It was here that Capone became friends with Lucky Luciano, another who would become a hallmark in the '30s gangster era. By his late teens Capone had been hired by Torrio and Frankie Yale as a bouncer at a saloon / brothel in Brooklyn.
Capone warily respected Sicilian Lucky Luciano, but regarded him as less of a Sicilian and more like the pragmatic Jews he grew up among in New York. Two of Luciano's closest allies were Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. (In the lineup below, Luciano is third from the left; Meyer Lansky is fourth.
By the age of 14, Luciano dropped out of school, had been arrested numerous times, and had become a member of the Five Points Gang where he befriended Al Capone. By 1916 Luciano was also offering protection from the local Irish and Italian gangs to his fellow Jewish teens for five to ten cents a week.
"Hymie" Weiss (born Henryk Wojciechowski; January 25, 1898 – October 11, 1926), was a Polish-American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone. He was known as "the only man Al Capone feared".
In the meantime, Luciano had risen in Giuseppe Masseria's criminal organization. By the late 1920s, Masseria's main rival was boss Salvatore Maranzano, who had come from Sicily to run the Castellammarese clan. Maranzano refused to pay commissions to Masseria, and their rivalry escalated.
Charles “Lucky” Luciano was an Italian-American gangster who was said by the FBI to be the man who “organized” organized crime in the United States. In many ways, he was the model for the character Don Corleone in the popular book and movie, The Godfather (1972).
Luciano is believed to have been one of the models for Vito Corleone and Michael Corleone as the life stories of both characters share similarities with Luciano's biography including Luciano being diagnosed with smallpox upon his arrival in the United States.
Al Capone (1899-1947)
Along with his methods of extreme violence, he often bribed police, judges and even the Mayor of Chicago. However, it was after he publicly murdered seven rival gang members during the infamous Saint Valentine's Day Massacre that he was declared Public Enemy No.
Charles Dean O'Banion (July 8, 1892 – November 10, 1924) was an American mobster who was the main rival of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone during the brutal Chicago bootlegging wars of the 1920s. The newspapers of his day made him better known as Dion O'Banion, although he never went by that first name.
Eliot Ness (April 19, 1903 – May 16, 1957) was an American Prohibition agent known for his efforts to bring down Al Capone while enforcing Prohibition in Chicago. He was leader of a team of law enforcement agents nicknamed The Untouchables, handpicked for their incorruptibility.
Lucky Luciano might have been itching to get into the combat zone, but there was no need for him. Despite the truth that Luciano had little impact on the Sicilian campaign, he got his reward for his general war time assistance from the U.S. government in early January 1946.
Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrants. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels.
Prohibition and the Chicago Outfit
During Prohibition, Cohen moved to Chicago and became involved in organized crime, working as an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, where he briefly met Al Capone. During this period, Cohen was arrested for his role in the deaths of several gangsters in a card game.
Lucky Luciano – viewed to have been mentored by Rothstein, who supported him early on in his career as a racketeer and taught him how to be a full-fledged kingpin.
Though it's inspired by a true story, you shouldn't believe everything you see in Capone. That's because this take on the notorious gangster follows the final year of his life, and digs into the frenzied mind of a man who was incapacitated by neurosyphilis.
The Genovese crime family (pronounced [dʒenoˈveːze, -eːse]), also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the American Mafia.
Capone's weakness
Unfortunately for Capone, he had a weakness: he was fond of the finer things in life and wanted to flaunt his wealth. He was famous for living a life of luxury in Chicago's Lexington hotel, where he could often be seen drinking fine wines and wearing the best suits that money could buy.
Upon his death from a torturous, four-day bout with pneumonia in 1932, Frank McErlane was described by Chicago Police as the “toughest gangster of them all.” His ruthless bootlegging peers in the Windy City feared him so much they reportedly paid him a “pension” of hundreds of dollars a week just to stay out of town.
Torrio had several nicknames, primarily "The Fox" for his cunning and finesse. The US Treasury official Elmer Irey considered him "the biggest gangster in America" and wrote, "He was the smartest and, I dare say, the best of all the hoodlums. 'Best' referring to talent, not morals".
Wheelchair-bound Franzese, now 102 and living in a nursing home, told Newsday about his life of crime — and how he stuck to the “Goodfellas” adage of “Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut” despite facing 50 years behind bars. “They wanted me to roll all the time,” Franzese insisted.
A natural organizer, Luciano continued the committee of Five Families, which was established by Maranzano and would control East Coast rackets for decades. But rather than naming himself “Boss of Bosses,” as Maranzano had, Luciano called himself the chairman of the board.
The five major families of organized crime still exist in New York today, and the families continue to operate in illegal business practices similar to those they have engaged in since their creation. The practices of the families include extortion, gambling, loan sharking, and racketeering.
Vito Corleone is based on a composite of mid-20th-century New York Mafia figures Carlo Gambino, Frank Costello, Joe Bonanno, and Joe Profaci. The character's story begins as Vito Andolini in Corleone, Sicily, in the Kingdom of Italy.