Gangster Empire—Rise of the Mob: The Complete Series

With speakeasies hopping, liquor flowing, and Tommy guns blazing, Prohibition gave gangster style a permanent place in America's imagination. This six-part documentary series chronicles the rise of the Mafia, examining the transformational role of corrupt police, an all too eager public, and savvy hoods like Al Capone, who claimed to be merely giving people the "hospitality" they wanted. Gangster Empire gets off to a dubious start, tracing gangland roots to the "golden age" of piracy in the 18th century, and Civil War blockade runners. Like too much of the material here, this comes across as filler; more relevant are the sections on gang activity amidst the ethnic ferment of New York City's "Five Points" section, the corrupt "boardwalk empire" of Atlantic City, the 1919 Chicago "Black Sox" betting scandal, the rise of Jewish gangs, and rogue gangsters such as John Dillinger, who went from petty law-breaking during America's Great Depression to masterminding a crime spree across the nation's Midwest. After Chicago's infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, crime fighters like Eliot Ness and J. Edgar Hoover tried to shut down the criminal syndicate that was formed by mobsters including Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. This series suffers from repetitive film footage (likely culled from the public domain) and too much off-subject information. For a topic boasting so many larger than life figures, it is able to muster surprisingly little excitement. A better choice here would be Mafia: The History of the Mob in America (VL-9/94). Not a necessary purchase. Aud: C, P. (S. Rees)