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businessmen, dubbed The Secret Six, who beat Al Capone at his own game, ending the gangster era as prohibition was repealed.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

How was Capone Really Brought Down?

It wasn't Elliott Ness. When I am signing books of Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair I ask this simple question of people. Who brought Capone down? Elliott Ness and the Untouchables is the fast answer. Most people have either seen the movie or even the old television show or heard it through the lore of Capone that makes people profess being related to the big man, having seen the gangster, having been past his home, his grave, worked on his car, his stills, gone to his home in Wisconsin, eaten in his restaurant hideout along the Fox River. But the truth of what really happened to Capone has not seen the light of day.

Elliott Ness in 1957 was a drunk who met a Sports writer Oscar Fraley. Fraley like a lot of writers myself included was on the lookout for a new story. So he asked Ness if he had any good stories from the Prohibition years about Al Capone. Ness produced a dogeared manuscript of about twenty pages and gave it to Fraley. It wasn't much and Oscar went to work by the time he was done the tale of the Untouchables was complete. Then Ness died and Fraley published his books and sold about a million copies. Then he sold it to television and Robert Stack was set for life and then it was sold to the movies and Kevin Kostner became famous.

But the real story is much more fascinating. Six Chicago millionaires banded together to get rid of Al Capone. They had a Worlds Fair coming and it was going to be a disaster unless they got rid of the gang violence plaguing the city. They hired their own investigators and their own police force. They began a witness protection program, set up a speakeasy, and sent their own gangsters into Capones organization. Then they started to study his operation and began to attack his profitability. In the end they famously got him on tax evasion.

So that is the real story. Fraleys story was good but the real story of the Secret Six is even better.


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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

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

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

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

The Sad End of Sally Rand

She came to fame during the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1933 after she rode a white horse naked into the opening ceremonies when she could find no other way to be part of the fair. The horse reared at the moment the photographers snapped her picture and people thought she was part of the fair. From that moment on she was. Sallly Rand took her two ostrich feathers and became the number one draw of the Chicago Worlds Fair. They had to hire extra accountants to keep track of all the money. Her name became associated with The Century of Progress forever.

But then the fair ended and Sally Rand enjoyed a brief stint in Hollywood before returning to the circuit and there she stayed doing her feather dance coast to coast.  Many husbands and many divorces and lawsuits later found her at seventy still performing her feather dance. If you watch the movie The Right Stuff then you will remember at the end the woman on the stage dancing behind the feathers and that is Sally Rand. It was her last bit of fame before obscurity swallowed her up forever. She would die broke and alone and forgotten.

But Sally Rand does live on...on Youtube. You can watch her 1933 Worlds Fair dance that tantalized thousands during the worst years of the Great Depression. When you talk to people who went to the fair they always bring up Sally Rand. As one man told me. I went and saw Sally Rand, but I was just a kid and never told my mother. She would have wore me out with a switch. And there is a Sally Rand viewer. I have never seen one but I am told this souvenir exists where you can watch the feather dance over and over.

The cost of this bit of history...priceless.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Last Interview at WGN

I just finished up my last interview at WGN in the Chicago Tribune tower.  The revered station is moving across the river to 303 E Wacker and this would be it. It was the last time I would wait in the lobby of the Tribune building with the quotes from Presidents, poets, philosophers carved into the granite walls. The last time to go up to the seventh floor with WGN on the wall and walk past pictures of greats past and present. This last time was on Labor Day and the lights were off which made the old black and white photos more of their time.

I sat in the green room and waited once again listening to Rick Kogans interview before I went on. I held my book Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair and readied myself. It is a ritual that I had followed many times going  back to my novel Rocket Man. Kogan is one of the few men who still read books in Chicago and then have authors on his show.  He is one of the greats of Chicago journalism and harkens back to a time when writers and reporters all gathered at Billy Goats tavern on lower Wacker.

And then I am in the studio looking out the window at the Wrigley building and Michigan Avenue below. The gargoyles sit on the ledges and the speaker warns us we have thirty seconds. Rick and I make small talk and then we are on and for next thirty minutes we talk about the book like two old friends. And then it is over and I'm back out on Michigan Avenue. It is raining and I walk over the bridge and look down on the Chicago river and then over at the Tribune building.

Time passes.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Interview with Rick Kogan WGN

WGN Leaving the Tribune Tower

WGN is leaving the Tribune tower. No more going there on Sunday nights to do a live broadcast on a fifty thousand watt station that beams halfway across the country. You can only imagine the farmer out in Iowa picking up the voice of some writer being interviewed about his latest book. I remember once being on vacation in Minnesota and picking up WGN in the middle of the night. I was the distraught teen on vacation and it was like there was a bit of home sweeping across the cold dark skies of Northern America. And it will still be there but it wont be coming from the Tribune building anymore.

High up on seventh floor you can look out over the city before your interview. You cool your heels in the green room. How many people walked the halls? Sinatra, Newman, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe? You didn't come to Chicago and not do an interview on WGN. This would be before television when radio was King and the top of the mountain was the top of the building that also boasted one of the countries largest circulation newspapers. But that will be no more.

I was able to wait in august lobby of the Tribune building four times. It was always a Sunday night and no one was around. I would get a burger sometimes at Billy Goats  on lower Wacker and then head up to the seventh floor and wait in the green room and then into the studio. Rick Kogans show covers books and my last four have landed me across from him with the big WGN microphone in front of me. Always a great interview with a man who actually reads the books.

And then it is over and you drive home. You always wonder if you will do it again. Not anymore. At least in the Tribune building. That era is over.


Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Lady Godiva Rides into the Second Worlds Fair

Sally Rand wanted to be part of Chicago's Second Worlds Fair. The young dancer who had an act at the Paramount on State Street where she danced naked behind giant ostrich feathers but she knew this was her last chance. So she did what any self respecting woman would do she hired a boat and got hold of a horse and covered herself with body paint with nothing on but a cape and headed for the opening ceremonies. It was a warm night for May and Sally Rand put the horse on the boat and had her boss from the Paramount drive her along the Lake front.

She could hear the crowd and see the lights. Her career in Hollywood had fizzled when the talkies came and her lisp resonated like a bad cymbal. Cecil B Demill didn't have to tell her it was over and that's when she headed for Chicago with nothing but a bus ticket. She ended up sleeping in alleys until she hooked the job at the Paramount. But working on State Street didn't compare to the glittering lights of Hollywood and Sally Rand wanted to climb back and she saw the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933 as a way to do it.

So now she is on that horse heading toward the waters edge. The horse is restless as the boat bumps up against the cement retaining wall and then Sally digs her heels into the warm sides of the creature who just wants to run. It  is a dead gallop through the fair turning one way and then the other. The naked woman on the horse heads for the bright lights instinctively. It will be her last chance to be a star.

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Thank Al Capone for the Date on Your Milk

You always think that date on the milk came from some company who thought it was a great idea to let people know when their milk was going to spoil. And that date is pretty accurate and once it expires your milk goes sour. What most people don't know is that you can thank Public Enemy #1 for keeping your kids milk from tasting like the inside of an old shoe. Al Capone aka Bottles is the man who thought it would be a good idea to put a date on the bottle of milk so mom would know when to buy the milk and if it was going bad the next day.

So how did a gangster in the twenties make this change to bottling milk and just about every other perishable that we now take for granted. Capones bootlegging operation was vast and not only  did he bottle booze and beer he bottled milk. And he remembered as a boy many sour bottles of milk and one thing Capone was and that was inventive. In a different time he might have been a very successful manufacturer or run a corporation. He saw problems and solved them and ran a vast network of breweries, bottling operations and oversaw a transportation network that involved employing thousands.

So he saw it as logical to time stamp a date on a bottle and give a consumer an idea of how old hte milk was. The early dates were just the date of the actual bottling but of course this gave way to what he now have and that is an expiration date. Capone of course would not live to see his legacy in the from of a plastic jug of milk in a supermarket but it is one of the few things that transcend the murder and mayhem we associate with the man who went by the nickname "bottles."

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

The Second Worlds Fair In Chicago

Since the first fair in 1893 made famous in the book Devil in the White City people assume the Colombian Exposition was it. But forty years later there was another fair in 1933. This time the fair was during the worst year of the Great Depression and while there was no mass murderer like Dr. Holmes there was Al Capone. Arguably Capone was more of a mass killer than Holmes could ever hope to be and this presented a problem for Chicago. How do you have a Worlds Fair when everyone thinks Chicago is out of control?

The truth was Chicago was out of control. Capone had a lock down on the cops, the judges, the mayor, witnesses...basically the city. It is hard to believed a major American city could come under the control of one man but that was the situation. The St. Valentines Day Massacre confirmed to the world that Chicago was under the thumb of gangsters. Worse, the city was due to have a Worlds Fair in 1933 which would turn out to be the worst year of the Great Depression with the city literally broke.

tt would take Six Millionaires banning  together to get rid of Capone while the Worlds Fair was built with private funds from corporations and some very creative financing. Judy Garland would sing, Sally Rand would dance, the Zephyr would a record with a run from Denver to Chicago, people would see an image from a device called television, make a long distance call, and go on the Sky Ride which would take people higher than they had ever been before.

How Chicago pulled off  A Century of Progress and rid the city of AL Capone is the story of the Worlds Fair  of 1933...the Second Worlds Fair in Chicago.


Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair