Movie Question (godfather?)

that was Deniro as Al Capone

 

The Untouchables

 

I'm not certain, but I THINK this scene is also in the movie "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre", with Jason Robards as Al Capone.

 

Yes, as a matter of fact, I know the actor who met the bat!

DL

 

Some trivia on this, from the 1988 Motion Picture Guide Annual, in its review of "The Untouchables":

"DeNiro (Capone), seeing the erosion of his criminal empire, begins to clear his house of defectors, giving a banquet for one lieutenant and then beating his brains out with a baseball bat (an event, based on fact, and earlier depicted in 'Party Girl', in which Lee J. Cobb, playing a Capone role model, does the same thing, and 'The St. Valentines Day Massacre' in which Jason Robards Jr. , playing Capone, dispatches several unfaithful henchmen. In reality, Capone murdered John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, and Joseph 'Hop Toad' Guinta by crushing their heads with a baseball bat while giving them a party at his citadel, the Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero, but the year was 1930, not years later, as indicated in this inaccurate film)."

 

(Capone had invited three Sicilian gangsters to a lavish feast. He was the most exuberant and genial of hosts until the enormous meal had been consumed. Then, suddenly, he accused them of disloyalty – an offense he could not tolerate.)

With that in mind, Kobler's CAPONE: The Life and World of Al Capone puts the real story like this:

"Capone’s bodyguards fell upon them , lashing them to their chairs with wire and gagging them. Capone got up, holding a baseball bat. Slowly, he walked the length of the table and halted behind the first guest of honor. With both hands, he lifted the bat and slammed it down full force. Slowly, methodically, he struck again and again, breaking ones in the man’s shoulders, arms and chest. He moved to the next man and, when he had reduced him to mangled flesh and bone, to the third. One of the bodyguards then fetched his revolver from the checkroom and shot each man in the back of the head."

 

Isn't that a violation of their civil rights?