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Re: RARA-AVIS: The Secret Six 

On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Ken Yousten wrote:

> What, in real life, were "The Secret Six"?  I first heard mention of them
> in a bio of Al Capone, it said they were a secret group of wealthy
> businessmen who worked behind-the-scenes against Capone, letting Elliot
> Ness and his Untouchables take the headlines.  Or something like that.

Any number of vigilante groups sprang up during Prohibition, some
physically violent, some financial, and some the equivalent of a
Neighborhood Watch. I have no corroboration for this, but I think The
Secret Six was just a cutesy name the newspapers tacked onto a standard
anti-crime society.  As far as Eliot Ness goes, he took a lot of credit
for things he didn't do.  He used to *announce* his raids well in advance,
so that the papers and the newsreel cameras would be there--so, of course,
only a handful of minor-level people and a dozen barrels of beer (or
something that foamed up nicely for the pictures) would be behind the door
once they'd knocked it down. 

> Then there was the 1931 gangster film THE SECRET SIX, which had the Six
> as a largely undefined group of men in black masks who met to plot
> against the gangsters/bootleggers.  Said gangsters were the best part of
> that movie, btw, entertaining hardboiled portrayals by Wallace Beery,
> Lewis Stone, Ralph Bellamy, and others made the forces of law and order
> look quite boring by comparison.

Yes, isn't it a terrific picture?  I find Ralph Bellamy particularly
fascinating--and it's such a shock to see him in something other than a
bumbling-nice-guy or Other Man role.  The scene where Beery's "social
secretary" changes his dictated threats into perfect business-letter
sentences is priceless.

The investigation of Scorpio's/Capone's (Beery) finances actually did
happen in real life, but not by the Secret Six, and not until after the
reporter's murder depicted in the film.  Unlike the virtuous character
played by Johnny Mack Brown, however, the real reporter, Alfred "Jake"
Lingle, had been taking bribes left and right, including a gold belt
buckle with his initials set in diamonds (changed to a jewelled cigarette
case in the film).  The character shows up in at least 25 post-1930 novels
and motion pictures: I presented a paper on them called "Martyr--What a
Laugh!:  Fiction and Film Depictions of the Lingle Case" at a popular
culture conference in 1995.

Katherine Harper
Department of English
Bowling Green State University
Visit the W.R. Burnett Page at http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~kharper/


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