
had a kid, and started working as a salesman, it
seems like Al would go in that direction too.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, kind of a.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
More vanilla life than what it would actually be.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
The store for him, and we had these immigrant parents.
It was all about like, you know, we moved here
to make a better life for you. You go out
there in the world and you start a business and
you you know, American dream.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Shit, it exactly gets you a piece of this pie.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right Well, out of school and out of baseball, Al
was starting to spend more time with local gangs, and
eventually he joined the Five Points gang, which I closed
my hand. It's a fist, the five point five points
a finger.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
I mean, that's a great movie by the Gangs of
New York. Is the movie talking about.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Daniel day Lewis so good.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yep, Leo's questionable Irish accent.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Everyone's questionable Irish accent, but still good, except, of course,
Brendan Gleeson.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Right was not.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
This was great somehow his was great well, and oddly
Irish actor Daniel day lewis great Brooklyn accent in that movie.
So okay. So the Five Points Gang was one of
the most infamous gangs in New York history. They had
as many as fifteen hundred members at its peak. Al's
mentor in this gang was Johnny Torrio, and he was

(08:38):
an Italian businessman who ran bookmaking, loan sharking, prostitution, and
opium trafficking for the gang. And Al also learned a
lot from the gang's leader at the time, Paul Kelly.
This guy was changing the image of mobsters. They had
previously been seen as these like two timing street thugs.
You know, it was all about intimidation and being big

(09:00):
and scary and threatening. Paul Kelly came in and was
this like classy political sophisticate. He'd socialize and glad hand
and go to the opera and make deals there and
stuff like that. So he really started to turn the
mob more into that sort.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Of image, right, bigger influence, Yeah, you know, bigger tables.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, absolutely, well, the more flies with honey, right yeah.
But as a teen, al Capone himself was actually more brutish.
He was like five ten and two hundred pounds of
pure muscle, very different from the image we have of
al Capone when he was older. He was tough, he
had this rotten temper, and he was also an incredible
shot with a revolver. The Adonna Social Club was this

(09:41):
local hangout with a shooting range in their basement where
guys could go down and shoot empty beer bottles and
was like, imagine shooting a nineteen twenties revolver in a basement.
How were they not all deaf?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
I know, right, I was about to say, it must
have sounded like a siege, right. So Al ended up
working as a bouncer and a server at a Coney
Island club called the Harvard Inn for one of Brooklyn's
most notorious gangsters, Frankie Yale. Frankie loved al Capone. He
thought this was like the best kid that he had
working for him. He's like, this guy is going place us. Well.

(10:16):
One night, Al was waiting on an Italian couple about
his age. The girl of the couple had this ridiculously gorgeous,
like hourglass figure. So al Capone leans in and says loudly, quote, honey,
you have a nice ass, and I mean that as
a compliment. Baa boom, you got a nice ass and

(10:36):
I mean it as a compliment. How weird if he
was like, I'm you got a nice ass and I
mean that as an insult.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
What do you mean you got a really nice ass?
Take that?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, ha, go cry yourself to sleep.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, you'd be thinking of that one all night.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well it's a doubtful compliment. Yeah, But of course the
guy with her jumps up. His name is Frank Gluccio
and turns out he is her brother, and he's super
drunk and this server just disrespected his sister and stuff.
So he's about half Owl's size, so he wants to
fight this guy, but obviously he's like, oh my Anita

(11:15):
wall extra help, So he pulls out a four inch blade.
Everyone else at the club scattered. Capone's temper flared up.
He's like hulking out on this guy. He goes straight
for him, and Frank's knife slashed Capone on the left side.
Of his face and neck, but al keeps coming. He's
like a bull charging at Frank, so Frank's freaking out.

(11:37):
He's like, this guy's a freak. So he grabs his
sister and he runs out, and Capone was left with
three large scars along his left cheek, jaw, and neck,
earning him his notorious nickname Scarface Man.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
And okay, I'll do it every once in a while.
I got a really embarrassing admission about movies. Oh yeah,
I've never seen Scarface. Really yeah, I've never seen it.
And honestly, until I was researching this and I'm reading
about al Capone, I was like, wait a minute, al
Pacino is not playing an Italian in that movie. Let's

(12:12):
say hello to my little friend. Is not an Italian
or Brooklyn accent. And I had to look it up
and find out it's totally it's not al Capone. No,
it's way more modern than that.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
You all probably already know this because everyone's seen Scarface
but me. But it was apparently that movie was based
on a movie from the forties called Scarface, which was
about al Capone, and they just modernized it and changed
the character and basically it became a very different movie
and not about al Capone at all, but he just
kept the nickname Scarface Weird, super weird, so weird. Also

(12:45):
other side notes, since it doesn't really come up later
in this story, al Capone ended up hiring Frank Gluccio
down the line.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Love that.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, he was like this guy, this sky will fight.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
This guy got me.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, he stood up to me. He slashed my face.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
So I kind of admire that about someone, especially people
that are very proud. Yeah, you know, that's kind of
interesting when they'll be like, you know, you got me,
but that actually works for me, and I'm gonna go
to you should be you should be hanging out with me. Yep, Yeah,
kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Al Capone also loved to have a good time. The
meg could cut loose, he could have fun. You know,
he's a teenager. He's apparently also an incredible dancer, which
was common of the Italian men in that area at
the time. According to Lawrence Bergreen, who wrote Capone The
Man in the Era where a lot of this information
comes from, al Capone also the best billiards player in town,

(13:40):
and reporter Edward Dean Sullivan said quote, I have known
twenty men, infinitely more vicious than he is. He never drank,
and the one outstanding trait known about him in tough
circles was that he must be home every night at
ten point thirty to take care of his mother.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Ah yeah, that's nice.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, I know. It was like all his mob stuff happening,
and they're beating somebody up with a baseball bat and
al Capone's like, hey, wait a minute, everybody, I got
to get home the mom.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Somebody take over. It's ten point fifteen. I got to
catch the bus.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Well. Ow, you know. He had his own kind of
fun too. He did spend a lot of time with
local prostitutes, even from a very young age, and at
some point, very early in his in his sexual adventures,
he caught syphilis. Because at the time, syphilis was actually
really rampant in these neighborhoods and it had a very
high transmissionary So Bergreen says that he likely didn't catch

(14:37):
it just because he was promiscuous or not having anything
to do with sex workers, you know, being a more
likely place to catch venereal diseases, But actually estimates put
syphilis in the US at the time at between six
and ten percent of the population, so almost one in
ten people had syphilis, So you had millions of people

(14:59):
suffering and tens of thousands of people dying from it
each year. It wasn't until the draft of World War
One that public health officials really realized how bad this
pandemic was and started to do programs to try and
bring it down.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
I think we talked about this a little bit in
our Brief History of Sex Toys episode right with Ridiculous History,
because we were talking about the first sex doll was
made for troops to have sex with, so they would
not have sex with prostitute.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Please stop dying.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Your simplism't so like you're supposed to be getting killed
by bullets. Well, now, syphilis infections they can seem to
clear up on their own. Some people only ever thought
that they had a nasty cold, so they didn't even
know they had syphilis. And then it can enter this
latent stage where people can go without symptoms for up

(15:50):
to twenty years, so they're like, great, I never had
syphlis and I never will have it again. Unfortunately, though,
it can reactivate, and if it does, it can affect
the brain and become fatal, so it's sort of like
a sleeping giant with your body. So Capone got sick
and then he healed up and he thought he'd recovered. Yeah,

(16:11):
no harm, no foul. He kind of assumed at the
time that he'd been cured. He didn't think about it
again for a long time. So we're gonna put that
in a little box too, because in nineteen seventeen, Al
met Dominica. Everyone called her Susie Weird. I mean, there's
not even an S in her name.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
I wonder it was just like, I just need a
more less foreign sounding name.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
I'm sure it was.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
They were like, here's you know, to acclimate. Yeah, sure,
Well she was a neighborhood Italian girl who had a
reputation for being kind of a wild child. An eighteen
year old al Capone was totally love struck. They were
so inseparable that everyone knew it was only a matter
of time before they got married, to the point where
Al's parents even approached Doozie's about formal marriage negotiation. Okay,

(17:03):
the usual when where how much money do we get?
So on and so forth. But when the Capone suggested
the idea, Suzie's parents were like hell no, oh, They
had three problems with their little girl getting hitched to
al Capone. One, he was no fit husband for their
perfect daughter.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Two they did not want her getting wrapped up with
hoodlums and racketeers.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Sure logical.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
And three Al was eighteen years old but Susie was
only thirteen. Oh, we have some Jerry Lee Lewis vibes coming.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
In here, Like oooh, that's uncomfortable, not cute, especially for
everyone in town to be like, oh, it's only a
matter of time before those two kids get married.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
You know, right, one's a little too much of a
kid to get married. So let us hang on to this.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
So Alan Susie parted ways. And side note, according to
ber Green, Susie would go on to marry another Italian
with mob ties later on.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
So she's almost looked in the hoodlums and being avoided.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Maybe at least he was around her age.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yeah, they were like, if you're gonna give her a
hood little zoozie, at least find one year own age
two out of three.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
We'll take it. But now Al was turning nineteen and
he wanted to find a girl to marry, so he
looked a little further outside his own neighborhood to try
and escape his reputation a little bit, right, find someone
who didn't know what he got into during the nights.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
You know, I really need a strong relationship with my
wife friend, and we all know the basis of a
strong marriage live. Yeah, it's time to deceive another type
of lady. Let me, let me spread my wings.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
I need someone who doesn't know nothing about me so
I can kind of craft my own image. Well. In
nineteen eighteen, he found it because he went to a
party in a Carroll Street basement club where he met
a girl named May Coughlin. She was tall and beautiful,
and she was two years older than al so nice
going in the other direction there, and she worked as

(19:00):
a clerk out of the department store. It's a very
respectable job for a girl of that time. Her father
worked in construction. Her family was super respectable. They were
devoted Catholics. You know, they didn't have any sort of
negative image about them at all. And there was really
only one problem here. The Coughlins, of course, were Irish.

(19:21):
Her parents had moved to New York from Ireland at
different times. They met and married in Manhattan, and after
they totally nailed the American dream. You know, he was
a successful businessman, rose through the ranks, had a couple
of kids, and they moved to a quiet Irish neighborhood
in Brooklyn, which bordered Al's Italian district.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
So because these neighborhoods bordered each other, a lot of
the Irish and Italian kids knew each other. They played together,
no fuss, no no problem, but there was more of
a cultural rift with the adults because the Irish were
considered a few social pegs above the Italian. Their kids
could play together, but like romance was out of the
question because, as Green put it, they believed that quote

(20:02):
Italian husbands routinely beat, cheated on, and degraded their wives,
and many an Irish father declared that he did not
want his daughter marrying an Italian, she must marry a
white man. So this is that period of history where
Italians were not considered white people the way they are today,
I suppose.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, that's it's very interesting within these tiny little sectors,
like their own smaller versions of racism.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, you know, when you see it so clearly when
you look at the story of like people coming over
to America, because you had a huge Irish influx. They
were super discriminated against, right they were kind of not white.
And then when other people, like Chinese people came in,
and with that when the Italians came in. Oh, so
now there's other people who aren't white. So y'all can
be white, but the rest of them aren't white. But

(20:50):
you're not as white, you know, Like it's such a strange, weird, stupid.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
They just need someone to pick on, I know, and that's.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
A social psychology of we all need someone to sit on.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Interesting too, Irish people not being seen as white because
I'm like, they're whiter than British people I know a
lot of the times.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
But surprisingly, given all of this you know, stupid weirdness
around where you come from, there's actually no record of
May's parents actually disapproving of their relationship. They were probably
pretty skeptical about it, but her family was totally disconnected
from criminal and gang activity and stuff. They just didn't
know or assume that Al was involved in any of
that himself. Okay, so, as far as we know, Alan

(21:32):
May started dating without too much pushback from this family naivete.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
So Al did get what he wanted, found someone who
didn't even consider that was a possibility.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
He got to walk in and kind of be a
different person from them.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah. Now, young Irish women at this time actually had
a preference for Italian boys, according to the book Capone
by John Cobbler, because he writes that Italian boys would
actually get married faster. Irish boys tended to wait until
they were all settled and secure in their futures. But
Italian boys were like, I'm ready when you want, baby, so,

(22:08):
which I guess is where the Irish part of me
came through more than the Italians. It took a while
for us, right, But al and May did not get
married quickly, not even after she got pregnant. In fact,
it took a pretty major event to get al Capone
to finally settle down and wed May at the end
of nineteen eighteen World War One. And we'll find out

(22:32):
why right after.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
This welcome back, your lousy headcrack.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Of oh very nice. Well, al Capone is dating May,
and he may or may not have told her about
his syphilis from a few years earlier, because remember, he
thought that it had cleared up, so probably no point
in even mentioning it. She got pregnant in early nineteen
eight and Bergreen says that just the fact that these
two very Catholic teenagers didn't get married right away probably

(23:05):
points to some great rift between them at the time.
Logically they would have gotten pregnant and immediately started making
wedding plans, but maybe they really didn't want to get
married then. But in September of nineteen eighteen, Al had
to go and register for the draft for World War One.
In total, during the Great War, two point eight million
American boys and men were drafted, and Al Capone almost

(23:28):
certainly would have been among them. But he knew that
if he were married and raising a child of his own,
he was way less likely to get drafted and sent overseas.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh well, in December, May gave birth to a baby
boy named Albert Francis Capone, who everyone called Sonny. So
his godfather was Al's mentor, the racketeer Johnny Torrio. And
while Sonny was healthy at birth, he grew up very
prone to infections. He also started to lose his hearing
around ten years old, and as it turns out, that

(23:59):
was a known result even at the time of a
child being born with congenital syphilis, So it seems really
likely that Al passed his syphilis to May unknowingly and
then on to their child. Okay, syphilis also reeks havoc
on pregnancies, and that's likely why Al and May, despite
being from large Catholic families who probably were super into

(24:20):
begat Bigat, began as many kids as you can, never
had any other children, yea, the one.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, we don't know this, but the authors suggest that
it's likely there were miscarriages and failed pregnancies, you know,
various situations.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, because she has this infection now.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, yeah, or that Al was sterile regardless either way,
Yet it would have been very hard, but it's kind of,
you know, miraculous in a way that they had Sonny
to begin with. Well, either way. After Sonny was born
and May recovered from childbirth, they wanted to get married
as quickly as they could, so they applied for a license.
But they lied all over these four even though Al

(25:01):
was nineteen and May was twenty one, they both listed
their ages as twenty. Al said his occupation was paper cutter,
which was apparently a pretty respectable job at the time,
and they skipped the blood test by using a special
marriage license that just said on it quote I have
not to my knowledge been infected with any even aial disease,
or if I have been infected within five years, I

(25:23):
have a laboratory test which shows that I am now
free from my infection. And they just signed that.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
But you didn't have so many sages.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
I was like, well as signatures, as long as your
word as your bond. If they had taken a blood test,
Al likely would have known his condition now. Because of
their out of wedlocked child, they had been a little
ostracized from their families. But fortunately, since May was over eighteen,
just twenty one, she was legally an adult, so she
legally didn't need her parents' permission to get married. But

(25:54):
the law at the time said men were not legally
adults until twenty one. Women eighteen men twenty one super weird,
especially since you could get drafted at eighteen for real right,
and so back then Al would need his parents' permission
to get married since he even lying, he only said
twenty right, So fortunately his parents did give him permission. May's, however,

(26:17):
might not have had she not been able to do
it without it. And on December thirtieth of nineteen eighteen,
Alan May had their ceremony at the beautiful Saint Mary
Star of the Sea church, which was where May's family
attended in Brooklyn, and I looked on Google Maps to
see if it's still there today and where it was described.
Down near the docks in Brooklyn, there is a church
called Saint Mary Star of the Sea and I think

(26:39):
that's the same one. But you know, surprisingly they don't
advertise on their website this is where al Capone got married,
so I guess it's not a selling point for we
don't want.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
To be on the double decker bus tour. Okay, this
is a sacred place. Well. Despite the beautiful surroundings, the
wedding was a little awkward. Both sets of parents were present,
likely staring daggers at one another. The Coughlins were probably
not thrilled about their daughter marrying this Italian kid who
like knocked her up at a wedlock, but they were

(27:12):
likely believed that they were at least getting married he
was making an honest woman out of her. The Capones
probably wished that Al had married an Italian girl. Italian
families had an ingrained sense of campanalismo, which is a
word that describes this kind of dedication to your cultural
identity and history, the feeling about being around your own people,

(27:35):
in your own neighborhood and right keeping that going rather
than like reaching out to others.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Of those cultural words that like don't have a direct translation.
It's just like I can't explain it to you. It's
that kind of Yeah, what was the one on ted
Lasso night or Dutch? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Holtspar So it was something. Yeah, it's not that, but
it was something like that.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
I didn't tell us your cultural word that doesn't have
a direct translation, that means something you can't explain.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, and they try to explain it, yea to us.
So what it means? So the Capone still spoke Italian
at home, for example, May of course didn't so she
often could not understand them, and she had a hard
time learning to cook like an Italian wife, which would
be real hard.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
That's really hard.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Now, the expectations of an Italian wife's abilities in the
kitchen higher than an Irish in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
I've said it before, but my my Italian grandmother one
of the finest cooks in this country. You know, it's
very good. There's some stereotypes are true an Italian woman's
cooking oh man, there's nothing so good.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
But Al was devoted to her. He's like, Alia, your
potatoes or whatever, potatoes again?

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Huh well, right, I guess I love you, honey.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
At least there's no famine, you know. But he decided
that now he was a husband and father, he had
to give up his criminal ways. It was time for
a real career, time for him to become al capone,
honest businessman.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yes, as we know him today, that's right.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
As we have the trading card, the honest businessman trading cards.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Well, he said, first things first, I gotta get out
of Brooklyn. Not that much trouble here. So he moved
his family to Baltimore, famed city of no.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Trouble, famously untroubled.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, well, actually there he worked as a bookkeeper for
a legitimate construction firm run by Peter Ayelo. He wore
a suit and tie to work every day. He got sober,
He got really good at his job, and he started
to show real skill in accounting and for business in general.
And apparently he is pretty happy being this respectable hard worker.

(29:48):
He earned the respect of his coworkers, his bosses, and
very importantly, his parents. But in nineteen twenty, Al's father
died suddenly of a heart attack. Or Green rights that
this quote marked the end of Al's legitimate career. Maybe
it was the shock of the loss that changed him,

(30:09):
you know. He might have just been depressed and wanted
to fall back into something familiar. Maybe he didn't feel
like he had to prove anything to anyone anymore, Like
he'd think his dad was the one he was working
so hard for and how it didn't matter. Or it
might have been that when he went back to New
York City for his father's funeral, he bumped into his
old mentor, Johnny Torrio. Johnny wasn't living in Brooklyn anymore either,

(30:33):
and he told Capone, hate pal, you want to make
some real money. Huh, you'd tie it of being a
two bit nickel scuff on a shoe, Shine's buff rag.
You want? You want to be the hottest banana and
the bunch, the Donkey's Derby, the Fiddler's briefcase. Ah, and
you got to come with me to the most magical
city in the world, shit Gogo.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
The second city a U. I don't know if who
wants to be a hot banana?

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Who doesn't want to be a hot banana.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Oh okay, excuse me. Apparently we all want to be
hot banana.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Well this was in nineteen twenty and you know what
else happened in nineteen twenty Prohibition. Oh, so the gangs were,
of course all seeing a new way to make a
ton of money. So in nineteen twenty one, Al told
his boss Peter A Yellow, that he was leaving Baltimore,
and Peter's like, well, sort of, su go, but here's
five hundred dollars. I wish you Well, that's nice. I

(31:33):
wish more bosses to that.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
I what can you imagine quitting a job and your
boss is like, well, here's some money. Oh my god,
just out of the kindness of my heart. I know.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Businesses now are like, you give me five hundred job.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Well, it's a contract termination fee, I know.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Right. So Al moved to Chicago and he started working
for Johnny as a bouncer may and Sonny did not
move to join him until nineteen twenty three. So they're
separated for a hot minute here. And as Johnny Torio
rose in the ranks, so did Al Capone. Johnny Torio
had been working for Big Jim Colossimo's gang. Oh and

(32:07):
he's really pushing Colossimo to get into bootlegging. You know,
He's like this, well, the money is you want to
be the hottest Banano, you gotta get the hottest top
budge or whatever. You gotta get the whipped cream man.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
But Colossimo refused to do it. He's like, I ain't
trying to get that heat. I don't want to be
hot Banana, want to be cold. But right, so Johnny got
with his padawan al Capone, and he's like, hey, will
you call in a favor back in New York. It's
your old friend and boss, Frankie Yale. Remember Frankie, we
talked about him earlier. And then Johnny told Colossimo, you know, hey,

(32:42):
go check on a ship tonight your restaurant. But when
he arrived, Johnny was not there. Instead, Frankie Yale was there.
He had traveled from New York to Chicago, and he
ambushed and assassinated Colossimo himself. Police suspected Frankie Yale of this,
but they never charged him, and some people suspected that

(33:03):
al Capone was actually the gunman. So at any rate,
it was just this whole gang on gang violence kind
of situation.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, take out me calling, let me call in a
tough guy to come and you know, kind of a
neutral assassin, right to come in and take this guy out.
You know, Frank Yell at the time, he's he's he's
he's a hot banana in New York. But but at
the same time, like a lot of these guys, you know,
they had to do their own dirty work. Sure right,

(33:32):
it wasn't They weren't so big at this time that
they're just like, let me just let me go out
of the park and pick somebody out and say, hey,
I want him, I want him to disappear, you know,
wink wink. Right, It's like, no, I got to go
shoot this guy myself.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
So well, look, people talk, you know sometimes the dirty
ist shit you probably did want to do yourself, because
I'm not going to tell him myself.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
And if you want a job done right yourself. How
many times if Frank Yale sent someone out and he
came back, Hey, boss, you know what you know the
guy you told me killed? Well, we're best friends now
I am h you know, and we're gonna open the
ice cream shop together.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Actually, now I got two people to kill and an
ice cream shop to take over.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
You got butter pecan listen.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
If you don't have hot bananas at this ice cream shop,
I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Hot bananas ice cream. I'm just like, I.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Really don't understand hot bananas.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Well, it's like bananas foster.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
I guess I've never had a bananas foster so delicious.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Look, there's there is. There are times where a banana
can be hot and it's okay. But if you were
just to go grab a banana, no, you would not want.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
It to be hot.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
I guess you don't throw your bananas in the microwave
before you eat them.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I'm just saying we make banana pudding, not banana cobbler.
All right, Banana cobbler A okay. I'm so sorry that
I said it now because I feel like you're gonna
try it. If someone wants to make a banana cobbler
and tell them that I'm wrong and it's amazing, I
won't hear you out very least.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
I'm gonna google it and see if there's a recipe.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
I'll hear you out.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
All right.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
I might not try it, that's all I'll say.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Well, whether Frankie Yale killed Colossimo or al Capone. Either way,
Al definitely benefited because Johnny took over the gag.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Of course, and get him into bootlegging.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Yeah, and Al was his right hand man. And this
is around when May and Sonny moved to Chicago to
join him. Also, Al's widowed mother and younger sister were
depending on him to survive because Al had far surpassed
his older brother's ability to care for them.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Oh he's just a salesman, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
So soon his whole family had left their Italian Brooklyn
neighborhood and moved to Chicago. Now, unfortunately, it's at this
point that we don't really know too much about what
was going on with May Capone, and this is partly
because mobsters aggressively kept their family lives separate from the business.

(36:00):
But the vintagenews dot Com says that May was fully
aware of Al's racketeering and bootlegging, and she would actually
stay up late cooking food for him and his cronies
when they got back from you know, whatever murder spree
they were on when.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
They got back from you know, the ice cream show.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, but from the banana factory. So there's really just
no doubt that she certainly overheard plenty about the business,
but she really loved Al and she never said a
word about it to anyone.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Al truly loved May as well, but he was also
starting to be pretty unfaithful. So he's kind of diving
into this life of excess and rule breaking with Johnny Torio,
and he took quite a few mistresses and all of
them had blonde hair. Now Al's about twenty one, He's
seeing this blonde girl who was only fifteen years old.

(36:50):
Gross when May allegedly had enough. You know, she's like
bootlegging and murda that I can forgive, but I draw
the line at adult. So instead of confronting him directly, May,
a lifelong brunette, bleached her hair blonde, which is basically
kind of a big I know about the girls, Al.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
And a statement one of those old remember when you
could just like like wear a brooch and it was
like a devastating burn to someone, right, or like.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
The language of Flowers, where you like, I'll get you
a violet and you may as well kill yourself, you know,
like weird.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
I was thinking about House of the Dragon when that
girl showed up in a green dress, and everyone was like,
oh my god, the statement. And I'm like, I just don't.
I don't have the observational abilities for these kinds of things.
Like May would dye her hair blonde and it'd be
three days before I was like, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Oh man, did you change your hair? Did you do
something with your hair? The green thing, the green dress thing,
was especially weird because I was like, what if you
just look good in that color? She just looked like
she should wear green.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
I'm not clocking that she's never worn green before, you
know what I mean, like totally, but it was different times, but.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
It meant something back then. And apparently this really embarrassed
al Capone in front of his whole family, that she
dyed her hair blindeye everybody. They knew why. Now he
could not find any clear info about whether this ended
his affairs, but it's probably not likely, right, I mean,
he's not going to let a bottle of bleach stop

(38:19):
him for whatever he's doing.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah. Now, like y'all know that the al Capone story
is huge, There's so much to tell, but we are
going to try and stay focused on his love life
and you know, and limit ourselves to the specific crimes
around that. So stay tuned. We're going to take a
quick break and we will talk more about his son,
his marriage, and how he actually tried to retire from

(38:42):
the Mob to spend more time with them right after this.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
So, even with al Capone's whole family living in Chicago
right now, they all still loved their roots in Brooklyn,
and they would go back and visit their Italian neighborhood frequently.
When his mother went back to their old neighborhood, Frankie
Yale or Lucky Luciano would meet her at the train
station with a bulletproof Cadillac along with a personal chauffeur

(39:12):
and bodyguard. And I love this idea of like, you know,
some some big tough thug being like write this way,
missus Cabone. We had beat ahead. Here's a bouquet of flowers,
and if anybody looks at you twice, I'll rip their
face off with my bare min's. You know.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
It's such a nice boy, right, yeah, exactly, Oh Lucky,
you're such a nice boy.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Am I feeding you boys? Like she makes ninety.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
She like takes over their kitchen.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
But the next time that al and make upon would
go to Brooklyn was for a medical emergency for Sonny.
This poor kid was suffering from illnesses all the time,
but now he was dealing with a deep mastoid infection
in his ear. And the mast to oid bone is
right behind the ear. It's kind of got this honeycomb
like structure inside, so it's full of airy pockets. It's

(40:07):
just one of those very light bones, right, and it's
kind of meaty, and infections can happen, and they can
be really serious. Doctors in Chicago told Al that the
surgery would leave Sonny permanently deaf. So Al started looking
around trying to get a second opinion, and he talked
to some people in New York and found a specialist

(40:27):
there who said that he could you know, that gave
him a more promising prognosis than that. So Al told him,
I give you one hundred thousand dollars if you fix
my boy. Now, the surgeon was a little smarter than that,
and he took his customary fee of one thousand dollars
because he's like, I'm not taking one hundred thousand dollars

(40:48):
from al capone. A that's already probably a bad idea,
and be what if I can't do it, then you're
gonna like break my knees for taking your money. You know.
That'll be fine. I'll just do it for the standard rate. Now.
The surgery was successful in so much that they removed
the infection and Sonny did not go completely deaf, but
he was left partially deaf for the rest of his life.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Now, of course, people tried to kill both Johnny Torio
and al Capone a few times, more than one.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
Right on a standard practice, and after.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
One particularly close call where he survived several gunshot wounds,
Johnny Torrio decided it is time to hang it up
and retire.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
He's like, I might be getting a little too old
to be shot at.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, like this when you get that lucky, You're like,
I'm not gonna get that ony very true.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, He's like, you know, lightning, lightning will strike me
next time.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
So he gave total control of the Chicago Gang to
al Capone. He said, quote, it's all yours, al me.
I'm quitting. It's Europe for me.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
He's like, I'm going off to Europe, Yeah, which I
would love to retire to.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Ye, sounds great.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
I kind of get it. Johnny, Me and Johnny same, same,
exactly the same retire to Italy. So he left Capone
with an organization that was pulling in about seventy million
dollars a year, which today is worth Oh wow, well

(42:12):
it's worth one point two billion dollars today.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Geez our translation calculator could not handle that inflation rate
was too much.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Oh geez, so wild, that's that is, I mean crazy
money at the time. I mean even today that would
be incredible. Like yeah, So Toriel moved to Italy to
work with the mob there, so he was retiring from
Chicago rather than from organized I'm.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Gonna go take it easy and join the mob in Italy.
You know, I'm not going to be the center of
attention in one of the most violent cities in the world.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
I mean, I get it. I'd rather go hang at
the Blue.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Grotto, right, yeah. Whatever.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
But in nineteen twenty eight, Mussolini started cracking down on
the Italian mafia. So Johnny came marching back home to
New York and he got right back into bootlegging and
New York. But this time he helped organize the Big Seven.
This is basically like the Avengers of East Coast mobster. Right,

(43:08):
they're like, let's stop fighting each other and start working together.
Let's organize our organized crime even more.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Probably the same level of snark between them. You know,
a lot of egos in one room, but they know
they all got to work together to stop the big
skylaser from destroying the earth.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Well, Johnny Torio, Lucky Luciano, and others met in Atlantic
City in nineteen twenty nine and they formed the National
Crime Syndicate to prevent wars between gangs, right, because they're like,
we're spending too much time on each other. It needs
to be like united Front. Get all these other folks
that are trying to start their own shit. No, we
want to concentrate all the protection, all the alcohol, all

(43:44):
the shit in our hands and make as much money
as possible.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Interesting to see how that evolved from like, you know,
back when what was his name, Paul Kelly, we talked
about in the first part, where you know, he was like,
we can't just be walking around punching people in the
face until we get we want, shooting people until we
really want we got. We gotta come to the table
and negotiate and glad hand and suck up and offer things.
And now it's this too. It's like, we can't just

(44:08):
keep shooting each other. Let's see what we can solve
at the table.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
I think. So the veneer of respectability was more profitable. Yeah,
because they were able, as you're saying, to go hang
out with politicians and like glad hand with cops and
stuff like, if you're not out here looking crazy and
shooting people and punching people, you can get away with
a lot of shit.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
They somebody got out the calculator and they said, how
much am I spending a year all this ammunition and
guns patent pooled? Yeah? Right, So if you're out there
and you're organizing crime, you know, consider this a lesson.
You know, see what you can do in the boardroom.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, let's cut down on the gun violence and crime.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, which again if you and then if speaking of boardrooms,
you continue to follow the evolution of crime, and now
it's literally in boardrooms succession like we were talking.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
About, yeah, very very much so. And legal crime.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Well oh jeez, so look at the time, we are
really getting sucked into this story. There's so much. So
next up, we'll just say that al Capone did some
very bad things.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
A nice blanket statement about a bunch.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Of crimes happened. You can read all about him. Go
watch The Untouchables, you know, watch al Capone movies. A
lot of stuff happened here. That was a lot of
shooting and gang wars and turf wars between uh New
York and Chicago and everything like that. And he really
was notorious at the time, Like everybody knew al Capone
was the head of the mob in Chicago. He just

(45:37):
owned too much. The police or theyd have They had
a hard time literally finding him very often, or it
was he was too well protected, so he just wasn't
getting arrested, or you know, evidence issues, all these things
that mobsters use. But at one point he did try
to move to Los Angeles. Things were a little too
hot in Chicago, and when he showed up, thinking that
he would be welcomed to the city with open arms,

(45:59):
the lap police chief told him, you got twelve hours
to get the hell out of town. We don't want
al Capone coming to Los Angeles. And at the same time,
while he was in LA the Chicago police chief said
that if al came back to Chicago, he would arrest
him on the spot and he's actually put all the
mobsters under house arrest. He posted police outside of every

(46:22):
mobster's known home and was like, you can't leave, and
if Capone comes in, We're going to arrest him.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
OK. Well. At this point, May his wife broke her silence,
and she did an interview with the Chicago Herald and Examiner,
hoping to get some sympathy for her husband, if for
nothing else than for the sake of their nine year
old boys, Sonny. She said in this interview how Sonny
would come home from school every day in tears because

(46:48):
his classmates bullied him so badly about his dad being
all over the news for being a criminal. She said, quote,
it's not fair. It's more than he can stand. He's
broken hearted and he can't understand it. I'm a true
mother and I suffer with him. Can't something be done?

Speaker 2 (47:06):
But when the Harald printed the interview, the headline read
quote Capone's son finds sins of father, heavy mother, Please
for lad victim of schoolmates torment and burg Green writes
that it really had the opposite effect of what she wanted,
because it just made people think worse of al Capone
for putting this poor kid in like a shitty situation

(47:27):
in the first place, right, right, Feel like if he
wasn't like that, he wouldn't get bullied. Pro solve sounds
like the prim's in your house, honey, Right.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
No, one's like, oh, we shouldn't be so mean to
al Capone his kids getting teased.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
You know, like she should have maybe seen that one coming. Yeah,
Like May, the call's coming from inside the house. The
problem is there, not here.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Well.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Obviously al Capone managed to avoid arrest at this point,
but the family moved to a rentfered palatial estate in
Miami where Al hoped he could enter. You know, it's
sort of a studo retirement like Johnny Choreo had done,
where he was not like in the day to day,
you know, getting his hands as dirty so much in
the news and so on. But he was still involved.
You know, he's still get in his beak wet yep. Well,

(48:10):
once they were in Miami, May went full rich lady.
She bought all this like ornate, gaudy, ridiculous decor, Like
they had golden spice jars and ivory miniatures and silver
trays and marble busts and four big metal elephants. Sure,
you know, she's just at this point going to stores,

(48:31):
going I got money, what you got to buy? I
don't really care if I like it or if anyone
likes it.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
I'm just gonna if it looks expensive I wanted in
my house exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, it was the first home that was really hers
to manage, and Burgreen writes, quote devoid of taste, freaking
of money. This was exactly the kind of opulent decor
that the wife of any newly rich magnate might be
expected to purchase. Okay, so that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Yeah, I could see. I mean, you know, people who
suddenly become wealthy kind of have a different and I
think you sort of have a different idea of how
to show it, right.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
I think, Actually funnily this comes up with succession a
lot about how they dress and stuff, like the choices
made about their costuming, and they don't you know, they're
not ostentatious. Shiv is not out here ran a ton
of jewels and the ripping and emeralds and stuff. It's
just the cut and the fabric. You know that you're
like this, this is a expensive and brand name. It's expensive.

(49:26):
It looks expensive, but it's not ostentatious. That's not really
the same thing. So there is this funny like new
money old money thing where like old money for some
reason has more taste because it's not gaudy, which I
kind of agree, like, I find I find some people
very tacky, and when they go overboard and they want

(49:47):
everything gold washed or something, it's very kind of not
attractive to me. But on the other hand, it is
a little snobbish to be like, well, if you have
chair isn't five hundred years old, it may as well
be in the dump stall.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
I know.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
It's sort of like and.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
There's this other thing to wwards, like you're supposed to
hire a designer who makes your home into what rich
people's homes look like right now, you know, and not
just go off on your own and just buy things.
I don't know. I'm speaking on a subject I know
nothing about, which is having money.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Well, I think too, there's something about it where you're
trying to prove that you belong. You know, even with
May she might not have had any taste. That's entirely possible.
Well she might have also been like, I'm in this
area where people know who that I'm a capone and
they know where my money came from, and so I
have to You can either shrink from that, or you
can be like, well then if you.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Look at it, yeah, I look at that too, Or
she came from a family in New York who like,
for intents and purposes, we're doing quite well. Like you know,
he was a construction guy and he made good money,
and they had a respectable home in a small Irish
neighborhood in Brooklyn. They weren't rich, but you could just

(51:00):
be fine. And that was good back then, and but
it certainly also was faced with well, we can't afford that,
or I can't buy that, or even if you want something,
that doesn't mean you can just have it. And then
I know, for me, switching lifestyles like that into well
now you can even in my sort of mini version
of that between like I'm waiting tables and I have

(51:22):
a salary job at different times in my life, you
spend differently, Oh sure, just because you can, Like I
actually can go out to dinner without thinking about it tonight,
like that was mine for May. It's like I can
actually buy these four metal elephants without thinking about it.
So I'm papa, let me do it.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
So she's, you know, walking around dropping thousand dollars bills
at every shop, you know, trying to rehabilitate the family image.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Sure, and Burgreen writes quote to the extent that respectability
could be bought. May did so, and she paid for
it in cash.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah. And now, while May was obsessed with decorating, I
was kind of doing the same thing, except his whole
thing was closed shopping. He he also, we'll get into
this later, but he also bought food. This is where
the man started to eat, and their grocery bill was

(52:12):
astronomical apparently wow, and that would come back to bite
him in the ass later. So, but his clothes shopping
was his main thing at this time, and this was
a similar effort to get more people to like him.
It was just like ingratiating himself with the locals in Miami. Right.
He went down to a shop called the Sewell Brothers
one day and he bought over a thousand dollars worth

(52:34):
of clothes. And while he was there, one of the
Sewels noticed that Al had brought out this big diamond
studded belt that he picked out and it wasn't going
with the outfit that he'd picked again, not you don't
have taste just because you have money, right, right, And
so Sewell comes over and he's like, hang on, sir,
let me go find you a better belt. Yeah, and

(52:55):
he comes back with a very nice belt, matches his
outfit perfectly. And he's also he got one hundred dollars
Panama hat and he placed this on Capone's head and
he sort of tilted it down over the side to
cover the scar on Al's face, and he told him, quote,
this is a gift from me to you, and the
belt too. Now, Capone, over the recent years, he'd become

(53:18):
increasingly sensitive and defensive about his scar. He wouldn't talk
about it. He got mad if people pointed it out.
And so this guy gave him this hat and like
covers his scar with it. Al Capone reached out his
hand to Suwell and he said, quote, let me shake
your hand. This is the first time anybody ever gave
me anything. So he was just so touched by this,

(53:40):
and he was like, you know, it was just what
he was looking for, like really ingratiating himself.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
And his iconic look. Of course he always has ACTI
and then that became a real thing. Pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
Yeah. Actually, now that you mentioned it, that was an
interview with Sewell, so maybe Sewell was trying to take
credit for al Capone's signature.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Look Al was like, I picked that Panama hat, thank
you very much.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Speculation Station made that shit up and make themselves sound good.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
He's like, let me get some money off of this
for getting caution.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, and I gave Charlie Chaplin his bowler and mustache.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah, and I told him, you know what's funny suspenders.
But well, of course al Capone's a quote unquote retirement
could not really last. You know, the minute I think
I'm out, they pulled me back. That's a stereotype for
a reason. It turned out to be way more stressful

(54:33):
than he thought also to be retired, because he was
still involved with operations in Chicago and now he's getting
involved with criminals and politicians in Miami. So he's got
two fronts to like play off. But unlike in Chicago,
where Al could keep his personal and crime lives very separate,
in Miami he had to run some of his business

(54:56):
right out of his house. May did not love that
because there's these big, huge bodyguards around them all the time.
They be like loose guns strewn about on her fancy
furniture and statue. She's like, I bought this elephant for beauty.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
This is an original bott A Shelley who left their
Tommy gun on top of this painting.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
And when they went out to local restaurants, it was
like the secret service of the criminal underworld was all
around them. One of Al's main thugs carried around a
large bass fiddle case which inside had a set of
gold rimmed plates that Al preferred to eat off of,
as well as a bunch of machine guns, you know,

(55:38):
just in case, which I'm laughing at the idea of
this case, just like rattling around like machine guns and plates,
just like banging up. Were they like shattered.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
To put some foam in there or something.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Surely there's some wrapping going on.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
People are like, wow, that's the heaviest fiddle I've ever seen. Well. Also,
I love getting to the restaurant and being like, hang on,
miss the Capone wants the chef to have something, and
he opens the case and they're like, oh no, and
he pulls out four gold rimmed plates. Please serve the
food on.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
These warm it first? Yeah right, I mean also, what's
funny too, is that a bass fiddle case is not
exactly inconspicuous, all right, very weird thing to carry it around.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
I always bring my fiddler with me everywhere we go,
just in case I want to hear some old Irish jigs. Well,
things for al Capone were starting to unravel despite his
enormous financial and criminal success. His wife May was doing
her best to hold him together, but his relationship with
Frankie Yale in Brooklyn at this point was basically shattered.

(56:44):
And again it's just a you know, it's a it's
a ten volume book to get into all the reasons why.
But wars had broken out between the Chicago and New
York gangs and it just totally wreaking havoc on both cities,
blood in the streets, and all the police on the
news knew that it was because Chicago and New York
gangs were fighting each other in addition to a bunch

(57:07):
of criminal politics. Al's temper was kind of getting out
of control and he became harder and harder to deal with.
And as it turns out that latent syphilis was actually
starting to rear its head because among the symptoms of
what's called tertiary syphilis are extreme personality changes, and this
can include paranoia, anger, mood swings, you know, a lot

(57:32):
of psychiatric changes. It was literally making him a more
violent and determined and untrustworthy gangster, and this only added
to his notoriety. So a lot of people say in
their writings now looking back at it, that if al
Capone had not had syphilis, or had his syphilis treated,

(57:53):
he might not have been quite as ruthless unhinged as
he's seen today. So it's like it's all almost like
syphilis was running the mob at a certain point, which
is so weird because it was like parasitic in his
brain and turning him into someone else. One Sunday in
July of nineteen twenty eight, Frankie Yale was driving in
his bulletproof Cadillac through Brooklyn when he suddenly noticed a

(58:16):
black buick following him. Inside the buick was machine gun
Jack mcgern, al Capone's favorite assassin, and Frankie sees this
and he sped off, and this whole car chase ensued
through New York. But the buick caught up to him
in this suburban neighborhood and right outside a house where
a family was watching. Mcgirn pulled up alongside and fired

(58:40):
a shotgun straight at Frankie's head. Now the body of
the car was bulletproof, but not the windows. So Frankie Yale,
al Capone's old boss and the guy who had come
to Chicago to kill Big Jim colosimofore him, was now dead.
The New York Police commissioner blamed Capone publicly. He even
went to Chicago to talk to belief chiefs there in

(59:01):
this big show of like, we won't stand for these things.
But the Chicago police were not about to get involved.
There had been so much bloodshed between New York and
Chicago rival gangs that, as far as they were concerned,
al Capone had done them a favor.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Hmm wow.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
But even so, things were just going to get worse
and worse for al Capone and by extension, may Compone, sure,
and even staying focused on just their relationship and the
events most closely connected to it. We don't have time
for everything. In one episode, it's al Capone. He is
be doing stuff.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
He'd be doing stuff all the time my.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Book al Capone, He'd be doing stuff. Bye Diana, Diana
bas So next time we will come back and talk
about Al's arrest spoiler alert, al Capone was arrested and
how May handled the press, the police, and her life
as a mother during the trial. Right, it is no
less ridiculous than any of this. It's of a different

(01:00:00):
look at the Capone family that we usually don't get
to see too often. Yeah, so stay tuned. We will
be back next time with the rest of al Capone story.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Yeah. I can't wait, as it's so weird, you know,
researching and writing this and just like skipping over you know,
this huge all these mob politics are really fascinating to me,
and I want to just go on and tell these
whole stories about just I mean, we briefly mentioned Peter
Aello earlier. That was that al Capone that gave al

(01:00:30):
Capone five hundred bucks and was like off with you, buddy,
and like whoa boy. Their relationship changed too. And there's
just pages and pages of these books. If you get
a chance read through Capone The Man in the Era
by Lawrence berg Greens from ninety four, and it's detailed
and fascinating, and he talks a lot about what a
lot of people get wrong about Capone, like him going

(01:00:52):
to war and where he got his scars and all
this stuff that just wasn't true. But it's tough to
kind of skip over all that and just be like, yeah,
but what was his romance like, especially because again, May
was not very public. So we just have these kind
of pieces and the sort of outside life that moved

(01:01:13):
them from place to place.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
It's Godfather with part three, just Diane Keaton, just the
bits with.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Only Godfather Part three and then just the bits of
Diane Keaton. Can I say, actually a loan up to
this one too? Never saw Godfather three. I've seen one
and two and I was I mean, everybody just said that,
you know, it's fine if you don't see're right, right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
I mean, you know, I don't know. There's probably somebody
out there who's like, just finish it up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
I know I've thought about it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Plain about it with the rest of us, But I
kind of agree Godfather Part two.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
To watch three right after. You know there was some
time in between in real life. But you know, if
you're just have the trilogy, you're boom and you're like,
what the fuck?

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
But also the only time in my life that I've
been attracted to Robert de Niro, he's so fucking hot.
And Godfather Too.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Yeah, sure, sure, I guess after that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
No, but in Godfather Too, it was just working for me.
He's like, yes, commit crimes, all.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Right, Well maybe Godfather three. We should go watch Hoodlum
with Laurence Fishburne.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
And I've never seen that. Yeah, I'm not sure I've
ever seen The Untouchables either. Yeah that you mentioned that. Man, Well,
movies we haven't seen.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
I haven't seen either one since the late nineties. So
I say we go back and see if they're any good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Yeah, we should have some some mob movies.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Yeah, because I know I remember Hoodlum is Ooh. I
could be wrong about this, but Vanessa Williams might be
in it. No shit, he used to be in love
with Vanessa Williams. I guess I still am. I haven't
seen her in a while. I'm still well, does ever
really go away? True love? You know? I mean, I'm
just saying. And the colors of the Wind music video,

(01:03:02):
it's beautiful, those eyes, those green eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Oh yeah, she was so beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
For get it. I don't even know if she's in
this movie. I'm just totally in my mind about Vanessa Williams.
Suddenly it's nineteen ninety six, I'm twelve years old, and
all I could think of is Vanessa Williams. I was right,
it is Vanessa Williams. Yay.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Yeah, good for you, babe.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Yeah, and she McBride what a cast? Okay, William Atherton Okay. Anyway,
stay tuned for our Hoodluan Rewatch podcast. Well look for
anybody who's still around. Thanks so much for tuning in
for this part one of al Capone. Again, thanks for
sticking with us this month that we we kind of

(01:03:41):
scattershout these episodes out, but I hope you're enjoying them.
We definitely are enjoying getting a little break from the
theater world to kind of tell these stories too, So
totally have a lot of fun and learning this whole
other side of al Capone. Again. I don't think we
get much of this in the movies, true, so I
was really excited to get to kind of glue all
this together.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Totally. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed it too. We'd love
to hear your thoughts or any other suggestions for shows
or whatever you think about Vanessa Williams. If you like
hoodlum whatever, reach out. Our email is ridic Romance at
gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
That's right. You can find us on Instagram. I'm at
Oh great, it's Eli though. God I've not posted in months. Sorry, right, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
At Dynamite Boom. You will see nothing but advertisements for
Fringe for the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
But you follow at redic Romance, you're gonna see all
our episode memes and everything like that. It's a really
good time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
They were like, follow us, but like sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
But thank you so much for tuning in, listening today,
spending your time with us, and we will catch you
all the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
We love you. Bye, solong friends, it's time to go.
Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends names, uncles,
and dance. To listen to a show Ridiculous Well dance