58 Fun Facts About Al Capone

In which New York borough was Al Capone born in 1899?

Brooklyn: though his name is tied to Chicago, Capone was a New Yorker, the fourth of nine children of Italian immigrants, and only moved west at about 20.

What was Capone's famous nickname, which he loathed?

Scarface came from the scars on his left cheek; Capone hated the name and tried to keep that side of his face away from the cameras, while his friends called him Snorky.

How was the young Capone's left cheek marked for life?

Slashed by a man whose sister he insulted: Frank Galluccio cut him three times at the Harvard Inn, the Coney Island bar where he worked; Capone later passed the marks off as war wounds, though he never served.

Which powerful Lower Manhattan outfit did the teenage Capone join?

The Five Points gang, Paul Kelly's Lower Manhattan outfit, took Capone in as a teenager; there Frankie Yale became his mentor and employed him at the Harvard Inn on Coney Island.

What was Capone's father's trade?

Barber: Gabriele Capone cut hair for a living while his wife Teresa worked as a seamstress, and nothing in their law-abiding household hinted that a son would become America's most notorious gangster.

What ended Capone's schooling at the age of 14?

Hitting a female teacher in the face got Capone expelled, or in another telling he quit after the principal beat him for it; either way he never went back, and drifted into odd jobs and street gangs.

What job did Capone's eldest brother take in Nebraska under the name Richard 'Two-Gun' Hart?

Prohibition agent: James Vincenzo Capone left home in his teens, took the surname of cowboy film star William S. Hart, and was raiding stills around Homer, Nebraska, while his brother built a bootleg empire.

Who was the mentor who brought Capone to Chicago?

Johnny Torrio, whom Capone had known in New York, invited him to Chicago to work in Big Jim Colosimo's vice empire, which Torrio took over when Colosimo was shot dead in 1920.

What was Capone's first job in Chicago?

Bouncer in a brothel: Capone started at the bottom of Big Jim Colosimo's vice business, but was soon managing the Four Deuces, a speakeasy, gambling den and brothel under one roof.

After handing Capone the Chicago organisation in 1925, his wounded boss left for which country?

Italy: shot several times by North Side gunmen that January, the boss quit, left the 26-year-old Capone in charge and moved back to the country of his birth, staying about three years.

Whose murder in his flower shop in November 1924 set off the war with the North Side Gang?

Dean O'Banion was among his flowers when a visitor gripped his hand in greeting and two gunmen opened fire; Hymie Weiss took over the North Side Gang and swore revenge.

In which Illinois town did Capone base himself after taking over its elections?

Cicero, just west of Chicago, became the gang's base because a reforming mayor had taken office in the city in 1923; Capone's gunmen then terrorised the suburb's 1924 election to keep its town hall friendly.

What did North Side gunmen do at Capone's Hawthorne Inn headquarters in September 1926?

Machine-gunned it from passing cars: a North Side motorcade raked the inn's restaurant while Capone sat inside. He was unhurt and proposed a truce, but Hymie Weiss was shot dead three weeks later.

About which country did Capone joke that he didn't even know which street it was on?

Canada: asked by a Toronto reporter whether he knew Ontario bootlegger Rocco Perri, Capone said he didn't even know which street Canada was on, though Canadian suppliers were shipping whisky to his gang.

In whose name was the title to Capone's Palm Island estate put when he bought it in 1928?

His wife's: a go-between put up the deposit and the deed went to Mae Capone, but the estate still told against him, because prosecutors used it at his tax trial as proof of income he had never declared.

How did rival Joe Aiello try to have Capone killed at his favourite restaurant in 1927?

Prussic acid in his soup: Aiello offered the chef of the Bella Napoli Café a small fortune to poison Capone, but the chef told Capone instead, and gunmen wrecked Aiello's bakery in reply.

Chicago's violent 1928 'Pineapple Primary', when Capone's men terrorised voters, took its name from slang for what?

A hand grenade: 'pineapple' was the slang of the day, and the name stuck because bombs marked the whole campaign, thrown at polling places and at the homes of candidates.

Which Chicago mayor, nicknamed 'Big Bill', won back City Hall in 1927 with Capone's backing?

William Hale Thompson promised a wide-open town and hinted he would reopen the saloons his reforming rival had shut, and Capone's money, put at $200,000 or more, helped pay for the campaign.

Which of Capone's brothers was shot dead by police during a 1924 town election?

Frank Capone was gunned down in the street by police sent out from Chicago after the gang's gunmen began terrorising voters at the polls; the gang's candidates won all the same.

Where was Capone when the St Valentine's Day Massacre took place in 1929?

At his Miami-area mansion: Capone was wintering in Florida, a ready alibi, yet press and public blamed him at once. He was never charged, and the case stayed unsolved.

How many people were killed in the St Valentine's Day Massacre?

Seven men were lined up against a garage wall and shot by gunmen posing as police: five North Side gangsters, a mechanic who worked for them and an optician who liked their company.

Who was the intended target of the St Valentine's Day Massacre but escaped it?

Bugs Moran was running late, saw what looked like a police raid at the garage and turned away; days later he told reporters, 'Only Capone kills like that.'

At what Chicago address did the St Valentine's Day Massacre take place?

The SMC Cartage Company garage at 2122 North Clark Street was the North Siders' liquor depot; Capone's men had rented rooms across the street to watch it.

Capone allegedly beat three treacherous lieutenants with what before having them shot?

A baseball bat, in the oft-told story of a banquet at which Capone clubbed John Scalise, Albert Anselmi and Joseph Giunta before they were shot; some biographers doubt it ever happened.

Which US president told his Treasury secretary in 1929 that he wanted Capone in jail?

Herbert Hoover, in office only weeks, was answering the public outcry over the St Valentine's Day Massacre; his Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, set the tax investigators on Capone.

Which federal lawman led the Chicago squad that the press nicknamed the 'Untouchables'?

Eliot Ness and his men earned the name by refusing bribes while they raided Capone's breweries, but it was the Treasury's tax investigators, not Ness, who sent Capone to prison.

Two years before his tax conviction, what offence put Capone in a Philadelphia jail in 1929?

Carrying a concealed weapon: police picked up Capone and his bodyguard as they left a Philadelphia cinema, and by the next day both had been sentenced to a year in prison.

Which Chicago citizens' group first named Capone 'Public Enemy No. 1' in 1930?

The Chicago Crime Commission listed the city's worst gangsters, Capone first, to keep the light of publicity on them; the FBI later took up the phrase for its own most wanted men.

In the 1927 case that opened the way to try Capone, a bootlegger claimed which amendment excused him from filing tax returns?

The Fifth: Manley Sullivan argued that declaring his bootleg profits would incriminate him, but the Supreme Court ruled that he still had to file, and that let prosecutors charge gangsters with tax evasion.

Which document became the most contested evidence at Capone's 1931 tax trial?

A letter from his own lawyer: seeking a settlement, Lawrence Mattingly wrote that Capone had earned up to $100,000 a year, and the judge admitted it over the protest that a lawyer cannot confess for his client.

How did the judge at Capone's trial defeat a plot to bribe the jury?

Swapped juries with another court: warned that Capone's men held the list of prospective jurors, Judge James Wilkerson had his whole panel exchanged with another judge's as the trial opened.

In 1931 Capone was indicted on 5,000 violations of which federal law?

The Volstead Act charges took second place: prosecutors put the income-tax case first, and it was on five tax counts, three felonies and two misdemeanours, that the jury convicted him.

How long a prison sentence did Capone get for tax evasion?

Eleven years, the longest term handed down for tax evasion up to then, with a $50,000 fine on top; sick and credited for good behaviour, he was freed early, in 1939.

What did Capone's defence lawyers argue had happened to essentially all his income?

It was lost gambling, the defence claimed, calling bookmakers to testify to huge losses at the track; but gambling losses can only be set against gambling winnings, and his spending betrayed him.

To which prison was Capone first sent in May 1932?

Atlanta: Capone began his sentence at the federal penitentiary there, and reports that he was buying favours from the guards were one reason given for shipping him to the new Alcatraz two years later.

Which instrument did Capone play in the Alcatraz prison band, the Rock Islanders?

Banjo: refused every special favour he asked for, Capone told the warden that Alcatraz had him licked, and settled for a place in the inmate band, which played for the other prisoners on Sundays.

What disease eroded Capone's mind during his years in Alcatraz?

Neurosyphilis, the late stage of an infection he had carried untreated since his youth; prison doctors even gave him malaria in the hope that the fevers would kill it, and he spent his last year there in hospital.

Which Baltimore hospital refused to treat Capone after his release in 1939?

Johns Hopkins: Capone's own doctor taught there and meant to admit him, but the trustees would not have so notorious a patient, and a nearby hospital took him in instead.

Capone was among the first American civilians treated with which new drug in the 1940s?

Penicillin: Capone was one of the first civilians to be given the new antibiotic, but it came too late to undo the damage that years of untreated infection had already done to his brain.

After his release, doctors judged that Capone had the mentality of someone of what age?

Twelve: his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist both reached that verdict, and the man who had run Chicago spent his last years fishing and playing cards, shut away with his family.

What was the immediate cause of Capone's death in January 1947?

Heart failure after a stroke and pneumonia: the man who had survived years of attempts on his life died in bed at 48, at home in Florida with his family around him.

Who took over the Chicago Outfit after Capone went to prison?

Frank Nitti, Capone's enforcer, walked out of prison in March 1932 after his own tax-evasion sentence and took charge; the Outfit carried on without its famous boss, only more quietly.

What did Capone sponsor in Chicago during the Depression to improve his image?

A soup kitchen: it fed Chicago's jobless for free and polished his reputation as a Robin Hood, yet within a year a jury had convicted its sponsor and no good press could save him.

Which TV host opened Capone's walled-off vault at the Lexington Hotel live in 1986?

Geraldo Rivera had been fired by ABC News months earlier and took the live special as a comeback; some 30 million people watched, and he had his own talk show the next year.

What did Capone's Lexington Hotel vault contain when it was opened on live TV?

Nothing but debris: after two hours of build-up the vault gave up only dirt and rubbish, yet some 30 million people had tuned in and the flop relaunched its host's career.

Which European comic-book hero took on Al Capone in a 1932 adventure set in Chicago?

Tintin finds the city's gangsters waiting for him in Tintin in America, and with reason: a book earlier, in the Congo, he had crossed a diamond-smuggling ring headed by the same real-life mob boss.

Capone's parents were both born in Angri, a small town outside which Italian city?

Naples: Gabriele and Teresa Capone left nearby Angri for New York in the early 1890s with two small sons, so Al, their fourth child, was born an American a few years later.

What was the nickname of Capone's elder brother Ralph?

Bottles: the name is usually traced to the soft-drink bottling trade Ralph Capone worked in; tax investigators went after him first, and he was convicted before his brother Al was.

Which future TV star, whose studio later made The Untouchables, was a schoolmate of Capone's son?

Desi Arnaz, newly arrived from Cuba as a teenage refugee, shared a classroom with Capone's only child; decades later his studio, Desilu, made the hit series, and the Capone family sued over it and lost.

How did Capone like to describe himself when reporters asked about his work?

A businessman, 'giving the people what they want', was his stock answer; asked if he was a bootlegger, he said yes, and that some of the best judges used his stuff.

What did a grateful Capone give Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital for treating him after his release?

Two weeping cherry trees: one made way for a new wing, and when a 2010 snowstorm tore a limb off the other, the wood was turned into bowls and pens to raise money for the hospital.

The son of 'Easy Eddie', a Capone-case informant killed in 1939, gave his name to which Chicago landmark?

O'Hare Airport: lawyer Edward O'Hare fed investigators leads for the tax case and was shot at the wheel of his car days before Capone's release; his son Butch, a Medal of Honor pilot, was honoured in 1949.

Capone was arrested in Philadelphia in May 1929 on his way home from a gangland summit in which resort?

Atlantic City: crime bosses from across the country met there to talk about ending the bootleg wars, and Capone, stopping to see a film on the way back, walked out of the cinema into a year's sentence.

Who played Capone in Brian De Palma's 1987 film The Untouchables?

Robert De Niro put on weight and shaved back his hairline to play Capone, in his fourth film for Brian De Palma; Sean Connery won the picture's only Oscar.

Which composer wrote the Oscar-nominated score for The Untouchables (1987)?

Ennio Morricone's score lost the Oscar to The Last Emperor; after decades of nominations without a win, he finally took one home in 2016, aged 87, for The Hateful Eight.

Which actor played Tony Camonte, the Capone-inspired gangster of Howard Hawks's 1932 crime film?

Paul Muni played Tony Camonte, with George Raft as his coin-flipping sidekick; Ben Hecht, a former Chicago newspaperman, wrote the screenplay in eleven days.

Which actor played a dementia-stricken Capone in the 2020 film Capone, first announced as 'Fonzo'?

Tom Hardy played the ailing Capone of his last years in Florida in Josh Trank's film, which skipped cinemas for premium video-on-demand in May 2020 because of the pandemic.

Which Michael Jackson hit grew out of a demo he had titled 'Al Capone'?

Smooth Criminal grew from a demo named after the gangster; the finished song dropped his name, but its video still plays out in a 1930s gangster club, and the demo itself went unreleased until 2012.