Al Capone (Volume 5, Episode 4) Part Two

In 1929, Al Capone was worth an inflation adjusted 1.5 Billion Dollars.

Most speakeasies and night clubs serving illicit alcohol provided entertainment in some form, mostly jazz or a vocalist with a band.  One of these entertainers named Joe E. Lewis was a regular performer at the Green Mill, a club that was owned by the Outfit.  As compensation, Al Capone gave Jack McGurn a piece of the club’s profits and when McGurn found out that Lewis was not going to renew his contract and was going to earn more money at the Rendezvous, a North Side Gang operation, he confronted the singer-comedian and told him he couldn’t leave.

Lewis brushed him off, said his contract was up and that was that.  He actually performed at the Rendezvous for a week, protected by a bodyguard who accompanied him to and from his hotel residence.  Lewis then decided he didn’t need protection, that McGurn had only been trying to scare him.  On November 9, 1927, seven days after he opened at his new club, three men showed up at Lewis’ Commonwealth Hotel room, burst in on the sleepy Lewis when he opened the door and pistol whipped him into unconsciousness.  Then one assailant took a large knife to Lewis’ throat and mouth and even cut off part of the singer’s tongue.  Although they could have merely shot the defiant entertainer, the thugs instead sent a terrible message to Lewis and any other performer who attempted to assert such independence.  Joe E. Lewis managed to crawl into the hallway and was quickly taken to a hospital where he underwent extensive but successful surgery.  He recovered but eventually became a stand-up comedian, his voice now a bullfrog like croak, no longer able to belt out night club standards.  Ironically, most likely to counter the public outcry over the incident, Al Capone actually went out of his way to patch things up, claiming to Lewis personally that he knew nothing about the attack and that Joe should have come to him personally if he had a problem.  Capone also got him back to the Green Mill, equaling his deal at the Rendezvous, and gave Lewis winning tips at dog and horse races controlled by the Outfit.  Lewis’ career continued successfully well into the sixties, and a biographical film starring Frank Sinatra called the Joker Is Wild was produced in 1957, reiterating Lewis’ terrible ordeal and recovery.

While this investigation proceeded laboriously, in mid-1929, a curious incident occurred which only added to the mysterious lore surrounding Al Capone.  In mid-May of 1929, Capone traveled to Atlantic City to participate in what became known as the Atlantic City Conference.  Organized by Meyer Lansky, this gathering included almost all of American organized crime including Capone, Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and many other gangsters from all over the US.  The meeting was the first attempt by the American underworld to set up a national organization to oversee and make decisions to divide territory and adjudicate disputes without violence.  Another underlying issue was a resolve to minimize the attention that Al Capone was generating, involving both the type of violence that occurred with the St. Valentines Day Massacre and Capone himself, who routinely sought out positive media coverage and made himself publicly prominent to the point of celebrity, behavior that created hostility from other prominent underworld figures who abhorred attention of any kind.  Following the conference, which concluded on May 16, Capone intended to return to Chicago by train via Philadelphia.  With some time on his hands, he and a bodyguard went to a movie and when the film ended, upon leaving the theater, both men were arrested, searched and found in possession of a firearm, in Capone’s case a .38 caliber revolver.

.  But his respite was brief, In late April, the Chicago Crime Commission, a watch-dog collection of businessmen with no legal standing issued a list of the 14 most prominent Public enemies in the city.