james o'donnell bennett was one of the first journalists who tried to explain the phenomenon that al capone had become and he described how, and i quote here, with no conscience effort he emanated menace while saying please. he was the criminal version of a fopish dandy in his luredly colored, but exquisitely tailored suits with the handkerchief neatly folded in his breast pocket to be whipped out to cover the facial scars whenever he needed to smile for the cameras. everyone knew to we bare of-- beware of the smile because it could turn sinister in a moment. there was a paradox with prohibition. he was so wildly charming, so blatantly outsized in everything that he did and so in the public eye, it was hard to believe that such a good fellow and one so highly entertaining, he of the pithey quotation and the phrase, he couldn't be that bad. and prohibition might have been the law of the land and no one would take it seriously. so why not take that drink? that's how al capone fulfilled the public's imagination and how he was regarded until the market crashed and once that happened, pub