The Hoods

[drinkanddestroy]

sorry HG, I think you are jumping to conclusions way too quickly by assuming that it's settled that this Louis Schomberg guy was Noodles. What do you have to go on, except the comment by Ron Arons that it COULD BE Schomberg?


As for Noodles's father, yes his nickname was Srulick the Shtarker (Shtarker in this context meaning "Tough Guy"). So assuming it's true that Noodles's father's nickname was Srulick (and that's not just a fictionalized part of the book), it's most likely that his real name was Yisrael, which in English would be Israel.  So, ASSUMING his real last name was Goldberg and all these other assumptions, his father's name in American records would probably read Israel Goldberg (which, unfortunately for researchers, sounds like a very common name, just as common as "Harry Goldberg") First thing you have to do is make sure that whoever you think Noodles is would have died in 1981 or 1982. Then see if he had a father who died when Noodles was young (Noodles was young when his father died, but he doesn't say the precise age in the book).

I don't know exactly where to find death/birth records, and whether they are available publicly online; my guess is that there is some way to do it, though it might cost $.

The board member named ONCE was really good at doing this sort of research, unfortunately he seems to have disabled his account and taken all his old posts with him, all we have left are the snippets of his posts that were quoted by other members, such as the one where he cites some census records, but I am not certain how much of it is real census records, and how much he is filling in. For example, he writes "Srulick the Shtarker" next to the father's name; that is certainly not in the Census Records.

[cigar joe]

ancestry.com, has a lot of all these records, and there is usually a 15 day free trial period, it may be useful to us, if say each one of us in turn near the respective end of each free trial, registers and puts in all the info we have on the above and any that pops up automatically.

[chris]

There are 30 pages about Shomberg/Goldberg in Ron's book.  Death in 1975 is stated 3 times with backup evidence from journalist Sidney Zion and death records.  In 1990 Sidney Zion wrote a book called Markers ostensibly about Shomberg and speculation about a possible involvement in the murder of Bugsy Siegel.

Born in 1896 in England, father Abraham and mother Rebecca from the Lomza Gubernia region of North East Poland. Moved to America in 1903 and lived in Stanton Street on the Lower East Side.

His early life in crime may have been similar to our man - pickpocket, larceny, Sing Sing but he very quickly rose to a position of importance in the criminal world. On 17 May 1926 he married Becky Mae Fox, a stunningly beautiful 21 year old clothing model from upper Manhattan.

In 1934 he threw a lavish party for his parents Abraham and Rebecca at the Broadway Central Hotel, at the time the largest hotel in New York City. The guests included some of the deadliest killers in Manhattan and prominent businessmen and policitians including Jimmy Hines.

New York papers described him as "the most powerful man in the country if not in the world".

In Shomberg's FBI file it is claimed that he was the real owner of the Cotton Club from 1932 to 1941 and a co-owner of several other establishments. He moved to L.A. and had several business ventures involving Bugsy Siegel and Hollywood. He was possibly a co-owner of the Flamingo Hotel.

From 1953 onwards there were several attempts to have him deported back to his native England.

In October 1970 he suffered the first of several heart attacks. He lived in a luxurious apartment at the Hotel Delmonico at 59th Street and Park Avenue, with Lucille Ball and Ed Sullivan as neighbours. In Oct 1973 he was back in hospital after another heart attack and in 1975 died of a cardiac arrest.

Does this really sound like the same person described by Sergio Leone and whose wife was a Primary School teacher and cooked spaghetti badly?

From The Hoods:

"In the ghettos of Odessa your father was called, 'Srulick the Shtarker.'"

“My father was called 'Israel the strong and tough one' in Odessa?”

"He was called Srulick the Shtarker. Hey, Max, you know a good place wholesale where I can buy a new large stone for my father's grave?”

[drinkanddestroy]

Damn, i retire everything i said, man.
I didn't know the chapter written by Ron Arons about Louis Schomberg was so detailed (i didn't read it, as you can see).

So he's not Noodles.. what a waste of hope..

Sorry to see you're so disappointed, HG. I mean, yeah I guess that with all the ambiguities in the book, it would be interesting if someone indeed figured out who he was, but frankly I don't see why anyone would be that fascinated by him. He was just another despicable murderer and thief (and if not that, then at least a liar) and I care about him far less than I care about the cockroach I just saw crawling around in the bathroom.

[chris]

I don't know for sure but I think Harry Grey/Goldberg only killed criminals. What is certain is that he lived in very poor conditions and at the time many people liked and some even admired these gangsters.

Sergio had a fondness towards him, an empathy and could see parallels in their lives:

Simsolo: N'aimez-vous pas tendrement Noodles?

Sergio Leone (translated): I wrote a text on it. I will read it to you. It will explain my relationship with him ...  

I saw Noodles, a child in the Lower East Side of New York. I saw a little boy in the service of racketeers. Then I saw people being killed deliberately and passionately. After that, I saw Noodles alone and exposed, carrying out a war without success against the gods of organized crime.

But Noodles was not Dutch Schultz, Peter Lorre, Alan Ladd, Lucky Luciano, Al Capone or Humphrey Bogart.

Nobody paid much attention to him: the view of the world had traversed him as if he was the window of a bar.

He was Noodles. And that's all. A small Jew from the ghetto. A Mr. nobody who had tried his luck with a Thompson submachine gun in his hand, when alcohol was banned and the game of urban violence was still young.

Like thousands of other young offenders, survivors of gang warfare, then locked behind the bars of a penitentiary and crucified on a cross too big for him.

Even in summer, he wore a coat caricaturing the aesthetics of the gangster. But despite his villainous appearance and form evoking the Actor's Studio, this coat floated on him. Too wide, as if it was a gift from an evil Good Samaritan to some drunk from the Bowery.

It really did not suit him. And things turned out very badly for him. Betrayed, hunted, unknown, torn, he had to flee.

But I was supportive of him for other reasons. The Hoods confirmed me in an old idea. The idea that America was a world of children ...

Chaplin also, in his time, thought the same. And today, I am sure my friend Steven Spielberg thinks it.

Noodles was one of those children. Not the boy scout of Frank Capra, with the aim of helping Mr. Smith to save the world. He was more a child who clenched his teeth and gripped tightly the knife in his pocket. Something like a unlucky Mickey Rooney who has never met Spencer Tracy as a priest in Boys Town ...

[drinkanddestroy]

Oh please. How many countless people came from those terribly impoverished neighborhoods on the Lower East Side and had honest successful business careers? This cliche' that the gangsters like repeating that basically anyone who tries an honest living is a loser and turns out poor is such hogwash (besides being immoral). So many of those iummigrants and children of immigrants from those terribly poor neighborhoods worked hard and had incredibly successful careers. So many of the big Hollywood studio heads and actors were themselves Jewish immigrants or children of immigrants who grew up in awful poverty. And that's just the famous ones. So many other success stories. In America (Happy 236th Birthday), as in all free societies, everyone who works hard has the opportunity -- no guarantees, but the opportunity -- to be successful. Not that money = success. Everyone has their own idea of success. For some it is money, for others it is having a loving spouse and children, being a good husband/father, or wife/mother, being a good and decent person. Everyone has their own definition of success, and in free societies, everyone has the opportunity to try to pursue and achieve that success. Growing up in poverty is zero excuse.

And of course the same is true for Sicilian, Irish, or any other group: immigrant groups are generally poor (if theyw ere doing well in their own country, they most likely wouldn't have left), and there are those who choose a life of killing and stealing, and those who choose an honest living. Poverty is no excuse for stealing from, beating, or killing others.


The cliche that gangsters only kill other gangsters is bullshit. They kill anyone who gets in their way, whether it's a gangster or not. So many of these big gangsters started out robbing impoverished pushcart dealers. Bugsy Siegel got his start by extorting Protection money to poor pushcart dealers in Williamsburg. The scene in OUATIA where the gang burns down the poor guy's newsstand cuz he doesn't pay Protection money to Bugsy is very typical of how big gangsters get their start. I read Sammy The Bull Gravano's book, this guy who rose to be Underboss of the Gambino crime family, like all other big gangsters, started out 'small": cracking open car trunks parked on the streets of Bensonhurst and staling whatever he could find inside. Gravano describes the killing of Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steak House, and that he waited outside, and he waited with a  .357, anyone who interfered with the hit team, I would take them out. There's that odl myth, that we only kill ourselves -- that shoots taht in the ass a little bit ( 29:50 of this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ijKIfPtNA )

So many disgusting people admire them, think they are cool, with their fancy suits and hats and cigars, etc. These people don't want to talk about how those "big guys" always started off by committing "small" crimes against poor people. Not that there is any excuse for any sort of stealing or killing, ever. If the stories Noodles writes in The Hoods are true (a big IF), then I view him with as much disdain as I view any serial killer.

As for Leone, I don't think he admired Grey for being a gangster (and if he did, then he'd be just as despicable as anyone else who did). the way I understood it from Frayling's book (and Frayling uses those Noel Smiloso interviews a lot), he basically saw him as a pathetic loser, who was imagining things, distorting reality and mixing it with fantasy. Frayling says that Leone always felt he had lost time, having grown up in Fascist Italy, and that Grey may have somehow felt the same way, and that on that point, he felt some sort of connection to Noodles.

I wish that these idiots who were screaming outside the courtroom in support of John Gotti http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNt52S7jjfk had been robbed or killed by him. Maybe then they'd feel different. These gangsters had real terrible effects on real people's lives; talking about them as the fairy tale dime novel characters is ludicrous 

[stanton]

The board member named ONCE was really good at doing this sort of research, unfortunately he seems to have disabled his account and taken all his old posts with him,

He did ? wow ...

Only because he was wrong about that 220 min version ...

[drinkanddestroy]

He did ? wow ...

Only because he was wrong about that 220 min version ...

 

well all of a sudden I see that all of his posts are gone 

There are many other old posts that under the name of the author it says "Guest," so I guess that means they deactivated their accounts. But for some reason, ONCE's old posts are all gone. He must have somehow done that consciously.

Memo to all current members: if for some reason you decide to leave the board, please do not take all your old posts with you! often there are important conversations based on those old posts, that some responses seem to be silly when one guy deletes the posts that someone was responding to!

Maybe the moderators should exercise "eminent domain" in certain instances and make some posts un-delete-able. (Like if one day rrpower gets pissed off at everyone (eg. if we call him a cheater), he could just with one click delete the entire RTLMYS thread! That shouldn't be allowed!)


This is the first time in my life that I am gonna argue for some use of eminent domain by the moderators 

[Groggy]

Interesting posts Chris, keep up the great work!

[drinkanddestroy]

yeah, if you have translation of direct quotes from conversations with Leone, we're always happy to read them

[cigar joe]

Yesterday I was killing time in B&N and flipped through a book with a title called something like "Murder & Mayhem in the Catskills" and they were going through the various gangsters who had stills and breweries in the Catskills, one of the gangsters biographies mentioned that he met his partner while they were trying to knock over the same pushcart, sounds familiar, I think it was Lepke.

[drinkanddestroy]

You misunderstood my intentions; i DON'T admire this kind of people, i don't like violence or gangsters or individual robbers and killers.
I'm just interested in discovering who this Noodles was only because his "opera" originated the most beautiful movie of every time, absolutely, in my opinion; clear?

I don't know why everytime a speech about a violent movie is faced, there's always somebody who doens't lose the opportunity to flaunt his moral principle: it's insufferable!

I am not "flaunting moral principles" about violent movies; OUATIA is probably my favorite movie of all-time. Movies are not reality; they are a dream (one of the themes of OUATIA).
 I'm just responding to a post that seemed to excuse real-life criminality because of the criminal's impoverished childhood. That's insufferable!

[drinkanddestroy]

Yesterday I was killing time in B&N and flipped through a book with a title called something like "Murder & Mayhem in the Catskills" and they were going through the various gangsters who had stills and breweries in the Catskills, one of the gangsters biographies mentioned that he met his partner while they were trying to knock over the same pushcart, sounds familiar, I think it was Lepke.

Interesting.

Several of the characters in OUATIA are actually amalgamations of various people in The Hoods. In the book, Max was always the leader of Noodles's gang was always together; they didn't meet while rolling the drunk like you see in the movie.
But in the book, there was a separate gang of 3 guys (named Jake, Pipy, and Goo-goo) whom Max, Noodles, & Co. met while pickpocketing some guys; that other separate gang kind of appears on and off in The Hoods, they did occasional jobs with Max & Noodles's gang. For the movie, there's no mention of that separate gang, but they took that element of meeting them while involved with a crime, and added that to the Max character. (I guess that helped to emphasize the pocketwatch they stole, which symbolizes TIME, one of the themes of the movie.

Also, in the book, Patsy is Irish. (Dominic is Italian, just like in the movie). I am not sure why the movie makes Patsy Jewish. Maybe cuz Leone just wanted to make a movie about a Jewish gang and didn't want to have the ethnic mixture, so that it would be viewed as a Jewish/Irish gang: he wanted it to be a Jewish gang, straight up. Another possibility is that if Patsy was Irish Catholic, he would have been buried in a Christian cemetery, not a Jewish one, and the cemetery is an important part of the movie. So I guess the screenwriters figured it was easier to just make Patsy Jewish. (But they should have changed his name: I have never met a Jew named Patsy or Patrick!)
and btw, RE: the cemetery: that part with the cemetery being moved is utter bullshit: once you buy a cemetery plot, it's yours, you can't sell the property and dig up the graves! Jewish law places tremendous sanctity on dead bodies. (And I am sure that no other religion would allow that either). Now, it's true that the cemetery is the excuse for Noodles to come back, and the point of Noodles seeing the graves being dug up is supposed to be symbolic, how the past is being destroyed, per the themes of the movie of passage of time, dreams and fantasy, etc. And the whole 1968 part may well be fantasy anyway. But still, the script should have used  some other way of achieving these themes and story line. A synagogue sending letters to its members telling them to "relocate their loved ones" is less realistic than if the synagogue would sent letters inviting its members to a pork chop barbecue for Christmas.

[chris]

BBC News recently carried a story about a large supermarket group (part of the Walmart group) who want to build a store on an old graveyard.

The graveyard is a bit neglected and the supermarket group have said that they will pay for the graves to be relocated to a new site which relatives of the deceased persons can visit and pay their respects.  It looks like it will go ahead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-18519566

Had a quick look on Google and there are quite a few stories about cemeteries being relocated in the U.S. e.g. :

http://www.cemeteryspace.org/2009/04/cemetery-relocations-what-do-you-do.html

 

[drinkanddestroy]

BBC News recently carried a story about a large supermarket group (part of the Walmart group) who want to build a store on an old graveyard.

The graveyard is a bit neglected and the supermarket group have said that they will pay for the graves to be relocated to a new site which relatives of the deceased persons can visit and pay their respects.  It looks like it will go ahead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-18519566

Had a quick look on Google and there are quite a few stories about cemeteries being relocated in the U.S. e.g. :

http://www.cemeteryspace.org/2009/04/cemetery-relocations-what-do-you-do.html

 

Thanks for these links.

I do not doubt that there are people who would do that.

I've read numerous stories of Jewish cemeteries -- some ancient, some more recent, with Holocaust victims -- being plowed over in some Eastern European countries in recent years, and there are Jewish groups that are fighting it, trying to restore the cemetery. In one particularly horrific instance, a soccer stadium in Belarus was built over a Jewish cemetery http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=20030702&id=GG1PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IAQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6426,357717

But my point is that no synagogue would ever do that. Jewish law has very strict restrictions and procedures for moving a body once it is buried. I once met a Jewish American World War II vet whose brother was also a vet and killed in France and buried in a military cemetery; in later years, after the war, he wanted to move his brother's body to a cemetery in Israel but was unable to due to Jewish law. Theoretically a body can be moved in certain instances, there's a whole set of conditions and procedures, but generally it is not done. Once a body is buried it is not moved. And it is absolutely 100% certain that a synagogue would never sell its cemetery and move the bodies.