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Chicagoland Breweries & Saloons Newsletter For
October 19, 2006
In This Issue:
James "Big Jim" Colosimo
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Although
much has been made of Al Capone’s control of the bootlegging business in Chicago
during
 Prohibition, I’ve always noted that it was Johnny Torrio (at left), one time
pimp and lieutenant of James “Big Jim” Colosimo who paved the way for Capone.
While Torrio quietly organized a tentative coalition of various gangs throughout Chicago,
Capone’s need for publicity and his demonstrations of violence eventually brought him
down---sort of a Prohibition era John Gotti.
But to take a broader look at Capone’s ascension as “Mr. Big” in Chicago’s
history of beer and brewing, we have to go back to Jim Colosimo. As a street sweeper in
the First Ward area, Colosimo eventually married Victoria Moresco, a former prostitute
turned madam. Colosimo then organized his fellow sweepers into a social and athletic club.
Soon after, he opened up a pool hall and became collector for local aldermen who provided
legal help and protection for saloon owners, pimps and madams. With the success of his
widening business of small-time whore houses afforded by the protection of First Ward
aldermen Mike Kenna and John Coughlin and matched by the business skills of his wife and
partner, Colosimo would soon become a key figure in the beginning history of Chicago’s
mob.
Colosimo’s fame and fortune, however, was threatened by the Black Hand, a group of
extortionists who made their living by threatening the lives of
rich and successful Italian immigrants. Fearful for his life, Jim called upon the services
of Johnny Torrio from New York for protection, somewhere around 1909.
A year
later, Big Jim opened up a restaurant at 2126 South Wabash. The café/club was an
immediate success, counting people like John Barrymore, Sophie Tucker and Marshall Field
as regular customers. Torrio’s skill and loyalty to Colosimo was soon rewarded as
Torrio started to take over control of some of Big Jim’s whore houses in the south
suburbs and the profitable restaurant and cafe. Torrio set up quarters at the Four Deuces,
2222 South Wabash, just up the road from the restaurant.
In 1919, Torrio was convinced that bootlegging would become more profitable than
prostitution and
 gambling, two of Colosimo’s biggest money makers, and tried to
convince Big Jim that ownership in Chicago’s breweries would prove profitable to both
him and Colosimo. Jim, however, had other interests, mostly his
new wife, Dale Winter, a cabaret singer Colosimo had recently hired for the club.
Torrio took control of what he felt was Colosimo’s apathy towards their business
interests by calling up hit man Frankie Yale from New York. On May 11, 1920, just a month
or so after Big Jim’s honeymoon with Dale, Colosimo arrived at the restaurant to wait
on a supply of booze, reportedly coming from gambling king Jim O’ Leary’s Horn
Palace Saloon on South
Halsted. As Colosimo went into the vestibule of the restaurant, impatient because the
delivery was late, Yale stepped out from the coat room and fired two shots at Colosimo,
one round missing Jim, the other finding its target. (Blood still evident on
floor in front of middle door)
Torrio assumed control of Colosimo’s businesses, stepped up his brewing and liquor
interests, and working with his young lieutenant, Al Capone, went on to control most of
the breweries in Chicago.
Colosimo's Cafe Today, A Parking Lot
Don't Forget
Stop By Barnes & Noble Webster Place
1441 West Webster Avenue, Chicago, IL
Saturday, October 19, 2006, 3:00 P.M. And Meet The Author, Bob Skilnik
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