![]() Only Capone wasn’t Mafia and he wasn’t Sicilian. In reality, Capone sided with his rival Joe Masseria in New York’s Castellammarese War, which was the flash point for the beginning of organized crime and the American Mafia. For one, it claims Capone was an associate of Salvatore Maranzano. So much so that when Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather in 1969, he had fictional Don Vito Corleone say he “held the Capones in small esteem as stupid, obvious cutthroats” who forfeited whatever political influence they may have amassed in their violent rise to prominence by the “flaunting of his criminal wealth.” But the novel gets a few things wrong. Still, the mythology around him only grew. If he hired a tax lawyer instead of a criminal lawyer, he might have gotten off. ![]() The statute of limitations on his tax evasion conviction had actually expired. ![]() But then there were people in the industry who never thought the man who was the face of the mob had much going on under his thick skull. ![]() Capone is 47 and his mind is rotting from the dementia caused by years of untreated syphilis. In spite of the Tommy gun and the Cotton Club from Hell scenes, Josh Trank’s Al Capone biopic is a tearjerker, not a gangster movie. The slashes across his cheek which gave him his nickname “Scarface” are still there, but the movie is more concerned with deeper wounds. New movie Capone is set in the twilight years of America’s most infamous mobster. ![]()
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