GET CAPONE!
Al Capone was one of the very few gangsters to have competent biographers (three in his case). This new book, by Jonathan Eig, a reporter for the NYTimes, isn’t one of them:
“Get Capone,” which begins with Snorky’s arrival in Chicago, is a curious mixture of details (many gleaned from FBI files gathered under the Freedom of Information Act) and even more omissions. For instance, he short-shrifts Dion O’Banion, who was Torrio and Capone’s most dangerous rival in the early days, and overemphasizes Hymie Weiss, O’Banion’s short-lived successor. He makes no mention of Torrio/Capone’s alliance with, and then war on, the Gennas—all important stuff on Capone’s way up.
Eig’s relentlessly breezy and flippant writing style makes it hard to take his book seriously. For example, he notes that Capone personally murdered Joe Howard, a smalltime hood, because he slapped around Jack Guzik, whom he describes as “Torrio’s bookkeeper.” Only later does he acknowledge that Guzik was The Outfit’s second in command and chief political bagman. And he never mentions that Guzik was Capone’s mentor when he arrived in Chicago, his inseparable friend, and he ran The Outfit with Frank Nitti while Capone was in Alcatraz. That relationship, not just “bookkeeper,” would explain why Capone put it all on the line for Guzik. Similarly, Eig correctly notes that Capone wasn’t a Mafioso, or The Outfit a Mafia family. Later he describes the 1929 Atlantic City gangster convention as “the first meeting of the Commission” [!] and the attendees—more than half of whom were Jewish—as “Mafia men.”
Eig also advances three far-fetched, and poorly supported, theories:
--Capone had nothing to do with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He says the most likely explanation is that William (Three-Finger) White, a tough hood, did it in revenge for the Bugs Moran mob’s fatal shooting of his cousin more than a year earlier. Eig never mentions that White was one of Capone’s triggermen, even though one of the photos in the book shows White with Capone and Capone’s lawyer. (BTW: One of the book’s strong points is that it has quite of few photos of Capone, his family and associates that I’ve never seen before.)
--Capone didn’t baseball-bat Albert Anselmi, John Scalesi and Joe (Hop Toad) Giunta—they were killed by the remnants of the Moran gang in revenge for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (this after telling us that Capone—and, presumably his top killers, Anselmi and Scalesi, had nothing to do with the Massacre).
--Capone didn’t arrange for his own arrest in Philadelphia and incarceration after the ‘29 gangster convention in AC—he was arrested, unwillingly, by diligent Philly cops who tracked him to a movie theater and caught him red-handed with an unregistered handgun. Eig, who put much detail into describing how effectively Capone managed to avoid prison on multiple charges previously, notes that less than 24 hours elapsed between Snorky’s arrest, conviction and imprisonment on the gun charge. Given his legal muscle and money, why would Capone fold up so quickly—unless, as his other biographers wrote, he had been “advised” by the other gangsters in AC and his political allies in Chicago to take a furlough until things cooled down.
Eig also notes that Eliot Ness was a blowhard and publicity hound who made no dent in Capone, and that Elmer Irey, of the Internal Revenue Service, was largely responsible for his demise. All of that has been covered before. Save your money.
