Alphonse ("Scarface") Capone

Alphonse ("Scarface") Capone (1899-1947), the most famous U.S. gangster of the twentieth century, became head of the Chicago crime syndicate in 1925. Two years later, the 28-year-old gangster was grossing "105 million a year from his operations. He continued to dominate organized crime until 1931, when he was imprisoned for income tax evasion" (Wallechinsky & Wallace, 1981, p. 496), an incongruously minor infraction compared to the bloodshed he actually left behind.

No other American gangster rose to the international reputation of Al Capone, whose historical image is a curious blend of ruthless gangster and a "distorted Horatio Alger hero who went from rags to riches to jail" (Nash, 1992, p. 78). Nash (1992) goes on to characterize Capone as "a ruthless, murderous thug who killed without remorse--street smart, clever, and ingenious when it came to crime . . . killing without compunction . . . at the whims of a mercurial and murderous temperament" (p. 78). Capone killed his friends as well as his enemies, while at the same time spending lavishly on himself and those about him. In fact, as Nash (1992) notes, Capone "projected an image of generosity, of a philanthropist to the common man" (p. 78).

In Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone, a brilliantly written and superbly documented biography by John Kobler (1992), the author presents Capone's Brooklyn neighborhood as a fertile ground for criminal behavior (p. 19). In fact, the early Italian immigrants "tended to

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s father could barely pay the monthly rent . . . consequently, his mother Teresa (1867-1952) had to work as a dressmaker . . . (1981, p. 496). Gabriel Capone resigned himself to a wretched life of menial, low-paying jobs. As Kobler (1992) explains, a life of crime was an attractive alternative: Resignation was not a characteristic of the younger Italians. As they grew up poor in the world's richest nation, as educational, social, and economic opportunities, purportedly accessible to all Americans, eluded them, they did not, like their elders, passively accept frustration. Without yet having established legitimate values of their own, they rejected their parents' old country traditions as irrelevant to the challenge of America . . . it appeared that only crime could open the door to the good life, and they joined the ranks of professional gunmen and bombers, extortionists, vice peddlers, labor racketeers, gambling-house operators and bootleggers. (p. 21) Actually, this lawless first- and second-generation minority comprised only a minute fraction of the Italo-American population. Even so, other immigrants stereotyped the Italians as innately criminal: "They saw the 'dago,' the 'ginzo,' as not only

Category: People - A