Eliot Ness (35 page)

“No kidding,” he said before cheerfully signing off.

“What was that?” Bowman asked.

Eliot couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. “They just told me Hollywood is nibbling on the book idea.”

He wouldn’t live to see it, but he was about to become an American icon.

“As a federal investigator for 9 years he crashed into gang hide-outs with steel-nosed trucks, shot it out with gunmen, and tapped the wires of wire tappers. His tamer sports are handball, badminton, and tennis.”
American
magazine embraces the Ness myth in 1937.

Wallace Jamie and Eliot Ness, future lawmen

Eliot Ness, University of Chicago, class of ’25

Ness and his fraternity brothers, grim-faced in the midst of Jazz Age prosperity

Left to right: “Untouchables” Joe Leeson, Sam Seager, Lyle Chapman, Paul Robsky

Al Capone, aka the Big Fella

Eliot Ness, leader of the Capone squad

Chicago’s Prohibition administrator, E. C. Yellowley (left), and Assistant Administrator Alexander Jamie (right) pose with Frank White and Eliot Ness after the young agents break up an illegal liquor-importing operation carried out by Pullman passenger-train porters.

A scrapbook photo captures Edna and Eliot in transition.

Edna enjoys—sort of—a rare evening out with her dashing husband.

Elisabeth Andersen, new art school graduate, poses for Cleveland’s top art photographer.

“We have no place for traitors in the police department.” Cleveland’s “Boy Wonder” turns over evidence to Cuyahoga County prosecutor Frank T. Cullitan.

With tear gas wafting through the air, strikers at the Fisher Body plant hurl stones at police.