World Film and Television Progress (1938)

Continuing 'Al Capone is Going Mad' He was living then at his headquarters, the Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero. It was 11.15 in the morning, and the day of the Hawthorne Races. Al was in the restaurant on the ground floor, having a late breakfast. Suddenly a car passed down the road, firing a machine-gun. As it disappeared Capone rose from the floor where he had instantly fallen, and was going to investigate when his bodyguard hurled him to the ground. "It's a trick, boss — there's more to come!" There certainly was. A cavalcade of seven cars came slowly down the street and stopped outside the hotel. Then the occupants began systematically to spray the facade of the building with bullets. One man stepped out of the sixth car and unconcernedly set up a Thompson submachine gun on the pavement, sighted it carefully and poured a hundred shots in rapid fire into the lobby. Then he returned to the waiting car and the cavalcade moved off down the street and was gone. Capone, miraculously, was unhurt. The O'Banions had failed to avenge their leader, and their turn was soon to come. Capone knew how to take care of his enemies. In the following October Hymie Weiss was put on the spot. They said of him that he was the only man Al ever really feared, and he was not easy to get. He was cunning, was "Little Hymie". So the Capone gunmen went to considerable trouble. They rented a set of rooms overlooking the Weiss headquarters — above the flower shop of his late-lamented leader — and trained a battery of guns on the exit. Then they waited — waited for more than a week until the right moment arrived. On the afternoon of October 11th they saw Weiss step from his car, accompanied by four friends, and cross the road to the shop, laughing and chatting gaily. The guns opened fire and Weiss and another dropped stone-dead on the pavement ; the rest were Al Capone, now in Alcatraz. badly wounded. The outside of the Holy Name Cathedral across the way was pockmarked with bullets. Capone was quite upset. He couldn't understand, he said, why anyone should want to kill poor Hymie. He sent a nice big wreath to the funeral. But there were still several O'Banions left. They were to be reserved for the bloodiest mass murder that Chicago was ever to witness— the massacre of St. Valentine's Day, February 14th, 1929. After Hymie's death, George "Bugs" Moran took over control of the O'Banion gang. Bugs and Hymie had been together on the Hawthorne shooting affray, when Capone had been so amazingly lucky. Now it was "Bugs" Moran's turn to be lucky. Only a master mind could have planned the St. Valentine's Day massacre. It was the work of a fiendishly ingenious brain. On the morning of February 14th the Moran crowd had assembled at a garage on Clark Paul Muni. Karen Morley and George Raj! in a scene from 'Scarface' (Ace Films). Street to receive a large consignment of stolen liquor which "Bugs" had bought over the telephone the night before. He had bought it unquestioningly, evidently from someone he knew well and trusted. There were seven of the gang present, and they stood around waiting for "Bugs" to appear. but "Bugs" was unaccountably late. Perhaps the gangster's sixth sense had warned him that something was in the air. Anyway, "Bugs" did not show up. Instead a police car arrived, and out stepped several officers in uniform. The gang were annoyed, but not unduly disturbed. These raids were routine affairs which often occurred; usually they could be "squared" without much trouble. The gang were told to put their hands above their heads and to line up against the garage wall, which they did, grumbling not a little at this police officiousness. Their lawyers would have something to say about this. Meanwhile two men in ordinary clothes had entered the alley which led to the garage. One carried a machine-gun, the other a double-barrelled sawn-off shot gun. The machine-gunner set up his weapon, aimed carefully for a spot half-way up the spine. and opened rapid fire. The seven men were mown down like grass, and lay on their backs on the concrete. The man with the shot-gun stepped over to them and carefully finished off those who still showed any signs of life. The murderers returned to their car and left. Pedestrians who saw them did not give them another thought. It was just another police raid, a commonplace occurrence. They drove away unhindered. And thus was the O'Banion gang finally annihilated and all real opposition to Capone removed in one fell swoop. Scarface was left supreme, with not a care in the world. His enemies were all dead, or if not dead, their spirits were broken. He was the "Big Shot" o\' all time, the uncrowned king of crime. The world was at his feet. "They'll never pin anything on me", said Al. And now. in his cell in Alcatraz, he sits and shivers with fear, his fat. coarse body shaking like a jelly, his diseased mind trembling on the brink of insanity. The story of "Scarface" is almost finished. II