I take in a little early morning TV news and of course hear all the commercials, most of which are pointed toward people of a certain age with compromised health or i need of money. There's one that touts, "if you're over 50, wouldn't you like to make one-third more in retirement money." It's an ad for an insurance company's annuities. I always talk back to the TV: "50? that shipped sailed for me quite a while ago."
Then there are the drug ads. Prior to my recent medical event from which I'm doing quite well, thank you, I used to feel left out of the pitch. Even at 71, I wasn't taking anything they were pushing. I just plain didn't have the ailments the drug companies had a treatment for.
The other night I was watching a Jeopardy episode, one of those throw-back replays where Alex seemed to wear better suits, and there it was, an ad for Brilinta. Hey, I take Brilinta. I feel I finally joined to club. I joked to the cardiologist that Brilinta sounds like Tom Brady's wife. Or at least should be Tom Brady's wife. (Maybe someday she will be.)
I do read books, but I read book reviews the most. I always like the book reviews in the WSJ, one because they are always in the same part of the paper Monday through Friday, and two, they're seldom about novels, but rather about finance, science, history and true crime. There's little that interests me less than a review about the psychological byplay of the latest novel that explores the depths of human emotion and the ironies of life. The NYT is great for those reviews.
I've long accepted that I'm of "a certain age." But according to Tom Nolan's review of Eliot Ness and the mad Butcher by Max Alan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz, I'm of an "even earlier era" all because I remember The Untouchables starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness in the TV series (1959-1963) and not just those "of a certain age" who remember the 1987 movie starring Kevin Costner that was stolen by Sean Connery's performance as a Irish Chicago cop who famously scoffs at someone who brings a "knife to a gunfight."
The implication is clear. If you remember a 1987 movie, you're headed for dotage. If you remember anything earlier, well, you're taking televised medication and belong to an era just after dinosaurs.
Anyway, yes, I do remember the TV series where Stack and his shoulder-holster crew are always going after Al Capone and Frank Niti, especially Frank Niti. As a growing lad I became fascinated with gangsters. I bought a pulp paperback about the famous criminals of the 1930s, the and jails they were sent to, and hid it under the mattress. When my parents found it they were greatly concerned about where I might be vocationally headed. Parents worry about everything.
I remember reading about the real life Eliot Ness and what he did after bringing down Capone and sending him to the Big Island, Alcatraz. The latest book about Eliot Ness picks up when he becomes the police chief in Cleveland and aids in bringing a halt to some gruesome killings by a serial killer who left headless torsos in the woods.
One almost wishes the killings were reported on by the New York Post. The headlines in 1938 would have been worthy of the Headline Hall of Fame. "Headless dead" lead off each reports of another body.
In Cleveland, Ness formed another hand-picked squad and became instrumental in getting the psychotic doctor, Francis Sweeney, who was performing his own version of unauthorized autopsies. Apparently, so pervasive and gruesome where the murders, the foreign press even became aware of the story. Germany, of all countries, scolded the U.S. when the Nazi press made fun of our country's inability to bring the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" to justice. Imagine Nazis making fun of murders. Now there's an irony of life.
Regardless, Ness and his crew were able to get the sod committed to a mental institution. His guilt was inconvertible, but too circumstantial for a court conviction. Anyway, once Sweeney was institutionalized, the murders stopped.
Ness's Chicago crew became called The Untouchables because they were hand-picked and were outside corruption influences. They couldn't be bought. The book review is interesting in that I didn't know the Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould was spawned by Ness's success. I distinctly remember the comic strip. It held price of place on the front page in the Sunday Daily News, in color, with crimestopper tips and always a reference to Tracy's "two-way wrist radio." Who didn't wish for one of those?
Another nugget is that when Ness passed away at 54 of a heart attack in 1957, he was $9,000 in debt. I don't know what that is today's dollars, but I'm sure it's relatively significant.
The Robert Stack series was immensely popular. I remember the Italian defamation people were getting pissed off that the thugs were always Italian. Their pleas for diversity in crime were successful because the show bowed to pressure and introduced Greek gangsters, an ethnic group who my family is part of on my father's side and who, to this day, do not possess a great deal of political clout. I've grown up always saying that in NYC it's best if you're Catholic or Jewish to help you enjoy being near the seats of influence.
Despite my parents concern for my new-found interest in gangsters, I remember my father was at some dinner that Robert Stack was at. My father brought home a glossy of The Untouchables crew signed by Stack with a inscription to me. Sadly, I don't know what happened to it.
Untouchable certainly has meaning beyond crime fighter. There is outcast caste in India that is referred to as the Untouchables. And then there are The Untouchables who browse at Barney's.
Huh? Well, as always, something always reminds me of something else, and in the late '60s or early '70s Barney's men's store at the very unfashionable location of 7th avenue and 17th Street started an advertising promotion where you could just come in and browse. I'd shopped at Barney's, and they always descended on you as soon as you walked in, made you wait a bit, then assigned you to a salesman based on what you were interested in. There was no free-range browsing.
The campaign they started was a "Just Looking" button that you asked for, pinned it to your jacket, then descended down the stairs to roam around on your own.
Myself and two other guys from the office made our way over to Barney's on lunch hour one day, asked for the "Just Looking" buttons and descended the staircase.
A salesman at the bottom of the stairs looked at us, and derisively said, "Oh, here come the Untouchables."
I wish I still had that button.
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