Al Capone (1899–1947) is one of the most notorious American
gangsters of the 20th century and has been the subject of numerous articles, books, and films. From 1925 to 1929, shortly after Capone relocated to
Chicago, he was the most notorious mobster in the country. Capone cultivated an image of himself in the media that fascinated the public.[1][2] His personality and character have modeled fictional crime lords and criminal masterminds ever since his death. The stereotypical image of a mobster wearing a pinstriped suit and tilted
fedora are based on photos of Capone. His accent, mannerisms, facial construction, physical stature, and parodies of his name have represented gangsters in comics, movies, music, and literature.
Literature
Capone is featured in a segment of
Mario Puzo's The Godfather as an ally of New York mob boss
Salvatore Maranzano in which he sends two "button men" at the mob boss' request to kill
Don Vito Corleone; arriving in New York, the two men are intercepted and brutally killed by
Luca Brasi, after which Don Corleone sends a message to Capone warning him not to interfere again, and Capone apparently capitulates.[3]
Capone's grandniece Deirdre Marie Capone wrote a book titled Uncle Al Capone: The Untold Story from Inside His Family.[5]
Al Capone is the inspiration for the central character of Tony Camonte in
Armitage Trail's novel Scarface (1929),[6] which was adapted into the
1932 film. The novel was later adapted again into the
1983 film with the central character of
Tony Montana, by moving the action to then-present-day Miami.
Jack Bilbo claimed to have been a bodyguard for Capone in his book Carrying a Gun for Al Capone (1932).[7]
Al Capone is mentioned and met by the main character Moose in the book Al Capone Does My Shirts.
A fictional alternate universe version of Al Capone is the second leader of a communist version of the United States known as the United Socialist States of America (USSA) in the
alternate history book Back in the USSA by
Eugene Byrne and
Kim Newman. In the alternate universe depicted in the book, it was America instead of Russia that had a communist revolution in 1917 with Russia under the control of a democratic version of the
Russian Empire as a rival of the USSA in this timeline's version of the
Cold War. Many characters (consisting of real historical figures and characters from other fictional works) and events in Back in the USSA are parallel to those in real life with the USSA as the equivalent of the
Soviet Union. Capone becomes leader of the
Socialist Party of America and the USSA in 1926 after the death of the Party leader and regime's founder,
Eugene V. Debs. Just as Debs was the equivalent of
Vladimir Lenin, Capone was the equivalent of
Joseph Stalin who was Soviet leader after
Lenin's death. Capone ruled as a Stalinesque tyrant with widespread repression, a
cult of personality based around himself as well as the exile of political opponents and includes the timeline's own version of Stalin's
Great Purge where Capone directs the regime to kill his Party rivals. Just as
with Stalin, Capone dies in office and replaced by
Barry Goldwater who is depicted as a
Nikita Khrushchev type reformist.
Another fictional alternate universe version of Al Capone is featured in the short story Boss by Mark Bourne in the alternate history anthology, Alternate Tyrants. The short story is written in the style of a
Studs Terkel oral history. In it, the fictional version of Terkel narrates that Capone, after seeing a chance astronomical event, decides to start a political career. Capone is eventually elected
President of the United States and starts a Mafia-like presidency that lasts for several decades.
Yet another fictional alternate universe version of Capone is found in the alternate history short story Next Year in Prague by Barbara Newman. This story depicts him as the gangster he was in real life though he dies through different circumstances than in reality. This story's timeline diverges from our own when
Anton Cermak was not assassinated in 1933 but instead survived and not only remains
Mayor of Chicago but gets elected to several more terms. During that time, Cermak wages a campaign against Chicago's gangsters, including Capone. Cermak goes as far as risking his own life be personally talking part in police raids. Evidence found during that campaign led to Capone's conviction on seven charges of murder (in real life, Capone was highly suspected of such crimes but the courts were unable to prove it beyond the
reasonable doubt required by the law and instead jailed him for proven
tax evasion in 1931) and executed in 1938. As a result of Capone's conviction, Cermak was now very popular nationally to the point that in the 1940s, the "Cermak Amendment" was enacted, amending the
US Constitution to remove the
Natural-born-citizen requirement for president and vice-president to allow Czech-born Cermak to run those positions, which does transpire later in the story.
Bernie Gigliotti in The Babe (1992), in a brief scene in a Chicago nightclub during which Capone and his mentor
Johnny Torrio, played by Guy Barile, meet the film's main character
Babe Ruth, portrayed by
John Goodman.
Alkpote is a French rapper whose pseudonym is a play on words between Al Capone and "capote", a French slang word for condom. Alkpote is well known for his sadistic universe with a lot of multisyllabic rhymes, references to old-fashioned celebrities, sex, drug, violence, old TV shows and political controversial stances.
Prince Buster, Jamaican ska and rocksteady musician, had his first hit in the UK with the single "Al Capone" in 1967.[13]
The British pop group
Paper Lace's 1974 hit song "
The Night Chicago Died" mentions that "a man named Al Capone, tried to make that town his own, and he called his gang to war, with the forces of the law".[14]
British rock band
Queen referenced Al Capone in the opening of their 1974 song "
Stone Cold Crazy", which was covered in 1990 by the American rock band
Metallica.[15]
In 1979,
the Specials, a
UK ska revival group, reworked Prince Buster's track into their first single, "Gangsters", which featured the line "Don't call me Scarface!"
"Al Capone" is a song by
Michael Jackson. Jackson recorded the song during the Bad era (circa 1987), but it wasn't included on the album though he did rework it into the song "
Smooth Criminal" which did get on the album and was one of Jackson's most popular songs.[17] "Al Capone" was released in September 2012 in celebration of
the album's 25th anniversary.[17] By that point, Jackson had
died in 2009 and so did not see the release of "Al Capone" during his lifetime.[17]
Brazilian musician
Raul Seixas has a song entitled "Al Capone", included in his 1973 debut album Krig-ha, Bandolo!.
Multiple hip hop artists have adopted the name "Capone" for their stage names including:
Capone,
Mr. Capone-E and
Al Kapone.
The R&B vocal group
the Fantastic Four recorded a song entitled "Alvin Stone: (the Birth & Death Of A Gangster)" in 1975 from their album of the same name. The main protagonist was a gangster with a name very similar to Al Capone.[18]
Chicagooutsider musicianWesley Willis' track "Al Capone" is about the crime boss. In the song, Willis claims Capone "gunned down his brother" and "stole his hot rod", as well as "beat two men to death with a baseball bat". The song was to be on the unreleased album "My Friend Reza" but can be found on the Greatest Hits, Volume 2 compilation album.
Fans of
Serbian football club
Partizan are using Al Capone's character as a mascot for one of their subgroups called "Alcatraz", named after a prison in which Al Capone served his sentence. Also, in honour of Capone, a graffiti representation of him exists in the center of
Belgrade.
^Ruas, Pierre Assouline ; translated by Charles (2009). Hergé : the man who created Tintin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN978-0-19-539759-8.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
^Capone, Deirdre Marie (27 October 2010). Uncle Al Capone – The Untold Story from Inside His Family.
ISBN978-0-9828451-0-3.
Al Capone (1899–1947) is one of the most notorious American
gangsters of the 20th century and has been the subject of numerous articles, books, and films. From 1925 to 1929, shortly after Capone relocated to
Chicago, he was the most notorious mobster in the country. Capone cultivated an image of himself in the media that fascinated the public.[1][2] His personality and character have modeled fictional crime lords and criminal masterminds ever since his death. The stereotypical image of a mobster wearing a pinstriped suit and tilted
fedora are based on photos of Capone. His accent, mannerisms, facial construction, physical stature, and parodies of his name have represented gangsters in comics, movies, music, and literature.
Literature
Capone is featured in a segment of
Mario Puzo's The Godfather as an ally of New York mob boss
Salvatore Maranzano in which he sends two "button men" at the mob boss' request to kill
Don Vito Corleone; arriving in New York, the two men are intercepted and brutally killed by
Luca Brasi, after which Don Corleone sends a message to Capone warning him not to interfere again, and Capone apparently capitulates.[3]
Capone's grandniece Deirdre Marie Capone wrote a book titled Uncle Al Capone: The Untold Story from Inside His Family.[5]
Al Capone is the inspiration for the central character of Tony Camonte in
Armitage Trail's novel Scarface (1929),[6] which was adapted into the
1932 film. The novel was later adapted again into the
1983 film with the central character of
Tony Montana, by moving the action to then-present-day Miami.
Jack Bilbo claimed to have been a bodyguard for Capone in his book Carrying a Gun for Al Capone (1932).[7]
Al Capone is mentioned and met by the main character Moose in the book Al Capone Does My Shirts.
A fictional alternate universe version of Al Capone is the second leader of a communist version of the United States known as the United Socialist States of America (USSA) in the
alternate history book Back in the USSA by
Eugene Byrne and
Kim Newman. In the alternate universe depicted in the book, it was America instead of Russia that had a communist revolution in 1917 with Russia under the control of a democratic version of the
Russian Empire as a rival of the USSA in this timeline's version of the
Cold War. Many characters (consisting of real historical figures and characters from other fictional works) and events in Back in the USSA are parallel to those in real life with the USSA as the equivalent of the
Soviet Union. Capone becomes leader of the
Socialist Party of America and the USSA in 1926 after the death of the Party leader and regime's founder,
Eugene V. Debs. Just as Debs was the equivalent of
Vladimir Lenin, Capone was the equivalent of
Joseph Stalin who was Soviet leader after
Lenin's death. Capone ruled as a Stalinesque tyrant with widespread repression, a
cult of personality based around himself as well as the exile of political opponents and includes the timeline's own version of Stalin's
Great Purge where Capone directs the regime to kill his Party rivals. Just as
with Stalin, Capone dies in office and replaced by
Barry Goldwater who is depicted as a
Nikita Khrushchev type reformist.
Another fictional alternate universe version of Al Capone is featured in the short story Boss by Mark Bourne in the alternate history anthology, Alternate Tyrants. The short story is written in the style of a
Studs Terkel oral history. In it, the fictional version of Terkel narrates that Capone, after seeing a chance astronomical event, decides to start a political career. Capone is eventually elected
President of the United States and starts a Mafia-like presidency that lasts for several decades.
Yet another fictional alternate universe version of Capone is found in the alternate history short story Next Year in Prague by Barbara Newman. This story depicts him as the gangster he was in real life though he dies through different circumstances than in reality. This story's timeline diverges from our own when
Anton Cermak was not assassinated in 1933 but instead survived and not only remains
Mayor of Chicago but gets elected to several more terms. During that time, Cermak wages a campaign against Chicago's gangsters, including Capone. Cermak goes as far as risking his own life be personally talking part in police raids. Evidence found during that campaign led to Capone's conviction on seven charges of murder (in real life, Capone was highly suspected of such crimes but the courts were unable to prove it beyond the
reasonable doubt required by the law and instead jailed him for proven
tax evasion in 1931) and executed in 1938. As a result of Capone's conviction, Cermak was now very popular nationally to the point that in the 1940s, the "Cermak Amendment" was enacted, amending the
US Constitution to remove the
Natural-born-citizen requirement for president and vice-president to allow Czech-born Cermak to run those positions, which does transpire later in the story.
Bernie Gigliotti in The Babe (1992), in a brief scene in a Chicago nightclub during which Capone and his mentor
Johnny Torrio, played by Guy Barile, meet the film's main character
Babe Ruth, portrayed by
John Goodman.
Alkpote is a French rapper whose pseudonym is a play on words between Al Capone and "capote", a French slang word for condom. Alkpote is well known for his sadistic universe with a lot of multisyllabic rhymes, references to old-fashioned celebrities, sex, drug, violence, old TV shows and political controversial stances.
Prince Buster, Jamaican ska and rocksteady musician, had his first hit in the UK with the single "Al Capone" in 1967.[13]
The British pop group
Paper Lace's 1974 hit song "
The Night Chicago Died" mentions that "a man named Al Capone, tried to make that town his own, and he called his gang to war, with the forces of the law".[14]
British rock band
Queen referenced Al Capone in the opening of their 1974 song "
Stone Cold Crazy", which was covered in 1990 by the American rock band
Metallica.[15]
In 1979,
the Specials, a
UK ska revival group, reworked Prince Buster's track into their first single, "Gangsters", which featured the line "Don't call me Scarface!"
"Al Capone" is a song by
Michael Jackson. Jackson recorded the song during the Bad era (circa 1987), but it wasn't included on the album though he did rework it into the song "
Smooth Criminal" which did get on the album and was one of Jackson's most popular songs.[17] "Al Capone" was released in September 2012 in celebration of
the album's 25th anniversary.[17] By that point, Jackson had
died in 2009 and so did not see the release of "Al Capone" during his lifetime.[17]
Brazilian musician
Raul Seixas has a song entitled "Al Capone", included in his 1973 debut album Krig-ha, Bandolo!.
Multiple hip hop artists have adopted the name "Capone" for their stage names including:
Capone,
Mr. Capone-E and
Al Kapone.
The R&B vocal group
the Fantastic Four recorded a song entitled "Alvin Stone: (the Birth & Death Of A Gangster)" in 1975 from their album of the same name. The main protagonist was a gangster with a name very similar to Al Capone.[18]
Chicagooutsider musicianWesley Willis' track "Al Capone" is about the crime boss. In the song, Willis claims Capone "gunned down his brother" and "stole his hot rod", as well as "beat two men to death with a baseball bat". The song was to be on the unreleased album "My Friend Reza" but can be found on the Greatest Hits, Volume 2 compilation album.
Fans of
Serbian football club
Partizan are using Al Capone's character as a mascot for one of their subgroups called "Alcatraz", named after a prison in which Al Capone served his sentence. Also, in honour of Capone, a graffiti representation of him exists in the center of
Belgrade.
^Ruas, Pierre Assouline ; translated by Charles (2009). Hergé : the man who created Tintin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN978-0-19-539759-8.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
^Capone, Deirdre Marie (27 October 2010). Uncle Al Capone – The Untold Story from Inside His Family.
ISBN978-0-9828451-0-3.