Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 8, 1994 TAG: 9412020001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JERRY MARKON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Given to ``intoxicating bursts of charity,'' he ran soup kitchens, gave away millions of dollars and steered kids away from crime.
On the side, he was also a murderer, pimp, bootlegger, gambler, adulterer, tax cheat, political fixer and ``Public Enemy No. 1.''
In ``Capone: The Man and the Era'' (Simon & Schuster, $30), Laurence Bergreen presents a complex Al Capone, a gangster with a sensitive side, the homicidal maniac as perfect house guest.
Bergreen's Capone is a charming, impeccably groomed businessman who wears colored silk underwear. Plagued by self-doubt, he longs for a legitimate career. Terrified of assassination, he drives around the Chicago he owns in a seven-ton, armored Cadillac sedan.
Not that Bergreen neglects the familiar sides of Capone in his engrossing, richly detailed, 619-page biography of the 1920s gang leader. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, he charts Capone's violent rise from New York street hood to Chicago racketeer to national outlaw.
Alphonse Capone was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1899, the fourth child of poor Italian immigrants.
He rose to prominence through business skill, selective ruthlessness and an uncanny instinct for survival. With a gregarious flair, he bribed Chicago's police, intimidated the mayor, courted sycophantic journalists - and killed nearly all rivals.
``There had never been a criminal quite like him,'' Bergreen writes. ``Capone did not operate outside the law, but from within, corrupting it as he went.''
Throughout, Bergreen flavors his portrait with context and subplots. He brilliantly describes 1920s Chicago, a lawless city so corrupt ``it was expected that police were on the take.''
Debunking the myth of anti-Capone crusader Eliot Ness, Bergreen shows the ``Untouchables'' hero to be a publicity-hungry alcoholic whose showy raids of Capone breweries did nothing to bring down Capone's empire.
And in a fascinating foil to Capone, Bergreen reveals his older brother Vincenzo's secret career as Richard ``Two-Gun'' Hart, a famed Prohibition agent.
Bergreen's effort to broaden Capone's superficial, gangster-movie caricature is laudable.
But he goes overboard with the sensitivity stuff.
Blaming Capone's reputation on everything from the syphilis that eventually killed him to anti-Italian prejudice, Bergreen occasionally lapses into a cloying, sympathetic tone that makes Capone seem like a victim.
One example is a section about Capone's 1926 summer outside Lansing, Mich., where ``beside Round Lake, Al lived the simple life. He spent his days lolling on the beach. ... occasionally he played with the children who came to frolic at the water's edge.
``For once his nights did not reverberate with the rattle of the roulette, the squeal of tires, and gunfire.''
Come on. Capone chose the life he led.
Bergreen is more convincing when he sets Capone into historical context. He argues persuasively that Capone reflected the excesses of a sordid era, taking advantage of Prohibition's hypocrisy and a national moral laxity.
When the Depression hit and the party ended, Capone was through. The public that happily drank his beer cheered his downfall.
Convicted of income tax evasion, Capone wound up a pathetic figure, ranting hysterically and cowering in his federal prison cell as he went insane from syphilis.
When he died in 1947, he could barely remember his deeds. Unfortunately, America has never forgotten them.
\ Capone: The Man and the Era
By Laurence Bergreen
Simon & Schuster.
$30
by CNB