Why do they blame me for something that happened when I was miles away?” asked Al Capone at the time of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. “They accuse me of killing everything except the Dead Sea—and they’ll get around to that eventually.
Based on the national attention the massacre was bringing him, Capone turned to his journalist friend, Damon Runyon (1884-1946) to act as his press agent and apologist, and help him rebuild his image.
Runyon, who started out as a columnist and sportswriter for Hearst newspapers, liked to hang out with gangsters, not to get the scoop on them, but to understand their world for use in his short stories. Runyon’s Guys and Dolls is a short story collection seeded with gangsters based on the likes of Al Capone, Frank Costello, and many more. Guys and Dolls, of course, was eventually turned into the popular Broadway musical, based on two short stories within it.
On September 22, 1927, Runyon attended the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney fight at Soldiers Field in Chicago with Capone. He turned to prizefighting to try and soften Capone’s image after the massacre. Runyon’s first step was to instruct Capone to give the media the impression he was retiring from Chicago and bootlegging.
Runyon arranged for Capone to have his picture taken with prizefighter Jack Sharkey at his training camp in Miami. Capone is photographed standing between the fighter and former All-American football star Bill Cunningham. The photo ran in the New York American newspaper, with the following cutline, written by Runyon: “The somewhat portly person is none other than ‘Scarface’ Al Capone, once a well-known Chicago gangster, now residing quietly in Florida, who has never been photographed. Although the police have lately mentioned his name in connection with the Chicago rum massacre—which Capone says he knows nothing about—the hitherto shy Al consented to pose with guess whom? Jack Sharkey, the sunshine of Miami Beach.”
Runyon also encouraged Capone to throw a lavish prefight party at his Palm Island estate for sixty sportswriters attending the Sharkey fight. In the course of the party, one of them writers made off with $300,000.00 worth of Mae Capone’s jewelry, which was never recovered. Nevertheless, Capone attended the fight at Flamingo Park on February 27, 1929, resplendent in a tuxedo, handing out $100.00 bills and sitting with Jack Dempsey.
Runyon’s spin on Capone’s image proved ineffective. His high profile in Miami didn’t give anyone the impression he was retiring, but prompted the Chicago Tribune newspaper to proclaim that Capone was planning to take over Miami, just as he had Chicago.
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