00:20 - Welcome to Courage,

00:21 - Sport, Pennsylvania and the Eliot Ness Museum.

00:24 - I'm Steve Green, the founder of the museum,

00:26 - which we started in 2019 here in KOTOR Sport.

00:30 - We're going to talk today about the the three main

00:33 - chapters of Eliot Ness, the highlights of his career,

00:36 - and so that you'll understand why is this museum in college sport.

00:39 - And in fact, Eliot Ness, his first office when he came to cover sport,

00:43 - is upstairs in this building right over my head.

00:46 - We're in two buildings here that were built in 1880 and 1881.

00:50 - They're combined on this floor.

00:52 - It was a time after college sport, largely.

00:54 - The town burned down in the 1870s.

00:57 - We hold festivals here in college sport for Eliot Ness,

01:02 - and this museum got started after our second festival in 2018.

01:08 - In terms of the three chapters of Eliot Ness, his life, as I call them,

01:12 - I'm going to talk first about Chicago, which is what he's most known for

01:16 - in the takedown of Al Capone during Prohibition.

01:20 - Then I'll talk about Cleveland,

01:22 - which is actually lesser known for being, in my view,

01:25 - more accomplished in Cleveland than even he was in Chicago.

01:31 - Then we're going to talk about powder sport, because it's fundamentally

01:34 - important that everyone understands why is this museum in college sport?

01:39 - Why does counter sport claim dibs on Eliot Ness?

01:43 - And why does college sport have this big festival of Eliot Ness

01:47 - every summer in July 1st in Chicago,

01:52 - it was the 19 tens prohibition, probably America's

01:56 - greatest failed social experiment of all time,

02:00 - and probably gave rise to who I feel is America's first and still

02:04 - most notorious gangster of all time, Al Capone, basically.

02:09 - In fact, in my view, Capone was one of the people

02:12 - who invented organized crime in America.

02:16 - Capone started taking advantage of the situation when prohibition

02:19 - was passed of bootlegging, booze on the on the black market,

02:23 - making money hand over fist in Chicago.

02:26 - In fact, Capone got to the point where he could just

02:29 - about buy off all the politicians, judges, cops.

02:33 - He got to the point where he almost owns Chicago.

02:36 - He was extorting businesses, expanding businesses

02:39 - into gambling, racketeering, prostitution.

02:43 - And then other gangs started rising up because they wanted a piece of the action.

02:49 - You might have heard of the Bugs Moran, an Irish gang.

02:52 - Other gangs started rising up to the point

02:55 - where violence in Chicago was really getting out of hand,

03:00 - to the point where Chicagoans and businesses in Chicago

03:03 - called on the Treasury Department, the US Treasury Department,

03:07 - Bureau of Prohibition, the federal agency responsible for enforcing Prohibition.

03:13 - The public asked the Treasury Department

03:15 - to do something about Al Capone.

03:18 - It was then that the Treasury Department turned to Eliot Ness

03:22 - and hired Eliot Ness to take down Capone.

03:26 - Early on in those days, Ness

03:29 - and his agents who he had recruited early on, they deservedly got the nickname

03:34 - The Untouchables, because Capone could not bribe ness.

03:38 - Ness was incorruptible, as were as agents who he had carefully selected.

03:44 - And one thing you'll find as you go through the museum,

03:47 - one of the most important things we do here is celebrate law enforcement.

03:52 - Because Eliot Ness was a model for good law enforcement.

03:57 - Honest, fair, incorruptible,

04:01 - unbiased, relentless, humble.

04:04 - All the features you'd want in a good cop.

04:06 - Ness was a perfect cop.

04:07 - And so in this museum, we celebrate law enforcement,

04:11 - as we do in our annual Eliot Ness Festival that we have every July.

04:17 - So you'll see evidence of of of all that and law enforcement throughout the museum.

04:22 - By way of example,

04:24 - it's ATF today, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

04:28 - That is the present day federal agency

04:31 - that NASA's first federal agency, the U.S.

04:34 - Treasury Department, Bureau of Prohibition, has actually today

04:38 - morphed into today, having moved to the DOJ.

04:42 - And then ultimately today's federal agency for whom NASA's

04:46 - their legacy is ATF.

04:49 - This is what we call our Great Wall of ATF in the museum.

04:53 - It's one of actually many exhibits about ATF here, but this is the largest one.

04:58 - And what you'll find is, for example, all of the badges that were worn

05:02 - by ATF federal agents, of course,

05:05 - they weren't ATF until 1972,

05:08 - but going back all the way to 19, 1862.

05:11 - This is a history of the badges of ATF.

05:14 - These are some images of two of ATF's

05:17 - major divisions, the national response team images on the left.

05:22 - And you'll see this woman responding.

05:24 - That's an actual action shot at some undisclosed event.

05:28 - And you'll see the agent in the background.

05:31 - Looks like he's literally running for his life right there.

05:34 - We've recreated the look of the woman that you see in the foreground.

05:39 - These are images of ATF special response team.

05:42 - These are the agents that respond to the really bad guys

05:46 - and a lot of bad events and incidents.

05:49 - And you can see how they're equipped and so forth.

05:52 - Now times you'll find things in the museum that may not be explained,

05:56 - but that in fact are particularly important, for example, and a bit

06:00 - have a bit of a nuance.

06:02 - For example, these candles, which we don't explain unless I'm showing

06:07 - them to you or one of my colleagues, are the actual candles

06:11 - that were burned at Eliot Ness, his first and only funeral.

06:14 - 40 years after his death in 1997 at the Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland.

06:20 - The funeral was arranged by my friend and colleague, and that's a story.

06:24 - And Rebecca McFarland of Cleveland.

06:27 - And she donated these candles,

06:29 - which were only ever lit once, which she lit at NASA's funeral.

06:33 - She donated these to the museum.

06:36 - So now

06:37 - Eliot Ness has been recruited by the Treasury Department of Prohibition.

06:41 - He's got his guys lined up and they start going after their mission.

06:46 - He's charged with the mission of taking down Al Capone.

06:50 - And in the end, that's why these guys did take down Al Capone.

06:54 - And it wasn't because they ever got him, for example,

06:58 - for one of the countless murders.

06:59 - Capone was probably responsible for

07:03 - in the end, they got him for tax evasion.

07:06 - But in essence, this guy still got the lion's

07:08 - share of the credit for that because they made that possible

07:11 - by disrupting Capone's businesses to the point

07:15 - where they could get into his books.

07:17 - And it's a lot easier, as most people know,

07:20 - to convict someone when it's on paper than it would be,

07:23 - for example, to convict Capone and send him up for life on a murder case.

07:27 - So while that wasn't quite as satisfying in 1931, Capone was convicted

07:33 - for tax evasion and shipped off to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

07:39 - Here, for

07:39 - example, is a replica of the death of a desperate

07:42 - might have looked like Eliot Ness in the days they were.

07:46 - He was working with his guys to take down Al Capone.

07:49 - We've recreated it even to include items from the period

07:53 - like the candlestick phone, the desk lamp and so forth

07:57 - over here.

07:57 - My my friend Tom TOMSIC from Salamanca

08:01 - restored this 1925 Model-T truck

08:05 - and created the back as a paddy wagon.

08:07 - And he actually did that expressly for our first Eliot ness,

08:11 - for our second Eliot Ness Festival, where we reenacted the trial of Capone.

08:16 - And spoiler alert, we convicted him after the trial.

08:21 - Our Al Capone, our our cast member was then taken out of the courtroom

08:26 - and put in the back of this truck and hauled to our absolutely

08:30 - beautiful drop dead stone jail down the street here in Cutter's port.

08:35 - Now, here's an interesting exhibit in the museum that actually was

08:38 - one of our first exhibits in 2019, donated by my friend Dr.

08:43 - Veazey Cullen of York, Pennsylvania.

08:47 - This is his Rolls-Royce

08:48 - that his dad and he restored when he was young.

08:52 - It's a 1924 Rolls-Royce Roadster.

08:56 - Now, that car was actually owned

08:59 - by Colonel Robert Byrd McCormick, who you see pictured here when McCormick was

09:04 - the publisher and editor of the Chicago Tribune

09:07 - during the days of Nelson Capone.

09:10 - Now, during those days, because of his coverage with Capone, one of his reporters

09:15 - was shot dead in the middle of the street in broad daylight.

09:19 - It was after that that McCormick

09:22 - bulletproof that car when at that time it was actually a sedan.

09:26 - And that car, which comes to our festivals

09:29 - every year, was one of the first cars ever bulletproof in the United States.

09:36 - And this is our dear

09:37 - friend and museum partner, Scott Sroka, who is the grandson of the actual

09:42 - untouchable Joe Leeson, who was Eliot Ness, his driver

09:46 - Scott, who was also a prosecutor in real life,

09:49 - portrayed prosecutor George GQ Johnson in our reenactment of Capone's

09:55 - tax evasion trial and our Eliot Ness

09:58 - Fest 2018 and 2019.

10:02 - Okay, so it's 1931.

10:04 - It's still Prohibition.

10:06 - Not long after Ness got Capone out of the picture,

10:10 - the mayor of Cleveland, who was a nice guy,

10:13 - but at the same time, Cleveland was had a lot of corruption.

10:17 - The police department politician were corrupt,

10:19 - but the mayor of Cleveland was not.

10:22 - And he saw what Ness did with Capone in Chicago

10:25 - and hired Eliot Ness to come to Cleveland

10:28 - as Cleveland's public safety director.

10:31 - Now, that included police, fire and emergency services.

10:35 - It's a big deal job.

10:36 - Cleveland's a big city, and this is only about 30 years old when he took this job

10:43 - in the few short years.

10:44 - And this was in Cleveland.

10:46 - He did clean up Cleveland.

10:47 - He rooted out the bad cops out of the police force.

10:50 - He worked with youth to prevent juvenile crime.

10:53 - He used innovative

10:55 - law enforcement techniques, both in terms of technique in technology.

10:59 - And by the time this was done, cleaning up Cleveland and turning it around.

11:03 - Cleveland actually went from being considered one of the most

11:06 - dangerous cities in America to actually earning the nickname

11:10 - and the National Award as America's safest city.

11:15 - Two other things happened in Cleveland of great importance

11:17 - that were on the negative side.

11:20 - There was a serial killer at the time nicknamed the Mad Butcher

11:24 - or the torso killer, and I won't get any more graphic about his deeds.

11:29 - But this knew who the guy was.

11:31 - But he could never nail the guy.

11:33 - And to this day, the case has never been closed.

11:37 - Now, during the course of NASA's efforts

11:40 - to get the mad butcher,

11:42 - he employed some really innovative technology.

11:45 - He actually interrogated this fella

11:48 - who was an ankle doctor on a lie detector.

11:52 - Now, this is the 1930s.

11:53 - And during the course of this interrogation, the suspect

11:58 - pointed to the guy sitting next to Nass, and he said, Who's that guy?

12:02 - And they said, Well, that's so Mr. So-and-so.

12:04 - And he invented this machine.

12:06 - That's how early on Eliot Ness employed technology like that.

12:11 - Now, during the course of the interrogation,

12:14 - the suspect, this maniacal doctor who was actually pretty smart, asked Nass,

12:20 - Can you use these results against me in a court of law?

12:23 - And of course, Nass said no, because at that time and in that state, you couldn't.

12:28 - It was then this really knew that this was the killer,

12:31 - because then the killer taunted Nass, knowing no matter what he told them,

12:36 - it couldn't be used against them.

12:38 - The other thing I'll mention about Cleveland,

12:41 - because this was recognized as having led the effort

12:44 - to turn Cleveland around to America's safest city.

12:48 - And because of that, his peers, colleagues and friends

12:51 - persuaded him to run for mayor of Cleveland.

12:54 - But because this was such a lousy politician

12:57 - and in part because he never

12:59 - solved this serial killer crime,

13:01 - he lost by a landslide.

13:04 - Now, here's an interesting side story about NASA's

13:07 - days in Cleveland that you'll find in the museum.

13:10 - And you'll find a lot of side stories in the museum that aren't very well known.

13:15 - But during that time, when this was cleaning up Cleveland

13:19 - and breaking up the mob who had been extorting businesses,

13:23 - stouffer's, who at the time

13:25 - ran upscale restaurants in Cleveland.

13:28 - They were so appreciative that we're getting extorted by the mob.

13:32 - They were so appreciative of NASA's efforts.

13:35 - The staffers allowed ness and at that time his second wife, Evelyn,

13:39 - to live in their boathouse.

13:41 - Now, you might think that's not a particularly nice place to live,

13:43 - but the Stouffer's Boathouse

13:45 - was nearly a match and it was quite a nice place to live.

13:49 - During the course of that time and the investors loved that, Evelyn

13:52 - liked to get to know the staffers

13:55 - and the social life associated with wealthy people.

13:58 - And it was during that time that Eliot Ness actually was influential

14:03 - in persuading Stouffer's to get into the frozen food business.

14:07 - And Stouffer's now today is one of the biggest companies in that business.

14:12 - This was really

14:13 - innovative in his days in Cleveland, as well as throughout his career in both

14:18 - in employing innovative law enforcement techniques as well as technology.

14:23 - In fact, this was one of the first persons to employ widely

14:28 - in a large city the use of a squad car.

14:31 - As you see in this Dick Tracy exhibit, who actually Eliot Ness

14:36 - was the model for the comic strip character Dick Tracy.

14:40 - They employ patrol cars and radio cars in part to make it safer

14:46 - for his officers who beforehand had been walking the beat, often alone.

14:51 - And now they're in a patrol car

14:53 - with another officer with them in the buddy system.

14:56 - And you can imagine how much more efficient they were

14:58 - when they could employ radios to communicate among themselves

15:02 - to chase down a suspect, for example.

15:05 - Now, some of the most

15:06 - authoritative authors on both Nelson Kaplan

15:10 - are my friend and partner of the museum, Brad Schwartz.

15:14 - This young fellow right here, and Max Collins, who picked up,

15:17 - by the way, the Dick Tracy comic strip when its creator passed,

15:21 - who wrote and researched the most of what I consider to be

15:25 - the most authoritative book on Eliot Ness and Al Capone

15:28 - during their days in Chicago, Scarface and the Untouchable.

15:33 - These two authors also paired

15:35 - to write Eliot Ness in the Mad Butcher, chronicling

15:39 - the mad butcher case of the serial killer in Cleveland.

15:43 - This is my dear friend and museum partner Paul Hamill's exhibit.

15:47 - Paul is the author of three Eliot Ness books

15:51 - and is known in Eliot Ness circles as the Dean of Eliot Ness Research.

15:56 - Now, is

15:57 - this real examples of how innovative Ness was in terms of both using

16:02 - law enforcement, innovative law enforcement techniques

16:05 - and emergency services techniques and technology?

16:09 - This is an example

16:11 - of a combination ambulance paddy wagon.

16:14 - That ness was one of the first to employ in a large scale way in a major city.

16:19 - And this is actually a restored replica

16:23 - of one of those ambulance paddy wagons

16:26 - that our friends at the Cleveland Police Museum restored.

16:29 - And in fact, that's one of our partners, Jimmy Traynor of the Cleveland

16:33 - Police Museum, former officer of Cleveland Police.

16:37 - They bring that ambulance to our festivals every July.

16:41 - In fact, an interesting mention for the museum about two years ago,

16:44 - in the early days of the museum, a fella came in.

16:48 - His name was Ryan Corbett Bell, and he saw this exhibit

16:52 - and he exclaimed to me, Holy cow.

16:55 - I wrote about that ambulance in my book and you'll see here, Ryan has written

17:00 - one of the most authoritative books on the history of the ambulance,

17:03 - and he wrote about Ness and this ambulance in his book.

17:08 - Another example of NASA's expertize

17:11 - in the area of emergency services, fire protection and firefighting

17:16 - is the example you see in this actual Look magazine from 1941.

17:20 - The in-depth article that Ness coauthored and was published in that issue

17:24 - of Look magazine,

17:26 - another lesser known story

17:28 - about Eliot Ness is that after his days in Cleveland,

17:32 - he also ran the Diebold safe and locked company out of Canton, Ohio.

17:36 - And we have an example of a competitor safe, similar to the Diebold Safe

17:41 - dating from the late 1800s in the museum in 1956.

17:46 - Next came to cover sport on what

17:49 - turned out to be a failed business venture.

17:52 - The company that had a proprietary formula for watermarking documents,

17:56 - legal documents so they couldn't be counterfeited or forged.

18:01 - Now, at that time, he was with his now third wife, Elizabeth,

18:05 - and their son, Robert.

18:07 - Now, as best we can determine, this was only encounters

18:10 - for ten months, maybe two, 12 months, because it's documented.

18:14 - He brought Elizabeth and Robert here in August of 56.

18:18 - He died in May of 57.

18:20 - That I'll talk about in a minute.

18:22 - But we also know he came to cover sport in advance of bringing Elizabeth Robert,

18:27 - as anyone might, to check out the whether they went to live here

18:30 - or whether he wants to take on this new job.

18:34 - In any event, his first office was

18:36 - actually upstairs at the museum, and he lived across

18:39 - the courthouse square in a house on the other side of the courthouse.

18:44 - Now, NASA's working on this business is failing.

18:48 - And the honest guy that this is, he's trying to recover

18:51 - the losses of his investors, a lot of whom were local folks.

18:55 - And he's trying to pay the bills,

18:57 - which he can't, because the company has no money.

19:00 - And you'll find examples in the Museum of Letters

19:03 - he was getting from creditors, asking for their money.

19:06 - So in May of 1957,

19:09 - this was a feeling one well, one day walked home to his house

19:14 - across the courthouse square was drawing a glass of water

19:17 - from the kitchen sink and just dropped dead of a heart attack.

19:22 - Natural causes.

19:23 - And here's Eliot Ness.

19:24 - Dead at the young age of 54.

19:28 - Now, you might ask.

19:29 - Okay, well, this came to counter sport, failed at this business, and he died here.

19:33 - But is that enough reason for you folks in Carter's support to claim dibs on this

19:37 - and have an Eliot Ness museum in encourage sport and this big festival?

19:42 - Well, no, I don't think it

19:44 - really is, because the other thing that happened

19:47 - in those few 10 to 12 short months ness was here.

19:50 - He was telling one of his colleagues in this company

19:53 - about his exploits with Capone in Chicago.

19:56 - And this fellow knew another fellow in New York City

20:00 - named Oscar Fraley.

20:02 - Fraley was a syndicated sportswriter and a wannabe author.

20:06 - And this fellow told Fraley, he said,

20:09 - hey, there's a story here.

20:11 - So Fraley would start coming to cover sport to interview Neff.

20:16 - And Fraley would always stay at the Crittendon Hotel across the street

20:20 - from the museum to interview ness about his exploits with Capone.

20:25 - They would usually sit in the bar of the Crittendon Hotel, or

20:28 - maybe sometimes up in Frehley's room,

20:31 - or maybe chat over coffee at a local eatery.

20:34 - But it was Oscar Fraley who wrote the book

20:38 - The Untouchables, coauthored by Ness.

20:41 - But that's because this was the interviewee and had some notes.

20:45 - But it was Fraley who authored the book.

20:47 - So the story, The Untouchables was written and born right here in Courage, sport

20:53 - in the Crittendon Hotel, across the street from the museum.

20:57 - Now, to take that story a step farther,

21:01 - everybody's familiar with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

21:05 - Lucille Ball grew up near Jamestown, New York, not far from here.

21:09 - There's a museum there.

21:11 - The Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz Museum

21:14 - and their partners with us informally with this museum and at our festival.

21:19 - So it was Desi Luce Studios who bought the rights to the book

21:23 - and produced the TV show The Untouchables,

21:27 - starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness.

21:30 - And anybody My Generation and Robert Stack

21:34 - will always be Eliot Ness.

21:37 - That's what launched Eliot Ness.

21:38 - His fame and the story of The Untouchables made them famous worldwide.

21:44 - There are seven antique cars and trucks in the museum,

21:47 - and you'll find there are three vintage categories, basically to reflect

21:51 - the three areas of ness, the pre 1930

21:54 - fours as in these two examples beside me reflect

21:58 - what was on the streets when Ness was in Chicago.

22:02 - There's the 1934 Pure Sara that you see behind me.

22:06 - That's an example of what was on the streets when this was in Cleveland.

22:11 - And there's a 1950 Hudson convertible in a museum.

22:14 - That's an example of what was on the streets

22:16 - when Ness was here in counter support.

22:19 - Now, in the examples beside me, this

22:22 - 1929, Chrysler served in our first Eliot Ness Festival

22:26 - in 2018 as the next car in our reenactments.

22:30 - This 1928 Ford model truck

22:33 - was our bootleg booze running truck in that Eliot Ness Fest.

22:36 - And in 2019,

22:39 - among the

22:40 - countless interesting artifacts you'll find in this museum

22:44 - are some of the Capone artifacts,

22:46 - such as these many original family photos

22:50 - and prints from originals from the Capone family estate,

22:54 - including and also in this exhibit is a silver platter

22:58 - that was in the Lexington Hotel back in the days

23:01 - when that was Capone's headquarters and his residence until he was convicted

23:05 - for tax evasion in 1931.

23:09 - Now, this case, this is why counters pour.

23:13 - Here's the original book written by Fraley in the hotel across the street.

23:18 - These are some of the scripts and original screenplays for both the TV show

23:23 - and the 1987 Paramount movie, starring

23:26 - Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness.

23:29 - This is white powder sport,

23:31 - where the story of The Untouchables was written and born,

23:34 - and where Eliot Ness and his untouchables achieved their fame.

23:40 - So on

23:41 - behalf of the entire Eliot Ness museum team,

23:44 - I want to thank you for joining us here at the museum.

23:47 - We're a community nonprofit film museum.

23:49 - And if you want to learn more about the museum or events or donate,

23:54 - visit us at Eliot Ness Museum dot org.