Al Capone: The Untouchable Legend

Al Capone: The Untouchable Legend is a new one-hour biography of the most notorious gangster in history. On January 17th, 1999, Al Capone would have celebrated his 100th birthday. His exploits in the early part of the century have inspired authors, journalists and filmmakers. Myths have always been woven around the figure of Al Capone. Born in Brooklyn, he began his career in crime as protege to New York underworld boss Frankie Yale in the early 1920's, and then moved to Chicago where he made himself a multi-millionaire from the protection business, gambling, brothels, and speakeasies. He is most infamous for planning the massacre of seven members of a rival gang on Valentine's Day in 1929. This was also the year the Justice Department named Eliot Ness to form a special crime-busting squad which came to be known as "The Untouchables." In 1931 Alphonse Capone was convicted on income tax evasion and began an eleven year sentence in the Federal Prison on Alcatraz Island. Capone died in 1947 and is buried in Chicago's Mount Carmel Cemetery. But who really was this man? How did this child of Neapolitan immigrants become the most legendary gangster of the "Roaring Twenties." Using historical film footage, movie scenes, and dramatic recreations filmed on location in Chicago, Brooklyn, Ellis Island, Florida's Palm Island, and Alcatraz, Al Capone: The Untouchable Legend not only depicts the rise and fall of "Scarface," but also looks behind the myths at the private family man. Interviews with Capone's nephew Harry Hart, and with Capone experts John Binder, Dennis Hoffman and William Balsamo all help to illuminate the social and economic milieu of the '20s and '30s that led to the rise of the "Mafia."