Mobsters, molls, moonshine
Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Gangster Museum of America Address: 113 Central Ave., Hot Springs Hours: 11 a. m.-9 p. m., Monday-Saturday, 11 a. m.-5 p.m. Sunday. The last tour begins an hour before closing. Admission: $ 8; age 60 and older, $ 7; ages 6-12, $ 4; under 6, free (501 ) 318-1717 www. tgmoa. com HOT SPRINGS — At 3 a.m. on the night before the May grand opening of the Gangster Museum of America in Hot Springs, director Robert Raines drove a forest green 1928 Cadillac down Central Avenue to the Arlington Hotel, just as Al Capone, the former owner, used to do.
“I drove it down Central Avenue, and made it to the fountain here, just where it was in ’ 28, ’ 29 and ’ 30 right on this street,” Raines says. “Then we drove it back to the museum for the grand opening.” The story of how the museum acquired the car reflects the enthusiasm Raines says he has encountered setting up the museum, which chronicles Hot Springs ’ gambling heyday and gangster history, highlighting the activities of Capone, Owen “Owney” Madden and Lucky Luciano.
Raines says he was talking to a Houston Chronicle reporter who was also writing a story about the Jonathon M. O’Quinn Classic Cars collection, which includes the famous car that security-conscious Capone equipped with bullet-proof glass, armor plating and run-flat tires. The reporter helped Raines get a photograph of the car for the museum and then contacted the collection to get written permission to use it. A few weeks later, Raines got a call from a staff member at the collection.
“He said, ‘Mr. O’Quinn didn’t think it would be a good idea, since this is your first year, to show pictures of the car in the museum, ’” Raines recounts. “And I said, ‘ OK, that’s no problem,’ and I was going to dismiss it.” “And he said, ‘Wait a minute, he’s going to send you the car for your first year.’ And the next day it came on its own luxury liner at 3 in the morning.” That’s when, after backing it off an air-conditioned trailer, Raines took the car for a spin on Central Avenue.
“I didn’t even ask for it,” Raines says. “It’s exactly the way everything has been happening. It’s sort of a right-place, right-time deal where it seems like everyone is interested in gangster stuff right now.” Since the opening, the launch of the museum’s Web site and the national and international publicity the museum has received, Raines says he is constantly receiving phone calls and mail with more gangster stories and information. He and his film crew continue to shoot interviews for the minidocumentaries that air in each room of the museum.
“People are just coming out of the woodwork now,” Raines says. “There’s a lot of 90-year-olds in Hot Springs with stories to tell.” There’s also plenty of people who want to hear the stories. In the first seven weeks, the museum had more than 8, 000 visitors. Raines says he had in mind to plan a big “hoopla” when attendance surpassed 7, 777, but it happened much faster than he expected.
Instead, Raines is working with the Arlington and other businesses to arrange a package deal for Labor Day weekend. All visitors in August will be entered into a raffle for a weekend stay in Capone’s suite at the Arlington, along with spa treatments and other gifts. Raines has already leased the building next door to the museum and plans to expand once it becomes available this month.
Steve Arrison, the director of the Hot Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, isn’t surprised by the interest in the museum.
“I think it’s just the lure of the gangster era of the Capones,” Arrison says. “There’s always been a great interest in that period of time. There’s a lot of interesting stories out there and some are true, some are not, but there’s no doubt these people were here.” Raines also credits the television show The Sopranos for the museum’s early success.
“I don’t think we could do this without The Sopranos happening,” he says. “They sort of warmed up the market because it showed mobsters’ personal side.” Frank Viertbauer, the general manager at the Arlington who has worked closely with Raines, says hotel guests have long been interested in the city’s gangster history. People still request Capone’s suite on the hotel’s fourth floor. The museum is an ideal new attraction for Hot Springs, he says, because it adds context to sites that are still there, like the Arlington and the former Southern Club, which is now the Josephine Tussaud Wax Museum.
“I think in general many people travel to get a piece of the place where they actually are, and it seems like the bathhouses and Al Capone and the gambling clubs are it for Hot Springs,” he says.
Gary and Elisa Mosley of Benton visited the museum on a recent weekend with friends. They said they were impressed by the tour because it helps piece together all the stories about Hot Springs.
“We just left the Arlington where you can look out the window and see the old Southern Club,” Elisa Mosley says. “And now you can learn more about what was going on in those places. The gangsters weren’t good guys, but there’s something so intriguing about it all.” Raines ran a computer store and Internet service in Pine Bluff — a far cry from tourism, museums or anything related to gangsters — before he decided to open the museum a year and a half ago. He spent a day in Hot Springs helping a friend move and fell in love with the town, he says.
“We went out to get a beer around midnight and we were walking down the street with all the horses and carriages,” Raines says. “When the sun goes down on Central Avenue, the spirits come out. It’s just a fascinating place to be.” He decided then that he wanted to move to Hot Springs. Doing something related to the gangster history crossed his mind right away, Raines says, but when he learned there wasn’t another such museum in the country, it sealed the deal.
“I decided I would never have another chance to do something in this day and time that’s the first,” Raines says.
He then started combing old issues of the Arkansas Democrat, the Arkansas Gazette, The New York Times, court documents and received help from the staff at the Arlington Hotel.
Through the newspapers and other accounts, the cast of characters came together, Raines says. There was Madden, who came to Hot Springs in 1931 after a stint in prison in New York and never really left. Madden, who married a postmaster’s daughter, supplied the horse-race results to bookies and eventually became a partner of the Southern Club, then the most lavish gambling establishment in town.
Other gangsters began visiting the city, too, including Frank Costello, Meyer Lanksy, Lucky Luciano, Alvin Karpis and of course, Capone. During prohibition, Chicago-based Capone came to Hot Springs to make deals with bootleggers, then shipped moonshine back to his clubs in railcars cars with “Mountain Valley Water” printed on the sides.
“I didn’t want to glamorize the deeds of these guys, but rather glamorize the time,” Raines says. “It’s romantic, it’s formal, it’s gentlemanly. They did some pretty ungentlemanly things, but it was all behind closed doors.” And according to local lore, the gangsters set aside their differences when on vacation in Hot Springs.
“They didn’t really do anything bad while they were here,” Arrison says. “This was a place they came to relax and enjoy the waters and the golf and the horse races and the casinos, so this was their safe place to come and relax and not kill each other.” From Hot Springs residents, antique shops and the Internet, Raines found photographs, newspaper articles, receipts and artifacts like a roulette table from the Southern Club, a Silvertone phonograph machine, a vintage slot machine and even two Thompson submachine guns to adorn the museum’s walls.
Because the nighttime spirit of Hot Springs is what Raines liked most about the town, he decided to keep the museum open until 9 p.m. In the evenings, he sometimes sings Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett tunes at the museum’s 1929 Steinway piano.
On the tours, Raines or Dwight Anderton tell the narrative of the history of Hot Springs as visitors progress through the five main rooms.
The first, called the power brokers’ gallery, details the early gangster history, including stories about Mayor Leo P. McLaughlin and Municipal Judge Vern S. Ledgerwood, who were part of the political machine in Hot Springs that allowed gambling and prostitution to flourish.
Next is a room devoted to Madden, then one for Capone, then Luciano, and finally a room that details the later gangster history including exhibits on Maxine’s bordello, black gangsters, and the 1967 cleanup of Hot Springs by Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller.
At the end of the tour, there’s a final film, which shows Raines plodding through water in a tunnel under Central Avenue in a search for a secret bowling alley.
Raines says he went down to disprove the story. Instead, a wall with what appears to be bowling scores seems to prove it was once there.
“It’s true, just like every other wacko story here,” Raines says. “You can’t make up the true stories you find here.”
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