Alcatraz Island… What Really Happened?
Al Capone Shines My Shoes is a novel, grounded in history, but heavily embroidered by my imagination. While the characters of this book and the actions they take are completely fictional, some of the scenes came from true stories.
It was true, for example, that the families of most Alcatraz guards lived on the island during the years Alcatraz was a working penitentiary. Jolene Babyak described her experience living on Alcatraz this way: “ Alcatraz was like a small town with one bad neighborhood. Children played baseball, flew kites and played ‘guards and cons’ under the shadow of the cell house.” [1]
The year 1935 was in the midst of the Depression. Money was scarce. Convicts who had trade skills worked for free as plumbers and electricians, painters, movers, custodians, gardeners, and trash collectors in the “civilian”-as the families on the island were sometimes called-homes and apartments.
Jimmy and Moose’s dilemma about how to dispose of the bar spreader came from a true fact of island life. Since the convicts acted as trash men, island residents had to be careful about what they tossed out. As one island resident remembers: “No glass, razor blades or other sharp objects in our garbage as prisoners were detailed to pick it up.” [2]
The convicts did the laundry for everyone who lived on the island. Though note-passing through the laundry was a figment of my imagination, the laundry sometimes did provide a vehicle for convicts to let hated guards know how they felt. Rocky Chandler, who grew up on Alcatraz in the thirties, described the phenomenon this way: “Convicts had their own small ways of hassling. Because the wind was cold up on the tower catwalks, most guards wore long john underwear beneath their uniforms. Occasionally EF Chandler ’s underwear would come from the laundry starched stiffer than a board.” [3] There were other island families who refused this service, as the laundry often “came back mangled.” [4]
Convicts on special detail were accompanied by a guard, but human nature being what it is, rules were occasionally relaxed or even broken. Surprising alliances formed in the most unlikely of circumstances. George DeVincenzi, a guard from 1950 to 1957, told me one of the most feared convicts on Alcatraz, Jimmy Groves, came to his aid one night when he had night duty in the cell house. Night duty was long and tedious at best, terrifying at worst, and one boring evening George fell asleep at his desk. He was awakened by Jimmy throwing crumpled-up sheets of paper at him from his second-tier cell. Groves, who had a bird’s-eye view of the cell house corridor, saw George’s supervisor approaching and he didn’t want George to be written up for falling asleep on the job. [5]
There were plenty of stories of Alcatraz children breaking the rules as well. As one boy who grew up on Alcatraz put it: “[I could] probably write several pages of things Phil Bergen [captain of the guards] caught me doing.” [6] Or as Chuck Stucker said: “Two-thirds of the island was restricted, what do you think a boy was going to do? Go to the places he’s not supposed to.” [7]
Still, there was a stiff penalty for misbehaving. As Bob Orr, who lived on the island from 1941 to 1956, said: “We couldn’t mess up, violate rules or we’d be asked to leave the island.”
Ed Faulk, a resident on the island in the thirties, told me about the day he came home from school to his father and three convicts sitting around his kitchen table. Sharon Haller said the parents of her friends in San Francisco sometimes would refuse to let their kids visit her on Alcatraz because they thought “we ate dinner with the convicts.” But they did not. Ed Faulk’s story is the only evidence I have found of the convicts sitting down at the same table with the civilians.
But for the guards-the fathers of the children who lived on the island-there was a terrifying side to life on the island. As one former resident described it: “The danger was there. Everyone knew. All you have to do is take the bone out of a T-bone steak and you’ve got an excellent weapon.” [8] During the escape attempt in 1946 known as the Battle of Alcatraz, two guards were killed-both family men.
And sometimes the convicts did know more about the families who lived on the island than they had any right to know. Chuck Stucker told me about his return to the island after having been gone for eight years. As soon as he got off the boat, one of the convicts on dock duty tapped him on the shoulder and asked, “Are you Ed Stucker’s son? Tell your father hello. I always liked that man.” [9]
Perhaps the most peculiar fact of life on the island involved the convicts who worked in the warden’s home. “The wardens all employed exemplary prisoners known as ‘passmen’ to cook and clean at the residence, and every thirty minutes [10] these inmates would emerge onto the front porch, where they would stand until they had been counted by an officer who could see them through a prison administration window.” [11]
And yes, some of the wardens had school-age children living on the Rock. James A. Johnston, the first warden on Alcatraz, had a daughter named Barbara who described what happened when her mother, Ida Mae Johnston, came upon two passmen fighting in her kitchen. Apparently Ida shook her finger at the men and said: “You boys. You stop that right now.” And they did. [12]
Generally the passmen were selected because they had relatively short sentences, thus they were not considered flight risks. But there is evidence that more than one passman took advantage of his situation. A houseboy and a cook were said to have a still in the warden’s basement from which they made a home-brewed wine out of fermented fruit.
Bill Dolby, who lived on Alcatraz as a boy and had the job of delivering newspapers on the island, remembered his interactions with the warden’s passman Chief Wareagle. “Carrying the newspapers gave me access topside and to the lighthouse. Chief Wareagle met me every morning to take the paper and slip me some freshly made cookies or candy. After a while I told [the chief] not to do that any more because I didn’t want to get Dad in trouble… which was difficult to do since he made really good pralines.” [13]
Clifford Fish, a guard on Alcatraz for twenty-four years, talked about a passman named Montgomery who, because of his unique ability to come and go from the cell house, was asked to participate in the 1946 escape attempt. Montgomery decided against involvement because he “had too good of a job [on Alcatraz].” But neither did he forewarn guards of the impending escape because if he had, he would have been killed by the other convicts. [14]
The prison was, after all, a maximum security operation that housed some of “the world’s most dangerous criminals.” [15] You did not typically go directly to Alcatraz. “To qualify for a reservation at Alcatraz, the tough customers must have demonstrated their incorrigibility at the other prisons or… [be suspected] of running rackets or gangs from within prison walls.” [16] In 1935, you were sent to Alcatraz if you were a troublemaker at another prison or an “accomplished escape artist.” [17]
The reason Al Capone was moved from the Cook County facility in Illinois to Atlanta and then to Alcatraz was because he worked the prison system to his own advantage. In Cook County he was able to bribe, or “tip,” as he preferred to call it, the guards and live the high life behind bars. “It was said he convinced many guards to work for him, and his cell boasted expensive furnishings including personal bedding… [the cell was] carpeted, and he had a radio around which many of the guards would sit with him conversing and listening to their favorite serials.” [18] In fact, “a clue to his power [in prison] could be found in a recess carved in his tennis racket’s handle. He might have a couple of thousand dollars secreted there at any given time.” [19]
Warden Johnston described Capone this way: “He was suave and aggressive by turns, and it was apparent from the beginning that he was trying to show the other prisoners that he would find some way to get what he wanted inside, just as he had always got what he wanted when he was outside.” [20]
Capone’s challenge on Alcatraz was avoiding trouble from the other inmates. At one point Capone’s empire was worth $62 million [21] (more than $950 million in today’s dollars), and some inmates wanted him to bankroll their escape. “Upon arriving at the Island Al was approached… to advance $5000 to be used as an escape plan to hire a gun-boat.” [22] In 1936 a young punk named Jimmy Lucas stabbed Capone with a pair of barber scissors. Lucas’s motivation was simply to prove that he-not Capone-was the toughest guy on Alcatraz.
Capone, though a ruthless and vile human being, was not without his charming side. As Phyllis (Hess) Twinney, the daughter of the first doctor on Alcatraz, explained it to me: “Dad liked Al. But Dad was under no illusions about Al, who thought everyone was his servant.
“Even so, Al saved Dad’s life. Dad had to take visiting hours. The con ahead of Al came in and got really agitated. Every doctor had a little scalpel so he could lance something if needed. The guy went ballistic, grabbed up the scalpel, and came toward my father. Al heard the commotion. Al was very soft-footed for a big man, and he inched his way in, grabbed him from behind, and shook the scalpel out of his hand.” [23]
Although Warden Johnston tried to treat Capone as if he were no different from other convicts, in some small ways his infamy did penetrate the thick walls of Alcatraz. Many guards, as the story goes, gave Al their hats for him to dust off so they could brag, “Al Capone dusted off my hat.” [24] But so far as I know, Al Capone didn’t shine guards’ shoes. However, he did work at the shoe shop in his previous prison in Atlanta, so it is likely he was an accomplished shoe shiner.
Al Capone never worked as a waiter on Alcatraz either, but the Officers’ Club sometimes employed convicts as waiters, and there is anecdotal evidence of convicts spitting or placing broken glass in a hated guard’s food.
Unless you were a friend of an Alcatraz civilian, or a family member of a convict, it was practically impossible to gain access to Alcatraz. VIPs and celebrities, however, were given tours on a regular basis and the administration might very well put on the dog for such visits.
There is one photo that documents a visit of J. Edgar Hoover to Alcatraz, but it’s likely he visited more than once, as creating a maximum security prison on Alcatraz was his brainchild. Eliot Ness was never, to my knowledge, on the island, so his inclusion in that scene was entirely fictional. Mae Capone was a frequent visitor to the island, and if the press got wind of a visit, reporters mobbed her at the Fort Mason dock where she boarded the ferry for Alcatraz.
The story of Willy One Arm picking the pocket of J. Edgar Hoover is fictional. It’s highly unlikely such a ploy would ever have been pulled on the head of the FBI, but the idea for that scene came from an incident relayed by Clifford Fish. According to Fish, Associate Warden Miller liked to pull that routine on visiting dignitaries. He used a convict by the name of Pivaroff, a pickpocket or “dip,” as it was sometimes called. Miller would give the nod to Pivaroff once he decided who would be the mark, and Pivaroff would pick his pocket. Then Miller would hand the visiting VIP his wallet and say, “You just had your pocket picked on Alcatraz.” [25]
And strangely enough, movies were shown to the convicts on Alcatraz twice a month. The favorite movie star of many of the Alcatraz inmates in the late thirties and early forties? Shirley Temple.
Although no escape exactly like the one depicted in Al Capone Shines My Shoes was ever tried, many of the details are based on other escape attempts. One convict escaped by impersonating an officer-though he only got as far as neighboring Angel Island before he was caught. Another convict smuggled a bar spreader into the cell house inside his steel guitar. The flat soft prison bars in the Hole (like those in the hospital) were cut in that same escape attempt. An abrasive cleanser and dental floss could be used for this-and, yes, dental floss did exist in 1935. [26]
Some convicts also befriended mice. “Hungry for companionship, some inmates made pets out of mice they found in their cells. They made nests in their bathrobe pockets…” [27] In another account, one inmate kept his mouse in his shirt pocket and surreptitiously fed him food crumbs when the officers weren’t looking.
After having connected directly to more than twenty people who lived on the Rock during the penitentiary years, the one sentiment that seemed to come through in each person’s story was what a close-knit group this was. As one man who lived on the island as a boy put it: “[Living on Alcatraz was like] having a lot of uncles everywhere to watch over us.” [28] Or as Phyllis Twinney said when I asked her if she’d ever thought of running away from Alcatraz: “Why would anyone run away from Alcatraz? It was home.”
<a l:href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> JOLENE BABYAK, quote displayed on Alcatraz Island in cell house (2007).
<a l:href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> ERIN CRAIG lived on Alcatraz Island from 1947-1949. Letter to Alcatraz Alumni Association President Chuck Stucker.
<a l:href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> ROY CHANDLER AND E. F. CHANDLER, Alcatraz: The Hardest Years: 1934-1938 (Jacksonville, N.C., Iron Brigade Armory Publishers, 1989), 127.
<a l:href="#_ftnref3">[4]</a> SHARON HALLER lived on Alcatraz Island from 1960-1963.
<a l:href="#_ftnref5">[5]</a> GEORGE DEVINCENZI lived and worked on Alcatraz Island from 1950-1957. Interviewed at his home in San Francisco on October 25, 2005.
<a l:href="#_ftnref6">[6]</a> BILL DOLBY, Alcatraz Alumni Association Newsletter 1996.
<a l:href="#_ftnref6">[7]</a> CHUCK STUCKER, island resident from 1940-1943 and from 1948-1953, former Alcatraz Alumni president and noted Alcatraz historian and archivist. Interviewed November 14, 2005.
<a l:href="#_ftnref8">[8]</a> JOLENE BABYAK, Eyewitness on Alcatraz: True Stories of Families Who Live on the Rock (Berkeley, Calif.: Ariel Vamp Press, 1996), 20
<a l:href="#_ftnref9">[9]</a> STUCKER, interviewed November 14, 2005 and June 6, 2006 at his home in Dixon, Calif.
<a l:href="#_ftnref10">[10]</a> In the fictional world of Al Capone Shines My Shoes, I changed the timing of the counts to every hour.
<a l:href="#_ftnref10">[11]</a> MICHAEL ESSLINGER, Alcatraz: A Definitive History of the Penitentiary Years (San Francisco: Ocean View Publishing, 2008), 127.
<a l:href="#_ftnref12">[12]</a> STUCKER, spoke with Barbara Johnston at her home a few months before she died.
<a l:href="#_ftnref13">[13]</a> BILL DOLBY, e-mail dated February 8, 2006.
<a l:href="#_ftnref14">[14]</a> CLIFFORD FISH, guard on Alcatraz from 1938-1962. Videotaped interview held in the Alcatraz archives of Chuck Stucker. Viewed on April 1, 2008.
<a l:href="#_ftnref15">[15]</a> FREDERICK R. BECHDOLT, “ The Rock,” Saturday Evening Post (November 2, 1935), 5.
<a l:href="#_ftnref15">[16]</a> FRANK J. TAYLOR, “ Alcatraz: Pen for the Toughest,” Colliers, (July 25, 1936), 11.
<a l:href="#_ftnref15">[17]</a> JAMES A. JOHNSTON, AlcatrazIsland Prison: And the Men Who Live There (Douglas/Ryan Communication, 1999), 44.
<a l:href="#_ftnref18">[18]</a> ESSLINGER, Alcatraz, 141
<a l:href="#_ftnref18">[19]</a> ROBERT J. SCHOENBERG, Mr. Capone: The Real-and Complete-Story of Al Capone (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1992), 332.
<a l:href="#_ftnref20">[20]</a> JOHNSTON, Alcatraz Island Prison, 40
<a l:href="#_ftnref21">[21]</a> ESSLINGER, Alcatraz, 144
<a l:href="#_ftnref21">[22]</a> MARK DOUGLAS BROWN, Capone: Life Behind Bars at Alcatraz (San Francisco: Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, 2004) 35. Letter from convict #97 to Al Capone’s brother, Ralph.
<a l:href="#_ftnref23">[23]</a> PHYLLIS (HESS) TWINNEY lived on Alcatraz Island from 1934-1939. Interviewed by phone on December 6, 2005.
<a l:href="#_ftnref24">[24]</a> STUCKER, interviewed April 1, 2008.
<a l:href="#_ftnref25">[25]</a> FISH, videotaped interview held in the Alcatraz archives of Chuck Stucker. Viewed on April 1, 2008.
<a l:href="#_ftnref26">[26]</a> http://www.toothbrushexpress.com/html/floss_history.html
<a l:href="#_ftnref27">[27]</a> MARILYN TOWER OLIVER, AlcatrazPrison in American History (Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow Publishers, 1998)
<a l:href="#_ftnref28">[28]</a> Alcatraz Alumni Newsletter, July 1993.