Filmography
By Carl A. Veno
Little Chicago is not in the state of Illinois. It's 75 miles from Niagara Falls, New York.
Stefano Magaddino, cousin of Joseph Bonanno, and his brother Antonio stood by the roaring waters of Niagara Falls on a freezing day in January of 1920, a day that changed the drinking habits of Americans. This was the day the Volstead Act -- Prohibition -- went into effect.
"We’re going to be rich, Antonio," Stefano said, looking over the Niagara River. "I'm glad I voted Republican."
They made a fortune moving alcohol, the golden key of bootleg whiskey, across the Canadian border. Magaddino would become the man to be reckoned with in Western New York. No one would dare cross one of the last "Dons" in America.
Like a giant conglomerate, the illegal booze racket ran wild. Speakeasies saturated the landscape, small-time hoods battled for power and Wild-West-style gang wars raged in small towns in Western New York and northern Pennsylvania.
The smell of big money reached the noses of ambitious young thugs.
Murder numbers ran out of control. It was a wide-open franchise as long as the Magaddinos received a generous return.
Out of the gunsmoke surfaced Al Ritchie, an ex-boxer and small-time thug who was given a gold badge by the district attorney and ran a successful bootleg operation.
The main character, Richie, an outside Mafia renegade, was behind many of the 14 unsolved murders in "Little Chicago." When he came to town he was a tall, handsome, 26-year-old Italian immigrant. He was a womanizer with a hypnotic charm. His jet-black hair, deep set eyes and slender build gave him a Valentino appearance. He always wore expensive suits and a $1,000 diamond pin in his lapel. He was the target of at least five attempts on his life but always walked away unscathed. To stay alive, he had to be clever, cunning and ruthless. He always wore a smile on his face, but kept a sinister hate in his heart. He trusted no one. His involvement with a 16-year-old beauty was taken as a passing fancy, but the affair carried a dark shadow with it. Rose Parente, a wide-eyed cupie-doll high school senior, was a constant companion of Ritchie’s.
Al Ritchie would go on to live his immigrant dream. He made a fortune with bootleg booze, ran a nightclub, the Sunset Inn, a few miles outside of Olean. He had cars, clothes, action and a reputation to be reckoned with. What more could one ask out of life?
He was a Robin Hood to the poor and downtrodden, but a chilling person to his enemies.
The movie is based on the true story described in a chapter of the book “Invisible Ink" by Carl A. Veno.
The Last Prohibition Witnesses Documentary
By Carl A. Veno
The Volstead Act imposed a federal law in 1920 restricting the sale of alcohol in the United States. The doors of the bars and nightclubs were bolted tight. But the thirst for a cool glass of beer or a whiskey on the rocks never went away. That thirst was satisfied by underground speakeasies that kept the music going and the booze flowing. The ambitious bootlegger had arrived. When opportunity surfaced, competition followed, And competition produced violence and countless murders. It was the breeding ground for international crime.
Each generation has its own interesting stories to pass on to other generations. The generation that witnessed the booze-running and the violence of that era is slowly disappearing. Most are in their 80s and 90s.
The documentary focuses on an area of Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania known by some as "Little Chicago", where alcohol flowed across the Niagara River from Canada, carrying with it dreams of wealth along with greed and murder. The "Last Prohibition Witnesses", a group of elderly people who describe what they recall about the era, tell a variety of tales. One woman describes the trauma of learning as a four-year-old that her father was murdered and her mother had disappeared.
"Little Chicago" thugs graduated to national crime organizations that still have an impact on America today. Prohibition ended in 1933 and so did the speakeasies. Some of the 72 murders in "Little Chicago" were solved, most weren't. People in "Little Chicago" still talk about them.
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