Manny P. here…
Nearly six decades after his passing, Eliot Ness is still so admired, Illinois’ two US senators want to name a federal building after him in Washington, DC. And, there are no signs the senators are considering backing down from a resolution to put Ness’ name on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives headquarters.
In lore, Eliot Ness is the prohibition enforcer who brought down Al Capone; the principled lawman and relentless investigator portrayed by actors Robert Stack and Kevin Costner, and the fellow who inspired the creation of the comic-strip detective Dick Tracy. His career has always been imbued with a mix of fact and fiction. He did go after Capone, but his role was less heroic than many Americans imagine.
These facts are undisputed: After graduating from the University of Chicago, Ness was in his 20s when he took a job as a temporary prohibition agent in 1926. He quickly climbed through the ranks until, according to the ATF website, Eliot put together a squad in 1930 to go after Capone’s bootlegging operation. But, prosecutors chose to pursue the gangster on tax charges instead. A few years later, Ness’ law enforcement career took him to Cincinnati and Cleveland. In 1933, he left his job to become a public safety director. He was widely praised for cleaning up Cleveland corruption. Ness ran unsuccessfully for Cleveland mayor in 1947. He died a decade later, but not before co-writing a book about his exploits – The Untouchables.
Bob Fuesel, a former Internal Revenue Service agent who knew Mike Malone (inspiration for Sean Connery’s character in the 1987 film), did research of the intelligence unit (later becoming the IRS’s criminal division) that conducted the investigation. A consultant on the movie, he told Costner that Ness had little to do with the tax-evasion case, and men who worked with Ness told stories about his real fear of guns. Costner dismissed the premise. ROBERT STACK ->
The problem is… much of what we think we know about Ness comes from literature, the television show starring Stack a half-century ago, and Costner’s portrayal of Ness in the motion picture. By the time the story got to Hollywood, the goal was to tell a good story and not give a history lesson.
There is suspicion the virtuous character the public knows may be singularly fabricated because Ness’s co-author, Oscar Fraley, applied most of the lawman’s qualities from Elmer Irey (left), a lesser known crimefighter who played a key role in sending the famed gangster to prison. Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, citing a recent Capone biography, concludes Ness had about as much to do with putting the gangster behind bars as Mrs. O’Leary’s cow had to do with starting the Great Chicago Fire. And he’s trying to convince the senators to drop the whole idea. Jonathan Eig, the author of Get Capone, a book Burke wants the senators to read, claims that while Ness did investigate bootlegging activities in Chicago, none of what he discovered helped put Al in the clink. And there is no evidence Capone and his supposed nemesis ever even met.
Despite these allegations, Dick Durbin, fellow Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, believe that back in the era of Prohibition, each man had a price… except for Eliot Ness. His Untouchable credo is enough to make him the face for every law enforcement officer of the era who fought crime and corruption. The scribe of an upcoming Ness biography has also weighed in, saying while Elliott was not involved with the income tax case that sent Capone to prison, he was a key figure in the broader battle against Capone in Chicago, and his contribution to law enforcement has been misunderstood for too long.
I plan to keep watching The Untouchables on the small screen each weeknight on ME-TV. I’m pretty sure Desi Arnaz, the producer of the iconic television program, and Bob Stack would find this discussion rather amusing. History has a way of singling out a face in the crowd to honor all who have traveled down a well-beaten path.
And, so it goes for this Hollywood-and-Vine moment…
Until next time> “never forget”
The New York Times hosts a Film Club that is sponsored by HBO. The events take place in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Once in a while, they pull a classic out of the archives. Past screenings have included The Shining, An American in Paris, and The Color Purple.
On February 18th, they will present an all-time classic. Enjoy the 1976 film Network, winner of four Oscars. After the screening, New York Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff discuss his new book, Mad as Hell: The Making of ‘Network’ and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies, a riveting account of this prophetic and startling motion picture; and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. A 35mm print of Network is provided courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
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