by Deirdre Bair
“to proceed through less invasive means”: “Al Capone’s ‘Grandson’ Wants DNA Samples,” Associated Press, March 13, 2009. The lawyer quoted was David M. Hundley.
Chris Knight ran afoul: Information and quotations that follow are from David Kesmodel, “Growing Up Capone: Mobster’s Kin Go to the Mattresses,” Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2010.
a reality television series: The series ran for one season on ReelzChannel in 2014.
Knight jumped into the fray: “Al Capone—War Brewing over New Reality Show,” TMZ.com, April 17, 2014.
When asked to explain this: In a telephone conversation, June 1, 2013, Griswold said the following: “I’m trying to get it stopped. I have lawyers on the case right now…What they are doing here is breaking the law.” I asked, “What law are they breaking?” She replied, “Illinois has a deceptive practices law, and I’m going to get it enforced…I sent two certified letters, and those people refused to accept them. Now I am sending letters to owners of the studio [channel].” I asked how she thought she could stop the program from going forward. She replied, “Because of the publicity I am generating about them. I have reached out to the Italian community, and they are all behind me.” At this point, she became angry, said I did not know what I was talking about, and changed the subject. Later in the same conversation, she said if the sponsors “could come to an arrangement” with her, she might withdraw her objections.
“kids who can’t name”: Al Capone: Icon, PBS documentary, 2014.
“where the legend outran the man”: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962. Directed by John Ford, starring James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Edmond O’Brien, and Vera Miles.
CHAPTER 26: THE LEGEND
mockumentaries: “A Town, a Gangster, a Festival,” an episode of Documentary Now!, IFC, Sept. 2015.
“he killed bad guys”: Aiden Capone, July 27, 2013.
Boardwalk Empire: Several friends who are nonfiction writers marvel at how their college-age and slightly older children relish the events of this program and how the AC character is their particular hero.
The Madame Tussauds wax museum: I thank Anne Heller and Will Swift for alerting me to this.
a course titled simply “Al Capone”: Offered by Jorie Walters, who described the original offering as “people’s oral histories of how he may have come to Kankakee during Prohibition when there was a local brewery here. This time, the emphasis will focus on ‘Gangs, Rivals, and Al Capone in the 1920s.’ ”
he often sneaked off anonymously: A contention expressed during various television appearances by Deirdre Marie Griswold.
“If Capone frequented even a tenth”: Dave Wischnowsky, “Where in the World Wasn’t Al Capone?,” Daily Journal, Aug. 11, 2012. This is a charmingly whimsical article that collects the spurious claims of hotels that AC slept there. “The Golffather’s Secret Trip to Scottish Courses,” Sun, July 31, 2012: interview with Deirdre Marie Griswold where she invents the totally false story that AC made frequent secret trips to play golf in Scotland.
His name alone: Vonn S. Bair provided this anecdote.
His face is on postage stamps: I thank Niko Courtelis, philatelist, who gave me copies of the stamps.
In Romania, websites and meet-up groups: William J. Helmer put several Romanian scholars in touch with me.
In England in the 1960s: Cole Moreton, “Legend: An In-Depth Look into the Violent History of Ronnie and Reggie, the Kray Twins,” Independent, Aug. 30, 2015.
Al Capone Festival: “A Town, a Gangster, a Festival,” broadcast Sept. 17, 2015, on IFC.
“Amazing,” mused a criminal defense lawyer: Robert Schoenberg website, “Al Capone as ALLUSION,” posted May 20, 2015. He is quoting Julius Lucius Echeles.
Al Capone’s name is the one to grasp: “Tuesday Reader’s View: Puzzling Decisions,” Midland, MI, Daily News, Feb. 23, 2016; Harold Brackman, “Dr. Freud Dissects Donald Trump,” Jewish Journal, March 4, 2016; “Is Hillary’s emails the same deal as Al Capone’s tax records,” posted on Godlike Productions and Done Health, March 7, 2016; “Cheerio, Then,” New York Times, March 4, 2016, p. 4.
“it is not because Capone”: Katharine Fullerton Gerould, “Jessica and Al Capone,” Harper’s Monthly, June 1931.
“major cultural figure”: Al Capone: Icon.
“Was he a mobster?”: Deirdre Marie Griswold repeats this in almost all of her many appearances.
“I don’t see much goodness”: Charles Strozier, who participated in the documentary Al Capone: Icon. His comments here are from a telephone conversation, Aug. 5, 2015.
“Most of them attempt a form of reasoning, fallacious or logical”: Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, 20.
“the desire to lay down rules”: Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1919, quoted by Schoenberg, Mr. Capone, 56.
“with no conscious effort”: James O’Donnell Bennett, Chicago Gangland (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1929); Schoenberg, “Quotes by and About Al Capone,” http://www/mistercapone.com/quotes.htm, May 9, 2014.
“mysteries that aren’t going to be solved”: Justin Kaplan, quoted in Fox, “Justin Kaplan, Prize-Winning Literary Biographer, Dies at 88.”
“God knows”: Wilde’s quotation is in Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, In Victorian Days and Other Papers (New York: Longmans, 1939), 122.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deirdre Bair received the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography. Her biographies of Simone de Beauvoir and Carl Jung were finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her biography of Simone de Beauvoir was a New York Times Best Book of the Year, and her biographies of Anaïs Nin and Saul Steinberg were New York Times Notable Books.
Sonny Capone, in a rare public appearance with his father at a Chicago Cubs baseball game in 1931, shortly before Al’s tax evasion trial began. Cubs player Gabby Hartnett made a point of autographing a baseball for Sonny while Cubs fans cheered support for Al Capone. [John Binder collection]
Mae Capone, when her hair was still its natural brown color, at Palm Island in Florida, shortly after the property was acquired in 1928. With her are her younger brother, Dennis (always called Danny), and their sister Claire’s daughter, Joan. [John Binder collection]
The “other” Capones: Raphael Capone and his wife, Adelina Clotilde Tufano Capone. Al Capone had a deep, private friendship with this family who lived west of Chicago, first in Freeport and then in Rockford, Illinois. Their home became a refuge for him during the height of the gang wars and a convenient location to store various Outfit financial ledgers. [Courtesy of the Rockford Capone family]
The wedding party of Mafalda Capone and John Maritote, December 14, 1930. Everyone was there but Mafalda’s beloved brother Al, who thought it best to remain alone in Miami. At the time, his presence in Chicago for any activity, legal or otherwise, would have been dangerous. [John Binder collection]
Albert Duckett, staff artist for the Chicago Herald Examiner, attended Capone’s 1931 tax evasion trial and the paper printed his daily cartoon. This one shows the principal players and a somewhat nervous Al Capone. [Albert Bruce Duckett collection]
Al Capone on the train taking him to the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, in May 1932. He sits carefully so that his handcuffs and the chain tying him to the frightened young car thief next to him will not show. [John Binder collection]
The happy Capone family at their Palm Island home after Al’s release from Alcatraz in 1939. This photo, taken in the early 1940’s, shows left to right: Sonny; his wife, Diana; Al and Mae. Al adored his daughter-in-law, whom he always called by her maiden name, Casey. [Diane Capone, Capone family collection]
Al Capone being escorted home from the reception after Sonny’s marriage to Diana Casey on December 30, 1941. His mental deterioration left him susceptible to outbursts in situations where there were large crowds and strangers, so he quickly left this happy occasion and returned to the sanctuary of Palm Island. [John Binder collection]
Al and Mae Cap
one pictured next to the grotto on the Palm Island property. Mae is blissfully happy, while a more relaxed Al holds his daily cigar and his waistline shows the effect of his mother’s good cooking in the months after his release from Alcatraz. [Diane Capone, Capone family collection)
Al and Mae Capone, with their first granddaughter, Veronica (Ronnie), and Jack, their Jack Russell terrier. The first of four daughters born to Sonny and Diana, Ronnie was one of the two grandchildren who were old enough to form treasured memories of time spent at Palm Island with their famous grandfather. [Diane Capone, Capone family collection]
Al Capone, fishing in pajamas from his boat, the Sonny & Ralphie, when it was moored at the dock on the Palm Island property. After his death, legends arose that Al was so befuddled in his later years that he cast his lines in the swimming pool, something his granddaughters said never happened. [John Binder collection]
Al Capone with his mother, Teresa, in the last year of his life. His face reflects the ravages of syphilis and hers reflects the tenderness with which she always regarded her son, whom she called “a very good man.” [John Binder collection]
Al Capone in his casket in late January 1947 at the Miami funeral home where his body first lay for a private viewing. The photos were taken surreptitiously and a set was given to his physician, who showed them seldom and kept them from publication until his family sold them in 2013. [Marc and Mary Perkins collection]
After the Miami viewing, the casket was transported to Chicago for interment. As gangster funerals go this one was relatively modest, with floral tributes only from his family and closest associates. [Marc and Mary Perkins collection]
The long-lost Capone brother, Vincenzo, who became known as Richard Two-Gun Hart, the fearless fighter of illegal booze in Nebraska during Prohibition. He liked to wear full cowboy regalia, particularly boots with his signature red hearts on them. [Courtesy of the Hart family]
Ralphie (Capone) Gabriel’s ex-wife, Elizabeth (Betty) Barsaloux Gabriel Irwin, with their two children, the teenaged Deirdre Marie Gabriel and her younger brother, Dennis Gabriel. After divorcing Ralphie, Al’s nephew, in 1945, Betty raised their children as far from the Capone family as she could keep them, fearing the influence they might have on her children’s upbringing. [Courtesy of Brian Gabriel]
An older Sonny Capone with his second daughter, Diane, in the late 1980s after he moved from Florida to be near his daughters in California. Sonny and Diana had a turbulent relationship in the years after Al’s death, but Sonny was always a loving father and became especially close to his children in later life. He and Mae, who lived until 1985, closely guarded Al’s legacy. [Diane Capone, Capone family collection]
Mae Capone with her eldest granddaughter, Ronnie, at Ronnie’s high school graduation from Notre Dame Academy for Girls in Miami, June 1960. Mae spent the years between her husband’s death and her own in Florida, but she traveled often to spend long visits with her granddaughters, regaling them with her stories of what it was like to be Mrs. Al Capone. [Diane Capone, Capone family collection]
The legend of Al Capone is global: Beyond his appearances in American movies and television series that are popular worldwide, Bulgarian gangs claim to study the Outfit to learn how to conduct their business and Tadjikistan issues postage stamps (seen here) with his face [Courtesy of Niko Courtelis]
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