1 00:00:18,950 --> 00:00:20,550 Never underestimate the need 2 00:00:20,550 --> 00:00:26,050 for young dopes to defy the conventional laws. 3 00:00:26,060 --> 00:00:26,960 You want something, 4 00:00:26,960 --> 00:00:29,490 you want them to brush their teeth, 5 00:00:29,490 --> 00:00:31,360 make it illegal. 6 00:00:31,360 --> 00:00:32,760 Make toothpaste illegal, 7 00:00:32,760 --> 00:00:37,000 and they'll be standing on the roof brushing away. 8 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:39,000 It's natural to human beings. 9 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:42,470 I think it's a healthy thing. 10 00:00:48,440 --> 00:00:50,750 NARRATOR: On June 19, 1926, 11 00:00:50,750 --> 00:00:55,350 61/2 years after Prohibition became the law of the land, 12 00:00:55,350 --> 00:00:58,750 Republican congressman Fiorello La Guardia of New York 13 00:00:58,750 --> 00:01:03,290 called 20 newspapermen and photographers into room 150 14 00:01:03,290 --> 00:01:07,100 of the House Office Building in Washington, D.C. 15 00:01:07,100 --> 00:01:10,130 No one had been a more vociferous critic 16 00:01:10,130 --> 00:01:11,300 of the Volstead Act. 17 00:01:11,300 --> 00:01:14,970 He thought it intrusive, unfair to the poor, 18 00:01:14,970 --> 00:01:17,470 and, above all, hypocritical. 19 00:01:17,470 --> 00:01:20,140 To prove it, he stood before the cameras 20 00:01:20,140 --> 00:01:23,080 and mixed two perfectly legal products 21 00:01:23,080 --> 00:01:25,680 available in any neighborhood grocery, 22 00:01:25,680 --> 00:01:29,150 non-alcoholic near-beer and malt extract, 23 00:01:29,150 --> 00:01:34,690 which, when allowed to ferment, would become illegal 2% beer. 24 00:01:34,690 --> 00:01:36,320 He downed a glass of it, 25 00:01:36,330 --> 00:01:38,630 pronounced it not only delicious, 26 00:01:38,630 --> 00:01:41,200 but "refreshing, pure, and wholesome," 27 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:44,570 and dared anyone to stop him. 28 00:01:44,570 --> 00:01:45,500 No one did. 29 00:01:45,500 --> 00:01:48,640 When the director of the New York Prohibition office 30 00:01:48,640 --> 00:01:52,510 warned that anyone who tried to duplicate La Guardia's stunt 31 00:01:52,510 --> 00:01:56,580 in his state would be arrested, the congressman hurried home 32 00:01:56,580 --> 00:02:01,450 to stage the same demonstration at Kaufman's Drugstore 33 00:02:01,450 --> 00:02:03,820 on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. 34 00:02:03,820 --> 00:02:07,190 No Prohibition agent turned up to arrest him, 35 00:02:07,190 --> 00:02:10,490 and when he asked a passing patrolman to take him in, 36 00:02:10,490 --> 00:02:13,460 the officer said it wasn't his job. 37 00:02:13,460 --> 00:02:17,530 The 18th Amendment, La Guardia said, was a disaster. 38 00:02:17,530 --> 00:02:22,100 It had created "contempt and disregard for the law" 39 00:02:22,100 --> 00:02:24,510 all over the country." 40 00:02:24,510 --> 00:02:27,480 MAN: I think the thing that stands out for me most 41 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:28,910 when I think about Prohibition 42 00:02:28,910 --> 00:02:30,380 is the law of unintended consequences, 43 00:02:30,380 --> 00:02:33,620 that you just don't know what you're gonna get when you pass 44 00:02:33,620 --> 00:02:35,650 a law that seems pretty straightforward. 45 00:02:35,650 --> 00:02:38,490 MAN: What a stupid idea it was, 46 00:02:38,490 --> 00:02:42,160 that people actually thought you could get away with this, 47 00:02:42,160 --> 00:02:44,060 that you could actually ban alcohol, 48 00:02:44,060 --> 00:02:47,600 completely eliminate its usage in American society. 49 00:02:47,600 --> 00:02:49,200 It's a preposterous idea. 50 00:02:49,200 --> 00:02:52,700 WOMAN: To me, one of the great lessons of Prohibition 51 00:02:52,700 --> 00:02:56,870 is that the dry movement in the late 1920s 52 00:02:56,870 --> 00:03:00,680 had an opportunity to capitalize on its success 53 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:06,080 but modify the most egregious issues within the Volstead Act 54 00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:10,590 and the enforcement of Prohibition and refused to. 55 00:03:10,590 --> 00:03:12,290 In their extremism, 56 00:03:12,290 --> 00:03:17,090 they eliminated all moderate support, 57 00:03:17,090 --> 00:03:19,030 and that's a really important political lesson 58 00:03:19,030 --> 00:03:21,960 that applies to a lot of different movements, 59 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:25,470 that you got to bend a little if you're gonna stay, 60 00:03:25,470 --> 00:03:27,470 if you're gonna keep what you've got, 61 00:03:27,470 --> 00:03:28,640 because if you don't bend, 62 00:03:28,640 --> 00:03:31,310 it's all gonna come crashing down around you. 63 00:03:31,310 --> 00:03:33,810 ["Charleston" playing] 64 00:03:54,330 --> 00:03:59,070 MAN: It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, 65 00:03:59,070 --> 00:04:00,400 it was an age of excess, 66 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:03,770 and it was an age of satire... 67 00:04:05,440 --> 00:04:09,280 it was a whole race going hedonistic, 68 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:11,510 deciding on pleasure... 69 00:04:11,510 --> 00:04:15,280 the people over 30, people all the way up to 50, 70 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:17,620 had joined the dance... 71 00:04:18,450 --> 00:04:22,460 the Jazz Age now raced along under its own power, 72 00:04:22,460 --> 00:04:28,300 served by great filling stations full of money. 73 00:04:28,300 --> 00:04:31,030 F. Scott Fitzgerald. 74 00:04:36,540 --> 00:04:38,340 NARRATOR: In the mid 1920s, 75 00:04:38,340 --> 00:04:42,710 the pace of change in America was steadily accelerating. 76 00:04:42,710 --> 00:04:46,310 Big cities grew relentlessly bigger. 77 00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:48,880 Women found themselves going places 78 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:50,790 they had never gone before. 79 00:04:50,790 --> 00:04:54,890 An unprecedented, unbroken winning streak on Wall Street 80 00:04:54,890 --> 00:05:00,330 seemed to suggest that the good times would go on forever... 81 00:05:00,500 --> 00:05:05,500 and an exciting new music seemed to capture it all. 82 00:05:07,300 --> 00:05:11,770 Prohibition had been enacted to forestall change, 83 00:05:11,770 --> 00:05:13,740 to put an end to alcoholism, 84 00:05:13,740 --> 00:05:15,740 to safeguard the American family, 85 00:05:15,740 --> 00:05:18,750 to re-establish the moral supremacy 86 00:05:18,750 --> 00:05:21,580 of small-town Protestant America. 87 00:05:21,580 --> 00:05:26,090 Instead, it had helped fuel the very transformation 88 00:05:26,090 --> 00:05:28,290 its champions feared. 89 00:05:28,290 --> 00:05:32,930 Somehow, the same country that had banned the sale of alcohol 90 00:05:32,930 --> 00:05:34,800 had become the biggest importer 91 00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:38,370 of cocktail shakers in the world. 92 00:05:38,370 --> 00:05:41,670 By 1926, more and more Americans 93 00:05:41,670 --> 00:05:44,210 were beginning to rethink the Volstead Act. 94 00:05:44,210 --> 00:05:48,480 Their initial optimism at the decline in alcohol consumption 95 00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:51,510 had given way to frustration and cynicism 96 00:05:51,510 --> 00:05:54,550 as the law was so imperfectly applied 97 00:05:54,550 --> 00:05:56,750 and so widely ignored. 98 00:05:56,750 --> 00:05:59,920 Whether you were for it or against it, 99 00:05:59,920 --> 00:06:03,290 Prohibition bred hypocrisy. 100 00:06:03,290 --> 00:06:05,260 Brigadier General Lincoln Andrews, 101 00:06:05,260 --> 00:06:08,160 head of the Treasury Department's Prohibition efforts, 102 00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:11,270 admitted that, while his agents had seized 103 00:06:11,270 --> 00:06:14,470 700,000 stills since 1920, 104 00:06:14,470 --> 00:06:18,270 at least half a million more remained in business. 105 00:06:18,270 --> 00:06:21,710 Scores of people had been killed in armed encounters 106 00:06:21,710 --> 00:06:25,710 with federal, state, and city law enforcement. 107 00:06:25,710 --> 00:06:29,320 Many more were dying from drinking illegal liquor 108 00:06:29,320 --> 00:06:32,720 made from industrial alcohol deliberately poisoned 109 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:36,590 at government orders to discourage its being diverted 110 00:06:36,590 --> 00:06:38,030 for human consumption, 111 00:06:38,030 --> 00:06:41,160 and when Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-saloon League, 112 00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:44,300 the chief lobbyist for the drys, denounced the victims 113 00:06:44,300 --> 00:06:48,870 as "deliberate suicides" for whom no one should feel sorry, 114 00:06:48,870 --> 00:06:51,610 even some Prohibition supporters 115 00:06:51,610 --> 00:06:54,080 were appalled at his callousness. 116 00:06:54,080 --> 00:06:58,750 Soon, Americans would be battling every bit as fiercely 117 00:06:58,750 --> 00:07:01,450 over whether to repeal the 18th Amendment 118 00:07:01,450 --> 00:07:05,520 as they'd once fought over its passage. 119 00:07:05,520 --> 00:07:07,720 Before that struggle would end, 120 00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:10,260 a Connecticut clergyman's daughter would chronicle 121 00:07:10,260 --> 00:07:15,030 a nighttime world her parents could never have imagined. 122 00:07:15,030 --> 00:07:18,770 A murderous gangster with a fatal fondness for publicity 123 00:07:18,770 --> 00:07:22,440 would turn himself into an international celebrity 124 00:07:22,440 --> 00:07:25,270 and then find himself under siege for crimes 125 00:07:25,270 --> 00:07:29,480 far less serious than the ones he'd gotten away with. 126 00:07:29,480 --> 00:07:31,880 An unyielding upholder of the law 127 00:07:31,880 --> 00:07:36,020 would abandon her principles and help poison a campaign 128 00:07:36,020 --> 00:07:38,290 for the highest office in the land, 129 00:07:38,290 --> 00:07:44,160 and an unlikely revolutionary would lead a new woman's crusade 130 00:07:44,160 --> 00:07:48,160 not in favor of Prohibition, but against it. 131 00:07:48,160 --> 00:07:52,500 No right-thinking man or woman wants the return of the saloon, 132 00:07:52,500 --> 00:07:56,100 but far worse than the return of the saloon it would be 133 00:07:56,100 --> 00:07:59,170 to enthrone hypocrisy permanently 134 00:07:59,170 --> 00:08:03,480 as our dominant force in this country. 135 00:08:23,270 --> 00:08:26,730 HAMILL: There was a speakeasy in the ground floor of our building 136 00:08:26,740 --> 00:08:31,940 run by Willie Sutton, later to become a famous bank robber, 137 00:08:31,940 --> 00:08:35,280 and most of the people... including my father, 138 00:08:35,280 --> 00:08:37,980 who had come from Ireland in 1923... 139 00:08:37,980 --> 00:08:41,780 most of the people remembered it fondly 140 00:08:41,780 --> 00:08:45,490 because it made them feel like Americans. 141 00:08:45,490 --> 00:08:48,320 A lot of them were immigrants, and, as we know with the history 142 00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:52,890 of Prohibition, a lot of it was an anti-immigrant movement, 143 00:08:52,900 --> 00:08:56,200 and these people were really Americans. 144 00:08:56,200 --> 00:08:59,200 They thought the Constitution was a real thing. 145 00:08:59,200 --> 00:09:02,440 They had to read it to get to become citizens, 146 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:05,410 which some of the other dumbbells didn't. 147 00:09:05,410 --> 00:09:07,440 They felt it was the stupidest law 148 00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:12,010 in the history of the country, couldn't possibly last, 149 00:09:12,010 --> 00:09:16,720 and they had to bring it to an early death by drinking, 150 00:09:16,720 --> 00:09:21,590 and thank God the resistance triumphed in the end. 151 00:09:21,590 --> 00:09:24,960 WOMAN: I wasn't much of a party girl... 152 00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:27,430 my sister went quite a bit... 153 00:09:27,430 --> 00:09:33,430 but I did go once to 21, which is still with us, 154 00:09:33,440 --> 00:09:37,070 and I remember knocking on the door 155 00:09:37,070 --> 00:09:40,010 and somebody looking through a peephole, 156 00:09:40,010 --> 00:09:45,850 and the boys in the group sort of whispered something to them, 157 00:09:45,850 --> 00:09:48,650 and they opened the door, and we went in, 158 00:09:48,650 --> 00:09:53,450 and it was very exciting, the fact, I guess, 159 00:09:53,460 --> 00:09:59,330 that you were able to break a law so easily 160 00:09:59,330 --> 00:10:04,230 and having to have a password 161 00:10:04,230 --> 00:10:08,300 and going out on the town. 162 00:10:11,810 --> 00:10:14,640 NARRATOR: The Stork Club and the 21 Club 163 00:10:14,640 --> 00:10:16,680 and O'Leary's on the Bowery... 164 00:10:16,680 --> 00:10:20,650 the Lido, Ciro's, and the Trocadero... 165 00:10:20,650 --> 00:10:24,420 The Day Breakers and The Cave of the Fallen Angels... 166 00:10:24,420 --> 00:10:28,590 The Casanova and The jungle room and Club Alabam... 167 00:10:28,590 --> 00:10:32,430 The Hyena and The Ha! Ha! And The Hole in the Wall... 168 00:10:32,430 --> 00:10:36,560 Basement Brown's and Barney's and The Beaux-arts... 169 00:10:36,570 --> 00:10:41,100 The Zum Brauhaus and The Irish Veterans Association... 170 00:10:41,100 --> 00:10:44,910 The Culture Club and the Club Pansy. 171 00:10:45,570 --> 00:10:49,480 Prohibition had done away with the old-time saloon, 172 00:10:49,480 --> 00:10:52,880 but speakeasies had grown up everywhere, 173 00:10:52,880 --> 00:10:55,120 from lavish nightclubs where waiters 174 00:10:55,120 --> 00:10:58,050 served champagne on silver trays 175 00:10:58,050 --> 00:11:00,690 to tiny apartments in rundown tenements. 176 00:11:00,690 --> 00:11:06,460 All you needed, one man said, was "two bottles and a room." 177 00:11:06,460 --> 00:11:10,360 No one knows precisely how many speakeasies 178 00:11:10,370 --> 00:11:12,470 operated in New York City. 179 00:11:12,470 --> 00:11:14,770 One police commissioner estimated 180 00:11:14,770 --> 00:11:18,040 there were at least 32,000, 181 00:11:18,040 --> 00:11:21,580 one for every 243 inhabitants. 182 00:11:21,580 --> 00:11:25,950 There were so many hidden behind the doors of brownstones 183 00:11:25,950 --> 00:11:29,150 along a single block of West 52nd Street 184 00:11:29,150 --> 00:11:32,520 that a tenant was forced to put a sign on her door... 185 00:11:32,520 --> 00:11:36,560 "This is a private residence. Do not ring." 186 00:11:36,560 --> 00:11:41,130 As soon as Prohibition agents closed one speakeasy down, 187 00:11:41,130 --> 00:11:44,500 two more seemed to open somewhere else. 188 00:11:44,500 --> 00:11:48,400 Texas Guinan, an ex-star of western movies 189 00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:51,510 and the city's most celebrated speakeasy hostess, 190 00:11:51,510 --> 00:11:55,580 endured so many closings that she had a charm necklace 191 00:11:55,580 --> 00:12:00,680 made for herself of miniature gold padlocks. 192 00:12:00,680 --> 00:12:03,450 WOMAN: My girlish delight in barrooms 193 00:12:03,450 --> 00:12:05,650 received a serious setback a week or so ago 194 00:12:05,650 --> 00:12:09,890 in a place which shall, not to say should, be nameless. 195 00:12:09,890 --> 00:12:13,530 The cause was a good old-fashioned raid. 196 00:12:13,530 --> 00:12:16,300 It wasn't one of those refined, modern things 197 00:12:16,300 --> 00:12:18,870 where gentlemen in evening dress arise suavely 198 00:12:18,870 --> 00:12:21,840 from ringside tables and depart, arm in arm, 199 00:12:21,840 --> 00:12:23,900 towards the waiting patrol wagons. 200 00:12:23,910 --> 00:12:26,770 It was one of those movie affairs 201 00:12:26,780 --> 00:12:29,010 where burly cops kick down the doors 202 00:12:29,010 --> 00:12:30,580 and women fall fainting on tables 203 00:12:30,580 --> 00:12:33,650 and strong men crawl under them and waiters shriek 204 00:12:33,650 --> 00:12:37,320 and start throwing bottles out of windows. 205 00:12:37,320 --> 00:12:40,620 Lois Long, the "New Yorker." 206 00:12:41,190 --> 00:12:46,490 NARRATOR: When the "New Yorker" magazine began weekly publication in 1925, 207 00:12:46,500 --> 00:12:50,060 its advertising prospectus vowed that it would be 208 00:12:50,070 --> 00:12:53,200 witty and sophisticated and definitely not 209 00:12:53,200 --> 00:12:57,610 for what it called "the old lady in Dubuque." 210 00:13:00,040 --> 00:13:01,780 23-year-old Lois Long, 211 00:13:01,780 --> 00:13:05,450 the Vassar-educated daughter of a congregational minister, 212 00:13:05,450 --> 00:13:08,980 was assigned to cover the city's nightlife. 213 00:13:08,980 --> 00:13:12,850 Her pen name was Lipstick. 214 00:13:16,290 --> 00:13:20,660 WOMAN AS LOIS LONG: To the accompaniment of a slight shiver of outworn padlocks, 215 00:13:20,660 --> 00:13:24,830 Barney Gallant is doing business at The Old Stand. 216 00:13:24,830 --> 00:13:27,470 The place is dimly lit, comfortable, 217 00:13:27,470 --> 00:13:31,310 and decorated in modernistic-bohemian fashion. 218 00:13:31,310 --> 00:13:35,380 The revue is as bad as ever. 219 00:13:35,380 --> 00:13:37,910 I don't like to put any deserving black bottom dancers 220 00:13:37,910 --> 00:13:40,680 out of a job, but I don't see why Barney 221 00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:43,320 bothers with entertainment at all. 222 00:13:43,320 --> 00:13:45,490 In a place as dark as that, 223 00:13:45,490 --> 00:13:49,190 people ought to be able to entertain themselves. 224 00:13:49,890 --> 00:13:51,760 MAN: Lois Long's columns were laced 225 00:13:51,760 --> 00:13:54,060 with a wicked sort of sexual sense of humor. 226 00:13:54,060 --> 00:13:58,800 She openly flouted sexual and social conventions. 227 00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:00,870 She was a favorite of Harold Ross, 228 00:14:00,870 --> 00:14:02,440 who was the original editor of the "New Yorker" 229 00:14:02,440 --> 00:14:04,540 and who couldn't have been more different 230 00:14:04,540 --> 00:14:05,940 from Long if he had tried. 231 00:14:05,940 --> 00:14:08,610 He was a staid and proper Midwesterner, 232 00:14:08,610 --> 00:14:10,440 and she was absolutely a wild woman. 233 00:14:10,450 --> 00:14:13,310 She would come into the office at 4:00 in the morning... 234 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:16,820 usually inebriated, still in an evening dress... 235 00:14:16,820 --> 00:14:20,090 and, having forgotten the key to her cubicle, 236 00:14:20,090 --> 00:14:22,590 she would normally prop herself up on a chair 237 00:14:22,590 --> 00:14:24,560 and try to, you know, in stocking feet 238 00:14:24,560 --> 00:14:27,330 jump over the cubicle, usually in a dress 239 00:14:27,330 --> 00:14:30,300 that was too immodest for Harold Ross' liking. 240 00:14:30,300 --> 00:14:32,470 She was... in every sense of the word, 241 00:14:32,470 --> 00:14:34,130 both in public and private... 242 00:14:34,140 --> 00:14:36,100 the embodiment of the 1920s flapper, 243 00:14:36,100 --> 00:14:37,810 and her readers really loved her. 244 00:14:37,810 --> 00:14:40,510 MEN: Yes, sir, that's my baby. 245 00:14:40,510 --> 00:14:41,680 No, sir, don't mean maybe... 246 00:14:41,680 --> 00:14:46,650 WOMAN AS LOIS LONG: Texas Guinan, who is now carousing at The Salon Royal, 247 00:14:46,650 --> 00:14:50,080 has added to her show a girl who does a hootch dance 248 00:14:50,090 --> 00:14:53,820 with the aid of a real boa constrictor 249 00:14:53,820 --> 00:14:56,190 a good 8 feet long. 250 00:14:56,190 --> 00:14:59,560 Since Texas' place is legitimately open 251 00:14:59,560 --> 00:15:00,530 until 7 A.M. or later 252 00:15:00,530 --> 00:15:04,130 and is, therefore, the last stop on the nightclub whirl, 253 00:15:04,130 --> 00:15:07,900 you can imagine the effect of this on late arrivals 254 00:15:07,900 --> 00:15:11,710 who are a little the worse for wear. 255 00:15:14,480 --> 00:15:18,950 The highlight of the week was the opening of The Club Mirador. 256 00:15:18,950 --> 00:15:21,920 I have never seen so many good-looking blonde women 257 00:15:21,920 --> 00:15:24,590 in my life as were present. 258 00:15:24,590 --> 00:15:25,990 The men were not handsome, 259 00:15:25,990 --> 00:15:28,760 but they looked like good providers. 260 00:15:28,760 --> 00:15:31,930 Rosita and Ramon are dancing at The Mirador 261 00:15:31,930 --> 00:15:33,790 and look so suspiciously Spanish 262 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:38,470 that I am convinced they were born in Jersey City. 263 00:15:43,100 --> 00:15:45,070 ZEITZ: Most women who were working 264 00:15:45,070 --> 00:15:47,310 didn't make enough money to go to nightclubs 265 00:15:47,310 --> 00:15:49,480 to spend their evenings drinking and dancing 266 00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:51,480 in the arms of dashing young men. 267 00:15:51,480 --> 00:15:53,480 That simply wasn't available to most people. 268 00:15:53,480 --> 00:15:56,950 This is still a country in which there are deep inequities, 269 00:15:56,950 --> 00:15:59,720 but they could read about what it was like 270 00:15:59,720 --> 00:16:02,490 to be a young, single, liberated woman 271 00:16:02,490 --> 00:16:04,430 who goes to all the right nightclubs, 272 00:16:04,430 --> 00:16:05,890 who drinks all of the right liquors, 273 00:16:05,890 --> 00:16:08,730 who knows all of the right people. 274 00:16:12,270 --> 00:16:14,870 WOMAN AS LOIS LONG: Another thing that your most high-hat friends 275 00:16:14,870 --> 00:16:19,510 have recently discovered is The Cotton Club in Harlem. 276 00:16:20,140 --> 00:16:22,710 I cannot believe that most of them realize 277 00:16:22,710 --> 00:16:24,280 that they are listening to probably 278 00:16:24,280 --> 00:16:27,310 the greatest jazz orchestra of all time, 279 00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:28,920 which is Duke Ellington's 280 00:16:28,920 --> 00:16:31,850 I'll fight anyone who says different. 281 00:16:31,850 --> 00:16:37,730 It is barbaric and rhythmic and brassy as jazz ought to be, 282 00:16:37,730 --> 00:16:41,960 and it is all too much for an impressionable girl. 283 00:16:43,500 --> 00:16:47,200 NARRATOR: Harlem had hundreds of speakeasies of its own, 284 00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:52,570 most hidden behind storefronts and tucked away in alleys. 285 00:16:52,570 --> 00:16:54,910 The Spider's Web and The Nest... 286 00:16:54,910 --> 00:16:57,810 The Garden of Joy and the Bucket of Blood... 287 00:16:57,810 --> 00:17:01,820 The Shim Sham and The Hotcha and The Yeah, Man... 288 00:17:01,820 --> 00:17:04,820 Connie's Inn and The Catagonia Club 289 00:17:04,820 --> 00:17:06,320 and Small's Paradise. 290 00:17:06,320 --> 00:17:11,290 Some, like The Cotton Club, allowed only white customers, 291 00:17:11,290 --> 00:17:13,730 but most were "black and tans," 292 00:17:13,730 --> 00:17:17,700 eager to sell drinks to customers of both races. 293 00:17:17,700 --> 00:17:20,870 WOMAN AS LOIS LONG: Above 125th Street, 294 00:17:20,870 --> 00:17:24,270 the latest place visited was The Club Harlem. 295 00:17:24,270 --> 00:17:29,310 Your first impression is of very pleasing decoration. 296 00:17:29,310 --> 00:17:34,080 The second impression is of a grand blues orchestra, 297 00:17:34,080 --> 00:17:37,280 and the third is probably the most inferior collection 298 00:17:37,290 --> 00:17:40,320 of white people you can see anywhere. 299 00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:42,160 Possibly, they are hired by the management 300 00:17:42,160 --> 00:17:44,730 to give the colored people magnificent dignity 301 00:17:44,730 --> 00:17:48,460 by contrast, but I don't know. 302 00:17:49,300 --> 00:17:51,800 WOMAN: We used to go dancing up there, 303 00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:54,770 and the music, of course, was wonderful. 304 00:17:54,770 --> 00:18:01,180 It was a time when quite a lot of white people were up there. 305 00:18:01,180 --> 00:18:04,750 They were sort of interested to have us, 306 00:18:04,750 --> 00:18:06,250 and we were all ashamed to dance 307 00:18:06,250 --> 00:18:10,420 because they all danced so much better than we did. 308 00:18:13,020 --> 00:18:18,260 MAN: What occasions the focusing of attention on the negro? 309 00:18:18,260 --> 00:18:20,430 Granted that white people have long enjoyed 310 00:18:20,430 --> 00:18:23,300 the negro entertainment as a diversion. 311 00:18:23,300 --> 00:18:26,330 Is it not something different, something more, 312 00:18:26,330 --> 00:18:28,100 when they bodily throw themselves 313 00:18:28,100 --> 00:18:31,040 into negro entertainment in cabarets? 314 00:18:31,040 --> 00:18:34,340 They camel and fish-tail and turkey. 315 00:18:34,340 --> 00:18:37,310 They geechee and black-bottom and scrontch. 316 00:18:37,310 --> 00:18:42,080 Maybe these Nordics at last have tuned in our wavelength. 317 00:18:42,080 --> 00:18:48,460 Maybe they are at last learning to speak our language. 318 00:18:48,460 --> 00:18:50,690 Rudolf Fischer. 319 00:18:54,500 --> 00:18:57,600 WOMAN AS LOIS LONG: In the dear, dead days of my youth, 320 00:18:57,600 --> 00:18:59,170 some 5 years ago, 321 00:18:59,170 --> 00:19:02,670 the crude younger generation that gamboled about the town 322 00:19:02,670 --> 00:19:05,610 used to dine out in all manner of places 323 00:19:05,610 --> 00:19:07,310 carrying such a load of cocktails 324 00:19:07,310 --> 00:19:12,850 that further libations were not only unnecessary, but risky. 325 00:19:12,850 --> 00:19:15,080 In the new speakeasies deluxe, 326 00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:17,650 there has been a trend among bright young drinkers 327 00:19:17,650 --> 00:19:20,420 toward a glass of sherry before meals, 328 00:19:20,420 --> 00:19:22,260 a bottle of wine during dinner, 329 00:19:22,260 --> 00:19:25,430 port with the cheese, a liqueur with the coffee, 330 00:19:25,430 --> 00:19:28,700 instead of one highball after another. 331 00:19:28,700 --> 00:19:32,270 All of this is doing wonders for our young people. 332 00:19:32,270 --> 00:19:34,840 All of us are less likely to collapse utterly 333 00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:38,270 before we have time to be the fathers and mothers 334 00:19:38,270 --> 00:19:41,440 of the next horrendous generation. 335 00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:43,850 Lois Long. 336 00:19:52,750 --> 00:19:56,990 MAN: Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. 337 00:19:56,990 --> 00:19:59,290 I call it a business. 338 00:19:59,290 --> 00:20:02,530 They say I violate the Prohibition law. 339 00:20:02,530 --> 00:20:03,060 Who doesn't? 340 00:20:03,060 --> 00:20:07,600 All I ever did was sell beer and whiskey to our best people. 341 00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:11,810 All I ever did was to supply a demand that was pretty popular. 342 00:20:11,810 --> 00:20:14,880 Why, the very guys that made my trade good 343 00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:16,980 are the ones that yell loudest at me. 344 00:20:16,980 --> 00:20:19,410 Some of the leading judges use the stuff. 345 00:20:19,410 --> 00:20:23,180 They talk about me not being on the legitimate? 346 00:20:23,180 --> 00:20:25,750 Nobody is on the legit. 347 00:20:25,750 --> 00:20:27,520 Al Capone. 348 00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:29,160 [Sirens] 349 00:20:30,460 --> 00:20:33,090 EIG: Capone becomes really famous for the first time 350 00:20:33,090 --> 00:20:33,930 in the summer of 1926. 351 00:20:33,930 --> 00:20:37,200 It's after the murder of Billy McSwiggin, a prosecutor, 352 00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:40,570 and this is a crime that really outrages everybody. 353 00:20:40,570 --> 00:20:42,070 I mean, it gets national publicity, 354 00:20:42,070 --> 00:20:45,740 and Capone is the first person blamed for it. 355 00:20:46,570 --> 00:20:49,010 He hides out for a while, and he comes back to town and says, 356 00:20:49,010 --> 00:20:50,940 "I'll answer all the questions you've got. 357 00:20:50,950 --> 00:20:53,150 "I didn't do it. Billy McSwiggin was a friend of mine. 358 00:20:53,150 --> 00:20:56,250 In fact, I was paying him. He was on my payroll," 359 00:20:56,250 --> 00:20:59,550 as if that explains everything. 360 00:21:00,220 --> 00:21:03,460 NARRATOR: Al Capone, the big-time Chicago bootlegger 361 00:21:03,460 --> 00:21:07,290 and gangster, had not wanted the prosecutor killed. 362 00:21:07,300 --> 00:21:09,800 His triggermen were trying to hit the mobsters 363 00:21:09,800 --> 00:21:14,000 walking next to McSwiggin who had gone to school with him. 364 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:17,900 Two of them had also died. 365 00:21:17,910 --> 00:21:20,640 Capone was never charged. 366 00:21:20,640 --> 00:21:22,640 The peace among the city's 367 00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:24,610 various ethnic neighborhood gangs. 368 00:21:24,610 --> 00:21:26,950 Capone and his mentor Johnny Torrio 369 00:21:26,950 --> 00:21:30,550 had carefully negotiated back in 1921 370 00:21:30,550 --> 00:21:32,490 had not lasted very long. 371 00:21:32,490 --> 00:21:34,720 The big profits to be made from hijacking 372 00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:39,990 each other's shipments of beer and liquor proved too tempting. 373 00:21:39,990 --> 00:21:43,800 MAN: So all the gangsters who had their own neighborhoods 374 00:21:43,800 --> 00:21:49,240 in Chicago started vying for the work in their territories. 375 00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:51,170 Well, the strong won out, 376 00:21:51,170 --> 00:21:54,340 and they ended up with the district, 377 00:21:54,340 --> 00:21:57,380 and the weak ended up in the cemetery. 378 00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:00,980 NARRATOR: Dion O'Banion, the head of one gang, 379 00:22:00,980 --> 00:22:03,480 became worried that the Italians, 380 00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:05,290 including Capone and Torrio, 381 00:22:05,290 --> 00:22:07,690 were conspiring against the Irish, 382 00:22:07,690 --> 00:22:09,790 and decided to double-cross them. 383 00:22:09,790 --> 00:22:12,760 When O'Banion learned that the police were planning 384 00:22:12,760 --> 00:22:15,460 to raid his biggest illegal brewery, 385 00:22:15,460 --> 00:22:19,500 he kept it to himself and told Torrio and Capone 386 00:22:19,500 --> 00:22:20,970 he wanted out of the business 387 00:22:20,970 --> 00:22:25,540 and was willing to sell it to them for half a million dollars. 388 00:22:25,540 --> 00:22:28,740 When Torrio arrived to take possession, 389 00:22:28,740 --> 00:22:31,480 the police descended and arrested him 390 00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:33,310 and a number of his men. 391 00:22:33,310 --> 00:22:39,050 "O'Banion's head," Capone said, "got away from his hat." 392 00:22:39,220 --> 00:22:43,960 A few months later, as O'Banion was working in his flower shop, 393 00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:45,990 two gunmen shot him dead. 394 00:22:45,990 --> 00:22:49,130 Capone denied any connection to that crime, too, 395 00:22:49,130 --> 00:22:52,370 and sent a huge bouquet to the funeral, 396 00:22:52,370 --> 00:22:55,040 but O'Banion's henchmen, Hymie Weiss 397 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:58,640 and George "Bugs" Moran, swore vengeance. 398 00:22:58,640 --> 00:23:03,580 The Chicago beer wars had begun. 399 00:23:09,450 --> 00:23:11,920 When someone shot up Capone's car, 400 00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:16,860 he ordered himself a 7-ton, bulletproof Cadillac. 401 00:23:16,860 --> 00:23:17,860 [Machine gun fire] 402 00:23:17,860 --> 00:23:20,490 Weiss and Moran then shot Johnny Torrio 403 00:23:20,500 --> 00:23:23,760 as he returned from shopping with his wife. 404 00:23:23,770 --> 00:23:26,300 Torrio was hit 5 times. 405 00:23:26,300 --> 00:23:27,700 He somehow survived 406 00:23:27,700 --> 00:23:31,640 but soon thereafter decided he'd had enough 407 00:23:31,640 --> 00:23:34,370 and went home to New York. 408 00:23:34,380 --> 00:23:38,850 Al Capone inherited all of Torrio's Chicago operations 409 00:23:38,850 --> 00:23:44,680 and moved to consolidate his hold on the beer business. 410 00:23:44,690 --> 00:23:47,090 EIG: As Capone starts to seek more power, 411 00:23:47,090 --> 00:23:49,520 there's a great shake-up in the hierarchy. 412 00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:51,320 This sets off a huge gang war, 413 00:23:51,330 --> 00:23:54,800 and the public begins to see shoot-outs on Michigan Avenue, 414 00:23:54,800 --> 00:23:58,500 and suddenly it's like Dodge City here... 415 00:23:58,500 --> 00:24:01,700 newspapers every day screaming with headlines, 416 00:24:01,700 --> 00:24:04,440 bullets flying, cars driving by, 417 00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,280 and light of the machine gun flashing from the window... 418 00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:10,640 and suddenly, he's in the spotlight. 419 00:24:10,650 --> 00:24:13,150 He seems to like the spotlight. 420 00:24:13,150 --> 00:24:14,750 MAN AS AL CAPONE: I don't want trouble. 421 00:24:14,750 --> 00:24:18,820 I don't want bloodshed, but I'm going to protect myself. 422 00:24:18,820 --> 00:24:23,060 When somebody strikes at me, I'm going to strike back. 423 00:24:23,060 --> 00:24:25,130 I'm the boss. 424 00:24:25,130 --> 00:24:28,360 NARRATOR: In September of 1926, 425 00:24:28,360 --> 00:24:30,360 Hymie Weiss led a deadly convoy 426 00:24:30,360 --> 00:24:33,670 of 11 sedans through the suburb of Cicero, 427 00:24:33,670 --> 00:24:36,340 firing more than a thousand rounds 428 00:24:36,340 --> 00:24:38,070 into Capone's headquarters there 429 00:24:38,070 --> 00:24:41,940 and hitting several innocent passersby. 430 00:24:41,940 --> 00:24:44,080 Capone was unhurt. 431 00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:45,310 No one was arrested. 432 00:24:45,310 --> 00:24:50,680 3 weeks later in broad daylight in front of Holy Name Cathedral 433 00:24:50,690 --> 00:24:53,790 in downtown Chicago, Capone's men 434 00:24:53,790 --> 00:24:55,620 machine-gunned Weiss to death 435 00:24:55,620 --> 00:24:59,730 and wounded 3 of his lieutenants. 436 00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:05,170 Again, no one dared make an arrest. 437 00:25:05,170 --> 00:25:10,340 76 mobsters would be shot or stabbed or bludgeoned to death 438 00:25:10,340 --> 00:25:14,140 in Chicago by the end of 1926. 439 00:25:14,140 --> 00:25:18,280 54 more would die in 1927. 440 00:25:20,450 --> 00:25:23,280 "I don't want to encourage the business," 441 00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:25,650 the chief of police told a reporter, 442 00:25:25,650 --> 00:25:27,520 "but if somebody has to be killed, 443 00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,460 "it's a good thing the gangsters are murdering themselves. 444 00:25:31,460 --> 00:25:33,860 It saves trouble for the police." 445 00:25:33,860 --> 00:25:38,930 jurors and judges and prosecutors were paid off. 446 00:25:38,930 --> 00:25:42,140 Gang members refused to talk. 447 00:25:42,140 --> 00:25:45,170 Intimidated witnesses developed 448 00:25:45,170 --> 00:25:49,040 what was called "Chicago amnesia." 449 00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,980 None of the killers was ever sent to jail. 450 00:25:52,980 --> 00:25:56,550 The city today, wrote the "Literary Digest," 451 00:25:56,550 --> 00:26:01,050 symbolizes "murder galore and crime unpunished." 452 00:26:01,060 --> 00:26:03,890 one senator demanded that President Coolidge 453 00:26:03,890 --> 00:26:07,130 withdraw U.S. Marines from Nicaragua 454 00:26:07,130 --> 00:26:09,260 and send them to Chicago. 455 00:26:09,260 --> 00:26:14,470 The New York mobster Lucky Luciano visited the city 456 00:26:14,470 --> 00:26:19,070 and pronounced it "a real goddamn crazy place. 457 00:26:19,070 --> 00:26:22,840 Nobody is safe in the street." 458 00:26:23,810 --> 00:26:27,280 EIG: For just a couple of years there, '26 and '27, 459 00:26:27,280 --> 00:26:28,720 it almost lives up to the hype. 460 00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:34,290 These incredible violent acts, it's Capone's doing. 461 00:26:34,290 --> 00:26:37,720 It's his quest for power. 462 00:26:37,730 --> 00:26:40,460 NARRATOR: With most of his enemies dead 463 00:26:40,460 --> 00:26:43,100 or driven out of town, Capone decided 464 00:26:43,100 --> 00:26:47,530 it was time to call for a truce in the beer wars. 465 00:26:47,540 --> 00:26:48,600 [Machine gun fire] 466 00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:50,800 MAN AS AL CAPONE: We're making a shooting gallery 467 00:26:50,810 --> 00:26:54,010 out of a great business, and nobody is profiting by it. 468 00:26:54,010 --> 00:26:55,880 It's hard and dangerous work, 469 00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:59,310 and when a fellow works hard at any line of business, 470 00:26:59,310 --> 00:27:01,450 he wants to go home and forget it. 471 00:27:01,450 --> 00:27:04,850 He doesn't want to be afraid to sit near a window 472 00:27:04,850 --> 00:27:05,490 or open a door. 473 00:27:05,490 --> 00:27:08,890 There's plenty of beer business for everybody. 474 00:27:08,890 --> 00:27:10,820 Why kill each other over it? 475 00:27:10,830 --> 00:27:15,830 NARRATOR: Everything seemed to be going Capone's way. 476 00:27:15,830 --> 00:27:18,130 In 1927, his old ally, 477 00:27:18,130 --> 00:27:21,070 the Republican ex-mayor Big Bill Thompson, 478 00:27:21,070 --> 00:27:25,110 decided to run again, promising an end to police raids 479 00:27:25,110 --> 00:27:28,580 that seemed only to affect thirsty working people 480 00:27:28,580 --> 00:27:31,510 and leave the big shots untouched. 481 00:27:31,510 --> 00:27:32,480 "When I'm elected, 482 00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:35,550 we will not only reopen places these people have closed,". 483 00:27:35,550 --> 00:27:40,290 Thompson promised, "but we'll open 10,000 new ones. 484 00:27:40,290 --> 00:27:42,290 "No copper will invade your home 485 00:27:42,290 --> 00:27:45,830 and fan your mattress for a hip flask." 486 00:27:45,830 --> 00:27:48,290 Capone gave Thompson an estimated 487 00:27:48,300 --> 00:27:51,460 $1/4 million dollars to run his campaign. 488 00:27:51,470 --> 00:27:54,770 The Republican won by a landslide. 489 00:27:54,770 --> 00:27:57,470 Capone hung a portrait of Thompson 490 00:27:57,470 --> 00:28:00,040 between images of George Washington 491 00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:03,010 and Abraham Lincoln on his office wall. 492 00:28:03,010 --> 00:28:08,250 He could now afford to be magnanimous about law enforcement. 493 00:28:08,250 --> 00:28:11,480 "I got nothing against the honest cop on the beat," 494 00:28:11,490 --> 00:28:12,490 he explained. 495 00:28:12,490 --> 00:28:14,590 "You just have them transferred someplace 496 00:28:14,590 --> 00:28:16,820 where they can't do you any harm." 497 00:28:16,820 --> 00:28:20,260 EIG: There's no real reason why he should become 498 00:28:20,260 --> 00:28:23,260 the most famous gangster in American history. 499 00:28:23,260 --> 00:28:25,730 He's not that different from dozens, 500 00:28:25,730 --> 00:28:26,470 maybe hundreds of others, 501 00:28:26,470 --> 00:28:28,670 who were doing the same kind of criminal activity. 502 00:28:28,670 --> 00:28:33,010 I think the key difference is that he liked attention. 503 00:28:33,010 --> 00:28:37,510 He was the first media hound, the first publicity addict 504 00:28:37,510 --> 00:28:38,450 among the great gangsters, 505 00:28:38,450 --> 00:28:42,350 and he invited the newspaper reporters for interviews. 506 00:28:42,350 --> 00:28:46,690 NARRATOR: Most gangsters did their best to stay out of sight. 507 00:28:46,690 --> 00:28:51,290 Al Capone held press conferences at which he presented himself 508 00:28:51,290 --> 00:28:54,460 as what he called a "public benefactor" 509 00:28:54,460 --> 00:28:56,330 who offered Chicago citizens 510 00:28:56,330 --> 00:28:58,530 the "light pleasures" they wanted. 511 00:28:58,530 --> 00:29:01,940 "When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging," he said. 512 00:29:01,940 --> 00:29:04,400 "When my patrons serve it on a silver tray 513 00:29:04,410 --> 00:29:07,640 on Lake Shore Drive, it's hospitality." 514 00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,950 CLARKE: He got to be very popular because he was 515 00:29:11,950 --> 00:29:15,280 one of the few gangsters that spent money. 516 00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,250 The rest of them threw half-dollars around 517 00:29:18,250 --> 00:29:20,050 like they were sewer covers. 518 00:29:20,050 --> 00:29:22,660 Capone gave everybody money, 519 00:29:22,660 --> 00:29:24,960 including the newspaper reporters. 520 00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:29,430 Capone's idea was that everybody reads the newspaper 521 00:29:29,430 --> 00:29:31,430 and most people are stupid enough to believe 522 00:29:31,430 --> 00:29:33,170 what's written in the newspapers. 523 00:29:33,170 --> 00:29:36,270 EIG: There was a great media war underway at the time. 524 00:29:36,270 --> 00:29:39,270 Hearst was expanding to Chicago and other cities, 525 00:29:39,270 --> 00:29:41,170 and he was doing it by making his papers 526 00:29:41,180 --> 00:29:43,780 splashier than the others, and the newspaper writers 527 00:29:43,780 --> 00:29:46,950 who discovered these gangsters were rewarded. 528 00:29:46,950 --> 00:29:48,450 They became stars of their newspapers because 529 00:29:48,450 --> 00:29:52,120 these were great stories that people couldn't get enough of. 530 00:29:52,620 --> 00:29:56,160 He felt like by elevating himself in this way, 531 00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:58,460 by making himself famous in the way that Babe Ruth 532 00:29:58,460 --> 00:30:01,460 was more than a baseball player but he was a celebrity, 533 00:30:01,460 --> 00:30:03,330 in making himself famous in that way, 534 00:30:03,330 --> 00:30:06,330 he would somehow rise above the muck 535 00:30:06,330 --> 00:30:08,870 and make himself into a public figure 536 00:30:08,870 --> 00:30:10,000 and he might be accepted that way, 537 00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,240 that he might have a better chance of operating 538 00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:16,880 in the long run as this Prohibition businessman. 539 00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:21,380 NARRATOR: Capone became one of the best-known Americans on Earth. 540 00:30:21,380 --> 00:30:25,150 He signed autographs at Cubs and White Sox games, 541 00:30:25,150 --> 00:30:28,490 played Santa Claus at the nearby parochial school, 542 00:30:28,490 --> 00:30:33,190 and gave away $100,000 worth of baubles every Christmas. 543 00:30:33,190 --> 00:30:36,000 Schoolchildren ran after his limousine 544 00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:38,300 as it slid through the streets. 545 00:30:38,300 --> 00:30:41,570 18 bodyguards surrounded him when he turned up 546 00:30:41,570 --> 00:30:46,010 at the fights or the opera or the racetrack. 547 00:30:46,010 --> 00:30:49,180 Tour buses rolled past the Metropole Hotel, 548 00:30:49,180 --> 00:30:53,010 his new Chicago headquarters, where he had rented two floors 549 00:30:53,010 --> 00:30:57,020 and 50 rooms from which to run a growing empire 550 00:30:57,020 --> 00:31:00,620 of prostitution and gambling, racketeering, 551 00:31:00,620 --> 00:31:03,990 and his biggest source of money... booze. 552 00:31:03,990 --> 00:31:08,760 Newspaper readers couldn't get enough of Al Capone. 553 00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:11,300 EIG: I think in the middle of Capone's reign, 554 00:31:11,300 --> 00:31:12,670 it's very complicated, 555 00:31:12,670 --> 00:31:13,800 the relationship that the public has. 556 00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:17,300 It's not that he's a bad guy, that he's a super villain. 557 00:31:17,300 --> 00:31:19,110 They see him as a human being 558 00:31:19,110 --> 00:31:21,140 who happens to be in this illegal racket, 559 00:31:21,140 --> 00:31:23,480 but it's also a racket that nobody really... 560 00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:25,310 I mean, nobody really supports Prohibition. 561 00:31:25,310 --> 00:31:26,810 So they can't really hate Capone too much, 562 00:31:26,810 --> 00:31:30,480 and for the most part, there's never a clear murder 563 00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:31,380 that you can pin on him. 564 00:31:31,390 --> 00:31:33,390 So people at least have this feeling 565 00:31:33,390 --> 00:31:34,720 that maybe he's above it all somehow, 566 00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,720 and, of course, he's got a piece of everything at this point. 567 00:31:37,730 --> 00:31:38,890 Not a lot of businesses in Chicago 568 00:31:38,890 --> 00:31:40,690 are not in some way connected to Capone. 569 00:31:40,690 --> 00:31:44,360 You know, every delivery driver, every dry cleaning business 570 00:31:44,370 --> 00:31:46,330 is connected to Capone. 571 00:31:46,330 --> 00:31:47,130 He's everywhere now. 572 00:31:47,130 --> 00:31:49,340 His tentacles are reaching everywhere. 573 00:31:49,340 --> 00:31:51,340 NARRATOR: As Capone diversified, 574 00:31:51,340 --> 00:31:53,340 he nonetheless cautioned everyone 575 00:31:53,340 --> 00:31:57,210 against investing in the booming stock market. 576 00:31:57,210 --> 00:31:59,910 "It's a racket," he said. 577 00:31:59,910 --> 00:32:04,820 MAN: My dad ran two very large hotels in Chicago. 578 00:32:04,820 --> 00:32:07,550 The principal one was the Stevens Hotel. 579 00:32:07,550 --> 00:32:09,120 They were successful in persuading 580 00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:13,330 the Canners' convention to come to Chicago. 581 00:32:13,330 --> 00:32:16,530 He and the manager of another hotel in Chicago 582 00:32:16,530 --> 00:32:19,700 thought it was very important that there not be 583 00:32:19,700 --> 00:32:21,770 an awful lot of crime in the city 584 00:32:21,770 --> 00:32:23,200 at the time of the convention. 585 00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,640 So they had the bright idea of going to see Al Capone, 586 00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:30,740 and they told him how important it would be for Chicago 587 00:32:30,740 --> 00:32:34,110 not to have crime while the Canners were in town, 588 00:32:34,110 --> 00:32:37,650 and Capone said he understood the purpose of it, 589 00:32:37,650 --> 00:32:39,390 and it's a certainly reasonable request, 590 00:32:39,390 --> 00:32:41,390 and he'd do what he could do to help out, 591 00:32:41,390 --> 00:32:44,390 and my dad said there wasn't a single holdup 592 00:32:44,390 --> 00:32:49,130 in the city of Chicago for the week the Canners were there. 593 00:32:49,130 --> 00:32:51,500 Now, I don't know if that's true or not, 594 00:32:51,500 --> 00:32:56,070 but he told me that story on more than one occasion. 595 00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:04,880 MAN: Women come into this new barroom. 596 00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:06,810 They go right up to the bar. 597 00:33:06,810 --> 00:33:10,450 They put a foot on the brass railing. 598 00:33:10,450 --> 00:33:13,950 They order. They are served. 599 00:33:13,950 --> 00:33:16,460 They bend the elbow. They hoist. 600 00:33:16,460 --> 00:33:19,590 They toss down the feminine esophagus the brew 601 00:33:19,590 --> 00:33:26,300 that was really meant for men, stout and wicked men. 602 00:33:26,300 --> 00:33:28,670 The last barrier is down. 603 00:33:28,670 --> 00:33:31,770 The citadel has been stormed and taken. 604 00:33:31,770 --> 00:33:35,070 There is no longer any escape, no hiding place 605 00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:39,710 where the hounded male may seek his fellow and strut his stuff 606 00:33:39,710 --> 00:33:44,320 safe from the atmosphere and presence of femininity. 607 00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:48,190 A man might as well do his drinking at home 608 00:33:48,190 --> 00:33:50,860 with his wife and daughters, 609 00:33:50,860 --> 00:33:54,490 and there was never fun in that. 610 00:33:54,500 --> 00:33:55,860 Don Marquis. 611 00:33:55,860 --> 00:33:59,170 MAN: Men and women almost never drank together 612 00:33:59,170 --> 00:34:00,200 before Prohibition, 613 00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:02,740 maybe at occasional dinner parties of the rich, 614 00:34:02,740 --> 00:34:06,170 because the saloon was a male-only institution, 615 00:34:06,170 --> 00:34:07,010 but the speakeasy, 616 00:34:07,010 --> 00:34:11,080 where there was no law enforced of any kind, became different, 617 00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,010 and if you have a little jazz band 618 00:34:13,010 --> 00:34:15,010 and they're gonna play the Charleston, 619 00:34:15,020 --> 00:34:17,150 you're gonna have women and men together. 620 00:34:17,150 --> 00:34:18,990 There's a real liberation for women, 621 00:34:18,990 --> 00:34:23,460 a liberation of behavior that takes place then, 622 00:34:23,460 --> 00:34:24,460 an independence that said, 623 00:34:24,460 --> 00:34:26,290 "You know, he can drink. I can drink, too," 624 00:34:26,290 --> 00:34:28,560 and that wouldn't have happened before Prohibition. 625 00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:33,470 WILKIE: I went to Radcliffe, and Harvard was right beside, 626 00:34:33,470 --> 00:34:38,370 and the boys at Harvard were always making bathtub gin, 627 00:34:38,370 --> 00:34:41,470 you know, and having people for drinks. 628 00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:45,910 I was somewhat in awe of some of the college men that I knew. 629 00:34:45,910 --> 00:34:50,980 They were so grown-up. They were juniors and seniors. 630 00:34:50,980 --> 00:34:52,620 I sort of went along with it. 631 00:34:52,620 --> 00:34:57,320 I didn't drink much, but I did drink some, 632 00:34:57,320 --> 00:34:59,330 and I thought it was quite good 633 00:34:59,330 --> 00:35:01,890 and made you feel nice and cheerful. 634 00:35:01,900 --> 00:35:05,670 LERNER: There's a liberation here that the young, urban, 635 00:35:05,670 --> 00:35:11,970 modern woman could jump into and really go crazy. 636 00:35:12,740 --> 00:35:18,440 Whether it was wild dancing or wild sex or really the sense 637 00:35:18,450 --> 00:35:21,710 of "No one's going to tell me what I can or can't do," 638 00:35:21,720 --> 00:35:24,920 women were suddenly behaving in very different ways in the 1920s. 639 00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:26,720 It's not a complete turn overnight. 640 00:35:26,720 --> 00:35:29,060 In some ways, this is a gradual build-up 641 00:35:29,060 --> 00:35:30,620 from the beginning of the 20th century, 642 00:35:30,620 --> 00:35:35,160 but then in the 1920s, it seems to really take off. 643 00:35:38,900 --> 00:35:41,330 MAN: Historians talk about a revolution in morals 644 00:35:41,340 --> 00:35:46,940 in the 1920s, and some of what's said is exaggerated, 645 00:35:46,940 --> 00:35:48,980 but the most careful studies find 646 00:35:48,980 --> 00:35:52,950 that if women were not being more promiscuous, 647 00:35:52,950 --> 00:35:55,310 men and women were enjoying sex more, 648 00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:59,490 and there is a view that what happens in the 1920s 649 00:35:59,490 --> 00:36:01,790 is that men discover the clitoris, 650 00:36:01,790 --> 00:36:05,460 and men and women have a lot better time in bed 651 00:36:05,460 --> 00:36:08,630 than they had in Victorian days. 652 00:36:09,260 --> 00:36:11,600 MAN: You'll do it someday. 653 00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:13,000 So why not now? 654 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:17,440 Oh, won't you let me try to show you how? 655 00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:19,510 Think what you're missing. 656 00:36:19,510 --> 00:36:21,510 Oh, it's a shame. 657 00:36:21,510 --> 00:36:23,310 You'll miss the kissing. 658 00:36:23,310 --> 00:36:25,980 And the rest of the game. 659 00:36:25,980 --> 00:36:27,750 In open spaces. 660 00:36:27,750 --> 00:36:29,020 Where men are men. 661 00:36:29,020 --> 00:36:33,450 A chicken never waits till she's a hen. 662 00:36:33,450 --> 00:36:35,720 Don't keep me waiting. 663 00:36:35,720 --> 00:36:37,620 For I do vow. 664 00:36:37,620 --> 00:36:39,760 You'll do it someday. 665 00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:42,960 So why not now? 666 00:36:43,330 --> 00:36:48,300 WILKIE: I did realize that there was a fast set 667 00:36:48,300 --> 00:36:50,740 and that you had to be prepared 668 00:36:50,740 --> 00:36:55,340 for how you were going to answer questions. 669 00:36:55,340 --> 00:36:57,580 It was the beginning of the time 670 00:36:57,580 --> 00:37:00,210 when boys and girls slept together. 671 00:37:00,210 --> 00:37:03,250 There was quite a lot of that going on, 672 00:37:03,250 --> 00:37:07,420 which astounded me from my innocent background, 673 00:37:07,420 --> 00:37:12,160 but anyway, it was happening a lot, really. 674 00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:16,430 My girlfriends told me, and, you know, would ask, 675 00:37:16,430 --> 00:37:20,770 did I have a really good boyfriend or not. 676 00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,270 But I always denied it. 677 00:37:24,270 --> 00:37:28,440 NARRATOR: The older generation of women who had fought so hard 678 00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:32,080 to win the vote and to bring about Prohibition 679 00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:33,780 were more and more appalled 680 00:37:33,780 --> 00:37:37,020 at the wanton behavior of their daughters. 681 00:37:37,020 --> 00:37:40,120 ZEITZ: There would have been a sexual revolution in the 1920s 682 00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,090 without the role of alcohol but because the two 683 00:37:43,090 --> 00:37:44,990 were happening together, folks who were active 684 00:37:44,990 --> 00:37:47,630 in the temperance and suffrage movements came to zero in 685 00:37:47,630 --> 00:37:51,000 on liquor as an engine of this new sexual revolution. 686 00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,600 Don't keep me waiting. 687 00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:55,170 For I do vow. 688 00:37:55,170 --> 00:37:57,300 You'll do it someday. 689 00:37:57,300 --> 00:37:59,470 So why not now? 690 00:37:59,470 --> 00:38:01,410 We tend to think ahistorically, 691 00:38:01,410 --> 00:38:04,480 so we imagine that our generation invented sex 692 00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:08,310 or that it invented drinking or even that it invented drug use. 693 00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:10,320 If you look at the movies of the 1920s... 694 00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,250 for instance, "Flaming Youth," the Colleen Moore movie, 695 00:38:13,250 --> 00:38:16,020 which was, arguably, the first flapper movie... 696 00:38:16,020 --> 00:38:18,160 it portrays a tremendous amount of sex 697 00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:19,090 and a tremendous amount of drinking. 698 00:38:19,090 --> 00:38:20,090 There's even a very scandalous scene 699 00:38:20,090 --> 00:38:24,430 that's seen behind a silhouette in which all of the teenagers 700 00:38:24,430 --> 00:38:27,970 are jumping into a pool unclothed. 701 00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,140 OKRENT: If you're in Omaha or you're in Cleveland 702 00:38:32,140 --> 00:38:34,270 or wherever it might be and you see the young, 703 00:38:34,270 --> 00:38:38,440 glamorous Joan Crawford drunk and dancing on a table top 704 00:38:38,450 --> 00:38:40,150 in "Our Dancing Daughters," well, gee, 705 00:38:40,150 --> 00:38:43,280 that's the life of the exciting people in the big city. 706 00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:46,620 So it spreads, and you find that as the country 707 00:38:46,620 --> 00:38:48,890 becomes more homogenized through mass media, 708 00:38:48,890 --> 00:38:52,730 one of the things that's getting homogenized is its drinking habits. 709 00:38:52,730 --> 00:38:55,800 [Men scatting "Let's Misbehave"] 710 00:38:57,660 --> 00:38:59,100 MAN: Let's misbehave. 711 00:38:59,100 --> 00:39:01,830 NARRATOR: In Hollywood and on the Broadway stage, 712 00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:03,670 in magazines and newspapers 713 00:39:03,670 --> 00:39:07,240 and countless songs turned out by Tin-pan Alley... 714 00:39:07,240 --> 00:39:08,410 MAN: Let's misbehave. 715 00:39:08,410 --> 00:39:11,940 NARRATOR: Illegal alcohol, with its hint of illicit sex, 716 00:39:11,950 --> 00:39:16,580 had come to be seen as a sign of glamour and sophistication, 717 00:39:16,580 --> 00:39:20,020 something to be sought after, not shunned. 718 00:39:20,020 --> 00:39:22,290 LERNER: It's part of the conspicuous consumption 719 00:39:22,290 --> 00:39:25,730 of the 1920s, where the amount you spent 720 00:39:25,730 --> 00:39:29,260 and what you got and the brand and the label and everything, 721 00:39:29,260 --> 00:39:31,930 it became that much more important to people. 722 00:39:31,930 --> 00:39:34,870 It's a status symbol. 723 00:39:34,870 --> 00:39:37,870 It's kind of strange to think of something so illegal 724 00:39:37,870 --> 00:39:40,910 being such a status symbol. 725 00:39:40,910 --> 00:39:43,540 You were what you drank. 726 00:39:44,540 --> 00:39:47,450 MAN: Let's misbehave. 727 00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:55,790 MAN: July 1, 1928. 728 00:39:55,790 --> 00:39:57,620 The "New York Times." 729 00:39:57,620 --> 00:40:00,460 More than 160 federal Prohibition agents 730 00:40:00,460 --> 00:40:04,060 conducted early this morning the largest series of raids 731 00:40:04,060 --> 00:40:08,700 on nightclubs that has taken place in this city. 732 00:40:08,700 --> 00:40:10,470 Between midnight and 3:00, 733 00:40:10,470 --> 00:40:14,140 11 of the leading nightclubs had been closed, 734 00:40:14,140 --> 00:40:18,740 the waiters, entertainers, orchestras, and guests 735 00:40:18,750 --> 00:40:21,780 driven to the street, and in many instances, 736 00:40:21,780 --> 00:40:24,120 principals and employees were arrested 737 00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:27,990 and taken to the West 30th Street Station. 738 00:40:27,990 --> 00:40:31,290 NARRATOR: One day before unprecedented raids 739 00:40:31,290 --> 00:40:35,290 closed down 11 of the biggest speakeasies in Manhattan, 740 00:40:35,300 --> 00:40:38,260 Al Smith, the governor of New York State, 741 00:40:38,270 --> 00:40:42,070 accepted the Democratic nomination for president. 742 00:40:42,070 --> 00:40:44,500 It was not a coincidence that one event 743 00:40:44,500 --> 00:40:49,280 preceded the other by just a few hours. 744 00:40:49,810 --> 00:40:52,780 The raid had been ordered in a deliberate effort 745 00:40:52,780 --> 00:40:54,680 to embarrass the Democratic nominee 746 00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:58,850 by Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the Assistant Attorney General 747 00:40:58,850 --> 00:41:02,350 in charge of enforcing Prohibition. 748 00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:04,920 She had devoted 7 years to the effort 749 00:41:04,930 --> 00:41:07,930 to uphold the 18th Amendment and was determined 750 00:41:07,930 --> 00:41:12,630 that all that work would not be undone by a presidential nominee 751 00:41:12,630 --> 00:41:16,140 who had consistently criticized it. 752 00:41:16,140 --> 00:41:19,840 AL SMITH: Government should be constructive, not destructive. 753 00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,480 While this is a government of laws, and not of men, 754 00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,740 laws do not execute themselves. 755 00:41:25,750 --> 00:41:28,550 OKRENT: In 1928, Al Smith gets the nomination, 756 00:41:28,550 --> 00:41:32,320 and it is the first national campaign run by somebody 757 00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:36,020 who believes the Prohibition law is wrong, 758 00:41:36,020 --> 00:41:40,060 and he runs as an unapologetic wet. 759 00:41:40,060 --> 00:41:42,900 AL SMITH: I will not be influenced in appointments 760 00:41:42,900 --> 00:41:47,000 by the question of a person's wet or dry attitude 761 00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:51,500 or by what church he attends in the worship of God. 762 00:41:51,500 --> 00:41:56,340 In this spirit, I enter upon the campaign. 763 00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:01,080 NARRATOR: The contrast between Smith and his opponent 764 00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:03,780 in the 1928 presidential election 765 00:42:03,780 --> 00:42:06,050 could not have been clearer. 766 00:42:06,050 --> 00:42:08,590 Herbert Hoover, the Republican nominee, 767 00:42:08,590 --> 00:42:12,360 favored Prohibition, at least in public. 768 00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:16,530 It was "a great social and economic experiment", 769 00:42:16,530 --> 00:42:21,130 "noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose," he said, 770 00:42:21,130 --> 00:42:22,970 but in a nod to swing voters 771 00:42:22,970 --> 00:42:25,000 disillusioned with the Volstead Act, 772 00:42:25,010 --> 00:42:28,570 Hoover also conceded that problems with the law 773 00:42:28,580 --> 00:42:31,610 "must be worked out constructively." 774 00:42:31,610 --> 00:42:34,480 MAN: The imperatives of democracy are such 775 00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:37,320 that even if people want to be hypocritical about it, 776 00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:40,320 they still want to vote for somebody who stands up 777 00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:42,550 for the right sort of values, 778 00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:44,920 and Prohibition counted in that time 779 00:42:44,930 --> 00:42:46,530 as the right sort of values. 780 00:42:46,530 --> 00:42:49,960 NARRATOR: Within a few days, Willebrandt would try again 781 00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,030 to tarnish the Democratic nominee's reputation 782 00:42:53,030 --> 00:42:56,670 by ordering another series of raids in Manhattan 783 00:42:56,670 --> 00:43:00,170 that swept up not just waiters and bartenders, 784 00:43:00,170 --> 00:43:02,940 but scores of speakeasy customers 785 00:43:02,940 --> 00:43:06,310 who had never before been targeted. 786 00:43:06,310 --> 00:43:08,510 Willebrandt's raids may have pleased. 787 00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:10,280 Hoover's conservative supporters, 788 00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:15,450 but many Democrats saw them as the publicity stunt they were, 789 00:43:15,460 --> 00:43:20,630 and they especially infuriated Al Smith's big-city supporters, 790 00:43:20,630 --> 00:43:23,500 who shared his conviction that Prohibition 791 00:43:23,500 --> 00:43:28,700 was then, and had always been, a terrible idea. 792 00:43:28,700 --> 00:43:31,600 MAN: If you were Catholic, you were for him. 793 00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:34,170 He said he would repeal Prohibition, 794 00:43:34,170 --> 00:43:37,380 and, boy, everybody gravitated to that message 795 00:43:37,380 --> 00:43:40,380 because they wanted to get that regular beer back. 796 00:43:40,380 --> 00:43:42,480 HAMILL: He knew what it was to be poor. 797 00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,990 He came off the streets of New York City. 798 00:43:45,990 --> 00:43:49,090 It was before television, obviously, 799 00:43:49,090 --> 00:43:55,360 but it was not before radio, so he had some disadvantages. 800 00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:57,700 AL SMITH: My friends of the radio audience, 801 00:43:57,700 --> 00:44:03,070 the only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. 802 00:44:03,070 --> 00:44:05,870 HAMILL: His accent... he was great. 803 00:44:05,870 --> 00:44:09,440 He makes me want to weep when I hear the voice. 804 00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:13,110 He was a terminal New Yorker... if you listened to him talking, 805 00:44:13,110 --> 00:44:16,480 because there's not many people who speak like that anymore... 806 00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:20,090 but he had one big strike going against him. 807 00:44:20,090 --> 00:44:22,150 He was a Catholic. 808 00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:26,130 It was the Catholic plus the big city, 809 00:44:26,130 --> 00:44:30,730 the Catholic plus the wet insistence. 810 00:44:30,730 --> 00:44:35,070 This religious fundamentalist root 811 00:44:35,070 --> 00:44:40,570 of the Prohibition argument got inflamed again. 812 00:44:40,570 --> 00:44:46,480 We must press on with invincible determination, 813 00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:48,680 praiseworthy perseverance. 814 00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:53,490 No time to shilly-shally, no time to turn back. 815 00:44:53,490 --> 00:44:54,890 Liquor is an evil. 816 00:44:54,890 --> 00:44:59,190 It has never done anyone any good, nor never will. 817 00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:04,030 NARRATOR: The country may have been changing. 818 00:45:04,030 --> 00:45:05,730 The drys were not. 819 00:45:05,730 --> 00:45:10,270 They had rejected every proposal to revise the Volstead Act, 820 00:45:10,270 --> 00:45:14,310 insisting that stronger enforcement was the answer. 821 00:45:14,310 --> 00:45:16,940 As for repealing the 18th Amendment, 822 00:45:16,940 --> 00:45:19,280 that was unthinkable. 823 00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:21,980 Prohibitionists said, "No way. It's a Constitutional amendment." 824 00:45:21,980 --> 00:45:24,520 "No Constitutional amendment has ever been repealed. 825 00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:29,020 We've got it. Tough nooks," basically. 826 00:45:29,020 --> 00:45:34,490 By 1928, when the drys... who are, may I say, 827 00:45:34,490 --> 00:45:38,560 the most inflexible people I have ever come across... 828 00:45:38,570 --> 00:45:42,570 it is completely their fault that Prohibition failed. 829 00:45:42,570 --> 00:45:48,470 They refused to give in an inch, a millimeter. 830 00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:50,880 There were multiple opportunities 831 00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:53,950 to make the law correspond more accurately 832 00:45:53,950 --> 00:45:56,650 to the reality of American life. 833 00:45:56,650 --> 00:45:59,920 OKRENT: Being no fools, the Anti-saloon League, 834 00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:02,720 realizing they had to get Prohibition passed by 1920, 835 00:46:02,720 --> 00:46:05,790 got it passed and then realized they had to protect it. 836 00:46:05,790 --> 00:46:07,790 So for the first time in American history, 837 00:46:07,790 --> 00:46:10,130 there was no reapportionment in congress. 838 00:46:10,130 --> 00:46:12,630 The Anti-saloon League controlled state legislatures. 839 00:46:12,630 --> 00:46:17,270 There was no reapportionment in '22, '24, '26, '28, 840 00:46:17,270 --> 00:46:18,700 and the issue, the only issue there, 841 00:46:18,710 --> 00:46:21,270 was keeping representation in the cities down. 842 00:46:21,270 --> 00:46:23,740 Now, who were the groups who wanted to keep representation down? 843 00:46:23,740 --> 00:46:27,080 Those who were anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Italian, 844 00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:29,280 anti-Jewish, and anti-booze. 845 00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:32,950 NARRATOR: Once again, big cities found themselves 846 00:46:32,950 --> 00:46:35,320 pitted against small towns. 847 00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:37,360 As the presidential campaign began, 848 00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:41,090 Hoover preferred to remain above its bitterness, 849 00:46:41,090 --> 00:46:44,130 but his surrogates fanned out across the country, 850 00:46:44,130 --> 00:46:49,070 intent on doing all they could to preserve the 18th Amendment 851 00:46:49,070 --> 00:46:52,000 and destroy Al Smith. 852 00:46:52,010 --> 00:46:54,470 Wayne Wheeler, the master tactician 853 00:46:54,470 --> 00:46:58,140 of the Anti-saloon League for more than 30 years, 854 00:46:58,140 --> 00:46:59,610 had recently died. 855 00:46:59,610 --> 00:47:02,810 His successor as league spokesman 856 00:47:02,820 --> 00:47:04,150 was James Cannon Jr., 857 00:47:04,150 --> 00:47:07,250 the Virginia political boss and Methodist bishop 858 00:47:07,250 --> 00:47:11,420 whose self-righteous zeal equaled that of his predecessor 859 00:47:11,420 --> 00:47:14,860 and whose xenophobia far exceeded it. 860 00:47:14,860 --> 00:47:18,430 Cannon concentrated his fire on the south, 861 00:47:18,430 --> 00:47:20,070 flooding the region with tracts 862 00:47:20,070 --> 00:47:22,000 and pamphlets falsely charging 863 00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,270 that Smith was a drunk, the "cocktail president," 864 00:47:25,270 --> 00:47:29,740 denouncing his Catholic faith as "the mother of ignorance", 865 00:47:29,740 --> 00:47:33,480 superstition, intolerance, and sin;" 866 00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:35,510 dismissing his most ardent supporters 867 00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:38,720 as the "kind of dirty people that you find today" 868 00:47:38,720 --> 00:47:42,050 on the sidewalks of New York." 869 00:47:42,060 --> 00:47:44,620 The Ku Klux Klan joined the fight. 870 00:47:44,620 --> 00:47:46,060 Crazed rumors spread... 871 00:47:46,060 --> 00:47:49,190 a Smith victory meant all Protestant children 872 00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:51,300 would be made illegitimate; 873 00:47:51,300 --> 00:47:53,030 Smith planned to give the Pope an office 874 00:47:53,030 --> 00:47:56,030 in the east wing of the White House and was building 875 00:47:56,040 --> 00:48:00,070 an underwater tunnel to the Vatican. 876 00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:04,640 OKRENT: The hatred directed toward him 877 00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:07,710 that was both anti-Catholic and anti-wet 878 00:48:07,710 --> 00:48:09,980 was really beyond the pale, 879 00:48:09,980 --> 00:48:13,090 the worst we can imagine in American politics. 880 00:48:13,090 --> 00:48:14,690 The reverend Bob Jones, 881 00:48:14,690 --> 00:48:17,090 the founder of Bob Jones university, 882 00:48:17,090 --> 00:48:20,130 he said, and this is a direct quotation of ugly words, 883 00:48:20,130 --> 00:48:23,830 "I would rather see a nigger in the White House 884 00:48:23,830 --> 00:48:26,000 than have Al Smith president." 885 00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,900 NARRATOR: In September, Mabel Walker Willebrandt herself 886 00:48:29,900 --> 00:48:33,810 took to the campaign trail, traveling to Springfield, Ohio, 887 00:48:33,810 --> 00:48:37,640 to address a gathering of Methodist ministers. 888 00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:40,150 Herbert Hoover would enforce Prohibition 889 00:48:40,150 --> 00:48:43,480 with "consecrated leadership," she promised them, 890 00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:46,290 while Smith was the captive of Tammany Hall 891 00:48:46,290 --> 00:48:49,290 and the liquor interests and could not be trusted 892 00:48:49,290 --> 00:48:51,790 to be faithful to the Constitution, 893 00:48:51,790 --> 00:48:56,800 and then she urged the clergymen to campaign against Smith 894 00:48:56,800 --> 00:48:58,160 from the pulpit. 895 00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:02,030 WOMAN: It is not abandoning your non-partisan policy 896 00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:06,140 to take a stand against the Democratic nominee. 897 00:49:06,140 --> 00:49:09,240 In fact, there is no choice. 898 00:49:09,240 --> 00:49:11,780 There are 2,000 pastors here. 899 00:49:11,780 --> 00:49:16,650 You have in your churches more than 600,000 members 900 00:49:16,650 --> 00:49:18,250 in Ohio alone. 901 00:49:18,250 --> 00:49:21,420 That is enough to swing the election. 902 00:49:21,420 --> 00:49:25,660 The 600,000 have friends in other states. 903 00:49:25,660 --> 00:49:26,460 Write to them. 904 00:49:26,460 --> 00:49:30,760 Every day and every ounce of your energy are needed to rouse 905 00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:35,430 the friends of Prohibition to register and vote. 906 00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,740 NARRATOR: To many, Willebrandt seemed to be calling 907 00:49:38,740 --> 00:49:41,670 for something like a religious war. 908 00:49:41,670 --> 00:49:45,910 "So much for the separation of church and state," Smith said, 909 00:49:45,910 --> 00:49:48,580 but the damage had been done. 910 00:49:48,580 --> 00:49:53,490 A conclave of Atlanta ministers warned the Democratic candidate 911 00:49:53,490 --> 00:49:56,920 that "you cannot nail us to a Roman cross" 912 00:49:56,920 --> 00:50:00,490 and submerge us in a sea of rum." 913 00:50:01,690 --> 00:50:05,900 as Smith's campaign train rattled toward Oklahoma City, 914 00:50:05,900 --> 00:50:09,740 it passed a fiery cross lit by Klansmen 915 00:50:09,740 --> 00:50:13,310 burning in a field beside the track. 916 00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:16,880 That night, the Democratic candidate 917 00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:20,880 blamed "Republicans high in the councils of the party" 918 00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:22,810 for countenancing the rumor-mongering 919 00:50:22,820 --> 00:50:26,120 and pointed out that no campaign official had disavowed. 920 00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:31,120 Willebrandt's exhortation to the Ohio clergymen. 921 00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:35,290 Then, he spoke directly to the question of his faith. 922 00:50:35,290 --> 00:50:38,930 "In this campaign," he said, "an effort has been made 923 00:50:38,930 --> 00:50:41,430 "to distract the attention of the electorate 924 00:50:41,430 --> 00:50:45,900 "and to fasten it on malicious and un-American propaganda. 925 00:50:45,910 --> 00:50:48,570 "Let me make myself perfectly clear. 926 00:50:48,570 --> 00:50:52,210 "I do not want any Catholic to vote for me 927 00:50:52,210 --> 00:50:53,810 "because I am a Catholic, 928 00:50:53,810 --> 00:50:56,420 "but on the other hand, I have the right to say 929 00:50:56,420 --> 00:50:59,520 "that any citizen of this country that believes. 930 00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:02,590 "I am capable of steering the ship of state 931 00:51:02,590 --> 00:51:04,690 "safely through the next 4 years 932 00:51:04,690 --> 00:51:08,460 "and votes against me because of my religion, 933 00:51:08,460 --> 00:51:14,030 he is not a real, pure, genuine American." 934 00:51:14,530 --> 00:51:18,870 Smith's cause had probably always been hopeless. 935 00:51:18,870 --> 00:51:20,310 The economy was still booming, 936 00:51:20,310 --> 00:51:24,310 and no one saw a way that the Republicans could lose. 937 00:51:24,310 --> 00:51:26,580 Smith's candidacy did bring thousands 938 00:51:26,580 --> 00:51:31,550 of big-city working-class voters to the polls for the first time, 939 00:51:31,550 --> 00:51:34,950 but his religion and his opposition to Prohibition 940 00:51:34,950 --> 00:51:39,990 cut deeply into the supposedly solid Democratic South. 941 00:51:39,990 --> 00:51:44,800 Hoover won by 6 million votes. 942 00:51:45,570 --> 00:51:49,570 Smith was stunned at the size of his defeat 943 00:51:49,570 --> 00:51:53,070 and the viciousness of the campaign against him. 944 00:51:53,070 --> 00:51:56,640 "I do not expect to run for office again," 945 00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:58,010 he told reporters. 946 00:51:58,010 --> 00:52:01,450 "I have had all I can stand of it." 947 00:52:01,450 --> 00:52:03,950 HAMILL: He had gone to a lot of American cities 948 00:52:03,950 --> 00:52:07,550 which were all against it, against Prohibition, 949 00:52:07,550 --> 00:52:11,920 and mistook that for the entire country, I think. 950 00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:14,990 OKRENT: But the important thing in terms of Prohibition 951 00:52:14,990 --> 00:52:18,460 is that he brought the discussion of Prohibition, 952 00:52:18,460 --> 00:52:22,170 whether it should be kept in the law and in the Constitution, 953 00:52:22,170 --> 00:52:25,570 he brought that discussion into the open. 954 00:52:25,570 --> 00:52:28,210 NARRATOR: Empowered by their mandate, 955 00:52:28,210 --> 00:52:32,980 Bishop Cannon and the drys won another victory for their cause, 956 00:52:32,980 --> 00:52:35,150 successfully lobbying congress to enact 957 00:52:35,150 --> 00:52:39,320 the so-called "5 and 10" law that doubled the penalties 958 00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,690 for a first violation of the Volstead Act, 959 00:52:42,690 --> 00:52:45,590 5 years in prison and $10,000 960 00:52:45,590 --> 00:52:48,960 for a first offense, and for the first time, 961 00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:53,100 also made it a felony not to report violators. 962 00:52:53,100 --> 00:52:57,070 A citizen who suspected his neighbor of selling home brew 963 00:52:57,070 --> 00:53:01,710 was now legally required to turn him in. 964 00:53:02,980 --> 00:53:07,750 LEUCHTENBURG: I have a searing memory of a day in my childhood. 965 00:53:07,750 --> 00:53:11,180 I'm living in a New Jersey suburb. 966 00:53:11,180 --> 00:53:13,720 My father works in the big post office 967 00:53:13,720 --> 00:53:16,960 across from Penn Station in Manhattan, 968 00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:20,630 and he supplements family income by a still 969 00:53:20,630 --> 00:53:24,600 down in the cellar of this New Jersey house, 970 00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:28,130 and on this particular day... I'm 8 years old... 971 00:53:28,130 --> 00:53:31,370 I'm sitting on the front steps of the house. 972 00:53:31,370 --> 00:53:35,970 All of a sudden come two huge men, broad shouldered, 973 00:53:35,980 --> 00:53:40,210 heavy suits and ties, like nothing I've ever seen before, 974 00:53:40,210 --> 00:53:44,650 like the scene in a movie of Hemingway's "The Killers," 975 00:53:44,650 --> 00:53:47,350 and they come in and tell my father 976 00:53:47,350 --> 00:53:49,350 that a neighbor has complained. 977 00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:52,160 They know he has a still in the cellar, 978 00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,030 and he has to smash it, 979 00:53:54,030 --> 00:53:57,730 and it takes away the extra family income. 980 00:53:57,730 --> 00:54:02,470 We are forced to move into the Borough of Queens in New York, 981 00:54:02,470 --> 00:54:05,570 give up the house, the countryside, 982 00:54:05,570 --> 00:54:10,110 and the city and life close in around me. 983 00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:13,750 NARRATOR: Not long after the election, 984 00:54:13,750 --> 00:54:16,450 Bishop Cannon himself was disgraced, 985 00:54:16,450 --> 00:54:19,350 charged with gambling in fraudulent stocks, 986 00:54:19,350 --> 00:54:21,690 hoarding flour during the Great War, 987 00:54:21,690 --> 00:54:25,090 and having had not one, but two mistresses 988 00:54:25,090 --> 00:54:27,660 while his first wife still lived. 989 00:54:27,660 --> 00:54:29,690 Meanwhile, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, 990 00:54:29,700 --> 00:54:34,030 who had so successfully stirred up anti-Catholic prejudice 991 00:54:34,030 --> 00:54:37,170 against Al Smith, expected to be rewarded 992 00:54:37,170 --> 00:54:40,070 for her loyalty by becoming Attorney General. 993 00:54:40,070 --> 00:54:44,210 When Hoover named someone else, she resigned her post 994 00:54:44,210 --> 00:54:47,880 and resumed the private practice of law. 995 00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:50,620 One of the first clients she took on 996 00:54:50,620 --> 00:54:52,320 was Fruit Industries, Limited, 997 00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:54,790 an organization of California grape growers 998 00:54:54,790 --> 00:54:58,320 lobbying for the right to sell a flavored grape concentrate 999 00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:03,260 called Vine-Glo which, when water and sugar were added, 1000 00:55:03,260 --> 00:55:05,430 could be turned into wine. 1001 00:55:05,430 --> 00:55:08,800 Later, she would represent the movie industry 1002 00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:13,170 and convert to the Roman Catholic faith. 1003 00:55:15,740 --> 00:55:20,080 LA GUARDIA: I believe that God Almighty, when he made grapes, 1004 00:55:20,080 --> 00:55:25,880 intended that grapes should be enjoyed by all of the people, 1005 00:55:25,890 --> 00:55:31,290 and I don't think that he intended the use of grapes 1006 00:55:31,290 --> 00:55:32,490 to be made into jelly. 1007 00:55:32,490 --> 00:55:36,930 Prohibition will be a success when Congress, 1008 00:55:36,930 --> 00:55:41,170 by an act or by a law, will be able 1009 00:55:41,170 --> 00:55:46,470 to stop fermentation or to repeal the law of gravitation. 1010 00:55:47,970 --> 00:55:51,810 NARRATOR: Despite the efforts of Fiorello La Guardia and others 1011 00:55:51,810 --> 00:55:54,110 to point out the folly of the law, 1012 00:55:54,110 --> 00:55:57,050 Al Smith's defeat seemed to make the chances 1013 00:55:57,050 --> 00:56:00,650 of repealing Prohibition more remote than ever. 1014 00:56:00,650 --> 00:56:05,560 There had always been organized opposition by wet politicians, 1015 00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:08,430 brewers, distillers, restaurant owners, 1016 00:56:08,430 --> 00:56:10,900 and the unions that represented workers 1017 00:56:10,900 --> 00:56:13,260 made jobless by the 18th Amendment, 1018 00:56:13,270 --> 00:56:16,570 but they had made almost no progress. 1019 00:56:16,570 --> 00:56:20,040 Over the years, a number of wealthy and influential men 1020 00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:23,340 had lent their names and given their money to an organization 1021 00:56:23,340 --> 00:56:28,650 called the association against the Prohibition amendment. 1022 00:56:28,650 --> 00:56:31,450 Some felt Prohibition was simply foolish. 1023 00:56:31,450 --> 00:56:35,690 Others objected to the contempt for the law it fostered. 1024 00:56:35,690 --> 00:56:40,960 All hoped that if alcohol could be legalized and taxed again, 1025 00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:43,560 their own income taxes would fall. 1026 00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:47,830 Their organization was well-financed but too elitist, 1027 00:56:47,830 --> 00:56:51,100 ill-suited to working with Americans 1028 00:56:51,100 --> 00:56:53,770 less fortunate than its leaders. 1029 00:56:53,770 --> 00:56:57,580 In 1928, they had tried to influence 1030 00:56:57,580 --> 00:57:00,040 56 House and Senate races, 1031 00:57:00,050 --> 00:57:03,620 but only 19 of their wet candidates won, 1032 00:57:03,620 --> 00:57:06,420 and 11 of them were incumbents. 1033 00:57:06,420 --> 00:57:11,660 That year, one wet politician said, "We were licked." 1034 00:57:11,660 --> 00:57:17,130 Something else, someone else, was needed. 1035 00:57:21,500 --> 00:57:24,740 SABIN: It has been 11 years since the passage 1036 00:57:24,740 --> 00:57:28,610 of the 18th Amendment as interpreted by the Volstead Act. 1037 00:57:28,610 --> 00:57:32,440 The time has come when we should organize and become articulate 1038 00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:35,850 and to work for some sane solution of this problem. 1039 00:57:35,850 --> 00:57:38,650 Prohibition, it has led to more violation of 1040 00:57:38,650 --> 00:57:41,790 and contempt for law, to more hypocrisy 1041 00:57:41,790 --> 00:57:44,720 among both private citizens and public officials 1042 00:57:44,720 --> 00:57:48,560 than anything else in our national history. 1043 00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:52,100 NARRATOR: Of all the splendid homes wealthy New Yorkers 1044 00:57:52,100 --> 00:57:55,470 had built for themselves near Long Island's tip, 1045 00:57:55,470 --> 00:57:59,040 none was more splendid than "Bayberry Land." 1046 00:57:59,040 --> 00:58:03,880 It had been constructed on a 289-acre estate 1047 00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:08,150 to the exacting specifications of its mistress... 1048 00:58:08,150 --> 00:58:09,950 Mrs. Pauline Sabin. 1049 00:58:09,950 --> 00:58:14,050 WOMAN: It was a beautiful house, just extraordinary, 1050 00:58:14,050 --> 00:58:17,860 on the water and a very large house 1051 00:58:17,860 --> 00:58:20,460 and built for entertaining. 1052 00:58:20,460 --> 00:58:23,090 I think it was having this household 1053 00:58:23,100 --> 00:58:25,000 that freed her to do what she wanted. 1054 00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:27,030 She didn't really have to run the house. 1055 00:58:27,030 --> 00:58:28,170 That was done for her. 1056 00:58:28,170 --> 00:58:31,540 NARRATOR: She was the wife of Charles Sabin, 1057 00:58:31,540 --> 00:58:35,010 chairman of the board of the guaranty trust company, 1058 00:58:35,010 --> 00:58:37,480 and an heiress in her own right. 1059 00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:38,780 Her father was president 1060 00:58:38,780 --> 00:58:41,680 of The Equitable Life Assurance Company. 1061 00:58:41,680 --> 00:58:44,280 An uncle founded Morton Salt. 1062 00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:47,750 She was also the first woman ever to serve 1063 00:58:47,750 --> 00:58:50,520 on the Republican National Committee, 1064 00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:52,090 the founder and first president 1065 00:58:52,090 --> 00:58:54,590 of the Women's National Republican Club, 1066 00:58:54,590 --> 00:58:59,100 and had been a major fundraiser for the presidential campaigns 1067 00:58:59,100 --> 00:59:01,830 of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, 1068 00:59:01,830 --> 00:59:03,400 and Herbert Hoover. 1069 00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:08,940 Sabin was also celebrated for her elegant parties. 1070 00:59:08,940 --> 00:59:12,140 WILLIS: Everybody had such a good time, 1071 00:59:12,140 --> 00:59:14,810 and the conversation would be sparkling. 1072 00:59:14,810 --> 00:59:16,810 That was terribly important. 1073 00:59:16,820 --> 00:59:21,250 My grandmother did not suffer dullards lightly. 1074 00:59:21,250 --> 00:59:23,820 The wine in Bayberry Land, I believe, 1075 00:59:23,820 --> 00:59:27,790 was stored in a secret room off the library. 1076 00:59:27,790 --> 00:59:31,330 The whole room was filled with leather books, 1077 00:59:31,330 --> 00:59:35,630 and that wall had a door of fake leather books, 1078 00:59:35,630 --> 00:59:37,600 and there was a little push button, 1079 00:59:37,600 --> 00:59:40,340 and the door would spring open at the touch. 1080 00:59:40,340 --> 00:59:44,540 NARRATOR: Pauline Sabin had initially supported Prohibition 1081 00:59:44,540 --> 00:59:48,110 because she thought it would be good for her two sons, 1082 00:59:48,110 --> 00:59:51,450 protect them from alcohol and its temptations, 1083 00:59:51,450 --> 00:59:54,750 but as time went on, she began to think again. 1084 00:59:54,750 --> 00:59:59,360 The Prohibition law, she said, was "written for weaklings" 1085 00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:01,960 "and derelicts, and has divided the nation, 1086 01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:09,030 like Gaul, into 3 parts... wets, drys, and hypocrites." 1087 01:00:09,030 --> 01:00:13,140 She was repelled by politicians who voted dry 1088 01:00:13,140 --> 01:00:17,980 and then turned up at her dinner table expecting a drink, 1089 01:00:17,980 --> 01:00:20,110 and she had a special aversion 1090 01:00:20,110 --> 01:00:23,110 to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 1091 01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:25,550 and the way its president, Ella Boole, 1092 01:00:25,550 --> 01:00:29,590 claimed to speak for all American women. 1093 01:00:29,590 --> 01:00:35,230 BOOLE: Women are relieved of the fear of a drunken husband. 1094 01:00:35,230 --> 01:00:38,660 Children no longer hide with terror 1095 01:00:38,660 --> 01:00:43,270 as they see their father reeling home. 1096 01:00:44,100 --> 01:00:49,370 The whole United States is happier 1097 01:00:49,380 --> 01:00:52,940 because the liquor traffic is an outlaw. 1098 01:00:52,950 --> 01:00:54,680 We are going to keep it up. 1099 01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:59,980 MURDOCK: She reacted to this now-fairly-worn image 1100 01:00:59,990 --> 01:01:03,720 that the WCTU was American womanhood. 1101 01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:06,790 It was getting a little frayed around the edges, that one, 1102 01:01:06,790 --> 01:01:09,290 and she just put her fist right through it and said, 1103 01:01:09,290 --> 01:01:11,600 "No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't." 1104 01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:16,070 LERNER: Pauline Sabin is sort of the most surprising hero 1105 01:01:16,070 --> 01:01:17,900 in the whole repeal story. 1106 01:01:17,900 --> 01:01:22,140 Here's this very wealthy, blue blood New York socialite, 1107 01:01:22,140 --> 01:01:23,940 but here's someone who genuinely believed 1108 01:01:23,940 --> 01:01:27,380 that Prohibition had failed and that it was her responsibility 1109 01:01:27,380 --> 01:01:30,150 and the responsibility of other American women 1110 01:01:30,150 --> 01:01:31,320 to do something about it. 1111 01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:35,350 NARRATOR: She had remained loyal to the Republican party 1112 01:01:35,350 --> 01:01:38,060 until after the 1928 election, 1113 01:01:38,060 --> 01:01:39,890 hoping that the new president 1114 01:01:39,890 --> 01:01:42,030 would make good on a campaign promise 1115 01:01:42,030 --> 01:01:45,860 to "look into Prohibition laws" once he was in office. 1116 01:01:45,860 --> 01:01:49,330 Hoover, like Harding and Coolidge before him, 1117 01:01:49,330 --> 01:01:52,340 had little personal interest in Prohibition, 1118 01:01:52,340 --> 01:01:55,610 but he did owe a heavy debt to the drys. 1119 01:01:55,610 --> 01:01:58,940 So the president did what politicians often do. 1120 01:01:58,940 --> 01:02:00,110 He dodged the issue. 1121 01:02:00,110 --> 01:02:04,080 He appointed ex-Attorney General George W. Wickersham 1122 01:02:04,080 --> 01:02:08,350 to head a blue-ribbon commission to study the entire problem 1123 01:02:08,350 --> 01:02:10,920 of American criminal justice. 1124 01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:13,360 Sabin resigned in disgust 1125 01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:15,660 from the Republican National Committee 1126 01:02:15,660 --> 01:02:18,760 and helped found a new group that soon became 1127 01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:23,500 the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. 1128 01:02:23,500 --> 01:02:26,740 Its sole goal was repeal. 1129 01:02:26,740 --> 01:02:29,040 LERNER: She knew how politics worked 1130 01:02:29,040 --> 01:02:31,910 because she had worked so much in the Republican Party. 1131 01:02:31,910 --> 01:02:35,050 She was well-connected, but she also had a real presence. 1132 01:02:35,050 --> 01:02:36,310 She knew how to deal with the press. 1133 01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:40,490 She knew how to make a repeal movement look very respectable 1134 01:02:40,490 --> 01:02:44,220 and very serious, and people really paid attention. 1135 01:02:44,220 --> 01:02:48,330 NARRATOR: Sabin may have been a wealthy New Yorker, 1136 01:02:48,330 --> 01:02:50,530 but she was wise enough to know 1137 01:02:50,530 --> 01:02:52,830 that if her movement were to succeed, 1138 01:02:52,830 --> 01:02:54,930 she would have to make welcome women 1139 01:02:54,930 --> 01:02:58,400 of every class from all over the country. 1140 01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:02,340 LERNER: She was going to recruit women from all walks of life... 1141 01:03:02,340 --> 01:03:06,280 factory workers, housewives, professionals... 1142 01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:07,750 and bring them all together 1143 01:03:07,750 --> 01:03:11,120 basically to say that women do not support this 1144 01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:16,050 and the temperance movement has to stop saying that they do. 1145 01:03:16,050 --> 01:03:18,960 They have to acknowledge that women could be 1146 01:03:18,960 --> 01:03:21,290 of different minds about Prohibition, 1147 01:03:21,290 --> 01:03:24,560 and what she does is, she makes it OK for women to say, 1148 01:03:24,560 --> 01:03:27,870 "Yeah, I don't like Prohibition either." 1149 01:03:27,870 --> 01:03:29,530 NARRATOR: For more than a century, 1150 01:03:29,540 --> 01:03:33,800 women had been essential to the struggle to impose Prohibition. 1151 01:03:33,810 --> 01:03:37,070 Now they were becoming central to the struggle to end it, 1152 01:03:37,080 --> 01:03:41,480 and they were using the same old arguments in a new way. 1153 01:03:41,480 --> 01:03:43,380 The gravest threat to the protection 1154 01:03:43,380 --> 01:03:45,850 of the American family, they now said, 1155 01:03:45,850 --> 01:03:48,890 was not alcohol, but Prohibition. 1156 01:03:48,890 --> 01:03:52,920 Sabin and her followers outargued, outcampaigned, 1157 01:03:52,930 --> 01:03:55,660 outpromised the dry opposition. 1158 01:03:55,660 --> 01:03:58,500 They held rallies, produced radio spots, 1159 01:03:58,500 --> 01:04:05,070 organized automobile caravans and flights by female aviators. 1160 01:04:05,070 --> 01:04:08,740 WILLIS: She got them excited and fired up. 1161 01:04:08,740 --> 01:04:10,440 They went everywhere. 1162 01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:12,810 They were taken out of their living rooms, 1163 01:04:12,810 --> 01:04:15,010 away from their canasta packs, 1164 01:04:15,010 --> 01:04:18,750 and just had a very exciting time for something 1165 01:04:18,750 --> 01:04:22,150 that they really believed in very strongly. 1166 01:04:23,560 --> 01:04:27,460 NARRATOR: The ranks of Sabin's organization grew steadily. 1167 01:04:27,460 --> 01:04:33,070 Soon, a million and a half women had signed on. 1168 01:04:35,870 --> 01:04:38,470 We are here a thousand strong. 1169 01:04:38,470 --> 01:04:42,110 We have come to the Capitol to inform our members 1170 01:04:42,110 --> 01:04:45,510 in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate 1171 01:04:45,510 --> 01:04:50,050 that we will not support candidates who will not help us 1172 01:04:50,050 --> 01:04:53,850 rid this country of a law that has made of us 1173 01:04:53,850 --> 01:04:59,490 a nation of hypocrites and undermined our moral fiber. 1174 01:04:59,490 --> 01:05:00,990 NARRATOR: "By heavens," 1175 01:05:00,990 --> 01:05:02,960 said Republican senator James Wadsworth, 1176 01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:08,430 who had lost his seat in 1926 under attack from dry forces, 1177 01:05:08,430 --> 01:05:10,940 "there's a chance of getting repeal 1178 01:05:10,940 --> 01:05:14,870 if the women are going to join with us." 1179 01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:27,550 EIG: He really seemed to believe that he could be a family man 1180 01:05:27,550 --> 01:05:31,660 and supply this booze and kill people when he had to 1181 01:05:31,660 --> 01:05:35,330 and still somehow come out of it all. 1182 01:05:35,330 --> 01:05:37,960 Maybe it was naïve, but the guy 1183 01:05:37,960 --> 01:05:42,130 really seemed to think that he could pull it off. 1184 01:05:43,140 --> 01:05:47,310 NARRATOR: On the morning of February 14, 1929, 1185 01:05:47,310 --> 01:05:51,840 Valentine's Day, Al Capone was vacationing at the new villa 1186 01:05:51,840 --> 01:05:57,320 he had bought on Palm Island off Miami Beach, Florida. 1187 01:05:57,320 --> 01:06:00,950 Back in Chicago, the truce Capone had tried to impose 1188 01:06:00,950 --> 01:06:05,460 on the city's bootlegging gangs had collapsed again. 1189 01:06:05,460 --> 01:06:08,930 His chief rival was George "Bugs" Moran, 1190 01:06:08,930 --> 01:06:11,900 the triggerman who had once almost killed. 1191 01:06:11,900 --> 01:06:14,000 Capone's mentor Johnny Torrio 1192 01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:18,100 and had made a failed attempt on Capone's life, as well. 1193 01:06:18,100 --> 01:06:23,510 Moran loathed Capone and loved saying so to newspapermen. 1194 01:06:23,510 --> 01:06:26,980 Capone was a "beast" and a "behemoth," he said, 1195 01:06:26,980 --> 01:06:29,780 "lower than a snake's belly" because he dealt 1196 01:06:29,780 --> 01:06:34,890 "in flesh," prostitution, as well as beer. 1197 01:06:34,890 --> 01:06:36,650 In Chicago that morning, 1198 01:06:36,660 --> 01:06:39,960 according to one of many contradictory stories, 1199 01:06:39,960 --> 01:06:42,330 Moran received a phone call. 1200 01:06:42,330 --> 01:06:44,060 It was from a nameless hijacker 1201 01:06:44,060 --> 01:06:48,000 who said he had a big stolen shipment of whiskey for sale. 1202 01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:51,740 Moran told his caller to drive it to a garage 1203 01:06:51,740 --> 01:06:55,070 at 2122 north Clark street. 1204 01:06:55,070 --> 01:06:57,780 He'd meet him there at 10:30. 1205 01:06:57,780 --> 01:07:01,150 At the appointed time, 7 of Moran's men 1206 01:07:01,150 --> 01:07:05,420 were waiting inside the garage for the hijacker to arrive. 1207 01:07:05,420 --> 01:07:10,320 Moran himself was late. He had stopped for a haircut. 1208 01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:14,020 Meanwhile, 4 men drove up in a Cadillac 1209 01:07:14,030 --> 01:07:16,430 and hurried into the garage. 1210 01:07:16,430 --> 01:07:18,600 Two wore police uniforms. 1211 01:07:18,600 --> 01:07:22,270 They all carried shotguns or submachine guns. 1212 01:07:22,270 --> 01:07:25,840 They lined Moran's men up against the wall. 1213 01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:28,440 Then they opened fire. 1214 01:07:30,110 --> 01:07:35,280 CLARKE: They're nice and bloody, a lot of photography, 1215 01:07:35,280 --> 01:07:38,650 no investigation required, 1216 01:07:38,650 --> 01:07:40,120 and who do you lay it on? 1217 01:07:40,120 --> 01:07:41,650 Why, our favorite guy... Capone. 1218 01:07:41,650 --> 01:07:46,820 Capone did this, in spite of the fact that he was in Florida. 1219 01:07:46,830 --> 01:07:49,060 EIG: It was extremely cold-blooded. 1220 01:07:49,060 --> 01:07:51,460 Nobody knows to this day who did it. 1221 01:07:51,460 --> 01:07:55,000 Nobody was ever arrested. Nobody was ever charged with the crime. 1222 01:07:55,000 --> 01:07:58,740 It was widely believed to have been the work of Al Capone, 1223 01:07:58,740 --> 01:08:02,810 who was said to be in pursuit of Bugs Moran. 1224 01:08:02,810 --> 01:08:06,440 Bugs Moran was not one of the 7 men killed. 1225 01:08:06,450 --> 01:08:10,310 NARRATOR: No one could ever prove Capone was involved. 1226 01:08:10,320 --> 01:08:12,080 The killers got away clean. 1227 01:08:12,080 --> 01:08:15,420 Bugs Moran managed to hold on to his territory 1228 01:08:15,420 --> 01:08:16,990 and what was left of his gang 1229 01:08:16,990 --> 01:08:20,420 but continued to feud bitterly with Capone. 1230 01:08:20,430 --> 01:08:24,430 The "Chicago American" reported that "Chicago gangsters 1231 01:08:24,430 --> 01:08:29,970 graduated yesterday from murder to massacre." 1232 01:08:29,970 --> 01:08:32,440 Something had to be done. 1233 01:08:32,440 --> 01:08:33,770 EIG: The Valentine's Day Massacre becomes 1234 01:08:33,770 --> 01:08:37,640 a rallying point at which people say enough is enough. 1235 01:08:37,640 --> 01:08:39,610 Something has got to be done about this. 1236 01:08:39,610 --> 01:08:42,450 There have been other shootings where, you know, 1237 01:08:42,450 --> 01:08:44,520 half a dozen people had been killed before, 1238 01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:46,280 but this one is different. 1239 01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:48,750 It seemed ridiculous to people that after all these years, 1240 01:08:48,750 --> 01:08:49,820 nobody had done anything about it, 1241 01:08:49,820 --> 01:08:53,190 that these gangsters could continue to operate with impunity, 1242 01:08:53,190 --> 01:08:56,490 that Al Capone, sitting in his mansion in Florida, 1243 01:08:56,500 --> 01:08:58,460 on the beach with a cigar in his mouth 1244 01:08:58,460 --> 01:09:00,330 and a fishing rod poked into the water, 1245 01:09:00,330 --> 01:09:03,770 can order a hit and have 7 men taken out in Chicago 1246 01:09:03,770 --> 01:09:05,970 and nobody would do anything about it, 1247 01:09:05,970 --> 01:09:08,410 that he wasn't even arrested. 1248 01:09:09,840 --> 01:09:12,080 NARRATOR: Gang violence was on the rise 1249 01:09:12,080 --> 01:09:15,850 in nearly every American city. 1250 01:09:15,850 --> 01:09:17,850 MAN: Spraying this crowded street with lead 1251 01:09:17,850 --> 01:09:19,080 at Dyckman Street and Broadway, 1252 01:09:19,080 --> 01:09:20,750 two thugs who killed two policemen 1253 01:09:20,750 --> 01:09:23,590 in cold blood met death in this bullet-riddled cab. 1254 01:09:23,590 --> 01:09:27,590 The cab itself was hit 42 times in the running gun fight. 1255 01:09:27,590 --> 01:09:29,590 Look at those bullet holes. 1256 01:09:29,590 --> 01:09:31,260 The crowd, which a few minutes before 1257 01:09:31,260 --> 01:09:33,060 fled in panic from the bandits fire... 1258 01:09:33,060 --> 01:09:34,430 pressed the police hard 1259 01:09:34,430 --> 01:09:36,570 in attempt to see the dead bandit taken away. 1260 01:09:36,570 --> 01:09:39,170 He goes to join his two companions, 1261 01:09:39,170 --> 01:09:43,440 who died on the way to the hospital. 1262 01:09:45,680 --> 01:09:48,550 NARRATOR: Slaughter was bad for business. 1263 01:09:48,550 --> 01:09:50,680 Even the mobsters began to worry 1264 01:09:50,680 --> 01:09:53,150 that things were getting out of hand. 1265 01:09:53,150 --> 01:09:56,720 Two of the shrewdest now lived in New York City... 1266 01:09:56,720 --> 01:09:59,490 Capone's old employer Johnny Torrio 1267 01:09:59,490 --> 01:10:02,990 and Meyer Lansky, who had already joined forces 1268 01:10:02,990 --> 01:10:06,800 to organize the bootlegging and rum-running businesses 1269 01:10:06,800 --> 01:10:10,030 from Boston to the Great Lakes. 1270 01:10:10,040 --> 01:10:13,440 For 3 days in may of 1929, 1271 01:10:13,440 --> 01:10:16,310 an unprecedented conclave of mob bosses 1272 01:10:16,310 --> 01:10:19,010 from the eastern half of the country strolled together 1273 01:10:19,010 --> 01:10:22,580 along the beach at Atlantic City, New Jersey. 1274 01:10:22,580 --> 01:10:25,920 Johnny Torrio and Meyer Lansky were there. 1275 01:10:25,920 --> 01:10:28,850 So were Charles "King" Solomon from Boston, 1276 01:10:28,850 --> 01:10:30,890 "Boo Boo" Hoff from Philadelphia, 1277 01:10:30,890 --> 01:10:32,560 Kansas City's Johnny Lazia, 1278 01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:36,530 Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Dutch Schultz, 1279 01:10:36,530 --> 01:10:38,930 and Albert Anastasia from New York. 1280 01:10:38,930 --> 01:10:44,570 Together, they agreed to build a national crime syndicate. 1281 01:10:44,570 --> 01:10:46,500 They had finally a sit-down 1282 01:10:46,500 --> 01:10:48,410 and said, "We can't kill each other," 1283 01:10:48,410 --> 01:10:52,580 and they divided up territories nationally, 1284 01:10:52,580 --> 01:10:56,450 using the Federal Reserve Bank's grid 1285 01:10:56,450 --> 01:11:00,150 to figure out where the zones were. 1286 01:11:00,150 --> 01:11:02,990 NARRATOR: Prohibition had been intended 1287 01:11:02,990 --> 01:11:05,290 in part to reduce crime. 1288 01:11:05,290 --> 01:11:08,460 Instead, it had provided small-time criminals 1289 01:11:08,460 --> 01:11:13,200 with a world of opportunities to increase exponentially 1290 01:11:13,200 --> 01:11:15,630 their profits and their power. 1291 01:11:15,630 --> 01:11:20,070 OKRENT: They learned during Prohibition how to do the things 1292 01:11:20,070 --> 01:11:22,340 that they would need to do in the years ahead 1293 01:11:22,340 --> 01:11:25,480 in every form of organized crime that we've seen since... 1294 01:11:25,480 --> 01:11:27,850 how to control money, how to control troops, 1295 01:11:27,850 --> 01:11:30,810 how to divide territory with each other, 1296 01:11:30,820 --> 01:11:33,720 how to cooperate, how to end feuds. 1297 01:11:33,720 --> 01:11:36,390 Prohibition was the finishing school, 1298 01:11:36,390 --> 01:11:38,320 the college, and the graduate school 1299 01:11:38,320 --> 01:11:40,720 for the criminal syndicates of America. 1300 01:11:40,730 --> 01:11:46,230 NARRATOR: Al Capone had attended the Atlantic City summit, too. 1301 01:11:46,230 --> 01:11:47,500 It had been called in part 1302 01:11:47,500 --> 01:11:50,130 because of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre 1303 01:11:50,140 --> 01:11:53,500 which had brought so much unwanted attention. 1304 01:11:53,510 --> 01:11:56,610 Afterwards, he told a reporter, "at Atlantic City, 1305 01:11:56,610 --> 01:12:01,610 "we all agreed to bury the past and forget warfare in the future 1306 01:12:01,610 --> 01:12:04,820 for the general good of all concerned." 1307 01:12:04,820 --> 01:12:08,020 In Chicago, the general good usually meant 1308 01:12:08,020 --> 01:12:10,520 what was good for Capone. 1309 01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:12,460 His business was booming. 1310 01:12:12,460 --> 01:12:14,890 Illegal beer was as plentiful as ever. 1311 01:12:14,890 --> 01:12:19,000 No one, it seemed, could touch him. 1312 01:12:21,470 --> 01:12:24,470 Each morning that spring, President Hoover 1313 01:12:24,470 --> 01:12:27,500 and some of his officials exercised together 1314 01:12:27,510 --> 01:12:28,970 on the White House lawn. 1315 01:12:28,970 --> 01:12:32,880 The press called the group "The Medicine Ball Cabinet." 1316 01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:35,480 One day, as Hoover hurled the ball, 1317 01:12:35,480 --> 01:12:38,920 he asked the Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, 1318 01:12:38,920 --> 01:12:41,590 "Have you got this fellow Capone yet? 1319 01:12:41,590 --> 01:12:47,330 Remember now, I want that man Capone in jail." 1320 01:12:50,500 --> 01:12:52,830 WOMAN AS LOIS LONG: After a couple of dreary weeks 1321 01:12:52,830 --> 01:12:55,170 in which the nightclubs of the town were half-full 1322 01:12:55,170 --> 01:12:58,500 of ruined stock market victims trying to get cheered up 1323 01:12:58,500 --> 01:13:01,440 and inevitably ending the evening with a crying jag 1324 01:13:01,440 --> 01:13:07,010 on the head waiter's shoulder, things seem almost normal again, 1325 01:13:07,010 --> 01:13:10,550 though I suppose every time the market slips a point, 1326 01:13:10,550 --> 01:13:14,020 the wailing will start up once more. 1327 01:13:20,290 --> 01:13:22,660 MAN AS F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: Somebody had blundered, 1328 01:13:22,660 --> 01:13:28,200 and the most expensive orgy in history was over. 1329 01:13:28,200 --> 01:13:30,830 It was borrowed time, anyway, 1330 01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:33,040 the whole upper tenth of the nation 1331 01:13:33,040 --> 01:13:35,640 living with the insouciance of grand ducs 1332 01:13:35,640 --> 01:13:38,310 and the casualness of chorus girls. 1333 01:13:38,310 --> 01:13:41,980 Even when you were broke, you didn't worry about money 1334 01:13:41,980 --> 01:13:46,220 because it was in such profusion around you. 1335 01:13:46,220 --> 01:13:48,620 Now once more the belt is tight, 1336 01:13:48,620 --> 01:13:52,190 and we summon the proper expression of horror 1337 01:13:52,190 --> 01:13:56,930 as we look back on our wasted youth. 1338 01:13:56,930 --> 01:14:00,130 F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1339 01:14:05,170 --> 01:14:07,740 NARRATOR: In the autumn of 1929... 1340 01:14:07,740 --> 01:14:11,810 after nearly a decade of unprecedented economic growth, 1341 01:14:11,810 --> 01:14:16,710 of rampant speculation and inflated real estate values, 1342 01:14:16,710 --> 01:14:20,550 of easy credit and little regulation... 1343 01:14:20,550 --> 01:14:23,120 the stock market crashed. 1344 01:14:23,120 --> 01:14:26,360 The Great Depression that followed was the worst crisis. 1345 01:14:26,360 --> 01:14:30,290 America had faced since the Civil War. 1346 01:14:30,300 --> 01:14:35,130 Before it was over, one out of every 4 wage earners, 1347 01:14:35,130 --> 01:14:38,470 more than 15 million men and women, 1348 01:14:38,470 --> 01:14:39,840 would be without work. 1349 01:14:39,840 --> 01:14:44,910 Prices of wheat and corn and cotton fell so low, 1350 01:14:44,910 --> 01:14:48,610 the crops were left to rot in the fields. 1351 01:14:48,610 --> 01:14:52,480 In Boston, children with cardboard soles on their shoes 1352 01:14:52,480 --> 01:14:56,190 walked to school past silent shoe factories 1353 01:14:56,190 --> 01:14:58,090 with padlocks on the doors. 1354 01:14:58,090 --> 01:15:01,590 In New York, 17 homeless men built themselves 1355 01:15:01,590 --> 01:15:04,600 a shantytown in the middle of Central Park. 1356 01:15:04,600 --> 01:15:07,430 Like hundreds of thousands of desperate people 1357 01:15:07,430 --> 01:15:11,030 all across the country, they named their temporary village. 1358 01:15:11,040 --> 01:15:14,040 "Hooverville" after the president whom they had come 1359 01:15:14,040 --> 01:15:17,880 to blame for everything that had happened to them, 1360 01:15:17,880 --> 01:15:20,280 and on the South Side of Chicago, 1361 01:15:20,280 --> 01:15:25,320 a soup kitchen fed thousands of hungry, desperate people, 1362 01:15:25,320 --> 01:15:28,550 courtesy of Al Capone. 1363 01:15:28,550 --> 01:15:31,290 ROCHE: My dad worked for the City of Chicago 1364 01:15:31,290 --> 01:15:32,990 in a civil service job, 1365 01:15:32,990 --> 01:15:36,690 and the city's budget was in trouble, 1366 01:15:36,690 --> 01:15:40,200 and my dad, even though he worked every day, 1367 01:15:40,200 --> 01:15:43,570 he didn't get a paycheck for 8 months. 1368 01:15:43,570 --> 01:15:46,700 I can remember one night, all we had for dinner 1369 01:15:46,700 --> 01:15:50,670 was a quart of milk with butter 1370 01:15:50,680 --> 01:15:52,810 and lima beans made into a soup. 1371 01:15:52,810 --> 01:15:54,480 That's all we could afford. 1372 01:15:54,480 --> 01:15:58,620 OKRENT: It just seemed very hard for people to focus 1373 01:15:58,620 --> 01:16:01,320 on the enforcement of Prohibition 1374 01:16:01,320 --> 01:16:03,620 when people are being thrown out of work 1375 01:16:03,620 --> 01:16:06,460 and their homes are being repossessed. 1376 01:16:06,460 --> 01:16:09,260 The economy has collapsed. 1377 01:16:09,260 --> 01:16:12,460 To the wets, it was always an anachronism, 1378 01:16:12,460 --> 01:16:14,560 but to the man and woman in the middle, 1379 01:16:14,570 --> 01:16:18,670 it really didn't make any sense any longer. 1380 01:16:19,270 --> 01:16:21,000 In fact, there was a very strong impulse 1381 01:16:21,010 --> 01:16:23,270 to get rid of Prohibition because of the Depression. 1382 01:16:23,270 --> 01:16:26,010 First, the government needed tax revenue desperately, 1383 01:16:26,010 --> 01:16:28,480 and secondly, it was a jobs program. 1384 01:16:28,480 --> 01:16:32,320 If you reopen the breweries and for every brewery, 1385 01:16:32,320 --> 01:16:33,950 how many people are making barrels 1386 01:16:33,950 --> 01:16:35,520 and how many people are making bottles and cans 1387 01:16:35,520 --> 01:16:38,460 and driving trucks and harvesting the grain for it, 1388 01:16:38,460 --> 01:16:41,020 it's hundreds of thousands of jobs. 1389 01:16:41,030 --> 01:16:45,800 NARRATOR: The two central issues in the 1930 mid-term elections, 1390 01:16:45,800 --> 01:16:49,830 the "New York Telegraph" argued, were "hunger and thirst... 1391 01:16:49,830 --> 01:16:53,470 "hunger for food and jobs and security, 1392 01:16:53,470 --> 01:16:56,110 "thirst, if not for decent liquor, 1393 01:16:56,110 --> 01:16:58,840 then the right to it." 1394 01:16:58,840 --> 01:17:02,180 Pauline Sabin and the Women's Organization 1395 01:17:02,180 --> 01:17:05,320 for National Prohibition Reform went to work 1396 01:17:05,320 --> 01:17:08,820 on behalf of candidates committed to repeal. 1397 01:17:08,820 --> 01:17:10,920 Like the leaders of the Anti-saloon League 1398 01:17:10,920 --> 01:17:14,960 a generation earlier, they were now practicing the most focused 1399 01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:18,900 and effective kind of single-issue politics. 1400 01:17:18,900 --> 01:17:22,330 Democrats triumphed at the polls that fall, 1401 01:17:22,330 --> 01:17:23,900 winning a majority in the House 1402 01:17:23,900 --> 01:17:28,610 and coming within a single vote of controlling the Senate. 1403 01:17:28,610 --> 01:17:31,170 Wet forces nearly doubled. 1404 01:17:31,180 --> 01:17:34,140 "I do think our little organization,." 1405 01:17:34,150 --> 01:17:35,480 Pauline Sabin said, 1406 01:17:35,480 --> 01:17:41,280 "did something to perfect this wet landslide." 1407 01:17:41,290 --> 01:17:43,450 In early 1931, President Hoover 1408 01:17:43,450 --> 01:17:47,620 finally released the report of his commission on Prohibition. 1409 01:17:47,630 --> 01:17:50,590 He took comfort from its summary statement... 1410 01:17:50,600 --> 01:17:52,830 the 18th Amendment should remain in effect 1411 01:17:52,830 --> 01:17:57,200 for the foreseeable future, but the report also cataloged 1412 01:17:57,200 --> 01:18:00,040 all the flaws in the Volstead Act, 1413 01:18:00,040 --> 01:18:02,110 and only a minority of its members 1414 01:18:02,110 --> 01:18:06,410 actually favored the law as it stood. 1415 01:18:07,810 --> 01:18:10,480 LERNER: I don't know why he needed a panel to tell him 1416 01:18:10,480 --> 01:18:13,250 how badly it was failing, but he did, 1417 01:18:13,250 --> 01:18:16,550 but Hoover looked at the report and basically found 1418 01:18:16,550 --> 01:18:22,430 what he wanted to find, sort of an argument to stay the course. 1419 01:18:22,430 --> 01:18:24,430 It seemed like, is the president the only one 1420 01:18:24,430 --> 01:18:27,030 in the country who doesn't get it? 1421 01:18:27,030 --> 01:18:28,970 Is he the only one who doesn't see 1422 01:18:28,970 --> 01:18:31,330 all the problems this is causing? 1423 01:18:31,340 --> 01:18:33,870 It added to the sense that Hoover was someone 1424 01:18:33,870 --> 01:18:37,270 who was very out of touch with the American public. 1425 01:18:37,280 --> 01:18:39,780 When you're a president and you're out of touch, 1426 01:18:39,780 --> 01:18:42,710 that's a big political problem. 1427 01:18:42,710 --> 01:18:46,780 NARRATOR: Hoover's critics were merciless. 1428 01:18:47,920 --> 01:18:51,560 MAN: Prohibition is an awful flop. 1429 01:18:51,560 --> 01:18:52,860 We like it. 1430 01:18:52,860 --> 01:18:56,330 It can't stop what it's meant to stop. 1431 01:18:56,330 --> 01:18:57,860 We like it. 1432 01:18:57,860 --> 01:19:00,960 It's left a trail of graft and slime 1433 01:19:00,970 --> 01:19:03,730 it didn't prohibit worth a dime. 1434 01:19:03,730 --> 01:19:06,970 It's filled our land with vice and crime. 1435 01:19:06,970 --> 01:19:11,480 Nevertheless, we're for it. 1436 01:19:11,480 --> 01:19:13,640 The "New York World". 1437 01:19:21,250 --> 01:19:25,420 NARRATOR: By 1931, Al Capone was at the top of his game. 1438 01:19:25,420 --> 01:19:30,430 He had no real rivals anymore among Chicago's mobsters, 1439 01:19:30,430 --> 01:19:33,260 and he continued to expand his empire 1440 01:19:33,260 --> 01:19:36,030 in case Prohibition was repealed. 1441 01:19:36,030 --> 01:19:38,300 He took over labor unions... 1442 01:19:38,300 --> 01:19:39,800 chauffeurs, plumbers, 1443 01:19:39,800 --> 01:19:42,970 city workers, motion picture projectionists, 1444 01:19:42,970 --> 01:19:46,340 soda pop peddlers, kosher poultry dealers... 1445 01:19:46,340 --> 01:19:50,510 and he toyed with the idea of going into the dairy business 1446 01:19:50,520 --> 01:19:54,350 because more people bought milk than booze. 1447 01:19:54,350 --> 01:19:56,990 Besides, the markup was higher. 1448 01:19:56,990 --> 01:19:58,660 "Honest to God," he said, 1449 01:19:58,660 --> 01:20:01,790 "we've been in the wrong racket right along." 1450 01:20:01,790 --> 01:20:05,830 Meanwhile, President Hoover remained determined to put. 1451 01:20:05,830 --> 01:20:12,200 America's most famous bootlegger behind bars, one way or another. 1452 01:20:12,200 --> 01:20:14,840 EIG: The income tax was a fairly new phenomena, 1453 01:20:14,840 --> 01:20:16,270 and a lot of people didn't understand it, 1454 01:20:16,270 --> 01:20:18,140 and if you're a criminal and all your business, 1455 01:20:18,140 --> 01:20:20,340 all of your income is illegally gained, 1456 01:20:20,340 --> 01:20:22,810 it makes sense that you are not going to file a return 1457 01:20:22,810 --> 01:20:25,480 and admit that you're taking in all this illegal income 1458 01:20:25,480 --> 01:20:27,250 and tell the government, basically, 1459 01:20:27,250 --> 01:20:29,350 "In case you hadn't noticed, I've been bootlegging 1460 01:20:29,350 --> 01:20:31,450 for the past year, and here's how much I made." 1461 01:20:31,460 --> 01:20:34,620 when the Supreme Court announced that, 1462 01:20:34,630 --> 01:20:36,560 yes, illegal income is taxable, 1463 01:20:36,560 --> 01:20:39,400 it was a great moment of confusion 1464 01:20:39,400 --> 01:20:40,300 for all these criminals, 1465 01:20:40,300 --> 01:20:42,830 and many of them went down and filed tax returns. 1466 01:20:42,830 --> 01:20:45,200 Capone did not get around to filing, 1467 01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:47,570 and neither did his brother Ralph. 1468 01:20:47,570 --> 01:20:50,010 NARRATOR: For two years, the government tried 1469 01:20:50,010 --> 01:20:56,450 without success to build a case, any case, against Capone. 1470 01:20:56,450 --> 01:20:57,780 CLARKE: President Hoover is sitting there 1471 01:20:57,780 --> 01:21:00,420 with a group of investigators 1472 01:21:00,420 --> 01:21:04,490 that couldn't find an elephant in a phone booth, 1473 01:21:04,490 --> 01:21:07,160 paying these people a lot of money. 1474 01:21:07,160 --> 01:21:08,990 The results... zilch, none. 1475 01:21:08,990 --> 01:21:11,900 EIG: They couldn't get Capone on gun charges. 1476 01:21:11,900 --> 01:21:13,300 They couldn't get him on murder. 1477 01:21:13,300 --> 01:21:14,600 They couldn't get him on bootlegging. 1478 01:21:14,600 --> 01:21:16,570 They thought they could get him on taxes, 1479 01:21:16,570 --> 01:21:18,540 but even that was a very hard case to make 1480 01:21:18,540 --> 01:21:20,740 because Capone was smart in this way. 1481 01:21:20,740 --> 01:21:23,470 He kept no books. He had no bank accounts. 1482 01:21:23,470 --> 01:21:26,480 He owned no property except for a house in Florida 1483 01:21:26,480 --> 01:21:28,610 that he bought in his wife's name. 1484 01:21:28,610 --> 01:21:31,620 He did everything in cash, and he seemed to pay out 1485 01:21:31,620 --> 01:21:32,820 almost as much as he was taking in. 1486 01:21:32,820 --> 01:21:36,490 It made it almost impossible for anybody to prove that he had income. 1487 01:21:36,490 --> 01:21:38,590 The first time he sat down with the IRS and tried to settle, 1488 01:21:38,590 --> 01:21:41,930 you know, he admitted that he hadn't paid his taxes all these years. 1489 01:21:41,930 --> 01:21:44,330 He said, "I really didn't make a lot." 1490 01:21:44,330 --> 01:21:46,200 "I don't have a lot of money to claim. 1491 01:21:46,200 --> 01:21:48,830 "I've been just delivering beer, supplying beer. 1492 01:21:48,830 --> 01:21:50,330 I'm a public servant." 1493 01:21:50,330 --> 01:21:54,040 He said, "I'm just doing it for the good of the people." 1494 01:21:54,040 --> 01:21:57,070 NARRATOR: On June 5, 1931, 1495 01:21:57,070 --> 01:22:00,480 the United States finally accumulated enough evidence 1496 01:22:00,480 --> 01:22:07,650 to indict Al Capone on 22 counts of income tax evasion. 1497 01:22:08,320 --> 01:22:12,290 EIG: Capone's trial was the story of the year. 1498 01:22:12,290 --> 01:22:16,330 Reporters from all over the world were coming in for it. 1499 01:22:16,330 --> 01:22:17,660 Actors from Hollywood were coming in 1500 01:22:17,660 --> 01:22:19,600 because they wanted to play parts based on Capone. 1501 01:22:19,600 --> 01:22:21,870 They wanted to see how he presented himself. 1502 01:22:21,870 --> 01:22:23,470 Jimmy Cagney was there, 1503 01:22:23,470 --> 01:22:26,000 and Damon Runyon came in from New York to cover it. 1504 01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:28,200 The celebrity journalists were all coming in for this 1505 01:22:28,210 --> 01:22:32,080 and partying with Capone at night before the trial. 1506 01:22:32,080 --> 01:22:35,080 Capone had managed to beat every rap before, 1507 01:22:35,080 --> 01:22:35,880 so I think he thought 1508 01:22:35,880 --> 01:22:38,150 there was no reason this would be any different. 1509 01:22:38,150 --> 01:22:42,490 NARRATOR: Capone's optimism was understandable. 1510 01:22:42,490 --> 01:22:44,590 His men had bribed or threatened 1511 01:22:44,590 --> 01:22:47,060 most of the people in the jury pool, 1512 01:22:47,060 --> 01:22:49,960 but at the last moment, the judge got wind of it 1513 01:22:49,960 --> 01:22:55,070 and brought in a whole new group of potential jurors. 1514 01:22:56,030 --> 01:22:59,200 On October 24, 1931, 1515 01:22:59,200 --> 01:23:01,000 after a 10-day trial, 1516 01:23:01,010 --> 01:23:04,440 Al Capone was sentenced to the stiffest penalty 1517 01:23:04,440 --> 01:23:07,010 ever given to a tax evader... 1518 01:23:07,010 --> 01:23:09,550 11 years in federal prison. 1519 01:23:09,550 --> 01:23:11,820 MAN: The king of the gangsters 1520 01:23:11,820 --> 01:23:13,350 is about to be taken for a ride 1521 01:23:13,350 --> 01:23:14,280 by your Uncle Sammy. 1522 01:23:14,290 --> 01:23:16,920 It's moving day for Scarface Al Capone. 1523 01:23:16,920 --> 01:23:19,990 The camera boys are all ready, so look sharp. 1524 01:23:19,990 --> 01:23:21,290 Here he comes. 1525 01:23:21,290 --> 01:23:23,660 That's Al wearing the big, white hat. 1526 01:23:23,660 --> 01:23:25,900 Seems to be in a hurry, but where he's going, 1527 01:23:25,900 --> 01:23:27,800 he'll have time and nothing but, 1528 01:23:27,800 --> 01:23:32,770 and none of the good citizens of Chicago is exactly weeping about it. 1529 01:23:33,470 --> 01:23:36,140 NARRATOR: "It was my own fault," Capone said, 1530 01:23:36,140 --> 01:23:40,340 "publicity. That's what got me." 1531 01:23:40,340 --> 01:23:44,910 STEVENS: I think the general feeling was that he deserved it. 1532 01:23:44,920 --> 01:23:47,980 There's that sense he was guilty of a lot of other things 1533 01:23:47,990 --> 01:23:53,360 and that society would be better off if he were behind bars. 1534 01:23:53,360 --> 01:23:56,330 A lot of people in the profession have felt 1535 01:23:56,330 --> 01:23:58,800 that he was punished for something 1536 01:23:58,800 --> 01:24:03,270 that was not his primary crime, but rather, they found an excuse 1537 01:24:03,270 --> 01:24:07,470 to put him away rather than trying to punish him 1538 01:24:07,470 --> 01:24:10,270 for things he probably had done. 1539 01:24:10,810 --> 01:24:13,510 NARRATOR: Despite Capone's imprisonment, 1540 01:24:13,510 --> 01:24:16,180 despite all the government's efforts, 1541 01:24:16,180 --> 01:24:21,890 the flow of liquor into Chicago never even slowed. 1542 01:24:41,210 --> 01:24:43,340 By the summer of 1932, 1543 01:24:43,340 --> 01:24:46,180 it seemed to many Americans as if the world 1544 01:24:46,180 --> 01:24:48,950 had turned upside down in the 4 years 1545 01:24:48,950 --> 01:24:51,480 since Herbert Hoover's election. 1546 01:24:51,480 --> 01:24:54,650 Bad times had only gotten worse. 1547 01:24:54,650 --> 01:25:00,360 In some cities, nearly half the wage earners were without work. 1548 01:25:00,360 --> 01:25:02,930 Nationwide, a thousand families 1549 01:25:02,930 --> 01:25:05,760 were losing their homes every day. 1550 01:25:05,760 --> 01:25:08,430 5,000 banks had failed, 1551 01:25:08,430 --> 01:25:10,730 taking with them the life savings 1552 01:25:10,730 --> 01:25:12,970 of 9 million Americans. 1553 01:25:12,970 --> 01:25:17,440 "We can no longer depend on passing the hat," 1554 01:25:17,440 --> 01:25:20,440 wrote the Kansas editor William Allen White. 1555 01:25:20,440 --> 01:25:25,010 "We have gone to the bottom of the barrel." 1556 01:25:25,020 --> 01:25:27,950 But president Hoover still insisted 1557 01:25:27,950 --> 01:25:31,190 that there was a "minimum of actual suffering." 1558 01:25:31,190 --> 01:25:34,590 Private charities and local governments, he said, 1559 01:25:34,590 --> 01:25:38,900 would take care of the hungry and the destitute. 1560 01:25:40,560 --> 01:25:44,670 It seemed increasingly misguided to spend millions 1561 01:25:44,670 --> 01:25:47,100 of federal dollars to enforce a law 1562 01:25:47,100 --> 01:25:49,670 that seemed perpetually unenforceable, 1563 01:25:49,670 --> 01:25:53,780 especially when the Republican administration was unwilling 1564 01:25:53,780 --> 01:25:57,610 to spend those dollars to provide relief. 1565 01:25:57,620 --> 01:26:02,250 MAN: We believe that to make beer legal at the present time 1566 01:26:02,250 --> 01:26:05,420 would bring labor and employment 1567 01:26:05,420 --> 01:26:07,520 for hundreds of thousands of people, 1568 01:26:07,530 --> 01:26:10,260 that it would bring business millions of dollars, 1569 01:26:10,260 --> 01:26:13,260 and that it would bring the Treasury of the United States 1570 01:26:13,260 --> 01:26:17,670 between $400 million and $500 million dollars in taxes 1571 01:26:17,670 --> 01:26:22,040 that we need to help our people. 1572 01:26:22,040 --> 01:26:26,940 Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, 1573 01:26:26,940 --> 01:26:31,850 it is with a sense of grave responsibility 1574 01:26:31,850 --> 01:26:34,920 that I address you tonight. 1575 01:26:34,920 --> 01:26:39,590 I speak on the eve of what I venture to regard 1576 01:26:39,590 --> 01:26:46,030 as the most momentous election ever held in this country. 1577 01:26:48,470 --> 01:26:53,040 I call on you whose standards I see before me 1578 01:26:53,040 --> 01:26:56,870 to here and now testify to your determination 1579 01:26:56,870 --> 01:26:59,680 that the candidate of this convention shall be, 1580 01:26:59,680 --> 01:27:03,880 and must be, that incarnation of Thomas Jefferson, 1581 01:27:03,880 --> 01:27:06,920 Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York. 1582 01:27:06,920 --> 01:27:09,850 [Cheering and applause] 1583 01:27:09,850 --> 01:27:15,730 NARRATOR: In Chicago stadium on the evening of July 2, 1932, 1584 01:27:15,730 --> 01:27:18,430 Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted 1585 01:27:18,430 --> 01:27:21,500 the presidential nomination of his party. 1586 01:27:21,500 --> 01:27:26,800 ROOSEVELT: This is more than a political campaign. 1587 01:27:26,800 --> 01:27:28,740 It is a call to arms. 1588 01:27:28,740 --> 01:27:32,780 Give me your help not to win votes alone, 1589 01:27:32,780 --> 01:27:36,480 but to win in this crusade 1590 01:27:36,480 --> 01:27:39,950 to restore America 1591 01:27:39,950 --> 01:27:42,720 to its own people. 1592 01:27:42,720 --> 01:27:43,550 [Applause] 1593 01:27:43,550 --> 01:27:46,060 NARRATOR: Like most politicians of his day, 1594 01:27:46,060 --> 01:27:48,490 he had hoped to avoid taking a stand 1595 01:27:48,490 --> 01:27:51,330 on the divisive issue of Prohibition, 1596 01:27:51,330 --> 01:27:54,330 but wet forces, led by Al Smith, 1597 01:27:54,330 --> 01:27:55,630 backed him into a corner. 1598 01:27:55,630 --> 01:27:58,870 They had already pushed through a platform plank 1599 01:27:58,870 --> 01:28:00,800 demanding repeal, 1600 01:28:00,800 --> 01:28:04,610 and Roosevelt quickly changed his mind. 1601 01:28:04,610 --> 01:28:05,740 ROOSEVELT: And now a word... 1602 01:28:05,740 --> 01:28:08,280 wait till I get through the paragraph. 1603 01:28:08,280 --> 01:28:10,810 Now a word as to beer. 1604 01:28:10,810 --> 01:28:13,650 [Cheering] 1605 01:28:15,490 --> 01:28:18,020 [Whistle blows] 1606 01:28:24,290 --> 01:28:26,530 You good people... 1607 01:28:26,530 --> 01:28:29,530 you good people are in a terrible hurry. 1608 01:28:29,530 --> 01:28:32,440 [Laughter and cheering] 1609 01:28:42,450 --> 01:28:44,610 Now let me complete the statement. 1610 01:28:44,620 --> 01:28:45,980 It's all right. 1611 01:28:45,980 --> 01:28:50,450 I favor the modification of the Volstead Act 1612 01:28:50,450 --> 01:28:53,060 just as fast as the law will let us. 1613 01:28:53,060 --> 01:28:55,460 [Cheering] 1614 01:28:58,960 --> 01:29:01,130 NARRATOR: Hoover and the Republicans 1615 01:29:01,130 --> 01:29:02,400 continued to straddle the issue. 1616 01:29:02,400 --> 01:29:07,000 Their platform simultaneously called for state conventions 1617 01:29:07,000 --> 01:29:09,140 to reconsider the 18th Amendment 1618 01:29:09,140 --> 01:29:11,140 and promised the federal government 1619 01:29:11,140 --> 01:29:14,710 would "continue to safeguard our citizens everywhere" 1620 01:29:14,710 --> 01:29:18,650 from the return of the saloon and attendant abuses." 1621 01:29:18,650 --> 01:29:22,250 "The Hoover plank," wrote the journalist H.L. Mencken, 1622 01:29:22,250 --> 01:29:27,420 "at least has the great virtue of being quite unintelligible." 1623 01:29:27,420 --> 01:29:30,730 Pauline Sabin, the lifelong Republican, 1624 01:29:30,730 --> 01:29:33,700 enthusiastically endorsed Franklin Roosevelt 1625 01:29:33,700 --> 01:29:39,840 and put the full force of her organization behind him. 1626 01:29:41,610 --> 01:29:48,440 ROOSEVELT: It looks, my friends, like a real landslide this time, 1627 01:29:48,450 --> 01:29:50,850 but... 1628 01:29:50,850 --> 01:29:54,650 but we have not yet had the returns from the West Coast, 1629 01:29:54,650 --> 01:29:58,720 and for that reason, I am making no official 1630 01:29:58,720 --> 01:30:02,860 or public statement as yet. 1631 01:30:04,190 --> 01:30:06,460 NARRATOR: It was a landslide. 1632 01:30:06,460 --> 01:30:11,570 Roosevelt carried 42 of the 48 states. 1633 01:30:13,840 --> 01:30:15,370 Less than a month later, 1634 01:30:15,370 --> 01:30:17,770 well before Roosevelt was inaugurated, 1635 01:30:17,780 --> 01:30:21,380 Republican senator John J. Blaine of Wisconsin 1636 01:30:21,380 --> 01:30:24,550 offered a joint resolution calling for submission 1637 01:30:24,550 --> 01:30:28,320 to the states of a new 21st Amendment 1638 01:30:28,320 --> 01:30:30,450 which would void the 18th. 1639 01:30:30,450 --> 01:30:33,590 Senator Morris Sheppard, the Texan who had introduced 1640 01:30:33,590 --> 01:30:37,430 the 18th Amendment in the senate 20 years earlier, 1641 01:30:37,430 --> 01:30:40,360 staged a one-man, daylong filibuster 1642 01:30:40,360 --> 01:30:42,730 to keep it from coming to a vote, 1643 01:30:42,730 --> 01:30:47,200 but after 81/2 hours, when not a single dry senator 1644 01:30:47,200 --> 01:30:49,740 thought it worth the trouble to support him, 1645 01:30:49,740 --> 01:30:52,180 he surrendered to the inevitable. 1646 01:30:52,180 --> 01:30:56,250 The resolution would pass, 63-23. 1647 01:30:56,250 --> 01:30:58,780 Seated in the gallery, Ella Boole, 1648 01:30:58,780 --> 01:31:02,720 president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1649 01:31:02,720 --> 01:31:03,720 wept. 1650 01:31:03,720 --> 01:31:06,860 The House passed it in 40 minutes, 1651 01:31:06,860 --> 01:31:09,560 289-121, 1652 01:31:09,560 --> 01:31:13,630 and sent it on to the states for ratification. 1653 01:31:13,630 --> 01:31:16,670 Within 9 days of taking office, 1654 01:31:16,670 --> 01:31:19,770 while waiting for the new amendment to be ratified, 1655 01:31:19,770 --> 01:31:23,640 the new president called upon Congress to do 3 things... 1656 01:31:23,640 --> 01:31:27,540 reorganize the banks, cut federal spending, 1657 01:31:27,540 --> 01:31:32,350 and pass a new bill legalizing 3.2 beer. 1658 01:31:32,350 --> 01:31:35,050 When the beer bill reached the floor 1659 01:31:35,050 --> 01:31:36,820 and members of the dry minority 1660 01:31:36,820 --> 01:31:40,690 began making their familiar case against alcohol, 1661 01:31:40,690 --> 01:31:43,530 the impatient wet majority chanted, 1662 01:31:43,530 --> 01:31:46,800 "Vote, vote! We want beer!" 1663 01:31:46,800 --> 01:31:49,500 The bill easily passed 1664 01:31:49,500 --> 01:31:49,930 both houses. 1665 01:31:49,930 --> 01:31:53,340 MAN: Like a magic wand, the stroke of the president's pen 1666 01:31:53,340 --> 01:31:56,140 has started cafés, beer gardens, and hotels 1667 01:31:56,140 --> 01:31:57,940 preparing for the amber flood. 1668 01:31:57,940 --> 01:32:01,980 So get ready to wet your whistle and join the festive chorus. 1669 01:32:01,980 --> 01:32:03,680 Let 'er go! 1670 01:32:03,680 --> 01:32:07,480 MAN: Gangway for good times. 1671 01:32:08,620 --> 01:32:11,320 NARRATOR: On April 7, 1933, 1672 01:32:11,320 --> 01:32:14,760 barely a month after FDR became president, 1673 01:32:14,760 --> 01:32:17,830 Americans could legally buy a bottle of beer 1674 01:32:17,830 --> 01:32:20,500 for the first time since 1920. 1675 01:32:20,500 --> 01:32:25,500 At the stroke of midnight, sirens and steam whistles blew 1676 01:32:25,500 --> 01:32:27,200 in the beer-brewing city of St. Louis, 1677 01:32:27,200 --> 01:32:31,810 and traffic was halted on Milwaukee's Wisconsin Avenue 1678 01:32:31,810 --> 01:32:35,880 by exultant crowds singing "Sweet Adeline." 1679 01:32:35,880 --> 01:32:40,650 MAN: It was Marching Through Paris Day, 1680 01:32:40,650 --> 01:32:44,650 Mardi Gras Day, Independence Day, 1681 01:32:44,660 --> 01:32:48,090 all the triumphal days put together. 1682 01:32:48,090 --> 01:32:52,900 The first time I had a drink, an actual beer, 1683 01:32:52,900 --> 01:32:56,830 was the night of celebration. 1684 01:32:58,540 --> 01:33:01,740 NARRATOR: In Manhattan, Anheuser-Busch 1685 01:33:01,740 --> 01:33:03,940 paid special tribute to the man 1686 01:33:03,940 --> 01:33:06,710 whose willingness to champion the wet cause 1687 01:33:06,710 --> 01:33:08,980 had helped destroy his political career 1688 01:33:08,980 --> 01:33:13,780 by presenting former governor Al Smith with a case of beer. 1689 01:33:13,780 --> 01:33:18,850 AL SMITH: I got a real thrill when I saw the 6 big horses 1690 01:33:18,860 --> 01:33:22,930 coming along with the wagonload of beer. 1691 01:33:22,930 --> 01:33:27,000 The only regret I have is that it isn't all for me. 1692 01:33:27,000 --> 01:33:30,030 The case just presented is kind of small, 1693 01:33:30,030 --> 01:33:34,070 but you can tell Mr. Busch that I'm around all the time 1694 01:33:34,070 --> 01:33:36,940 and that I have plenty of friends. 1695 01:33:36,940 --> 01:33:38,880 OK. 1696 01:33:39,780 --> 01:33:42,780 NARRATOR: The national celebration over the beer bill 1697 01:33:42,780 --> 01:33:44,950 was so intense and long-lasting 1698 01:33:44,950 --> 01:33:47,780 that repeal of the 18th Amendment itself 1699 01:33:47,780 --> 01:33:50,020 would seem almost anticlimactic. 1700 01:33:50,020 --> 01:33:55,330 Many believed that that process would take several years. 1701 01:33:56,330 --> 01:33:59,760 It took less than one. 1702 01:34:15,980 --> 01:34:19,480 At 5:32 in the evening, Eastern Time, 1703 01:34:19,480 --> 01:34:22,450 on December 5, 1933, 1704 01:34:22,450 --> 01:34:25,650 13 years, 10 months, and 18 days 1705 01:34:25,660 --> 01:34:28,460 after Prohibition went into effect, 1706 01:34:28,460 --> 01:34:32,630 it finally came to an end. 1707 01:34:32,630 --> 01:34:35,560 H.L. Mencken marked the occasion 1708 01:34:35,570 --> 01:34:38,630 by swallowing a tumbler of cold water. 1709 01:34:38,640 --> 01:34:44,980 It was, he said, the first water he'd drunk in 13 years. 1710 01:34:48,310 --> 01:34:51,780 WILKIE: I just remember it ended and that everybody 1711 01:34:51,780 --> 01:34:54,080 was terribly relieved to be able to go 1712 01:34:54,080 --> 01:34:59,520 into the shut-up restaurants without having to give a number. 1713 01:35:00,160 --> 01:35:04,430 There was a great feeling that it was better to trust people 1714 01:35:04,430 --> 01:35:06,760 not to drink so much on their own 1715 01:35:06,760 --> 01:35:10,100 than have a law saying they couldn't have liquor. 1716 01:35:10,100 --> 01:35:14,840 RUTH PROSKAUER SMITH: I think all my friends and my family 1717 01:35:14,840 --> 01:35:20,040 and everybody were relieved that they didn't, 1718 01:35:20,040 --> 01:35:24,080 quote, "need to break the law anymore." 1719 01:35:24,080 --> 01:35:30,450 At last, you could really choose what you wanted. 1720 01:35:30,450 --> 01:35:32,660 MAN: After Prohibition, 1721 01:35:32,660 --> 01:35:36,690 after everyone had seen how devastating it was to morals, 1722 01:35:36,690 --> 01:35:41,100 to policing, to government, really a failure, 1723 01:35:41,100 --> 01:35:45,330 people are picking up the pieces and trying to make sense of it. 1724 01:35:45,340 --> 01:35:49,340 The key thing, though, about this picking up the pieces 1725 01:35:49,340 --> 01:35:51,510 after Prohibition was, 1726 01:35:51,510 --> 01:35:54,080 the same God that laughs at our folly... 1727 01:35:54,080 --> 01:35:55,980 and there was folly in Prohibition... 1728 01:35:55,980 --> 01:35:57,750 still holds us responsible, 1729 01:35:57,750 --> 01:36:00,120 still wants us to build a better society, 1730 01:36:00,120 --> 01:36:01,580 to build a better world, 1731 01:36:01,590 --> 01:36:04,150 and doesn't disdain human endeavor, 1732 01:36:04,150 --> 01:36:06,020 and I think that post Prohibition, 1733 01:36:06,020 --> 01:36:08,160 you were picking up the pieces and trying to find 1734 01:36:08,160 --> 01:36:11,260 a new moral framework for improving America 1735 01:36:11,260 --> 01:36:14,260 without quite so much pride and arrogance 1736 01:36:14,260 --> 01:36:17,900 and self-assurance as the Prohibitionists had. 1737 01:36:18,800 --> 01:36:22,840 NARRATOR: Prohibition's effects outlasted the 18th Amendment. 1738 01:36:22,840 --> 01:36:27,480 Several states and many counties, townships, and towns 1739 01:36:27,480 --> 01:36:30,010 chose to let stand local laws 1740 01:36:30,010 --> 01:36:32,350 that would keep them dry for decades. 1741 01:36:32,350 --> 01:36:36,720 Oklahomans would do so for more than a quarter of a century, 1742 01:36:36,720 --> 01:36:40,760 in part because clergymen and bootleggers alike 1743 01:36:40,760 --> 01:36:42,320 opposed repeal. 1744 01:36:42,330 --> 01:36:44,860 His home state, Will Rogers said, 1745 01:36:44,860 --> 01:36:47,800 "will be dry so long as its citizens 1746 01:36:47,800 --> 01:36:49,630 can stagger to the polls." 1747 01:36:49,630 --> 01:36:54,840 they would do so 5 times before finally voting for repeal 1748 01:36:54,840 --> 01:36:57,610 in 1959. 1749 01:36:57,610 --> 01:37:00,680 The interstate crime syndicate spawned by warfare 1750 01:37:00,680 --> 01:37:04,410 over bootlegging profits would expand steadily 1751 01:37:04,410 --> 01:37:06,250 in the years that followed repeal, 1752 01:37:06,250 --> 01:37:11,550 finding new worlds to conquer in every corner of the country. 1753 01:37:11,560 --> 01:37:15,490 Congress had barred breweries from owning 1754 01:37:15,490 --> 01:37:17,490 or leasing saloons anymore, 1755 01:37:17,490 --> 01:37:20,330 and the old-time all-male drinking establishments 1756 01:37:20,330 --> 01:37:23,800 that had been the hated target of the Prohibitionists 1757 01:37:23,800 --> 01:37:24,900 never returned. 1758 01:37:24,900 --> 01:37:30,770 Women drank freely in the bars and taverns that replaced them. 1759 01:37:30,770 --> 01:37:33,480 OKRENT: The most surprising legacy of Prohibition 1760 01:37:33,480 --> 01:37:37,550 is that it's much harder to get a drink today than it was 1761 01:37:37,550 --> 01:37:39,950 when it was against the law to get a drink. 1762 01:37:39,950 --> 01:37:44,320 Once you allow something, there is an entire code of law... 1763 01:37:44,320 --> 01:37:46,290 closing hours, age limits, 1764 01:37:46,290 --> 01:37:48,460 percentage of alcohol in a drink, 1765 01:37:48,460 --> 01:37:50,530 no Sunday sales in many states. 1766 01:37:50,530 --> 01:37:53,600 During Prohibition, because you couldn't drink at all, 1767 01:37:53,600 --> 01:37:56,030 you could drink anytime, and anyone could drink, 1768 01:37:56,030 --> 01:37:57,730 and it was only when it comes back 1769 01:37:57,730 --> 01:38:00,670 that there's a restriction on our drinking. 1770 01:38:01,400 --> 01:38:07,080 NARRATOR: Prohibition did cut alcohol consumption for a time, 1771 01:38:07,080 --> 01:38:11,780 but alcoholism, the disease that had inspired it, 1772 01:38:11,780 --> 01:38:13,520 has never gone away. 1773 01:38:13,520 --> 01:38:18,320 It destroyed lives in 1820 and 1920, 1774 01:38:18,320 --> 01:38:20,420 and it destroys them still. 1775 01:38:20,420 --> 01:38:26,430 No government anywhere has found a way to prevent it. 1776 01:38:26,430 --> 01:38:30,870 LEUCHTENBURG: Often one hears about the response 1777 01:38:30,870 --> 01:38:33,670 to the repeal of the 18th Amendment, 1778 01:38:33,670 --> 01:38:36,270 that there's jubilation in the land. 1779 01:38:36,270 --> 01:38:38,170 There was not jubilation in my home. 1780 01:38:38,170 --> 01:38:42,180 My mother and father were both alcoholics. 1781 01:38:42,180 --> 01:38:46,450 My father was an alcoholic to the day of his death. 1782 01:38:46,450 --> 01:38:50,990 I wouldn't say that Prohibition caused the alcoholism, 1783 01:38:50,990 --> 01:38:52,890 but it surely didn't stop it. 1784 01:38:52,890 --> 01:38:57,090 I viewed the return of liquor 1785 01:38:57,090 --> 01:38:59,160 as not a blessing, 1786 01:38:59,160 --> 01:39:02,870 but a continuation of a sad, sorry time 1787 01:39:02,870 --> 01:39:06,870 for a boy growing up in this country. 1788 01:39:10,610 --> 01:39:14,240 NARRATOR: In 1935, two alcoholics, 1789 01:39:14,240 --> 01:39:17,750 a New York stockbroker and an Ohio surgeon, 1790 01:39:17,750 --> 01:39:19,820 discovered that simply through prayer 1791 01:39:19,820 --> 01:39:23,290 and by talking to one another, confessing their lapses, 1792 01:39:23,290 --> 01:39:27,260 and offering counsel based on their own experience, 1793 01:39:27,260 --> 01:39:29,260 they could sometimes strengthen 1794 01:39:29,260 --> 01:39:32,600 one another's resolve not to drink. 1795 01:39:34,130 --> 01:39:38,270 Alcoholics Anonymous, the organization they started, 1796 01:39:38,270 --> 01:39:41,600 would eventually have millions of members. 1797 01:39:41,600 --> 01:39:45,440 Its founders had never heard of the Washingtonians, 1798 01:39:45,440 --> 01:39:47,780 the temperance organization built 1799 01:39:47,780 --> 01:39:50,010 upon precisely the same principles 1800 01:39:50,010 --> 01:39:55,450 that had flourished in America nearly a century before. 1801 01:39:57,120 --> 01:40:03,090 MAN: Well, I'm a recovering alcoholic, 30 years almost. 1802 01:40:03,090 --> 01:40:05,690 I'm not a Prohibitionist. It doesn't work. 1803 01:40:05,700 --> 01:40:09,100 When you look at the United States 1804 01:40:09,100 --> 01:40:11,070 with 300-plus million people, 1805 01:40:11,070 --> 01:40:14,440 about 10% of the population, the adult population, 1806 01:40:14,440 --> 01:40:16,440 has a serious problem with alcohol. 1807 01:40:16,440 --> 01:40:19,710 You don't pass the law based on 10% 1808 01:40:19,710 --> 01:40:22,950 because a lot of people... in fact, most people... who drink 1809 01:40:22,950 --> 01:40:24,550 handle it very well. 1810 01:40:24,550 --> 01:40:27,720 So treat the people who have a problem with alcohol. 1811 01:40:27,720 --> 01:40:30,920 Don't try and treat the whole country. 1812 01:40:31,790 --> 01:40:34,060 NARRATOR: Over the years, there have been many calls 1813 01:40:34,060 --> 01:40:37,560 upon congress by one group of Americans or another 1814 01:40:37,560 --> 01:40:41,230 for Constitutional amendments that would impose their version 1815 01:40:41,230 --> 01:40:45,570 of morality on the rest of their fellow citizens. 1816 01:40:45,570 --> 01:40:47,270 All have been defeated, 1817 01:40:47,270 --> 01:40:50,740 at least in part because the memory of Prohibition 1818 01:40:50,740 --> 01:40:54,040 and the unintended consequences that accompanied it 1819 01:40:54,040 --> 01:41:00,450 remain fresh more than 3/4 of a century after it ended. 1820 01:41:02,990 --> 01:41:05,320 HAMILL: I haven't had a drink in 35 years, 1821 01:41:05,320 --> 01:41:09,590 and I don't even care if I ever have another drink. 1822 01:41:09,590 --> 01:41:13,900 I don't long for it or ache for it, 1823 01:41:13,900 --> 01:41:18,130 but if somebody said, "You can't have another drink," 1824 01:41:18,130 --> 01:41:23,040 I'd probably go to some demo in front of the federal courthouse 1825 01:41:23,040 --> 01:41:25,010 and have one. 1826 01:41:25,010 --> 01:41:30,810 It's one of those things where the average American says, 1827 01:41:30,810 --> 01:41:33,820 "Who the hell are you to tell me how to live?" 1828 01:41:33,820 --> 01:41:37,490 and if we cease being that country, 1829 01:41:37,490 --> 01:41:39,660 if we become a country in which we all say, 1830 01:41:39,660 --> 01:41:44,030 "Please tell me how to live," we're doomed.