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Little-Known Facts about Al Capone
Despite several historians' insistence that he emigrated with his parents from Naples, Italy, he was born in Brooklyn, NY, a native U.S. citizen. Perhaps because he's so often portrayed by middle-aged movie actors, few realize how young he was. At 26, he was the most powerful crimelord in history. He was barely 30 at the time of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Two years later he was in prison, and he was dead at 47. He turned 21 the day Prohibition went into force, banning the sale of liquor throughout the U.S. and paving the way for millions of profits in bootlegged booze. What a birthday present! Even casual students of criminal history know Capone invented military service in World War I to explain how he came by his infamous facial scars. A long-accepted theory was he was cut up for demanding a Mafia-style haircut in a Brooklyn barber shop. In reality, he was disfigured by one Frank Gallucio while working as a bouncer in Frankie Yale's Harvard Club, for insulting Gallucio's sister. After a cooling-off period, Capone made it a point to hire Gallucio as his personal bodyguard during visits to New York. The reasoning seems to be that anyone who could get close enough to slash his face could keep his later enemies at a safe distance. There were six Capone brothers operating in Chicago. A seventh, Jimmy (ne Vincenzo), ran away from Brooklyn early in the twentieth century, and was not heard from again until he showed up at Al's door in Miami after Al's release from Alcatraz, looking for a handout. In the meantime he'd served as a lawman out West-a corrupt one. Recent years have brought serious doubt whether Al had anything to do with the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. A lawyer once threw him up against a wall, demanding his fee, which was months past due. Meekly, Capone, an experienced killer and the mastermind behind murders without number, settled his bill. Perhaps the most often-repeated story told about Capone is the baseball-bat beating by his own hand of his hired killers, Albert Scalise and John Anselmi, during a banquet thrown in their honor. Historians disagreed on whether this event took place in Chicago or Cicero or Indiana (where their bodies were found) or somewhere else. However, no eyewitnesses ever surfaced, only rumors. Recent scholarship indicates that Capone probably wasn't present when they were bludgeoned and shot. Capone collected elephants-not real ones, knick-knacks- always with their trunks raised for good luck. They decorated his home and his headquarters in the Hawthorne and Lexington hotels. Notwithstanding his bulk, he was an avid swimmer. His Olympic-size pool was one of the biggest in Florida. He was an astute businessman, but a terrible spendthrift and one of the unluckiest horseplayers in the world; he once claimed to have lost $27,500 in Depression dollars on a single race. Ralph, his brother, instructed subordinates never to give Al cash, as he'd just blow it on the nags or a dozen pairs of tailored suits. The soup kitchens he established to feed the poor during the Great Depression might have been great propaganda-but he never publicized them. The federal government followed his lead, without acknowledging the source of the idea, and unlike him, made sure they made all the newsreels. None of this is to say he was a misunderstood guy. Dozens of murders were committed for his benefit, overwhelmingly indicating complicity, and strong circumstantial evidence suggests he committed at least three personally. Decades later, President Lyndon Baines Johnson sent 50,000 young Americans to their deaths in a war he privately admitted couldn't be won. Readers are invited to discuss these circumstances among themselves
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