Gangsters of the Golden Era

[Mr_D.]

We all know of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and the rest.

These people became legends in time in their own right.

So who is your favorite Golden Era Gangster(s) and why?

 

[Silver Dollar]

Actually, I don't really consider gangsters too cool, just out and out dangerous. I might get caught in the crossfire. :eusa_doh:

However, if I have to choose a particular period, it would have to be the Depression era. It's a well known fact that John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde were not typical of a lot of gangsters. Yes they stole and killed and were dangerous folks but they didn't really prey on the average person. They preyed on the banks who the average Joe in the street believed that the banks were preying on them. They hated the banks because they were foreclosing on everything they owned and it wasn't nice business either. Today with all the foreclosures going on, some of the lenders are at least doing something to help people. Back then, forget about it. When the banks got hit it was sort of a popular revenge thing like Robin Hood. If you watch the hHistory Channel which I know a lot of you do, it will explain it better than I can.

 

[Levallois]

My favorite is Alvin Karpis - the last Public Enemy No. 1 after Johnny D. and Baby Face Nelson. Karpis was one of the leaders of the Barker-Karpis gang and had an interesting (and profitable) crimnal career between 1931-1936. He was an unapologetic thief who would kill you if you got in his way. He was captured rather than killed in in New Orleans in 1936 by the FBI (supposedly by Hoover himself but Karpis refuted this in his autobiography) and spent most of his adult life in places like Levenworth and "The Rock" before being parolled in 1969. He died in Spain in 1979, supposedly of an accidental sleeping pill overdose. His autobiography is a good read but hard to find.

John

 

[Silver Dollar]

Hey, that's Creepy Karpis. I saw a picture of him. This guy was weird looking. Those guys sure did have some cool names back then. Baby Face, Machine Gun Kelly, Scarface, Bugs Moran. It sounds like a real Dick Tracy line up.

 

[Diamondback]

Dillinger himself, from my profiling, actually did his darnedest to try to avoid killing people--aside from one case where he did kill a private security guard, where it really messed up his head and he was even writing to the widow every so often for a while--so while I wouldn't call him or any of 'em favorites, I'd rather place my life in his hands (assuming* my profiling is correct) than have any of the others within a hundred miles.
*Yes, I know what they teach you about this in Boot Camp!

 

[Naphtali]

We all know of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and the rest.

These people became legends in time in their own right.

So who is your favorite Golden Era Gangster(s) and why?

Apparently, your knowledge of gangsters emanates from movies and books. I don't want to rain heavily on your outlook, but rain I will. Through a friend - the son of a capo, but no gangster himself - I became acquainted with Carlos Marcello and Nick Civella (spelling of both surnames???), bosses of New Orleans and Kansas City respectively. While pleasant companions, especially Marcello with a most unusual accent, these men were thugs - poorly educated, rigid, authoritarian, manic-depressive THUGS who would have you [fill in the blank] on a whim. Contrary to the "Godfather" nonsense, they were not planners or deep thinkers. They controlled their employees, friends - everybody - via force or its threat. Not to be cynical, they operated as feudal lords, much like politicians and bureaucrats. Where politicians and bureaucrats control via patronage and extortion, so did these guys.

Like you, although I knew what they were, I was intrigued and flattered by their attention, even though I knew it was veneer, and they knew I knew.

What I've implied I'll just keyboard. This idea of "favorite" or nice-guy gangsters is fundamentally inaccurate. Don't think Robin Hood or the Corleones. Think Heinrich Himler at a dinner party.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Silver Dollar]

Actually, I don't really consider gangsters too cool, just out and out dangerous. I might get caught in the crossfire. :eusa_doh:

However, if I have to choose a particular period, it would have to be the Depression era. It's a well known fact that John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde were not typical of a lot of gangsters. Yes they stole and killed and were dangerous folks but they didn't really prey on the average person. They preyed on the banks who the average Joe in the street believed that the banks were preying on them. They hated the banks because they were foreclosing on everything they owned and it wasn't nice business either. Today with all the foreclosures going on, some of the lenders are at least doing something to help people. Back then, forget about it. When the banks got hit it was sort of a popular revenge thing like Robin Hood. If you watch the hHistory Channel which I know a lot of you do, it will explain it better than I can.

That's pretty much what I said in the first sentences. It is however a fact that during the Depression, the population tended to side with some of the gangsters because they had a common enemy i.e. the banks and the federal government. Sometimes perceptions get twisted around a bit. I honestly don't think that anyone really loves any of those characters and I don't think the gangsters really cared to much about what the people thought of them. If you haven't already, check out A Bronx Tale. Toward the end of the movie, the young main character who loved the main criminal, Sonny like a second father, found out later if Sonny felt crossed, he struck out hard and fast no matter who you were or how close you were to him. He trusted no one and wasn't loyal to anyone but his higher ups (who could whack him). You really couldn't trust him at all.

 

[MikeBravo]

My favourite gnangster would have to be Melbourne, Australia's own "Squizzy Taylor". Quoted from http://hubpages.com/hub/Squizzy-Taylor-and-Other-Notorious-Australian-Gangsters-of-the-1920s
"For almost a decade Squizzy was a kingpin in Melbourne crime, involved in everything from vicious assaults to murder, blackmail, gambling rackets, robbery and theft. He died as violently as he had lived, allegedly gunned down in a shoot-out with a fellow criminal named 'Snowy' Cutmore on 27 October 1927.

"He had a nasty mouth that curled in a perpetual sneer. He was flashy and ostentatious, clad always in the best of suitings, and the most iridescent of shirts and ties. He was just a dapper little braggart, but he wielded amazing influence over gunmen, burglars and pick-pockets. They elevated him to the stature of a demi-god. To an assorted crew of morons he became a hero, a legendary figure, an exemplar of all forms of criminal derring-do."

As he stepped up the criminal ladder, Squizzy turned to blackmail, and discovered that he could make more money -- and stay out of jail himself -- by getting others to do his dirty work for him. He employed baby-faced molls to lure winning punters from the racetracks to their rooms, where one of Squizzy's male accomplices would burst in at a compromising moment and pretend he was the girl's husband. The punter usually paid up to soothe the 'husband's' hurt feelings. If not, he was told bluntly that 'Mr Taylor' would take up the aggrieved husband's case; this was enough to make the most stubborn punters dig deep into their hip pockets.

While Australians by their thousands were dying on the battlefields of far-distant shores, Squizzy Taylor remained in Melbourne where he continued to spill blood for his own criminal ends. Eyewitnesses identified Squizzy and John Williamson as the occupants of a cab whose driver, William Haines, was found shot dead in February 1916. Piecing together the evidence, police found that Taylor and Williamson had been on their way to rob a bank manager, but Haines had refused become involved, and had been killed as a result.

Witnesses who had sworn at the inquest that Taylor had been in the car, now discovered that they could not identify him with any certainty. The jury soon returned a verdict of not guilty on the murder charge, and instead of going to the gallows, Squizzy went to jail for vagrancy.

His close encounter with the hangman's noose was enough to deter the little crook from future active involvement in crime. He moved into the background as the criminal mastermind, pulling off one daring robbery after another. As the World War ended and the 1920s dawned, Squizzy's mob continued to do battle with revolvers and shotguns to win control of Melbourne's gangland by killing off their rivals.

He even wrote poems which were eagerly read by his admiring public. One, which seemed to sum up his philosophy, read:

While you live, live in clover,

For when you're dead,

You're dead all over.

For the next five years Squizzy dominated the Melbourne underworld, sending thugs to beat up or gun down anyone who dared oppose him. Usually Squizzy left it to his gang to do his dirty work, but an argument over a woman caused him to pay a personal call to a fellow gangster named Snowy Cutmore on the evening of 27 October 1927

A volley of revolver shots met Squizzy as he walked into Cutmore's bedroom. Cutmore was killed by a bullet to the heart, while Squizzy was hit in the right side over the lungs and died within minutes. Cutmore's mother was wounded in the right shoulder."

 

[1961MJS]

Hi, not exactly a "favorite", but a local boy gone bad. This is copied from Amazon's blurb on the book "The Tri-State Terror: The Life and Crimes of Wilbur Underhill":

"Wilbur Underhill—the "Tri-State Terror"—is the Boogeyman of Depression-era outlaws in more ways than one. For nearly a decade in the turbulent period of the 1920s and 30s, he was one of the most infamous and feared criminals in the Southwest. Convicted of one of his murders in Oklahoma he was sentenced to life and escaped, killing a cop and receiving another life term in Kansas, and then escaped again, leading ten others in a mass breakout. In the last months of his life, he rose to national notoriety as a prolific bank robber and suspect in the infamous Kansas City Massacre and became the first criminal ever shot down by agents of that fledgling agency which would soon become the FBI.

True criminal immortality seemed to elude Wilbur after his death, his name eclipsed in the national headlines by the likes of John Dillinger, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and "Baby Face" Nelson. But scratch the surface and he’s still there.

-- From his native Joplin where Underhill began his career modestly as a "lovers lane" bandit,
-- to the Tri-State mining district where he is best remembered as a lone wolf scurrying about the night terrorizing the populace and committing a half-dozen robberies at gunpoint,
-- to Wichita, Kansas where he was known as a vicious cop-killer,
-- to Jeff City, Lansing, and McAlester where he became a legendary figure among the inmate populations and seemingly possessed a talent to break out at will,
-- to the Central Oklahoma oilfields and his hideouts in the wild and wooly Cookson Hills,
-- to the many towns he struck in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arkansas his impact is still felt.

Underhill emerges from the shadows at last in this work, thanks to the tireless research of R.D. Morgan. The Tri State Terror is a natural follow-up to Morgan’s previous works (especially Bad Boys of the Cookson Hills) but easily stands on its own as the definitive biography of a long lost superstar of thirties crime whose position in the criminal constellation is reaffirmed."

I think that he isn't famous because he lacked a good nickname or last name. Dillinger sounds more dangerous than Underhill does.

Later

 

[1961MJS]

Hi again

Another interesting place to visit is the train station in downtown KC. They don't have much at all about the Kansas City Massacre which took place at the station, but you can still see the slugs in the stone front of the building.

According to a fairly recent book, (The Union Station Massacre: The Original Sin of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI by Robert Unger), the massacre was by the Law Enforcement not the mob or bank robbers. One of the guys sitting behind Jelly Nash didn't know how to use his new automatic shotgun, and when they showed up to rescue Jelly, this guy accidentally killed everyone else in the car. Whoops!!

The WW1 museum is across the street and it's really a great place to visit though. fftopic: Sorry, but looking at a few bullet holes only takes about 15 minutes, and 14 of that is looking for a place to park.

Later

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

After learning more about the era and the characters in it, both " good guys " and " bad ", the distinction between them really blurs. Hoover was a self-serving maniac and his new agency was responsible for the deaths of as many , or more, innocent people than the bank robbers he branded as Public Enemies. I think he targeted the outlaw bank robbers simply because they were easier to track down, as opposed to the big organizations his fledgling FBI had really no chance of defeating.
If I were to pick a favorite, it would be Dillinger. He wanted to avoid violence whenever possible, and probably would have if he could have avoided involvement with Baby Face Nelson, who was a psychopath.

 

[1961MJS]

...If I were to pick a favorite, it would be Dillinger. He wanted to avoid violence whenever possible, and probably would have if he could have avoided involvement with Baby Face Nelson, who was a psychopath.

Hi Major Danger, boy are you in trouble. It's George Nelson, not that stupid Baby face, G E O R G E. lol

Later

 

[Dated Guy]

Just to add my sixpenneth to the debate, I recently had to read up on a whole bunch of 'Gangster' types for a class subject matter, I must confess to be quite taken with a guy named 'Meyer Lansky'. A real brain, monetary of course, behind 'Bugsy Siegal' and so on. He basically ran the Cuban gambling joints, and other ventures over the years.
A book I would recommend to you is, Little Man, by Robert Lacey, it tells his life story, seemingly, warts and all....He had a particular taste in Cavanaugh Hats, that maybe not the correct spelling, but, it is what is written in the book. He was also deeply patriotic as well, but, pretty well abused by the powers that be, even if he did bail them out from time to time, the government, that is.....[huh]

 

[Harry Pierpont]

Do I really need to say it? Harry was the brains behind Dillinger, he and Charley Mackley taught JD the business. Pierpont did not like the "limelight" whereas JD did. So he became the more famous.

 

[Mr_D.]

Apparently, your knowledge of gangsters emanates from movies and books. I don't want to rain heavily on your outlook, but rain I will. Through a friend - the son of a capo, but no gangster himself - I became acquainted with Carlos Marcello and Nick Civella (spelling of both surnames???), bosses of New Orleans and Kansas City respectively. While pleasant companions, especially Marcello with a most unusual accent, these men were thugs - poorly educated, rigid, authoritarian, manic-depressive THUGS who would have you [fill in the blank] on a whim. Contrary to the "Godfather" nonsense, they were not planners or deep thinkers. They controlled their employees, friends - everybody - via force or its threat. Not to be cynical, they operated as feudal lords, much like politicians and bureaucrats. Where politicians and bureaucrats control via patronage and extortion, so did these guys.

Like you, although I knew what they were, I was intrigued and flattered by their attention, even though I knew it was veneer, and they knew I knew.

What I've implied I'll just keyboard. This idea of "favorite" or nice-guy gangsters is fundamentally inaccurate. Don't think Robin Hood or the Corleones. Think Heinrich Himler at a dinner party.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I in no way was saying "who was your favorite nice guy gangster". You can have a favorite "bad guy". Even the bad guys becomes legend. There is a huge difference in a gangster and Robbin Hood and I would think people, especially the people of this forum, would know that difference. As you pointed out, gangsters would not bat an eye to have you "taken care of" if you crossed them.

 

[Chainsaw]

Resivoir dogs. As far as gangsters go, I liked Tarintinos take on them. You have to shed a tears for some of these guys really. It's not the lives they would have chosen for themselves. Modern day S@murai, tragic hero's, thier souls are at least based on something human.

 

[Fedord Spaniard]

for me its Benjamin Siegel. i dont admire the evils, that he might have done. but i like his story the most, out of all the crime figures that i have learned about.

i even made a thread last year similar to this one. it even became too much for some people, and unfortunatley led to many forum fist fights....

heres the thread:

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=40265

 

[Chas]

They were all sociopaths; they are objects of interest and fascination, but I wouldn't want to rub shoulders with any of them. Some were out-and-out nut jobs and moral imbeciles.

As a kid I voraciously devoured every book I could find on them; particularly the big city gang wars. My favorite resource was Bloodletters and Badmen which tells the stories of not only the big time, but the small time wackadoodles that have made crime writers wealthy from the early years of the USA right up to about 1960. The book itself needs to be revised, but it's pretty entertaining.

The criminals I first found interesting were the mid 19th C. NYC gangs (Plug Uglies, Dead Rabbits), the Chicago Gang Wars of the 20's and 30's and the Barker Gang.

The Detroit Purple Gang were entertaining, and the antics of Murder Inc. make for interesting reading. I found Tough Jews interesting reading. It was written by a fellow whose relatives knew a lot of the Murder, Inc. guys.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Longie Zwillman!
(Just because it's a crazy name!)

-dixon cannon

 

[Puzzicato]

Dillinger was played by Johnny Depp. Win!