Prohibition Gangsters: The Rise and Fall of a Bad Generation

A Note on Sources

231 The first sentence in the first chapter in this book has waiter Al Capone say to Lena Gallucio, a female customer at a Brooklyn restaurant, “‘You got a nice ass, honey, and I mean it as a compliment. Believe me.’” This quote comes from William Balsamo ’s interview with Lena’s brother Frank, which appeared in an article in the March 1990 issue of Chicago magazine—a valid enough source to justify using it in this book. But in the 2011 book Young Al Capone by the same William Balsamo, this time coauthored with his son John, Capone says to Lena,“‘Do you like ragtime?’” to which she answers,“‘Really fellow, I’m not going to sit here and recite my musical preferences to you so please leave.’” The same passage describes minute things that Capone did, like staring at the girl,“his eyes aware of every delicate movement of tender flesh beneath her soft-yellow dress as she danced.”What Balsamo reported in the 1990 magazine article changes dramatically in the 2011 book. The book’s authors admit that the dialogue in the book “is written with the hopeful intention of providing a plausible discourse to the events as defined by the historical record.”1 In other words, the authors are making it up. Many other so-called “true crime” books about gangsters contain made-up dialogue without any warning to the reader. For example, a 1985 biography of Longie Zwillman purports to relate bedroom talk between Longie and his girlfriend, actress Jean Harlow. The author, in unintentionally ridiculous imagery describes how Harlow was wearing a skimpy dress when she met Zwillman: “Her large nipples seemed to be forcing their way through the cheap fabric as if gulping for air.” Later the two lovers are alone together in a luxury suite at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Longie looks out at the city lights. “‘Come here,’” he says, “‘I want you to see real beauty. Look at the way the lights shine from the windows, like diamonds. Play your cards right and you can have as many diamonds as you A Note on Sources 232 A Note on Sources see from this window,’” after which Harlow “felt Longy’s fingers brush against her bare back. She leaned back against him.” Zwillman and Harlow were long dead by the time the book was published. This leads the reader to assume that the book’s author must have been taking notes from underneath the bed.2 Similarly, many true crime books lack the scholarly apparatus of footnotes, bibliography , and index. Furthermore, many books make assertions that can be called into question—for example, that Lucky Luciano hid in a restaurant men’s room while his boss was assassinated in the dining room. These writers do not present to the reader alternate interpretations. Even worse, one prolific crime writer, Jay Robert Nash, informs readers that he has inserted falsehoods in his books to trap those who violate his copyrights—a tactic that certainly violates the basic principles of scholarship. Perhaps the most notorious book in this genre is The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano by Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer. Published in 1975, the book sparked a major controversy about its reliability by focusing on whether the quotes attributed to Luciano were made up and whether incidents described were invented. Alan A. Block, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, accurately describes the situation when he says that much crime writing is a “subject plagued by unreliable works based on unsubstantiated sources.”3 In this book I have sought to use the tools of the historian to question whether the author of a source was in a position to know what he or she was describing, whether the author had a bias that might color his or her presentation, and whether other sources lend support to that description. For all their faults, true crime books do contain some valuable information. I have sought to act on behalf of the reader by sorting out controversies and presenting the most probable interpretation. Readers who want to find out more about the history of organized crime can find many secondary sources that focus on facts rather than sensationalism. Among the best analyses of the history of organized crime are David Critchley’s work on the rise of the Mafia in New York and Mark Haller on the inner workings of criminal gangs. Among the best biographies of crime figures...