Al Capone told everyone who asked him what he did for a living that he was a "property owner and taxpayer in Chicago." He was really a powerful multimillionaire in 1920s Chicago who made money from the illegal sale of alcohol during Prohibition and the vices that usually accompanied it: gambling and prostitution.
His "Outfit" was such a smoothly running criminal organization that the Harvard Business School studied its structure with an organizational chart that included hundreds of names and jobs like "chief collector" Hymie "Loud Mouth" Levine, and liquor distributor Lawrence "Dago" Mangano.
Yet, we still don't know enough about Capone to distinguish the reality of the man from the legend that lived after his death. He lived in a pre-internet era and his large extended family has never talked about what really happened. Capone could be vicious and turn on a dime, yet his kindness and generosity were so admired that elites feared he might be elected to office in Chicago.
We also talk to a member of the Gambino crime family who was saved by books and religion while doing eight of his thirteen year sentence in a federal penitentiary. The reality of the mob isn't the stuff of legend for him.
GUESTS:
- Deirdre Bair - Biographer of Simone de Beauvoir, Anaïs Nin, Carl Jung, Saul Steinberg and Samuel Beckett: A Biography, for which she won a National Book Award. Her latest biography is Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend
- Louis Ferrante - Author of several books including Unlocked: The Life and Crimes of a Mafia Insider and Mob Rules: What the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman; and host of the series, Inside the Gangsters' Code, for the Discovery Channel
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Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired on October 26, 2016.
