2 Questions??

Did Lucky and Al Capone ever meet in person, if so is there a photograph??

Did Al Capone ever attend the commission that Lucky set up??

I'd have to do more research but I didn't think Luciano and Capone were ever in the same Prison, unless I'm really mistaken.

According to many of the movies Capone was at the Commission meetings but if I remember correctly I think I read that he was appointed to the Commission but never attended, again I could be wrong.

He would have been in prison even before the Commission was set up, right? He went to prison in 1932 and the Commission was set up only a year before that. It seems unlikely that he would have attended any meetings while under the jurisdiction of the court. But, maybe.

Capone and Luciano met at least twice--once in a gangland convention in Chicago that Capone hosted, also in another convention in Atlantic City that Luciano helped to organize. Luciano, clever fellow, appointed Capone "chairman" of the Commission when he formed it ca. 1931, but it is not recorded that Capone ever attended a Commission meeting. Probably just as well, since the title was honorific. Joe Bonanno, in his autobiography, notes that the Chicago Outfit seldom participated in Commission business because there was only one organization--theirs--in Chicago, and it wasn't in their interests to get embroiled in the perpetual srife among NYC's Five Families.

They never met in prison. Capone went to Atlanta after his tax evasion conviction, then to Alcatraz, then to Terminal Island. Luciano went to Dannemora Prison after his Mann Act conviction, then to Great Meadow, then he was deported.

Guys, put on your reading glasses.... the thread's originator asked if they ever met in PERSON, not in prison!

Popular legend has it that Luciano and Capone knew each other from their teen years when they were supposed to have been in the same street gang. Capone's biographer, John Kobler, states the two knew each other from elementary school and later being in the Five Points Gang (headed by Johnny Torrio). Similarly, some of Luciano's bios mention early contact between the two, as well.

I've never seen a picture in which the two appeared together, but its surely possible that they were photographed together.

Failing eyesight is just one of my ongoing problems, SC. Effing Social Security won't pay for magnifiers....

Much as I respect Kobler (Capone's best biographer, IMO), it's doubtful that Capone and Luciano met as teens. Capone grew up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard district, while Luciano was a son of the Lower East Side. Going from one borough in those days was a big deal, much less running with the same gang.

Gosch & Hammer's "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano" also mentions a few early incidents between Charlie Lucky and Big Al. I recall reading others that mention the two knew each other from their early days but I'm too tired to look it up now. Plus, I can't find my reading glasses.

I'm not 100% certain that I believe that they knew each other as young men and thats why I used the phrase "popular legend", but I can't really argue against a few different sources either.

According to several different sources, Al Capone and Lucky Luciano were co-members of a gang known as the Five Pointers.

The most notorious gangster in the history of the nation, Alphonse Capone, better known to most as Al Capone or Scarface, ran Chicago with blood and guns.
Capone was born in Brooklyn in 1899 to two Italian immigrants. From the beginning, he never responded well to authority. He beat a female teacher while in his sixth grade year and left after the principal verbally chastised him for the incident. Facing a life of low paying jobs, he joined the street gang led by Johny Torrio and Lucky Luciano.

That perception may have been based in the fact that Johnny Torrio, Capone's mentor, had been a Five Pointer--the long-running Lower East Side gang. But Torrio later moved to the Brooklyn Navy Yard district, where he became a ward heeler and racketeer, and where the adolescent Capone met and worshipped him.

BTW: Kobler explains the origin of the word, "racket." He writes that, periodically, ward heelers and gang leaders would enrich themselves by throwing a dinner in their own honor, and "inviting" (read: requiring) local politicians, merchants and their own cohorts to make substantial "contributions" to the dinner, to the "commemorative journal," etc. These were loud, raucous, sometimes violent affairs, with everyone getting drunk, throwing rolls at each other, etc. They made a loud racket, in other words. (The all-time great movie "Little Caesar" accurately shows a "racket" dinner when Caesar takes over the Club Palermo gang from Sam Vettore.) Gradually, "racket" came to describe any illicit or semi-illicit money-making scheme or business.

Thanks for the replies. I'm reading Five families by Raab and was interested if Capone and Lucky (two criminal masterminds) ever met. Its preety shocking to know how powerful the mafia was in america. Its a great book so far.