Capone ca. 1917
Presenting an authentic and iconic photograph of Al Capone in his late teens, courtesy of his great niece, Deirdre Capone.
This remarkable photograph, which I first encountered in Al’s great niece Deirdre Capone’s fascinating memoir, Uncle Al, had an enormous effect on me as I was researching and writing I, Capone. The only Capone I had been carrying around in my imagination was the burly, dapper, round-faced Al of his later years, and I had assumed that’s how he started out.
But not so. Here we see him in his late teens seated in front of the pool hall in which his father Gabriel Capone was part owner. It stood on Garfield Street, directly across from the Capone apartment in Brooklyn, where Al developed into one of the Borough’s most formidable pool players (note the pool cues leaning inside the window). If his suit is any indication, he may have already acquired his reputation as a smart dresser that earned him the nickname “Snorky.” This is a trim, hungry, muscular, broad-shouldered Capone before wealth overtook him. But he already exudes the kind of shrewd intelligence and athletic physique that first drew Torrio to him.
Seated to his right is his father, Gabriel Capone, who emigrated from Campania in Southern Italy in 1893. Tough, vigilant, with the subdued pugnacity of a retired fighter, Gabriel was obviously not someone who could be pushed around easily.
There is something in Al’s warranting a bentwood chair while the others make do, and in the deferential postures of his father and the standing man (whom Dierdre Capone identifies as Vincenzo Raiola, Al’s maternal uncle), that conveys a certain deference toward this rugged teenager, as though his earnings in the employ of Frankie Yale may have enabled Gabriel to invest in the pool parlor.
I thought at first that the standing man was Al’s older brother Ralph, but if I’m wrong, and I probably am, Ralph was a dead ringer for his Uncle Vincenzo
Most remarkably of all, though they are hard to discern in this copy, the family tradition is that in the righthand window, reflected in the pool room’s glass and a Murad ad, stands Al’s mother Theresa holding in her arms Ralph’s son, Ralph Jr., who in turn was Deirdre Capone’s father.
In any case, I am very grateful to Deirdre Capone for preserving and allowing me to include here what is to me an iconic window into the history of immigration, American aspiration, and the origins of organized crime.
