Airing tonight on Arte, "Les Incorruptibles", with a terrifying Robert de Niro in Al Capone, is an absolute classic that we never tire of seeing. Among the memorable scenes of the film is that of the baseball bat. But did she exist?
Paramount Pictures
"I grew up in a nasty neighborhood where you are better off getting something with a nice word and a gun than with a nice word alone!" jokes Al Capone to an audience of reporters, while he shaves comfortably in his chair.
An opening for a cult film, for a film that is no less. Brian de Palma's Les Incorruptibles, released in 1987 and broadcast tonight on Arte, has become an absolute classic of cinema, with its five-star cast, in the midst of which emerges a fabulous Robert de Niro in the guise and costume of the most powerful Mafioso of the time, which was then living its heyday, in the midst of the Prohibition period.
Among the film's memorable sequences is this chilling and terrifying baseball bat scene, in which Al Capone, after extolling the merits of teamwork at a dinner party attended by his lieutenants, smashes from behind his head of one of them with the bat. The unfortunate man obviously seeing nothing coming, all busy pulling large volutes on his chair bar cigar ...
The sequence below. "I Get nowhere, unless the team wins!" ...
Not one, but three victims ...
Yes The Untouchables is not of an unfailing historical fidelity, de Palma logically taking certain liberties, this sequence would indeed have taken place, although in a noticeably different way ... And worse, if one dares to say.
John Scalise and Albert Anselmi were two gangsters who worked for Al Capone as henchmen, known for their ferocity, particularly feared. It is in particular to them that we owe the very famous massacre of Saint Valentine ordered by Capone, which occurred on February 14, 1929: 7 men were executed, belonging to the North Side mafia, predominantly Irish and controlled by Bugs Moran, rival of Al Capone.
Here is what they looked like below. On the left, Albert Anselmi; on the right John (or Giovanni) Scalise:
In May 1929, John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, and another mafia man named Joseph "Hop Toad" Giunta, began plotting against Al Capone, to join the ranks of a rival mafia boss, Joe Aiello.
Capone's bodyguard, Frankie Rio, discovers the plan of betrayal, and logically warns his boss. Capone decides to organize a small meeting with his henchmen to confuse those who intend to betray him. In reality, it is a staging to obtain formal proof of their betrayal.
Capone slaps Rio in front of the others, and the latter runs out of the room. A little later, Scalise, Anselmi and Giunta, witnesses of the sequence, offer Frankie Rio to join them, thinking that he is also trying to betray Capone ...
A few days later, Capone had a big banquet organized, bringing together his capos and other important personalities from his mafia empire. As the meal draws to a close, Scalise, Anselmi, and Giunta are strapped to their chairs. They are insulted, while the other guests spit on them. And end up being riddled with .38 caliber bullets in the face, chest, arms and legs.
The legend retained in the Mafia circles is especially that of Capone, who would have beaten them one by one, with a baseball bat, leaving them almost for dead. Before being actually finished off with a revolver bullet. However, there is no formal proof that Capone participated in this evening, or that he himself participated in the killing. Because he was already at that time under the sieve of the Chicago authorities, and he had already long passed the stage of doing the dirty work with his own hands, when one of his many killers could do it without problem for him. ...
Still, their corpses are dumped on the side of a road not far from the town of Hammond, Indiana, where they were found on May 8, 1929.
Here is the snapshot taken of the three corpses at the Hammond Mortuary. From left to right: Joseph "Hoptoad" Giunta, Alberto Anselmi and John Scalise:
