Al Capone

by Deirdre Bair

  “I don’t see much goodness in the heart of Al Capone,” said the psychotherapist Charles Strozier in a 2014 documentary. He shares the view of many who see Al Capone’s public acts of beneficence and charity as the behavior of a brutal thug who needed to perform good deeds in order to convince himself that he was a good man. “Mild disassociation served his purposes,” Strozier added. “He attains internal self-cohesion when he persuades himself that he only does bad to enable himself to do good.” Dale Carnegie, he who wrote of winning friends and influencing people, said much the same thing in 1936 when he compared Capone to the criminals in Sing Sing prison: “Few…regard themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the trigger finger. Most of them attempt a form of reasoning, fallacious or logical, to justify their anti-social acts even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining that they should never have been imprisoned at all.”

  Al’s descendants do not accept such a premise; to them, it implies a falsity of character they do not believe he possessed. They refuse to accept that he presented himself as a loving family man who cared for the public’s well-being in order to maintain the fiction that murder and mayhem were necessary evils he had to perform so that he could spend the rest of his life living as the good man he was at heart. Most of them insist that such behavior was not a self-deceiving ruse and that he never wanted to be on the wrong side of the law. They insist that the mantle of criminal greatness was thrust upon his unwilling shoulders.

  The family believes that he might have become the lifelong businessman he always claimed to be had it not been for his father’s death and the need for him to become the main breadwinner for his extended family. If he was indeed working as a bookkeeper in his only honest job, and if his father had lived, they think there is every possibility that he might have risen through the ranks of accounting and financial affairs to the top of the legitimate corporate world. But after he was called back to Brooklyn and drawn into criminal circles, he stepped willingly into the unknown. When he was sent to Chicago, by his own admission he went because no other option was available.

  To reinforce the view that he was a reluctant killer, they point to the many times he told reporters that he wanted to get out of the Outfit and retire to a quiet private life. They argue that for Italian-Americans of Al’s generation the options for legitimate advancement were few. They are correct in one sense but not in another, larger one: not all Italian-Americans found the life of crime the only route to success.

  Katharine Gerould was correct to identify Al as “gorgeously and typically American,” because his rise to fame paralleled a most unusual moment in American history, one that could well fit the same description: Prohibition. It was a curious early form of political correctness that was imposed when a small number of fanatics convinced the national government that laws mandating universal behavior could be enforced. It was a weirdly schizophrenic time, when magazines like the fervently dry Ladies’ Home Journal could quote the former president and later chief justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft (a wet who became rabidly dry once the law was passed), as he observed with regret that the strongest tendency of human nature was “the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.”

  Unlike others who had wealth and social station and used them surreptitiously to defy the unpopular law they were often charged with enforcing, Al Capone ignored it and told the truth about why he did so. Capone openly admitted that he sold illegal alcohol to the “best people” as “a public service [to] supply a demand that was pretty popular.” For most Americans in the Roaring Twenties, he was an American hero because he did publicly what most of them had to do in hiding: he defied the law and got away with it.

  It is an accepted truism that cultural norms underwent seismic changes at the end of World War I. Women got the vote, shortened their skirts, and went to work; jaded and disillusioned men refused to join the traditional workforce and took off for foreign climes to create the great American novel or revolutionize the art world, and their opting out of the traditional “American way” gave rise to the glamorous myths that have since surrounded European expatriates. The rich, who always got richer, suddenly found they had lots of company as the economy soared and the middle classes found themselves with lots of disposable income. The time was right for thumbing one’s nose at what constituted acceptable social conduct, and with a flamboyant bootlegger leading the way, many others were as eager to break all the smaller prohibitions and constrictions on their private lives as they were to disobey the large one forced upon them by the Eighteenth Amendment.

  Al Capone led them on, and the public loved him, even though he was largely responsible for washing the streets of Chicago in blood. For most Americans who did not experience such sights directly, newspaper photographs and movies that portrayed sprawled and bloody dead gangsters and bullet-ridden cars were only entertainment and far removed from real life. Evil was appealing, even enticing, as long as it did not touch them directly. It had become entertainment, disconnecting the public even more from the violence of the gang wars and Al Capone’s part in them.

  To a lesser degree to be sure, blood was flowing all over the country. Colorful figures were robbing banks, kidnapping, and going on shooting rampages that were so frequent and frighteningly antisocial that they made the violence dictated behind the scenes by Capone seem almost dignified and “upper class,” as the British criminal Kray twins described him. He was the 1920s version of the Teflon man; nothing stuck to him. He waved his hand and brutal killings and hideous butchery happened while he stayed cannily removed, far enough away to make sure there was never solid proof that he actually participated in any of the heinous acts.

  James O’Donnell Bennett, one of the first journalists who tried to explain the phenomenon that Al Capone has become, described how “with no conscious effort he emanated menace while saying please.” He was the criminal version of a foppish dandy in his luridly colored but exquisitely tailored suits, with the handkerchief neatly folded in his breast pocket and ready to be whipped out to cover the disfiguring facial scars whenever he needed to smile for the cameras. Everyone knew to beware of that smile, for it could turn sinister in a moment.

  He was, in short, the perfect human paradox and the counterpoint to the political paradox that was Prohibition. He was so wildly charming, so blatantly outsized in everything he did, and so fully in the public eye that it was hard to believe such a good fellow and one so highly entertaining, he of the pithy quotation and catchy phrase, could be all that bad. And as for Prohibition, it might have been the law of the land, but nobody took it seriously, so why not have that drink. That was how Al Capone filled the public’s imagination, and that was how he was regarded—at least until the market crashed.

  Once that happened, public opinion reflected the changed new world of the Great Depression. Although Capone was still a figure of envy because he had the wherewithal to dress and eat well, wear diamond jewelry, drive in chauffeured limousines, and live in a spectacular mansion, he was no longer a figure of unquestioned approval. People were hungry, out of work, and losing their homes. Fun time was over, and the repeal of Prohibition reflected the new sobriety of the nation. The working class no longer had the jobs that gave them the income to pay for drinking and gambling, and admiration for Al had given way to deep resentment for how he lived the high life.

  Public opinion, easily diverted and fickle at best, turned against him, not entirely, but just enough for people to feel self-righteous satisfaction to say in one breath that he got what was coming to him and in the next that he got that comeuppance in a shaky trial on trumped-up charges. Even as they passed righteous judgment, they remained alert for every scrap of information about his life in prison, and as tales of his mental decline seeped out, they were ghoulishly avid for news, the more bizarre the better.

  By the time he died in 1947, the United State
s had been through a second world war, Prohibition was a distant memory, and Al Capone had become the nation’s antihero. The violence of his era had become watered down, glossed over, the stuff of fiction and film rather than the blood and gore of actual torture and trauma. The generation who had been through the war was more interested in the existential rather than the actual hero—or antihero. In contemporary times, the current generation puts its thoughts about Al Capone into a simpler, more direct context: Where does the existential hero of myth and legend end and the antihero of his historical time begin? Perhaps the legacy of Al Capone is that he will become permanently slotted into the category of “mysteries that aren’t going to be solved, that are too sacred to be solved.” This is how most of Al Capone’s descendants would like to leave the discussion, even as they admit that it will never happen. When handsome film idols take on the roles of the dastardly menacing and truly evil criminals of the 1920s and 1930s, the aura of allure they project is so far removed from the reality of what actually happened that nothing remains but myth and legend. It is interesting to make comparisons between these movies and the 2015 film Black Mass about Whitey Bulger and starring the chameleon actor Johnny Depp. The question has been raised whether Depp’s protean performance will begin the process of elevating Bulger to the status of Al Capone, but as quickly as it is asked, it is dismissed, for Bulger never had the international name recognition that Capone had and still has. So the ultimate question remains: Why is Al Capone the lodestone for so many different kinds of discussions, and where does he fit into the contemporary reality?

  The stories written about him during his lifetime are flawed in both content and interpretation, so arriving at the factual certainty of public events is difficult. All the traditional methods of determining the historical accuracy of his personal relationships are mainly nonexistent, because Capone, his cohorts, and his family were not the sort of people who wrote letters or kept diaries. Even the record books of the Outfit cannot provide certainty, because they lie and obfuscate in order to conceal illegal gains. After contemporary enthusiasts sort through the scant documentation available and combine it with personal memories and recollections, the consensus is that arriving at anything approaching a definitive interpretation of the man who was Al Capone remains elusive. All that we have are speculation and probability, and they lead only to endless possibilities.

  “God knows,” Oscar Wilde said of himself in his oft-quoted response to the question of what posterity might make of him. Wilde’s answer is something Al Capone might have said as well: “Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” Wilde envisioned himself as leading “the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?…Perhaps that will be the end of me, too.”

  For now, the only certainty is that as time passes and the man who was Al Capone recedes into history, the legend shows no sign of stopping.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Books come into being for a variety of reasons. Mine usually began with an idea I wanted to explore or a question for which I wanted an answer. This book did not fall into either category. It began when my friend, Jane Kinney Denning, told me her lawyer brother, Kevin Kinney, worked with a man named Andy Capone, who had grown up hearing family stories that they were so closely related to Al Capone that one of them might have been his illegitimate son. He thought the time had come to find out what his elders meant when they said “you don’t know how close you are,” and then refused to tell him anything more. When Jane asked how I would advise Andy to find the truth of his family’s myth, I was intrigued. One thing led to another until I found myself writing a book that explored the private Al Capone, the man behind the public legend.

  As I began the research, I met many people who were members of various families named Capone, some directly related to Al, others not at all. One man’s father was one of Al’s brothers, but he changed his name during Al’s lifetime so his children would not bear the onus attached to Capone. This man told me how his uncles, three of Al’s four other brothers, had changed their names for the same reason. Now, two generations later, he did not know any of his cousins, who they were or where they lived. He knew that some of his generation had gone one step further, changing their birth name to ensure they could never be identified by a prying public. He was eager to connect with these cousins, to meet them and explore their mutual family histories. Through this book, I was able to put many of them in touch with each other for the very first time, and to watch them forge friendships as they compared notes about their family’s history.

  I also met the granddaughters of Mae and Al Capone and learned that they, too, were wary of outsiders. They were curious about their heritage but still wanted their identities to remain private. Here again, through my research, I was able to introduce them to relatives they did not know they had, and to see the pleasure with which they formed friendships among themselves. In a very real sense, this book has been responsible for any number of Capone family reunions.

  I wish I could thank each family member who helped me by naming them all, but only some consented to let themselves be identified. I will respect their confidentiality as I thank those who wish to remain private by saying how much their testimonies have enriched this exploration of their illustrious ancestors’ lives. I know how hesitant they were to reveal anything about themselves, and I am deeply grateful that they trusted me to tell the stories they grew up hearing and those they experienced themselves.

  There were others who bore the Capone name who have allowed me to thank them by name. The senior direct descendant of Al and Mae Capone is their eldest (of four) granddaughters, Diane Capone, who was a generous friend as she shared her memories of the beloved “Papa” and “Mama Mae.” I look forward to her forthcoming memoir. By extension, I thank her sisters, Barbara and Theresa, whom she consulted on my behalf. They all lovingly remember their eldest sister, the late Veronica (Ronnie), who was a living presence in all our exchanges. Mike Martin was judicious in relating his memories. Brian Gabriel was generous with family stories and photographs, and Richard Corey Hart did the same. Ralph Hart cooperated in matters of genetic testing.

  In Rockford, I thank Andy Capone and his wife, Sang, for uncounted hours of research and archival assistance and for too many personal kindnesses to name. I thank the matriarch of that particular family, Phyllis Sciacca, who holds the key to “the Oath.” Her nephews, the sons of the late Joseph (Pip) Capone, tracked down photos and documents and often enlisted friends to help them. I thank the late James, Joseph Edward, Gary, and Gennaro (Jeep), all surnamed Capone. Their wives, Beverly, Chris, and Kathi (respectively), were generous with hospitality. Other Capone cousins contributed memories and documents, and I thank John (J.J.), John (Opie), Paula, Christine, and Naomi (all surnamed Capone), and Adele Anderson Mittlestat and Andy Sciacca.

  For photos, documents, archival information, and research, I wish to thank Bobby Eaton and Bobby Livingston of RR Auctions, and Marc and Mary Perkins for contributions from their impressive Capone collection. Albert Bruce Duckett donated his father, Albert Duckett, Sr.’s, drawings. Bill Papenhausen and Brett Schrieber, Esq., conducted genealogical research; John Alessio did so in Baja, California. June and the late Bob Kinney told me about life in Northern Wisconsin when Al had the Hideaway and Ralph had RaCap. Joanie Stern and Lynne Rossetto Kasper added to my knowledge of the area and its Italian-American people. Jeff McArthur contributed information about Two Gun Hart (Vincenzo Capone); Jan Day Gravel about Al Capone’s friend Gertrude Cole; Jessica Daugherty, of Las Vegas Pawn TV, investigated the provenance of a mistress’s prized necklace.

  Research assistance came from Deborah Cannarella through the Research Internship Program of the Graduate Writing Program in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. I thank Patricia O’Toole for putting the two of us together. Among those who write about Al Capone and who shared their significant knowledge of gangland and gangsters, I thank William J. Helmer, John Winkeler, William Balsamo
, Laurence Bergreen, Andrew Pappachristos, Robert J. Schoenberg, and Charles J. Strozier. I owe a special debt to John Binder, who contributed his extensive knowledge of Chicago’s beer wars by letting me read his forthcoming book in manuscript. Mary Lawrence Test, Esq., read the manuscript with an eye toward all things legal and medical. Leon and Myrna Bell Rochester provided everything from good cheer to photographs, calendars, and online research. Karen Nangle alerted me to collections that held Capone documents in Yale’s Beinecke Library, as did Kenneth Nesheim. Good friends, Ken and the late Roberta (Bobbi) Nesheim, were invaluable allies throughout the long process of making a book. Walter Donahue made sure I had enough miles for research travel. Thomas Henderson has saved me from scams and computer glitches time and again; for that I am exceedingly grateful, and also for the friendship he and Deborah offer.

  Theodor Itten and Evelyne Gottwalz-Itten contributed interesting observations about character and personality, as well as warm and welcoming friendship in Switzerland. Within the Jungian community, I benefitted from conversations with Suzanne and the late George Wagner, Jean and Thomas Kirsch, and Andrew Samuels.

  I am fortunate to be a member of the Women Writing Women’s Lives seminar at CUNY, the New York University Biography Seminar, and the New York Institute for the Humanities. Through conversations at lunches and in seminars, many friends helped this book. I thank Betty Boyd Caroli, Gayle Feldman, Anne Heller, Dorothy Helly, Laurence Lockridge, Dona Munker, Jill Norgren, Joan Schenkar, Alix Kates Schulman, Will Swift, and Aileen Ward. Three friends who wrestle with biographical issues contributed wisdom, expertise, encouragement, and especially commiseration in our gang-of-four dinners: Marion Meade, Diane Jacobs, and Sydney Ladensohn Stern. I received the same support from Lisa Corva, Patricia DeMaio, Allison Stokes, and Judith Steinberg Bassow. My agent, Kristine Dahl, and her assistant at ICM, Caroline Eisenmann, have smoothed my way repeatedly, as has Gary Johnson at the Markson Thoma Literary Agency.