History Buffs: The Untouchables

[Music] hello and welcome history buffs my name is nick hodges and join me on a trip to the windy city the birthplace of the untouchables it is 1930 in prohibition chicago and as once peaceful streets have turned into an active war zone that is fought over by brutal gangs each vying for power in the illegal bootlegging trade the most dominant is the south side gang led by the infamous mobster al capone his violent rise to power has made him think he's above the law and for good reason with all the cops judges and politicians in his pockets no one is dead cross him yet that was until a prohibition agent called elliot ness and his elite team single-handedly took him down at least that's what happens in the movie history on the other hand paints a completely different picture one that i will share over the course of this review and piece by piece we will uncover the true story behind the untouchables [Applause] now before i get into the untouchables i thought it'd be a good idea to tell a bit of the history behind prohibition and how is able to lead to the rise of organized crime in chicago between 1920 and 1933 a constitutional ban was set in place to abolish the production distribution and sale of alcohol within the united states a president during this time called herbert hoover once described prohibition as the great social and economic experiment but unbeknownst to him it was one that america was destined to fail by the dawn of the 20th century a grassroots social movement was making waves in the political landscape its deeply tied religious beliefs viewed alcohol as a blight on america's morality and condemned its consumption as the sole reason behind all its woes it was known as the temperance movement and from the very beginning it was women who had helped champion the cause many of them had seen firsthand the destructive role alcohol had played within their families and marriages whether had been as victims of domestic abuse or to witness their alcoholic fathers and husbands spent away their life savings the women's christian temperance union was amongst the first to successfully push through the idea of temperance into the public eye that began dividing americans with its politics into two camps the wets and the dries with the wet supporting the consumption and sale of alcohol whilst the drys didn't a prominent figurehead of the dries was a man named wayne wheeler who is the leader of a tempered society called the anti-saloon league which is by far the most effective unlike the wctu it was an organization made up of both men and women and as far as his policies were concerned the total ban of alcohol was the only thing they cared about the anti-saloon league was able to rise to power by directing its devout followers to vote for politicians who supported them and vote against the ones who didn't the league wasn't interested whether they were democrats or republicans as long as they played to their fiddle they were guaranteed votes even if that meant those politicians were privately drinkers themselves a huge turning point for the dries came in april 1917 when america entered the first world war the anti-saloon league the wctu and other temperance societies banded together to exploit an anti-german hysteria that was gripping the nation they did this by pumping up propaganda specifically targeting german american beer makers suddenly drinking beer brands like schlitz miller blatz or bush was made to seem like an act of treason with public opinion on their side the anti-saloon league pushed washington to institute a temporary wartime prohibition in order to save grain for the war effort this was a huge win for the dry activists but they went even further by proposing a prohibition amendment to congress they didn't just want a law passed to ban alcohol as laws could be repealed or changed the drives wanted it to be immortalized into the american constitution as no amendment had ever been repealed before then and so on august 1 1917 the united states senate voted 65 to 20 in favor of the 18th amendment the house of representatives followed shortly afterwards and largely voted in favor on december 18 1917 in an effort to stave off prohibition the wet supporters in congress had previously made a deal with the drives granting them only six years to receive the support for three quarters of the united states for final approval they had no idea it would only take 11 months it was ratified into law on january 16th 1919 and went into effect just a year later and so when the stroke of midnight began to approach on january 16 1920 people began to wonder would prohibition finally put an end to the nation's thirst for alcohol [Applause] [Music] prohibition [Applause] [Music] as the temperance movement patted itself on the back for a job well done its hopes for a dry america was naively mistaken enforcement of the law in the rural areas and small towns which they sprang was easy since many in those communities had long since been sympathetic to the idea of temperance but to enforce that same law in the big cities was another thing entirely now before i get into that i would like to briefly talk about the law then force prohibition itself known as the volstead act it forbade the manufacture sale and transportation of intoxicating beverages this included everything from beer wine to hard spirits but the consumption of these beverages wasn't illegal in itself and any alcohol that's purchased before prohibition was also legal to own this gave private clubs and the super rich an entire year to buy as much booze as they could cram into their cellars and anyone who couldn't afford to do so could still enjoy a drink from their local bootlegger as long as they didn't get caught buying it but even the criminals stood a good chance of never doing hard time ironically the same people who supported prohibition were also the types who didn't believe in big government spending three of america's presidency in the 1920s were warren g harding calvin coolidge and herbert hoover all three were republican and their parties dominated congress they had all the power they could possibly want and yet they spent as little money as they could on enforcing prohibition here's an example for you the federal law enforcement agency that was formed to enforce the volstead act was called the bureau of prohibition however it only had 1500 agents assigned to cover the entire country that's one agent for every 70 000 americans i guess they just hoped everyone followed the honor system and more accurately the states and small local governments would be kind enough to pick up the bill themselves but they of course argued why should they this is a federal law after all and if the federal government was so eager to pass it in the first place then they should be the ones to pay for it so you get the situation where everyone is just buck passing the responsibilities and little gets resolved but whilst all this was going on the criminal underworld was making a mockery of the volstead act despite early signs of success at the start of prohibition with a decline in public drunkenness and a 30 drop in alcohol consumption the decade that followed saw a new generation rise up and brazenly break this new law the conservative parents have thrust upon them and these scoff laws they were called did so not by visiting the saloons of the past but at the speak easy underground bars and clubs that were hidden by a secret door if you had the right password you were let in by a doorman and if you visited the largest of these venues then you were treated to a glorious night of entertainment with jazz bands playing out the greatest hits of the 20s to flappers dancing away on the ballroom floor and the finest alcohol you could possibly afford nothing within these walls indicated that prohibition was working at all in fact it was the era's worst kept secret local law enforcement often tolerated these establishments seeing alcohol as a harmless vice with some being customers themselves but mainly the reason why was because they were bribed to look the other way corruption was a huge problem within many police departments and none were more so than in chicago throughout prohibition no city was as notorious as bootlegging as chicago and no man more infamous in its trade than alfons scarface capone this brooklyn-born mobster would dominate the headlines for years to come when the 18th amendment first came into effect thousands of breweries and distilleries across america were forced to close seizing the opportunity capone and his old mentor johnny torio started buying the ones in and around chicago by controlling production and supplying the thousands of speakeasies across the city with their manufactured beer their profits skyrocketed into a multi-million dollar business at its very height capone would make over 60 million dollars a year and he spared no expense in buying protection from the law these ranged from bribing cops on the beat to prohibition agents judges even the republican mayor william hale thompson the scale of public officials that he was able to line in his pockets arguably major cargo one of the most corrupt cities in america each of them turned a blind eye to his bootlegging racket even at the risk of public safety capone's rise to power was not unchallenged although the italian mafia controlled much of the south side of chicago the north side was mostly ruled by the irish at first they came to an agreement to sell their booze in each other's territory and share the profits but eventually the treaty was broken and a five-year war ensued labelled by the press as the beer wars rival gangsters battled each other for ultimate power with drive-bys and shootouts become a regular current and public streets as the body cam made national headlines the police did little to contain the violence judges and juries were bought off as usual even as things escalated the beer wars reached its bloody conclusion on a day that would shock and appall the american people on february 14 1929 italian gangsters disguised as policemen rounded up seven leaders of the northside gang's hierarchy and mowed them down with machine gun fire at the time it happened al capone was on holiday in florida but everyone knew that he was behind it it would come to be known as the saint valentine's day massacre in the short term no one was arrested and the north side gang crumbled into the dust leaving the entire city of chicago in capone's hands but in the long term the saints valentine's day massacre would prove to be the turning point in capone's career with president hoover and the federal government decided they had enough of the defiant mobster and his obvious flaunting of the law declaring him public enemy number one they worked on a plan that would finally bring him down for good [Music] whenever i decide to review a historical movie i always have to ask myself how much should its accuracy affect my viewing experience what do i do if i enjoy the movie when i first watched it but then found out later that most of it wasn't true or indeed vice versa what if i hated the movie and then found out that for the most part it was accurate it's already happened to me a couple of times in this channel's history for example i love the movie gladiator but even i have to admit that from a historical angle the movie's full of [ __ ] and then there was oliver stone's alexander an awful movie that bored me to tears but it was for the most part historically accurate now i have to admit that when i first watched the untouchables i enjoyed it it's a well-written movie with a great cast and is set in a fascinating time period and i'm sure that many of you feel the same way as well but unfortunately as a historical movie it's mostly inaccurate and there's little resemblance to what actually happened the basic premise of the untouchables is that a prohibition agent called elliot ness created an elite team of honest cops and together they single-handedly brought down al capone and put him away behind bars just that alone the main plot of the movie is not the way how went down so over the course of this chapter i'm going to go step by step and point out its biggest inaccuracies so you can get a clearer picture of what actually happened and from time to time i'll also point out what the movie gets right i guess the best place we should start would be with the untouchables themselves let's begin with eliot ness when we're first introduced to nest we see that he is a family man with a loving wife and a young daughter but by 1930 the real nest had only been married for a year and he didn't have children this may seem trivial but the reason why the filmmakers made this change is so ness has an emotional attachment to the case if you can remember at the beginning of the movie we see another little girl the same age as his daughter died an explosion at a speakeasy on capone's orders which by the way i'm 100 sure happened either because by 1930 the beer wars were already finished and had resulted in al capone's victory it wasn't the death of a little girl that convinced the federal government to come after capone but the saints valentine's day massacre in 1929 but i guess that the main reason they gave nessa daughter is so that his situation could be even more dire when the gangsters come and threaten his family nice to have a family yes it is man should take care see that nothing happens to even though nest didn't have a daughter the threats made against him and his wife were very real indeed they were the last ditch efforts made by capone to intimidate nest into giving up his investigation but before he did that capone tried the usual tactic of bribery which we do see in the movie when arthur slugworth had nessa manila envelope now an interesting thing to know is that the envelope contained two thousand dollars in cash which was the annual wage of a prohibition officer back then and capone was willing to pay that amount every week and since almost everyone in chicago took bribes back then the fact that eliot ness and his men didn't is what made them stand out you fellas are untouchable is that the thing no one can get to you and you talk upon hey everyone can begotten then i'll see him in hell but just because ness refused to take bribes didn't make him squeaky clean the scene where he tells the chicago police to stop drinking because it's against the law is a little hypocritical considering that the real man was a heavy drinker himself next up we have the italian cop george stone who is also called giuseppe betheri stone is a completely fictional character and have been unable to find evidence of the untouchables ever having any italians on the team my guess is that the filmmakers needed at least one italian good guy so they wouldn't feel too one-sided with the villains then we have jimmy malone who has performed superbly by sean connery he is undoubtedly my favorite character in the movie even though sean connery has the worst irish accent i've ever heard albeit slightly more convincing than his spanish one in highlander i'm not spanish i'm egyptian anyway the character of jimmy malone is the most interesting to me because he's an old beat cop who knows the streets of chicago and he takes elliot ness under his wing so you have a mentor student relationship going on between them sadly jimmy malone is also fictional character but he does seem to be loosely based on a real guy called michael malone who works as an undercover agent for the irs but what malone was working on had nothing to do what the untouchables were doing so eliot ness and michael malone never met what michael malone had done was successfully infiltrate capone's inner circle and kept tabs in all his illegal money-making schemes and it was his investigation that was crucial in capone's downfall and had nothing to do with the prohibition case the untouchables were working on which brings me to the final guy on ness's team oscar wallace right from his introduction wallace pitches his idea to eliot ness of what he thinks will be the key to putting away al capone he has not filed a return since 1926. a return an income tax return at first nest dismisses the idea and focuses his investigation on component's bootlegging operation but eventually he comes around and sees that arresting the mobster for income tax evasion really is the most effective way however the character oscar wallace didn't exist but he does seem to be heavily inspired by the real historical figure frank j wilson and wallace does resemble him a little bit frank wilson was the real hero brought down capone not eliot ness he was an irs agent who was tasked to dig up all the files he could possibly find and link the undeclared millions between capone and his gang throughout his investigation he stayed in his stuffy office and read countless documents before finding ledgers that incriminated capone himself it was his investigation and that of michael malone's that contributed the most in capone's prosecution but the reason why their efforts are credited by elianes in the movie is because bookkeeping and tedious paperwork is nowhere near as exciting as a prohibition team getting into gun fights and taking on the chicago mafia but even that never happened not a single member of the untouchables was killed during their investigation nor do they ever travel to the u.s canadian border and get into a wild west shootout with a bunch of mobsters smuggling in canadian whiskey which by the way never made sense to me i'm not entirely convinced whether the canadian mounties would risk their lives confiscating smuggled whiskey since alcohol was completely legal in canada i mean i can't say for certain though but i would love to read your comments about this there's also the scene where elliot ness takes on the real life gangster frank ditty it starts off when ness spots nity carrying a pistol in court and he summons a police officer to escort him out to be disarmed now a cool thing to know is that one of capone's henchmen was removed from court for carrying a gun but it wasn't frank nitti so out in the hall nitty shows the two that he has a permit for his pistol and what i thought was a really nice touch is that the permit was signed by william hale thompson the mayor of chicago this didn't happen of course but it still feels authentic since the real williams thompson was deep in capone's pocket and is remembered as one of the most corrupt politicians in american history so anyway when frank niti gets his gun back an altercation between him and ness erupts into a rooftop chase scene that ultimately concludes with ness straight up murdering the man by chucking him off a building into a parked car and then ness says my favorite line in the entire movie where is niddy he's in the car [Applause] as much as i would love that scene to be true it sadly isn't eliot ness never killed frank nitty nitty didn't die until 1943 when he committed suicide so that's another exciting bit in the movie that was made up for dramatic effect the same goes for the final big shootout i'm talking about the scene with the untouchables and some mobsters get into a gunfight at union station whilst a baby in a pram starts tumbling down the stairs the scene is actually inspired by the odessa step sequence from the 1925 soviet silence film battleship potemkin if you put both scenes side by side you could see it's a great homage to one of the most important films ever made so if all the best bits in the film didn't happen what did the real untouchables do exactly and why weren't they the ones to bring down al capone well when the federal government decided to originally go on the offensive they did so by planning a two-pronged attack one was by investigating capone's tax evasion through the irs and the other would be by targeting his bootlegging operations with the bureau of prohibition what the untouchables mainly did was rate suspected breweries and destroy any illegal liquor they found at first these rates were successful and provokes capone into ordering a kill order in them i want you to get this [ __ ] where he brings i want you to find this nancy boy elliott ness i want him dead i want his family dead i want his house birthed to the ground i want to go to the middle and i don't want to piss out it wasn't long before the success of the raids and the recognition by the press began to get into eliot ness's head and in a ludicrous fashion he would call journalists beforehand to let them know which brewery they were going to hit so he could have his picture taken right before they burst in through the door as expected some of these journalists were corrupt as well and they would give the mob a heads up when to clear the place and yet despite the hostility between the two it is widely believed that neither nest nor capone ever met in person there was never a confrontation at the lexington hotel or in the courtroom moving away from the untouchables for a bit i'd like to briefly cover the film's portrayal of al capone and i'm glad to say that they did a pretty good job capone really did reside at the luxury lexington hotel and he did flaunt his power by speaking to the press about his boot lacking rackets he not only bragged about it but he also played the victim which is what essentially made him into such a public figure and then there's the famous banquet scene where capone beats one of his henchmen to death with a baseball bat now i have to admit it that when i first watched it i thought it was made up just to show how evil he was but surprisingly this scene is based on a real event except it wasn't one guy capone killed with a bat but two what allegedly happened was that two of capone's hitmen one being albert and selmy and the other john scalise were hatching a plot to murder their boss and take over his empire learning about this capone invited the conspirators to a feast in their honor with all the other capos then halfway through the meal he had his men hold down the traitors as he beat them half to death with a baseball bat then they were finished off later with a few gunshots to the head and the final inaccuracy i think deserves to mention is the scene where the judge switches the jury halfway through the trial in the movie nest discovers a list showing that all the jurors have been bribed by capone and he tells the judge but the judge refuses to accept it as evidence until nest lies about it and says that his name was on the list too now whilst it's true that the entire jury was bribed for the capone case judge wilkinson certainly wasn't he had correctly anticipated that the jury would be bribed and right before the trial began he switched the juries so as you can see there are more things that the untouchables got wrong than it did get right the film was more interested in glamorizing the legend of elliot ness than revealing the true story normally that would frustrate me as a history buff but in the end i genuinely believe that these creative liberties still felt within the spirit of the period they didn't stretch things so far as to betray the source material of course i would prefer they tried sticking closer to the truth but the inaccuracies weren't enough to infuriate me in the end overall i'm willing to admit that it is a fun movie but it's clearly meant for a casual audience if that isn't a problem for you then i highly recommend you check it out well that about wraps it up my name is nick hodges and thanks for watching history buffs and remember if you like the show help the channel grow if you wish to support history buffs then you can now do so at patreon and as always let me know in the comment section what you thought about the untouchables and of course what historical movie should i review next in the meantime check out the history bus twitter and facebook page for new updates until then i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: History Buffs

Views: 3,619,205

Keywords: The Untouchables, Robert De Niro, Kevin Costner, Andy Garcia, Sean Connery, History Buffs, Elliot Ness, Prohibition, Chicago, 1930's, 1920's, Beer, Speakeasy, Volstead Act, Historically Accurate, Historically Inaccurate, Al Capone, Alcohol, Scoff Law, 18th Amendment, Scar Face, Mafia, Review

Id: argZPb1kVUo

Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 01 2018