Author of Capones Vault Says Capone's Missing Millions May Still Be Hidden--40 Years After the Mystery of Capones Vaults

CHICAGO — As the 40th anniversary of the famous live television event The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults approaches, National Bestselling author William ElliottHazelgrove says the legendary Chicago gangster's missing fortune may still be out there. On April 21, 1986, more than 30 million viewers tuned in to watch journalist Geraldo Rivera open a sealed vault beneath Chicago's Lexington Hotel in what became one of the most anticipated broadcasts in television history. The nationally syndicated special, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults, remains the highest-rated syndicated television event ever aired. When the vault was finally opened live on television, however, the results stunned viewers. Instead of the rumored treasure, the vault appeared largely empty. But according to Hazelgrove, author of the new book Capone's Vault, the empty vault did not necessarily solve the mystery of Al Capone's missing fortune. "The vault was only one lead in a much larger mystery," Hazelgrove says. "Capone generated enormous amounts of cash during Prohibition, and much of that money was never accounted for. The empty vault actually deepened the legend rather than ending it." Hazelgrove's book examines the dramatic events behind the famous television special, including the planning of the broadcast, the intense public anticipation, and the aftermath of one of the most talked-about moments in television history. Based on extensive research and interviews with the producers of the program as well as Geraldo Rivera, the book explores how the broadcast helped usher in the era of modern reality television. Four decades later, the legend of Capone's hidden fortune still fascinates Chicagoans and historians alike. Stories of buried cash, secret hiding places, and lost mob money have circulated for decades, keeping the mystery alive long after the famous vault was opened.

Chicago Tribune Feature on Sally Rand who Crashed the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair

 The Chicago Tribune did a feature on my latest book. Sally Rand American Sex Symbol The article is written by Chicago Icon Rick Kogan. Enjoy Chicago Tribune Feature on Sally Rand

The First Kim Kardashian...Sally Rand

 She was famous for being famous. We  take this for granted today. But in 1933 Sally Rand was a phenomenon. She became famous overnight for crashing the Chicago Worlds Fair on a white horse with viturally nothing on. She was imediately arrested and then immediately hired. She became the biggest financial draw of the Worlds Fair and was responsible for making it profitable. She made 5000 a week in depression era dollars and ended up dancing for two years behind seven foot ostrich feathers. 

She then went on the road and there she stayed for forty years. She would dance for the Apollo Astronauts end up on To Tell the Truth, give speeches at Harvard, star in movies, have cartoons built around her...but her fame all dated back to the night ride into the Worlds Fair. She had her own television show, nightclub, and flew to her gigs at a time when few people flew anywhere. She got her pilots license when most women didnt even drive a car. She was her own business manager, agent, publicist, and made over a million dollars at a time when few options were open to women besides being a teacher, nurse, or secretary. 

She married three different husbands who squanderd her money. She took care of her family her entire life. She kept dancing well into her seventies. When she died Sammy David Junior gave her ten thousand dollars for her medical bills. Her name was Harriet Beck but Cecil B. Demilles changed her name for the movies and the world would remember her as SALLY RAND 

Finally The Paperback Release of Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Al Capone and the 1933 World’s Fair: The End of the Gangster Era in Chicago is a historical look at Chicago during the darkest days of the Great Depression. The story of Chicago fighting the hold that organized crime had on the city to be able to put on The 1933 World's Fair.

William Hazelgrove provides the exciting and sprawling history behind the 1933 World's Fair, the last of the golden age. He reveals the story of the six millionaire businessmen, dubbed The Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as prohibition was repealed. The story of an intriguing woman, Sally Rand, who embodied the World's Fair with her own rags to riches story and brought sex into the open. The story of Rufus and Charles Dawes who gave the fair a theme and then found financing in the worst economic times the country had ever experienced. The story of the most corrupt mayor of Chicago, William Thompson, who owed his election to Al Capone; and the mayor who followed him, Anton Cermak, who was murdered months before the fair opened by an assassin many said was hired by Al Capone.

But most of all it’s the story about a city fighting for survival in the darkest of times; and a shining light of hope called A Century of Progress.

Paperback Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Capone Stories from the Tour: Capone's Dentist

Yeah I was Capones dentist. I had just finished my speech and was shutting down my computer. The man held onto his wifes arm. The woman nodded. He was Capones dentist. What was that like I asked. The man grinned. Dangerous He always came in with his goons. They were big guys in loud suits and they always had their guns out. It didn't matter how many people I had in the waiting room they  just walked in and nobody said a thing and Capone he just put himself in the chair. It didn't matter what I was doing. His goons would pull the guy out of my chair and Capone would sit down.

The woman nodded. Nobody wanted to mess with him. The man shrugged. Yeah. So Capone would sit down and his goons would take out their guns and hold them in front of him while I worked on him. And every time I had to do something I would say to the goons. This is going to hurt. The would look and then say to Al Capone. This is going to hurt Al. And then I would work on his teeth and the whole time they had their guns out.

So then I finished up. The woman nodded. He worked real fast on Capone. Yeah. So I finished up and then the goons would walk out in the waiting room and look around and then Capone would leave and the goons would give me a big fat envelope of cash. The woman shook her head. Just like that they would leave the money. The man shrugged again. It was a lot of money and those were hard times. It was the woman said. But I was Capones dentist. The woman nodded. He was Capone's dentist.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

What I learned After 31 Barnes and Noble Signings

The first thing I learned is people just want to hear a good story. In fact they are dying to hear a good story that will take them out of their everyday life for even a minute. I cant tell you the amount of times people came in looking for another book and walked out with mine. Especially when they are looking for a book to give someone. Many times people would buy all three of my titles after I spoke to them about my newest book. It is as if once they had stopped and started to listen then all sorts of possibilities opened up.

The second thing I learned after 31 signings in two months is that people don't care about price. Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair lists out the door at 36 dollars and my other two nonfiction titles Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson and Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt lists out the door at about 32 dollars  On an average I would sell every signing 20-50 hardcovers. I can count on one hand the number of times people did not buy because of price. If the story is good and people want the book then people are willing to pay.

Women seem to buy more than men. They just do. Men are more reluctant to stop. Lets call it the hunter gather syndrome. Women are just more open to something new while many times men wont even stop to consider. Women think of others and are always considering what might make a great gift although many women buy for themselves. Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson was a surprise buy for many women who were caught up in the story of our First Woman President. Saying that, men did buy and  Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt was a favorite. I learned never to assume. Many times I was surprised at who was a reader of history and who was not.

People want something for free. Even if it is something small. It is an icebreaker if nothing else. I give them a small business card with the name of my book on it and that initiates a conversation.  It is nothing really but a reason to stop and if they don't buy they take it with them and there is a chance they may buy later. I have had many people circle back later and buy a book. Also I learned people you don't think will buy will surprise you every time. So I give everyone a card and I cant tell you the amount of times I was floored when someone I assumed would never buy my book would do it.

Authors are their own best salesmen. A signed copy of a book by the author is coveted. People like having their book inscribed to them or to someone they will give it to. Many times people told me they had never met an author before. I am literally surrounded by bestsellers when I am selling books and yet they just lay there and people breeze right past them. I know my book. I can talk to anybody about Al Capone, The Worlds Fair, Sally Rand, Edith Wilson or Teddy Roosevelt. The biggest advantage Barnes and Nobles has over Amazon is that it is full of human beings who interact with other human beings. People like talking to an author who is dressed up in a tie and a vest and who has a story to tell and will also listen to a story.  I can't tell you the amount of stories I have heard about Al Capone from people who bought my book.

Finally people seem to buy during the day more than the evening. If I arrived around eleven AM then there seemed to be a sweet spot right up to about 4PM. Usually I stayed in the store four hours. By then I usually ran out of books or out of gas. Evenings were hit and miss and yet I have been in a Barnes and Noble when it was absolutely dead and sold all my books. More books are better than a few. It is better to stack up fifty or a hundred books than twenty. At one Barnes and Noble outside of Chicago there were 65 books stacked on a single table and they all sold. More books implies a successful author who has come to the store to sign his or her latest.

 In the end I chewed through thirty packs of gum. Ruined three ties with coffee. I was probably asked where the bathrooms were fifty times where the calendars were twenty times and where the Starbucks was at least ten. I gave out four thousand cards and bumped into that many people. I sold over 600 hardcovers in the last two months of my three nonfiction titles It was hard work and I have a real appreciation for the Barnes and Noble employees and the managers who do this for eight hours straight. But it was also fun.

What I learned finally is that  it isn't price that sells books and it isn't having an online store at your fingertips. You just need to tell a good story. Believe me... people will listen.

William Hazelgrove

All Those Capone Stories

When you write a book on Capone then you hear lots of stories. What happens is you are at a signing or giving a speech and someone comes up to you. They lower their voice and get close and then say, you know I'm related to Al Capone. This is usually through some distant relation that married someone who was married to someone who was the great aunt of Capone. Then come the truly weird stories. One involved a welder.

The women who told me this story said her father had been kidnapped by Al Capone. Men had driven up and pulled out some guns and put her father in a car. They blindfolded him and drove him to an undisclosed location. When they took the blindfold off he was facing Al Capone. I need someone to fix my stills Capone told him. The welder did the job for Capone but the men in the car came back and he was kidnapped again. After the second time he moved his family far away. He just feared for his life the woman told me.

The other stories involve other gangsters who worked with Capone or houses he owned or his vacation home in Wisconsin. Some people ask me if i have been to his grave and many tell stories about how as kids they had a chance sighting of the gangster. They described his heavy black Cadillac passing by the way someone might speak of a rock star. And then there are the stories of places he ate, bars he frequented, people he murdered. The way the book is selling convinces me more than ever that Al Capone is the ultimate superstar that time cannot dim. He has been dead for seventy years. Rock stars should have such longevity.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

How the Thompson and Valentines Day made Chicago get rid of Capone

It was Valentines Day in 1929 that sealed Capones fate. The German Shepherd tied to a bumper was the only witness and he wasn't talking. The smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air when the cops arrived. The Thompson Machine gun fired .45 ACP cartridges and fired them one after another. General Thompson wanted a gun to kill the Germans in World War I and so he invented The Annihilator. That's what he called it but everyone else called it The Thompson. Soldiers called it a trench sweeper. 

Whatever the name the angry gun fired one bullet after another from the gas of the last one. The war ended and the annihilator was very rarely used and it was expensive for civilians at 400 per gun. The British thought it was too loud. But a new group of men really liked it. The cost wasn't a factor and it fit nicely in a violin case. Just like a man going to a recital of death. So the Thompson did its dirty work in that garage on Clark Street on St Valentines Day and killed off seven of Bugs Moran's men. 

The brick wall behind the men would be sold to a restaurant in Indiana so people could sit and stare at the chipped brick. The Annihilator fired like a garden hose and that's how the two men dressed as cops fired it. One low and one high so they could be sure each man was shot at least a dozen times. And that is what made Chicago realize Capone was out of hand and had to go. The Annihilators rendezvous with Americas holiday of love. 

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Selling Books in Barnes and Noble in the year 2017

Its amazing how many authors still sit behind their table. That is what happens when you arrive at your signing. There is a chair and a table and your books. There is also a sign announcing your book and a picture of yourself. So the author then takes a seat behind the table and waits for the hordes to arrive. They don't. Even NY Times Bestsellers don't pull in the people. Yes if you are Erik Larson you will get a crowd but even that can be a crapshoot. Selling books in the year 2017 is just different from before. If you don't have a television show then you better not sit in that chair.

I just had another signing and sold 27 hardcovers at 32.00 a piece. The reason I bring this up is that no one was there to see me or to find my book. The difference is I never sit down. The whole passive experience of selling books is responsible for many good bookstores going away. People come into a bookstore to look for a book, to look for a great story. I tell them a great story and out of three people one of them will buy. It is not hard to tell the story of our First Woman President, or how Teddy Roosevelt went to the Badlands after his wife and mother died on the same day or how Chicago held a fair in the worst year of the Great Depression and had to get rid of Al Capone ad the same time.

The author who sits behind his table will be asked if he knows where the bathroom is or if he knows where that new Harry Potter book is or if he knows where the magazines are. But he or she will not sell any books. You cant blame bookstores for not wanting to have book signings. Most authors just don't sell. Which is sad when writers are really story tellers and really all people want to hear is a really good story. And they are really happy to get a book signed by the author.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Woman Who Charged in Naked to the 1933 Worlds Fair

Sally Rand looked like something from the heavens on her white horse, her bare skin painted white. Holding onto a bridle, she sat bareback atop the skittish horse and glided across Lake Michigan toward the back of the fairgrounds. The lake whooshed softly against the gurgling motor as the pumping horse blood warmed her thighs. The fair’s colored lights jumped in the cool, rushing water. Sally was pimply with goosebumps, even though it was late May.

The low-riding wooden Chris-Craft could barely contain the horse, and as water slapped up, she leaned close to his ear. “It’s fine . . . it’s fine, baby. We are almost there.” She pulled the white velvet cape around her and felt the wind pass over her loins and breasts. Except for the ankle bracelet, her blond wig, some makeup, and the cape that barely covered her breasts, Sally Rand, a.k.a. Harriet Helen Beck from Missouri, was naked from her painted toes to her dimpled smile. Who would turn away this gliding nymph approaching the opening of the 1933 World’s Fair?

The boat bumped the dock, and the horse stepped down from the low bow as if he had done so all his life. Sally Rand clamped his sides with her legs and dug her heels in. The horse jumped to life as her blond hair flew back. They raced down the deserted streets heading for the grand opening, where people gathered around the stage. A Century of Progress, the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, was about to open during the worst year of the Great Depression, with a gangster-ridden city at its back. It was a perfect setup for a naked woman on a charging white steed.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Myth of Elliott Ness and the Untouchables

It was a good movie.  Kostner as Elliott Ness was perfect and his wife was beautiful. She would later pop up on House of Cards as a power player but no one can forget the closeups between her and Kostner. He was the honest man in a world of vice and corruption. Sean Connery was the cop seeking redemption who helped him. Of course Deniro was Capone. Mamet wrote the script and The Untouchables played out as the way Al Capone was convicted. Except none of it was true.

A sports writer named Oscar Fraley cooked up the whole thing with a down on his luck alcoholic named Elliott Ness. Ness had been a prohibition agent and had written a twenty page memoir that Fraley took and then changed for a bestselling book that sold 1.5 million copies. He then sold it to television for a series with Robert Stack. And then of course it was sold to Hollywood where it was immortalized for all time. But again, it wasn't true.

Fraley came up with the whole concept of the Untouchables; a group of incorruptible cops and investigators who would get Capone. Ness had died before the book was even published and that left Fraley as the only guy who could set the record straight and he wasn't talking. Writers bend the truth to make a story good. That's what we do. The sports writer got a lot of mileage out of the twenty page dogeared manuscript Ness had given him. The real story is how the Secret Six got Al Capone but no has told that one...yet.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Series

Chicago's Forgotten Fair of 1933...Hold the popcorn

Microwave popcorn. That is among the many things the 1933 Worlds Fair in Chicago brought to the populace 33 years after the turn of the century. That and a star in the flag of Chicago. There are four stars in the flag, one for Ft Dearborn, one for the fair of 1893, one for for the fair of 33 and one for the incorporation of Chicago into a city. But because the fair was held during the Great Depression it is overshadowed by HH Holmes and the Devil in the White City fair.

You could make a long distance call at the fair. Call anywhere in the United States. You could see yourself on a crude television. You could watch popcorn appear out of the air from microwaves. You could watch peas get canned and get a souvenir can yourself. All you had to do was press a button. Or you could watch your next car get built. Chrysler had a whole assembly line at the fair and cars rolled off the assembly line every hour. You could watch a woman in grease paint hide her body behind two huge ostrich feathers .

And if this wasn't enough you could ride on the Skyride 625 feet up across the lake to Northerly Island. You could watch the Zephyr the first diesel electric train set a new speed record from Chicago to Denver. And you could do all this for a nickel unless they threw the gates open on "kid days" which they did frequently because a lot of people didn't have a nickel. And you could go to the fair secure int he knowledge Al Capone had just  gone to prison and there was less chance you would get shot by some Thompson machine gun toting gangster.

You could even watch an unknown singer named Judy Garland.  She would bump into a man at the Biograph and get his autograph right before he was gunned down by the police. John Dillinger would not make the 33 fair.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Problem with Print on Demand for Authors

Publishers love print on demand. They can hedge their bets now. Sure we will buy your book does not have the same import any more as the print runs really don't exist. So lets talk about this. Traditional publishing goes this way:  Good advance. Good print run. Books in the stores. That is traditional publishing. But technology morphed and suddenly a publisher no longer had to make a stand on a book. Doing a print run requires the publisher to say I think I will sell x amount of books and it lets the author know that books will be there for the stores, events, signings, whatever the author does he can rest assured the book will be behind him.

Now lets talk POD. Small advance. The publisher will print maybe a hundred books. Maybe 50. The technology is such that if there is a demand then a book will be printed. But there is a lag. So the author notices there are no books in the stores. Then you notice that the publisher is showing no books in stock. Now you have another event and the printer cannot get the books to the press because there are lots of presses using this technology and they have books in cue. So the author shows up a at his signing with no books.

The author does not do well with POD technology. The publisher cannot react to a surge because the printer has other jobs ahead. Worse there will be no surge because books are not out in the marketplace pinging around. Now you are over nighting books talking to harassed book sellers and publishers. It becomes publishing lite. The assumption the book will be there is gone. Books create energy. But if the books is not there then there is a vacuum. So the question is where do authors sell their books?

The truth is for the author the traditional is still better. It is the publishers job to produce the book and the authors job to sell the book. Both must do their jobs for a book to be profitable.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

What Happens When Your First Print Run Sells Out

You pop your cork on the champagne and raise your glass and then you freak. As an author you always want your books to sell. Then when it happens you go to the dark side of freaking out because people are running out of books. Recently my book Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair A Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair sold out the first print run. In publishing publishers try and guess at demand and it is hard to do. You can print too many or not enough.  Authors usually fret about books not selling and so you go from that to there is not enough books.

Print on demand technology has largely solved the problem of warehousing books but you still have to take a stand and print enough for the warehouses. The economics of publishing are such that anyone can publish a book. But to get books into the system you still need to have supply. Supply and demand is king and if there is no supply then you have a problem.

Many will say well that is a good problem to have. It is but you want the storm to continue and for that you need books and you want them as soon as possible. Books are due from the printer tomorrow. 

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair Still in stock

The Motivation of the Las Vegas Shooter

Unfortunately Stephen Paddock is not that different from other American shooters. I just finished a first draft of a book, Shots Fired in Terminal 2 about the Ft Lauderdale airport shooting that I had the bad luck to be in. I studied twenty mass shootings in America and I looked for common factors in the shooters. This is what I found. They were male. Ninety nine percent white. Young adult to middle age. Middle class. And they had access to high powered weapons. And they were all insane to some degree. And their stated reasons for murdering people was not really important.

It is the pissed off white male syndrome. That is what I called it though I never put it in the book. From Sandy Hook to Columbine the psychopath was there waiting. The paranoid schizophrenic, the PTSD vet hearing voices telling him to kill, the manic depressive, the truly insane killer of children and the killer of people watching movies all are cousins of the severely mentally ill. By the time I was finished I realized there were two things that could be done to limit these shootings. One was to get rid of access to semiautomatic weapons and the other is to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

If we did these two things and nothing else we would see a result. People who shoot people enmasse are insane. They just are. There is no rational. There is no motive. I saw it in every shooting that I studied. The men who committed these acts were simply nuts and it is not about the second amendment or handgun laws. What happens is the insane individual decides to kill people and they know that the best gun to do this is a semiautomatic. That is where it stops.

 Stephen Paddock just joined the white men's club of mass killers who have no motivation. Insane people don't need one.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Was Devil in the White City A Novel?

Not technically. But it was told in a novelistic style. This would be narrative nonfiction which uses the technique of a novelist to tell a historical story. HH Holmes would have been less terrifying if he was not described the way a novelist would describe a character. We were privy to his thoughts and his horrible deeds as if we were there. History could not do this only a novel could pull this off. Historians give us exactly what happened and that is pretty much it. They interpret the historical data but we do not know what characters feel, see, sense. This is the purview of fiction.

So what is the difference? Scenes. Novelists build scenes and so do writers of narrative nonfiction. I had a Masters in History yet I wrote ten novels before switching to nonfiction. Granted some of my novels could have been considered historical fiction but they were fiction. When I switched I ended up using the same techniques as writing a novel. When I wrote Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson I imagined what Edith felt like running the White House when her husband became ill. I wanted the reader to feel the pressure she was feeling.

Same with Forging A President How the Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt  I wanted the reader to be in the Badlands with Teddy. And finally in my latest book, Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair I wanted people to smell the popcorn and know how Sally Rand felt when she galloped into the opening ceremonies. In this way, we get the best of both worlds and the story is more real for the reader. Verisimilitude means what is most true. That is what we are all after.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

How Al Capone Became Scarface

Young Al Capone got a job in a bar along the Jersey boardwalk. A woman and a man came in and sat down at a table. Capone gave them their drinks and went back to the bar. The woman was a real Italian beauty. Al couldn't keep his eyes off her. He went back to get their glasses and that was when he said it. I tell you honey, you got a really nice ass. The man who turned out to be the woman brother jumped up with a knife and started slashing at Capone.

Once twice the knife slashed Capones cheek. Blood flowed down his neck. Capone went crazy and the man barely made it out of the bar. Capone was stitched up but the scars remained. At first they were deep red and angry. Capone was very touchy about the scars. He never wanted to be photographed on that side. He didn't let anyone call him Scarface. Many times he would powder the scars over so they wouldn't be as prominent.

The man turned out to work for a local mobster. Capone was told he could not retaliate. As Capone rose up the man came to work for him and Al harbored no ill will. He had popped off and the woman's brother did what any brother would do. Scarface would not be so benevolent to other men who crossed him.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Sally Rand was the #1 Money Maker at the Worlds Fair

She did it all with her clothes off. She came from a small town in the Ozarks. Her real name was Harriet Beck. She wanted to be a dancer and follow the sun to Hollywood. She ran away when she was twelve and of course she ran to the circus. Her parents brought her back but she ran away again. She learned the trapeze and found she was very athletic. She was barely five feet tall and compact. This time she made it the coast and began to get big parts. Cecil B. Demills noticed her and asked Harriet her name. He frowned and looked around and saw an Atlas. Your name is Sally Rand he pronounced.

Sally Rand did well in the silent movies. She was a WAMPAS Baby Star which was basically a whos who of up and coming actresses. Everything was going fine until sound came along. Her screen test was a disaster. Sally Rand had a bad lisp that ended her Hollywood aspirations. Demills showed her the door and she ended up taking a bus to Chicago to look for work. She found it at the Paramount when she showed up with two giant Ostrich feathers and took off her clothes. Her dance was a hit and in three years the Worlds Fair was going to open.

Sally Rand crashed the opening ceremonies on the back of a white horse. She was naked of course and the people thought she was part of the fair. She was hired and quickly her fan dance became the number one draw. The fair had to hire extra accountants to take in all the money. Her fame lasted but the money did not. She had to go on the road and never got off. Sally Rand died penniless and obscure, only to live on in Youtube videos and rare 1933 Worlds Fair viewers.  Her dressing room was bought by a millionaire on the North Shore. Irony upon irony.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Devil in the White City and the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1933

The two fairs were forty years apart. The fair made famous by Eric Larson's book Devil in the White City was to show that Chicago had arrived and was a world city like Paris or New York. Daniel Burnham and his architects had this in mind when they designed the neo classical buildings of the White City. It was a celebration of culture in a city that was the slaughter house for the world. The Ferris Wheel made its debut along with Cracker Jacks and the first Hootchie Koo dance. People came away from the fair amazed that such a world existed in the rough and tumble coal burning city that at times smelled so bad people would not go out doors.

The 1933 fair was entirely different. Officially it was to celebrate the incorporation of Chicago but that didn't seem enough so it was changed to A Century of Progress. Technology and industrial might became the themes in a fair held in the worst year of the Great Depression. The fair quickly became a quest against the naysayers who pointed out that Chicago was broke and nobody would come during a Depression where a third of the banks had failed and a quarter of the work force was unemployed. The fair would be built on gold notes and corporate funds. No public funds would be used.

The Ferris Wheel became the Sky Ride, a cable car that went over the lake to Northerly Island 625 feet up. For people who had never been in a plane this was amazing. Television and long distance phone calls made their debut. An unknown young girl named Judy Garland sang and another unknown named Sally Rand danced behind two ostrich feathers. It was not white but multi colored earning it the name The Rainbow City.  It was the first disposal fair and was torn down a year and a half later.

People could watch peas get canned and cars get built. There was no Dr. Holmes but there was Al Capone. How Chicago got rid of Al Capone is a whole another story. President Roosevelt asked that the fair stay open an extra year. It was the only bright spot in a very dark world.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Great Booklist Review of Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Reviews
Booklist Reviews 2017 September #1
In the years leading up to 1933, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two rich Chicago kids, murdered another boy for fun; the U.S. was mired in the Great Depression; Charles Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped and murdered; Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany; and Al Capone, who had used Prohibition as a way to expand his criminal empire, was the de facto mayor of Chicago, even though he was, technically, a prison inmate.

 Amid all this turmoil, the Chicago political powers that be thought it would be a great idea to throw a World’s Fair. But how do you fund a $20 million extravaganza when the city is broke? How do you keep the gangsters from running rampant? The fair’s planner promised the people of the city that gangsters “will be gone” by the time of the fair, but how could he possibly follow through? 

Enter the Secret Six, a group of businessmen who joined forces for a most dangerous mission: to eradicate organized crime in Chicago by the time the fair opened. This is a thrilling and frequently surprising story about larger-than-life people and their larger-than-life ambitions. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.