Word: gangsterisms
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...three years coincided with the Sanitary District's "whoopee era." After the Sanitary District scandal began to fade most people were ready to forgive and forget whatever part friendly, genial Ed Kelly might have had in it. But since then things have changed. The U.S. had jailed Gangster Al Capone for eleven years for dodging his income tax. Many a good Chicagoan agreed with President Roosevelt in principle that he had a right to know how the Mayor became so rich while in public service. Ed Kelly was beginning last week to hear one of the most unpleasant sounds...
...Press. Editor Bingay, bald and fat, carefully segregated the majority of U. S. newspapers as law-abiding institutions. But the yellows and the "equally sinister group that is in the twilight zone, the near yellows, which parade under a cloak of respectability," said he, "created the fiction of the gangster and then through that fiction made him into a reality." Excerpts from his speech: ". . . [Yellow] newspapers create for headline purposes catchy, attention-arresting names for the bands of marauders. In my home city ... it is the 'Purple Gang.' . . Most of you police officers - and even the criminals themselves...
...smashing into a telephone pole. Having paid a $22 fine they were about to drive on when a policeman found in their car seven pistols, a rifle, a golf bag full of ammunition, a roll of adhesive tape and 20 ft. of gauze-regular kidnapping equipment. One gangster explained: "We were up here fishing. We got one 17-lb. muskie. The guns? Why, we had those to shoot the fish. They catch 'em big up here...
...sharp-heeled slipper, had driven Jolson off, word buzzed through the excited audience that Ruby Keeler was upset because Winchell's new scenario, Broadway Through a Keyhole, was supposedly based on her career. (She used to tap-dance in the night club of the late Larry Fay, Manhattan gangster slain last winter.) Post-bellum comment...
...Vincent ("Mad Dog") Coll was the kind of a gangster that big gangsters mortally fear. He was out to make his reputation as a killer, and he figured that the ratio of his own importance would increase with the importance of the criminals he killed. He had leaders like Owney Madden quite nervous until two men put the finger on him in a telephone booth last winter...