by Russo, Gus
Al Capone once said, “Nobody hustles like the Hump.” This truism rendered Curly’s role in the Outfit a no-brainer: He assumed control of union takeovers, political liaisons, and protection rackets. He also would develop into a brilliant legal tactician, inventing novel defense strategies for his oft-indicted associates. Curly’s future successes were predicted by the Chicago Crime Commission, which named Humphreys the new Public Enemy Number One after Capone “went away.” With only a brief prison term in his future, Curly proceeded to establish himself as one of the Outfit’s most powerful chieftains for decades to come.
Johnny
One of Curly’s most important Outfit associates was a largely absentee member named Johnny Rosselli. Like Curly, Rosselli was another affable Outfitter, and the country’s original gangster-patriot, referred to as The All-American Mafioso by his biographers. Another gangster with a penchant for thousand-dollar silk suits, Rosselli loved his high style almost as much as he loved his adopted country. In addition to being the Outfit’s traveling emissary to locales such as Hollywood and Las Vegas, Rosselli partnered with the intelligence community and the Kennedy White House in their efforts to remove Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. And Rosselli was likely the only one involved who refused to accept payment for his services. When he died, a high-ranking CIA executive who had worked with him wept openly, much as Curly’s death moved his FBI case officer.
Rosselli was born Filippo Sacco in Esperia, Italy, in 1905. Six years later, his family brought him to New York, on their way to permanent residence in East Boston. As a youngster, Sacco, like his other future Outfit mates, was drawn to the world of street gangs, seduced by the allure of easy money. Like so many before him, young Sacco spent countless hours at the mirror practicing malocchio (the evil eye), or the Look. Years later, Rosselli counseled a friend, “The secret is not to look in their eyes. You pick a spot on their forehead and zero in. That way you don’t blink, you don’t move. It intimidates the hell out of them.” Judging from the career he went on to have, one can assume Sacco, like Capone, mastered the Look.
Dropping out of school, Sacco took work as a driver of a horse-drawn milk wagon, the better to provide cover for his chief enterprise, narcotics trafficking, specifically morphine. Milky, as he was called, was collared twice in 1922, the result of a sting operation involving a pliant drug informant. After spending six months behind bars, Sacco was released, and the informant was soon found murdered. Authorities put two and two together and decreed Filippo Sacco suspect number one. Seventeen year-old Sacco took his cue and fled to New York City, where he assumed the name John Stewart. After a few months distinguishing himself in the local gang scene, Sacco/Stewart was quickly farmed out to the big leagues via the New York to Chicago gangster pipeline. Eighteen-year-old Sacco became Joe Accardo’s predecessor as Al Capone’s driver and bodyguard.
Capone and Sacco/Stewart became so close that some believed them to have been cousins. One night, Al convinced Sacco to adopt a more appropriate Italian surname. Back at home, the young gangster leafed through an encyclopedia until he chanced upon an entry concerning a fifteenth-century painter who had added Last Supper frescoes to the walls of the Sistine Chapel: Cosimo Rosselli. From then on, Filippo Sacco was Johnny Rosselli. Even his family seemed to forget his birth name when speaking of him.
During his time with Capone, Rosselli, like Paul, Curly, and Joe, grew to appreciate the importance of appearance. But unlike Capone, who was drawn to garish, often flamboyant attire, Johnny mimicked the suave, understated sophistication of Paul Ricca and his peers. In time, Rosselli began acquiring his own fitting nicknames, among them Mr. Smooth.
Just as the Syndicate was about to take off under Capone’s rule, unforeseen troubles cut short Rosselli’s stay in Chicago. Rosselli may have been tough on the outside, but no amount of staring into the mirror could strengthen his inherited weak lungs (his grandfather died of tuberculosis, his father of influenza). After a typically harsh Illinois winter, Rosselli was diagnosed with incipient tuberculosis. After consultation with Capone, Johnny was dispatched to the West Coast to be the eyes and ears of the Syndicate, on the lookout for opportunities should the infant Hollywood “dream factory” catch hold. Capone was smart: During the Depression, the only people who appeared to flourish were gangsters and entertainers (in the year after the 1929 stock crash, Warner Brothers Pictures was valued at $160 million).
Arriving in Los Angeles, Rosselli quickly attached himself to the bootlegging operation of Anthony Cornero Stralla, aka Tony “the Hat” Cornero. The stylish Cornero, a perfect match for the dapper Rosselli, made his living transporting alcohol on ships from Canada and Mexico. He became so successful that he soon earned the moniker King of the Western Rumrunners. At the time, Cornero was engaged in bloody sea battles with rival rumrunners that conjured up images of pirate exploits. As a trusted associate, Rosselli’s star, and income, rose with Cornero’s. Tony the Hat eventually came to feel police pressure and fled to Canada, where he turned his interest to gambling. By 1930, he would relocate in Nevada, where Rosselli and Humphreys were spreading Capone’s money around to any member of the state legislature who would vote for the Wide Open Gambling Bill.
With Cornero in absentia, Rosselli gravitated to Jack Dragna’s crime organization. Considered Al Capone’s alter ego, Dragna, ne Anthony Rizzoti, was the City of Angels’ own bootlegging/extortion/gambling kingpin. The local press named him “the Al Capone of Los Angeles.” Dragna’s operation flourished largely due to his friendship with Mayor Frank Shaw, the most corrupt chief executive in Los Angeles history. The Rosselli-Dragna liaison was mutually beneficial. Rosselli needed a sponsor to gain acceptance in his new home; Dragna valued not only Johnny’s street smarts, but his ties to the powerful Chicago Syndicate, which Dragna hoped would amplify his own purchase in the national crime hierarchy. In a police raid on the office of Dragna’s lieutenant Girolomo “Mo Mo” Adamo, evidence was found of the growing cooperation between Dragna’s gang and Rosselli’s Outfit: Adamo’s phone book contained the addresses and private unlisted phone numbers of Curly Humphreys and Joe Accardo.
Throughout the twenties, Rosselli maintained close contact with Capone. In September 1927, Capone threw a weeklong party to honor his friend boxer Jack Dempsey, prior to Dempsey’s ballyhooed title fight against champion Gene Tunney. (Capone offered to fix the fight; Dempsey, however, declined. He should have accepted - Tunney won.) The fight was the largest spectacle ever to hit Chicago, with over 150,000 fight fans arriving from all over the country to view the fisticuffs at Soldier Field.
Arriving by train from Los Angeles was Johnny Rosselli. After the fight, he accompanied Capone’s cousin Charlie Fischetti back to the Metropole Hotel, where Capone’s bacchanal was in full swing. For sheer extravagance, Capone’s bash ran a close second to the proceedings at the stadium: Pianist Fats Waller played, Al Jolson sang, and the top-shelf alcohol and women were in great abundance - all paid for by Capone. “There must have been a thousand people in that place,” Rosselli later said in Senate testimony. Polly Adler, the famous New York madam, attended the bash and later recalled in her memoir, A House Is Not a Home, “Capone was certainly a grand host - Lucullus and those old Roman boys could have taken lessons from him.”
Johnny attempted to return the hospitality when Capone journeyed to L.A. later that year. When Capone was booted from the posh Biltmore Hotel, Johnny tried to intercede with the local police, offering his home to Capone and his entourage. The authorities refused the deal and put Capone et al. on the next train east.
In due time, Rosselli would gravitate to the burgeoning movie business, a move that would have profound repercussions for the Outfit. In that milieu, Rosselli made the acquaintance of the robber baron already known to Al Capone and Curly Humphreys, Joseph P. Kennedy. Like Capone and his gang, Joe Kennedy was anxious to discover what the new people’s opiate would be, now that booze was widely available. The get-rich- quick crowd desired another tightly controlled product that wa
s in big demand - what Curly Humphreys described to his wife as “the new booze.” It seemed that Capone, via Rosselli and Humphreys, wasn’t the only bootlegger who grasped that the new booze was the Hollywood dream factory. As he later testified, Johnny Rosselli often played cards and golf with the Kennedy patriarch, who was now a prime mover in Tinseltown. All told, Kennedy’s 1920s contacts with the Outfit were but a prequel to a partnership arrived at four decades in the future.
While Mr. Smooth took full advantage of the hedonism of the movie capital, back in Chicago his sartorial polar opposite, “Greasy Thumb,” was going about the mundane but essential task of attending to the Outfit’s bookkeeping.
Jake
In the Outfit’s ruling system, a spot on the second rung was reserved for Russian-born Jake Guzik. At forty-four years old, he was twelve years Al’s senior when they both went to prison for tax evasion in 1931. As a child (one of twelve siblings), Guzik witnessed his parents’ arrests on white-slavery charges. Jake and his five brothers eventually became pimps themselves after starting out as errand runners for the prostitutes owned by their parents. Guzik was well-known for his lack of personal hygiene; his former driver, George Meyer, remembered the plump pimp: “Everything he ate for a week you could see on his vest. And the B.O.!”
Guzik was not only Capone’s bookkeeper at the Syndicate’s Four Deuces headquarters, he was his closest friend and confidant. They became so simpatico that friends began calling Guzik “the Little Fellow,” a reference to Al’s sobriquet “the Big Fellow.” In 1924, when a bloodied Jake showed up at the Four Deuces, mugged by a thug named Joe Howard, Capone went into a rage. In what was becoming an increasingly rare show of hands-on revenge, Capone tracked down Howard in a Wabash Avenue saloon, placed a pistol an inch from Howard’s head, and squeezed the trigger, killing him instantly. Capone’s display of loyalty to someone as repellent as Guzik was not unnoticed or unappreciated by other gangsters unaccustomed to receiving such support from on high.
During the Torrio-Capone regime, Guzik had operated in a room leased by Torrio for “A. Brown, M. D.” The office, just one block from the Four Deuces headquarters, was illegally raided by Mayor Dever’s men in 1924. Although the material seized could not be entered as evidence the raiders had neglected to obtain a search warrant - the bounty gave an insight into the Torrio-Capone operations, as well as Guzik’s role in it. Included in the seizure were numerous ledgers kept by Guzik, which detailed the inner workings of the regime. Among the docket headings were alcohol suppliers; Canadian and Caribbean route information; a list of commercial wholesale alcohol buyers (hotels, restaurants, etc.) and illegal speakeasies; officials (politicians, police, etc.) on the payoff schedule; a list of breweries owned by the Syndicate; and a list of brothels and gambling dens owned by the Syndicate.
The press nicknamed Guzik “Greasy Thumb” for reasons that are still debated. One explanation holds that the financial whiz earned the name as a sloppy waiter who often let his thumb dip into the soup. The more probable version postulates that the name reflects Guzik’s role as “the palm greaser” who disbursed countless stacks of greenbacks to corrupted cops and politicians. These payments were made from Guzik’s regular table at St. Hubert’s Old English Grill and Chop House (which he owned behind front-man owner Tommy Kelly). Whatever the source for the nickname, there is no evidence that anyone outside the working press referred to Guzik as Greasy Thumb.
Capone shared his bounty with Guzik, who reportedly earned millions, for which the government could show no paid taxes. So trusted was Guzik by Capone that he was given the honor of chairing Al’s 1926 peace conference. Guzik was convicted on tax charges one year before Capone and would serve five years, before returning to the Outfit as its financial and legal consigliere.
This then wras the Outfit’s starting lineup: Joe Accardo, Curly Humphreys, Paul Ricca, Johnny Rosselli, and Jake Guzik. Their efforts were buttressed by a supporting cast of hundreds. No effort was spared to insulate the leadership from the violent enforcement inflicted by the expendable ones. Among the troops who ran the gauntlet were Rocco and Charlie Fischetti (beer distribution); Joe Fusco (liquor); Frank Pope and Anthony Volpe (gambling); Peter Penovich, Jr. (floating casinos); ;Duke Cooney (brothels); Hyman Levin (collections); Jack McGurn, Louis Campagna, and Frank Milano (gunmen-enforcers); James Belcastro and Joseph Genaro (bomb squad); Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt (enforcer; found with Jack McGurn at the scene of a murder with a bag of golf clubs mixed in with a still-warm machine gun).
The Outfit adopted, whether arrived at casually or as result of formal discussion, a strict set of personal guidelines for the new regime: The board would hold daily meetings; at least six days out of the week, they put in twelve-hour workdays; Outfit leaders would dress the part, just as corporate directors of the upperworld; wives and families were to be respected at all times and kept insulated from the business of the Outfit; boozing and drug usage were not tolerated. The antinarcotics stance was a remnant of Capone’s own beliefs. “Only two kinds of hustlers I can’t stand: a pickpocket and a hophead,” Al had told his gang. Capone’s abhorrence of drugs was said to have resulted in his ordering the murders of users within the gang. Years later, Paul Ricca learned the meaning of Capone’s fears firsthand when his son became a drug addict. The edict against using was mild in comparison to that against dealing. During the reign of the Outfit, drug trafficking was strictly prohibited, and those who succumbed to the temptation of easy money in the narcotics trade were removed with great dispatch. When one member, Chris Cardi, was arrested for drug dealing, he was made an example when the bosses let him serve out his sentence, only to have him killed immediately upon his release.
The gang’s bylaws also had a practical rationale. One alcoholic union thug named George McLane, who was to be conscripted against his will into the Outfit, recalled his meeting with Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti. “He told me to stop drinking and get on the wagon,” McLane said. “Nitti said that there was an unwritten law in the Outfit. They are not allowed to drink, because they might shoot their mouth off. If they shoot their mouth off, they will be found in an alley.” But what thoroughly shocked McLane was that “they didn’t even chase broads during business hours.” Lastly, the Outfit continued Capone’s nondiscriminatory work ethic: No one was excluded from the Outfit due to race, religion, or nationality. But the leadership and key decisions were still reserved for Italians only.
The work of the Outfit was thus transfigured from amorphous hooliganism to the “business” of crime, and one its most important agendas, the control of the city’s workforce, was delegated to Curly Humphreys.
1. In the midtwenties, banker-investor Joe Kennedy purchased the Film Booking Office as well as controlling interest in RKO Productions. When he branched into Pathe Films, he plundered its stock, giving insiders such as himself stock worth $80 per share, while common stockholders were reimbursed to the tune of a mere $1.50. Many lost their life savings, while Kennedy walked away with a cool $5 million. The swindled stockholders tried to file suit but to no avail.
At the same time, Kennedy worked for Guy Currier’s Boston investment firm, and when Currier was away, Kennedy scrutinized his private files to gain insider information. Currier’s family now says that Currier felt double-crossed by Kennedy, whom he believed to be corrupt.
In 1929, Kennedy attempted a hostile takeover of the California-based Pantages theater chain. When owner Alexander Pantages balked, Joe Kennedy paid a seventeen- year-old girl $10,000 to accuse Pantages of rape. Pantages was charged and sentenced to fifty years in prison (later reversed), and Joe Kennedy got the theater chain at a greatly undervalued price. Four years later, when the girl wanted to admit her role in the frame-up, she suddenly died, apparently of cyanide poisoning. On her deathbed, the twenty-one-year-old admitted her conspiracy with Kennedy, who had promised to make her a film star (see Ronald Kessler, Sins of the Father, pp. 51-59).
It has been well documented that Kennedy used insider inform
ation to ’sell short’ before the 1929 stock market crash, making millions off the misery of his fellow citizens.
2. The role of Ness went to Kevin Costner, who appeared to be making a career of historical misrepresentations when, in the 1991 film JFK, he portrayed the bullying New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison as Jimmy Stewart reincarnated. Costner continued the theme in 2000, when he starred in and produced the dramatic recreation of the Cuban missile crisis Thirteen Days. In that role he played presidential adviser Kenny O’Donnell, who had no known input in the crisis; virtually all of “O’Donnell’s” actions and words in the film are invented.
2.
Curly’s Racket:
The Union Takeovers
Honest to God, we’ve been in the wrong racket all along.
-Al Capone to Curly Humphreys, 1930
One of the first enterprises embarked on by Al Capone’s heirs was in fact initiated during the Big Guy’s reign. Local lore holds that soon after his recruitment into the Syndicate, Curly Humphreys explained to Capone how the dreadful state of labor-employer relations could work to the gang’s benefit. Humphreys had once again absorbed the essence of recent American history, churned it around in his cranium for a while, and produced a synthesis that would benefit both him and his gang. It was classic Humphreys, displaying the great foresight that saw him dominate the early years of the Outfit’s reign.
In 1886, when the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was formed, workers began enjoying a period of great success. With improving wages and workplace conditions, laborers finally had a voice to be reckoned with: the union. For four decades, laborers enjoyed the benefits of unionization, until a post-World War I recession ended the party. Throughout the Roaring Twenties, unemployment quietly rose, as wages began dropping. In addition, the corporate world began to employ the same Communist-scare tactics that the anti-ethnic groups had used in proselytizing the virtues of alcohol prohibition. Given the nation’s postwar patriotic fever, Americans were coaxed to equate “workers” and “unions” with Marxist philosophies. Those who remained loyal to the unions were marginalized as Bolsheviks. With labor relations rapidly deteriorating, the workers’ unions seemed impotent against the onslaught of antiunion sentiment.