Program
Capone had previously housed his headquarters at the Metropole Hotel in Chicago, but in July 1928 moved to a suite at the nearby Lexington Hotel. Capone ran his various enterprises from this hotel until his arrest in 1931. A construction company in the 1980s planned a renovation of the Lexington Hotel, and while surveying the building had discovered a number of walled-off subterranean chambers on the property. [3]
Geraldo Rivera had been fired from ABC in 1985 after criticizing the network for canceling a report on the relationship between John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. [4] He then hosted the special The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults which was broadcast live on April 21, 1986. The two-hour special (including commercials) was greatly hyped as potentially revealing great riches or dead bodies on live television. This included the presence of a medical examiner should bodies be found, and agents from the Internal Revenue Service to collect any of Capone's money that might be discovered. [3]
When the vault was finally opened, the only things found inside were dirt and several empty bottles, including one Rivera claimed was for moonshine bathtub gin. After several attempts to dig further into the vault, Geraldo admitted defeat and voiced his disappointment to the viewers, apologizing as he thanked the excavation team for their efforts. Although it gathered criticism and became infamous for its disappointing ending, the program was the most-watched syndicated television special that year with an estimated audience of 30 million. [3] After the show, Rivera was quoted as saying "Seems like we struck out". [5] Geraldo said on the April 20, 2016, edition of the Fox News Channel program The Five that he went right across the street and got "tequila drunk" after the special aired, then went back to his hotel room and put the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. However, in his 1991 autobiography Exposing Myself, he wrote, regarding the event, "My career was not over, I knew, but had just begun. And all because of a silly, high-concept stunt that failed to deliver on its titillating promise."
Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.
Roone Pinckney Arledge Jr. was an American sports and news broadcasting executive who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main television networks, NBC and CBS, in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s. He created many programs still airing today, such as Monday Night Football, ABC World News Tonight, Nightline and 20/20. John Heard portrayed him in the 2002 TNT movie Monday Night Mayhem.
Geraldo Rivera is an American journalist, attorney, author, and political commentator who worked at the Fox News Channel from 2001 to 2023. He hosted the tabloid talk show Geraldo from 1987 to 1998. He gained publicity with the live 1986 TV special The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults. Rivera hosted the news magazine program Geraldo at Large, hosts the occasional broadcast of Geraldo Rivera Reports. He served as a rotating co-host of The Five from 2022 to 2023.
Eliot Ness was an American Prohibition agent known for his efforts to bring down Al Capone while enforcing Prohibition in Chicago. He was leader of a team of law enforcement agents nicknamed The Untouchables, handpicked for their incorruptibility. The release of his memoir The Untouchables, months after his death, launched several screen portrayals establishing a posthumous fame for Ness as an incorruptible crime fighter.
ABC News is the news division of the American television network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ABC World News Tonight with David Muir; other programs include morning news-talk show Good Morning America, Nightline, Primetime, 20/20, and Sunday morning political affairs program This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
John Donato Torrio was an Italian-born American mobster who helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s later inherited by his protégé Al Capone. Torrio proposed a National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and later became an adviser to Lucky Luciano and his Luciano crime family.
A Current Affair is an American television newsmagazine program that aired in syndication from July 28, 1986, to August 30, 1996, before it was briefly rebroadcast from March to October 2005. The program was produced by Fox Television Stations, and based at Fox's New York City flagship station WNYW, starting as a local production in 1986. It was syndicated to Fox's other owned-and-operated stations the next year, and then went into full national syndication in September 1988. Its signature "ka-chung" sound effect was created using a combination of the sound of a construction paper cutter and the swing of a golf club put through a synthesizer.
ESPN on ABC is the branding used for sports event and documentary programming televised by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in the United States. Officially, the broadcast network retains its own sports division; however, in 2006, ABC's sports division was merged into ESPN Inc., which is the parent subsidiary of the cable sports network ESPN that is majority owned by ABC's corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company, in partnership with Hearst Communications.
Douglas Steele Llewelyn is an American television personality, best known as the original host of the court show The People's Court from 1981 to 1993. Previously a news reporter, Llewelyn has produced numerous television specials, including The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults in 1986, and launched Judge Judy in 1996. Llewelyn subsequently returned to hosting The People's Court from 2016 to 2023.
Tribune Entertainment was a television production and broadcast syndication company owned and operated by Tribune Broadcasting. It was started in 1964 as a subsidiary of WGN-TV in Chicago. Many programs offered from Tribune Entertainment have been broadcast on the company's television stations.
Geraldo Rivera Reports, also known as Geraldo at Large, is an American television newsmagazine hosted by Fox News correspondent-at-large and former talk show host Geraldo Rivera.
The Untouchables is a 1987 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma, produced by Art Linson, and written by David Mamet. The film is loosely based on the book of the same name (1957), the TV series that ran from 1959 to 1963 and the real-life events it was based on, but most of its plot is fictionalized. The film stars Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy García, Robert De Niro, and Sean Connery, and follows Eliot Ness (Costner) as he forms the Untouchables team to bring Al Capone to justice during Prohibition. The Grammy Award–winning score was composed by Ennio Morricone and features period music by Duke Ellington.
Gus Alex was an American mobster affiliated with the Chicago Outfit, who succeeded Jake Guzik and Murray Humphreys as the Outfit's main political briber and "fixer".
The Atlantic City Conference held between 13–16 May 1929 was a historic summit of leaders of organized crime in the United States. It is considered by most crime historians to be the earliest organized crime summit held in the US. The conference had a major impact on the future direction of the criminal underworld and it held more importance and significance than the Havana Conference of 1946 and the Apalachin meeting of 1957. It also represented the first concrete move toward a National Crime Syndicate.
Ralph James Capone was an Italian-American mobster and an older brother of Al Capone and Frank Capone. He got the nickname "Bottles" not from involvement in the Capone bootlegging empire, but from his running the legitimate non-alcoholic beverage and bottling operations in Chicago. Further family lore suggests that the nickname was specifically tied to his lobbying the Illinois Legislature to put into law that milk bottling companies had to stamp the date that the milk was bottled on the bottle. He was most famous for being named by the Chicago Crime Commission "Public Enemy Number Three" when his brother Al was "Public Enemy Number One".
The Lexington Hotel was a ten-story hotel in Chicago at 2135 S. Michigan Avenue.
ABC's Wide World of Entertainment is a late night television block of programs created by the ABC television network. It premiered on January 8, 1973, and ended three years later. The title was based on the long-running broadcast ABC's Wide World of Sports; there was also an ABC's Wide World of Mystery broadcast from 1973 to 1978.
Billy Ray "Bill" Foster was an American television director known for his work with sitcoms. His credits, which spanned more than fifty years and encompassed hundreds of hours, included episodes of Full House, Sanford and Son, Amen, Marblehead Manor and You Again?.
Eaten Alive is an American nature documentary special which aired on Discovery Channel on December 7, 2014. The special focused on an expedition by wildlife author and entertainer Paul Rosolie to locate a green anaconda named "Chumana", which he believed to be the world's longest, in a remote location of the Amazon rainforest in the Puerto Maldonado, Peru.
The 1924 Cicero, Illinois, municipal elections were elections held in 1924 to select municipal officers in Cicero, Illinois. The elections were notable for the gang-related violence which took place.
