My Selection — Meyer Wolfsheim
Arnold Rothstein: The Man Behind the Fictional Gangster in Gatsby
The Dichotomy of Delicacy and Ferocity in Fitzgerald’s Work
F. Scott Fitzgerald based his fictional mobster character Meyer Wolfsheim from The Great Gatsby on the real mobster of the time, Arnold Rothstein.
He was also known as The Brain, Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, The Big Bankroll.
Rothstein was assassinated in 1928 at the Park Central Hotel and died at the Stuyvesant Clinic. When asked who shot him, he famously said, “My mother! You stick to your trade. I’ll stick to mine.”
This guy was known for bootlegging, racketeering, narcotics. With Prohibition, of course, these guys made a fortune — like Al Capone and the fictional Jay Gatsby.
In Bill Bryson’s great book, One Summer, America, 1927, one of the unintended consequences of Prohibition was to double the number of bars in New York. It was also to target German breweries and immigrants for World…
