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Arnold Rothstein
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Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein (January 17, 1882–November 4, 1928) was a New York businessman and gambler who became a famous kingpin of organized crime. Rothstein was also widely reputed to have been behind baseball's Black Sox Scandal, in which the 1919 World Series was fixed. His notoriety inspired several fictional characters based on his life, including "Meyer Wolfsheim" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, and "Nathan Detroit" in the Damon Runyon story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, which was made into the musical Guys and Dolls.
According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top." According to Rich Cohen, Rothstein was the person who first saw in Prohibition a business opportunity, a means to enormous wealth, who "understood the truths of early century capitalism (hypocrisy, exclusion, greed) and came to dominate them".
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Encyclopedia
Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein (January 17, 1882–November 4, 1928) was a New York businessman and gambler who became a famous kingpin of organized crime. Rothstein was also widely reputed to have been behind baseball's Black Sox Scandal, in which the 1919 World Series was fixed. His notoriety inspired several fictional characters based on his life, including "Meyer Wolfsheim" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, and "Nathan Detroit" in the Damon Runyon story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, which was made into the musical Guys and Dolls.
According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top." According to Rich Cohen, Rothstein was the person who first saw in Prohibition a business opportunity, a means to enormous wealth, who "understood the truths of early century capitalism (hypocrisy, exclusion, greed) and came to dominate them". Rothstein was the Moses of the Jewish gangsters, according to Cohen, the progenitor, a rich man's son who showed the young hoodlums of the Bowery how to have style; indeed, the man who, the Sicilian-American gangster Lucky Luciano would later say, "taught me how to dress."
Prohibition and organized crime
With the advent of Prohibition, Rothstein diversified into bootlegging and narcotics. His criminal organization included such underworld luminaries as Meyer Lansky, Jack "Legs" Diamond, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Rothstein's various nicknames were Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, The Big Bankroll and The Brain. Rothstein frequently mediated differences between the New York gangs and reportedly charged a hefty fee for his services. His favorite "office" was Lindy's Restaurant, at Broadway and 49th Street in Manhattan, where he would stand on the corner surrounded by his bodyguards and do business on the street. Rothstein made bets and collected debts from those who had lost the previous day.
Murder
On November 3, 1928, Arnold Rothstein was shot and mortally wounded while conducting some business affairs at Manhattan's Park Central Hotel. He died the next day at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital in Manhattan. The shooting was allegedly linked to a gambling event that Rothstein had participated in the previous month with several associates and acquaintances. According to underworld folklore, it was a spectacular three-day, high-stakes poker game held somewhere in Manhattan. Rothstein apparently experienced a cold streak with the cards and ended up owing $320,000 at the end of the game. However, Rothstein refused to pay the debt, claiming the game was fixed. The hit was arranged to punish Rothstein for welshing on this debt. Gambler George "Hump" McManus was arrested for the murder, but later acquitted for lack of evidence. Rothstein, on his deathbed, refused to identify his killer, answering police inquiries with "You stick to your trade. I'll stick to mine" and "Me mudder did it". Rothstein was buried at Ridgewood's Union Field Cemetery in a Jewish Orthodox ceremony.
Another theory about Rothstein's death is offered by crime reporter Paul Sann in his book Kill the Dutchman. Sann alleges that Dutch Schultz murdered Rothstein in retaliation for the murder of Schultz's friend and associate, Joey Noe, by Rothstein's protégé, Jack "Legs" Diamond.
Frank Erickson, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and other former associates inherited Rothstein's various "enterprises" after his death. Politically, Rothstein's death contributed to the fall of the corrupt Democratic political machine known as Tammany Hall and the rise of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
Ten years after his death, Arnold Rothstein's only surviving brother declared Rothstein's estate bankrupt.
In popular culture
- The author F. Scott Fitzgerald used Arnold Rothstein as the inspiration for Jay Gatsby's crooked associate Meyer Wolfsheim in the novel The Great Gatsby. At one point, Gatsby says to narrator Nick Carraway, "That's the man who fixed the 1919 World Series."
- Rothstein's legendary pool-playing marathon, against a Philadelphia pool shark called Jack Conway shipped in by Rothstein's enemies to humiliate him, took place over two days and nights in 1911 at McGraw's Billiard Parlor, off Herald Square in Manhattan. Rothstein just kept playing and betting until Conway's backers had lost $10,000. Eventually, the owner (John McGraw) stepped in and shut down the hall, saying "That's it. If I let you go on I'll have one o' youse dead on my hands." This was the real-life inspiration for the opening pool contest between Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) and Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in the 1961 film The Hustler. Rothstein's patronage of floating crap games also provided the model for Nathan Detroit in the musical Guys and Dolls. Rothstein also appears as "The Brain" in several of Damon Runyon's short stories, including a fictional version of his death in The Brain Goes Home.
- In the film The Godfather, Part II, Hyman Roth mentions that Rothstein is his inspiration. In a sequence cut from the original film, Roth adopts his surname after Rothstein's in honor of his part in the Black Sox Scandal.
- Rothstein was portrayed in several films: by F. Murray Abraham in the 1991 Mobsters, by David Janssen in the 1961 King of the Roaring 20s, and by Michael Lerner in the 1988 Eight Men Out, based on the Black Sox Scandal.
External links
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- , Legal Affairs, March-April, 2004
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