Word: nitty
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...Chicago, shortly after Showman Mike (Streets of Paris') Todd quit the world's biggest theater-restaurant, seating 3,700 (TIME, Jan. 6), it was closed by the Chicago police. Reported reason: it had fallen into the hands of Chicago's Nitti gang, who were converting it from a family-style resort into a vast honkytonk...
...public record by the State's Attorney's office was the story which McLane in bolder mood had breathed to the grand jury. Two years ago, Nitti had summoned him to a conference. Present, according to McLane's testimony, were Willie Bioff, a convicted pander; Nick Dean, alias Circella, a convicted crook; Louis Romano, who McLane said was a former Capone bodyguard; and fleshy George E. Browne, recently raised from fourteenth to twelfth vice president...
McLane was told, said he, of a plan to elect him international president of the Union of Hotel & Restaurant Employees (of which the bartenders' union is a local), with the understanding that, as president, he would also work for the mob. Testified McLane: "He [Nitti] said he made Browne," and Gangster Nitti gave McLane to understand he could "make" him. If he refused to run for the office, it was implied that he "would be found in an alley." McLane ran, secretly passed the word to his friends in the Federation not to vote...
Thwarted Gangster Nitti, said McLane, thereupon took over the Chicago local, ousted McLane from his job as business agent. Nitti's aides told McLane: "We are taking over. . . . You won't do anything we want you to do and we are taking over. . . . You got to go away." McLane went. In this simple manner, said he, Nitti gangsters had taken over Chicago waiters, hotel clerks, hat-check girls, cooks, soda jerkers, organized the "Local Joint Board & Council of Chicago," and obliged all union members to pay tribute...
Last week, with Nitti free and McLane mum, only hope for the Chicago bartenders seemed to be a court-appointed receiver, who was temporarily in possession of the local's treasury. From President William Green, who had subscribed to a pious anti-racketeer resolution* at the last Federation convention, came no word or action. Louder still was the silence from Vice President George E. Browne...