One of the most beloved 20th Century folk heroes was Prohibition Agent Eliot Ness, who, with his handpicked band of agents called "The Untouchables," spearheaded the prosecution of Al Capone which landed Capone in the federal pen for income tax evasion. Ness has been the subject of various TV shows, movies, and books. In fact, one of the greatest television series of all time was the version of The Untouchables produced by Desilu Studios from 1959 to 1963 and starring Robert Stack, shown above, as the quintessential Eliot Ness.
Ness's personal courage cannot be gainsaid in light of his willingness to take on Al Capone. In reality, however, Eliot Ness was not the fed who was responsible for sending Capone to prison. That distinction belongs to U.S. Attorney E.Q. Johnson and Internal Revenue agents Frank Wilson and Elmer Irey, who were the backbone of the prosecution team who put together the income tax evasion case against Capone. Ness did greatly vex Capone by seizing a lot of Capone's assets and destroying many of his breweries, but Ness had nothing to do with the tax case. Nor did he, contrary to what was represented in the 1987 film version of The Untouchables, toss mobster Frank Nitti off of the roof of the U.S. Courthouse.
Ness, however, was a great self-promoter with the press and did nothing to discourage the impression that only he and The Untouchables were responsible for the defeat of one of the most malevolent organizations of the era (well, of course, not counting that Nazi stuff going on in Germany).
Ness moved on to become the Safety Director in Cleveland from 1938 to 1942, where he was the head of the police and fire departments. Ironically encumbered by a heavy drinking problem, he drifted into various public and private jobs thereafter. He co-authored a book about The Untouchables with Oscar Fraley, which appeared a month after Ness's death from a massive heart attack at age 54 in 1957. Ness contributed a 21-page manuscript, which was fairly factual, for his share of the book; Fraley fattened up the remainder with a bunch of embellishments (also known as lies).
The real Eliot Ness is depicted below:
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