Fame usually doesn’t last forever; sometimes iteven ebbs and flows. Eliot Ness, the hard-hitting Prohibition agent in AlCapone’s Chicago, was all over the newspapers in the 1920s, but by the time hedied of heart attack in his kitchen, at age 55, he was as forgotten asyesterday’s papers.
This was 1957, shortly after he told his storyto hack writer Oscar Fraley, who exaggerated everything in the name of dramaticlicense and turned a decent cop story into thumping pulp fiction. Fraley soldhis biography, published months after Ness’ death, to television, where itbecame the long-running “Untouchables” show. Overnight, Eliot Ness becameAmerica’s most famous federal agent. As played by Kevin Costner in the hit filmThe Untouchables (1987), Nessreceived a third shot of fame.
Will there be a fourth?
Douglas Perry’s biography Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero (Viking) doesn’texplore the future of the agent’s fame, but sets the record straight about hisaccomplishments. In Fraley’s telling, the agent brought down a slew of kingpinsthrough detective work and bravado, but legends inevitably attract debunkers.Some claimed Ness was an incompetent gloryhound; in his “Prohibition”documentary, Ken Burns called him “a PR invention.” Perry establishes the truthas somewhere in the middle. His Ness was brave and unassuming, an honest cop ina dishonest agency who became a thorn under the feet of bootleggers, but notthe cause of their downfall. Capone was caught for tax evasion. Ness’ gangbustingwas a colorful sideshow Fraley and Hollywood turned into memorable fiction.
The Ness that emerges from The Rise and Fall of an American Hero was honorable but troubled, aworkaholic with a pair of troubled marriages and ironically, given hisProhibition gangbusting, an alcoholic. Fact can be more interesting thanfiction.
