Harry Goldberg - the real "Noodles"

[aleksandrored]

I found this article a long time ago and I find it very interesting guys:

"The Hoods" claims to be an autobiographical account of the life of a Jewish Gangster from Manhattan's Lower East Side written under Goldberg's pseudonym of Harry Grey whilst Goldberg was in Sing Sing prison. Goldberg was born in the late 1890s or early 1900s and died in the early part of 1982.

Harry Goldberg is listed on p.3 of:

The Rise And Fall Of The Jewish Gangster In America by Albert Fried (originally from Judah P Magnes' The Magnes Papers, The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, Israel)

In August 1912, a group of influential NYC German-American Jews asked Abe Shoenfeld to head a team of private investigators who would check out and report on the Jewish criminals and vice lords of NYC's Lower East Side. Crime and vice there had gotten out of hand, newspapers carried front page scandalous stories on a daily basis and the situation threatened to bring all New York Jews, even the most respectable (the Germans), into disrepute.

At the time 344,000 people were living in overcrowded tenaments in one square mile of Lower East Side - the most concentrated mass of people in the world. At the end of Shoenfeld's assignment, he had written biographical vignettes on approx. 1900 people.

In 1912/1913 Shoenfeld sent to his employers this list of the people from the Lower East Side underworld who regulary visited Segal's Cafe on Second Avenue in the early hours of the morning:

Patsye Keegan - gun - pipe fiend - mack
Sadie Chink - ex-prostitute - owner disorderly house
Aaron Horlig alias Big Aleck - 50% owner
Louis Segal alias Little Segal - 50% owner
Charlie Auerbach - mack-strike breaker - life taker
Little Carl - right name Carl Hudis alias Harry Cohen - gun - mack
Bockso - gun
Charles Pearlstein alias Kopki - mack - strike breaker - doorman
Keever alias Little Keever - mack - gun - gunman - strongarm
McKinley - gun and mack
Mendel - gun
Lhulki - gun
Whitey Lewis - indicted and convicted - Rosenthal Affair
Lefty Louis - indicted and convicted - Rosenthal Affair
Jack Zelig - recently murdered
Dopey Benny - guerilla - life taker
Benny - guerilla - life taker
Valinsky - gun - brother to Harry Vallon of Rosenthal Fame
Little Mikie Newman - gangster
Louis Cruller - alias Little Cruller - gun and mack
Candy Kid Phil - gun
Sam Boston - gambler - owner - former fagin - fence - commission better
Meyer Boston - same as his brother Sam - their right names are Meyer & Sam Solomon
Crazy Jake - gun
Bennie Greenie - gun
Harry Goldberg - gun
Markey English - gun
Bobby Mendelsohn - mack
Little Natie - (not the one from Broome St.) - gun. Right family name is Lubin being related to Lubin the Philadelphia Moving Film Company.
Charlie Whitey - mack and strike breaker
Dinah Hudis - prostitute. Her mack is Little Carl.
Jennie Morris alias Jennie The Factory - former prostitute and at present disorderly house owner. Her mack is Harry Morris. Owner 249 Broome Street.
Bessie London - right name is Mrs Meyer Solomon - her husband is Meyer Boston - best gun-mol in the world.
Tillie Gold - right name Mrs Sam Solomon - her husband is Sam Boston - a gun-mol from Bessie London's School.
Tillie Finkelstein - gun-mol from Bessie London's School - married to Candy Kid Phil - do not know his family name.
Birdie Pomerantz - gun-mol - married to Philly Furst, a gun, now out of town working the rattlers and shorts and towns out west.
Big Nose Willie - gun
Herman Scheiner - alias Chaim The Mummey - gun
Yanish - gun
Schorr - gun
Tutsie - worker in a pool room or crap house.
Monahickey - gun
Dan The Stud Dealer
Willie Berkowitz - gambler

Explanation of terms:

Gun stood for pickpocket and all-around thief
(derived probably from the Yiddish word gonif)
mack stood for pimp
pipe fiend for opium smoker
doorman for someone who warns gamblers, brothelkeepers, etc., of trouble
guerilla for strong-armer or enforcer
gangster for member of a criminal gang
fagin for organizer of young pickpockets
gun-mol for woman pickpocket (usually working in collaboration with a man)

At this address people of the underworld from out of town pay visits when they come here, as for instance Celia Minsky and Pauline alias Pauline The Horse Car - both disorderly house madams of Philadelphia. At this address Gold the actor plays pinochle, and Greenberg a city employee also. Zelig was "framed up" in here. Red Phil was in here 20 minutes before he killed Jack Zelig.

Shoenfeld wrote detailed and sharply opinionated sketches of many of the characters e.g. The Solomon brothers, alias the Bostons (after the city of their birth), Samuel and Meyer, and their wives or gun-mols, Tillie and Bessie. Sam, at twenty-eight, three years older than Meyer, was short and pudgy (five feet four, one hundred sixty-five pounds) and had "rosy stout cheeks" and "a heavy underlip showing his innate lustful character." How lustful is proved by the fact that he once had been "noted for his propensities as a seducer" and deadly "maiden taker." Also, he had been a "full fledged pickpocket and fagin" who stole barrels, the zinc steps of tenement buildings, and the purses of mothers wheeling baby carriages. He had met Tillie Gold about six years earlier, when she hardly spoke English. But Tillie happened to be the friend, or rather protegee, of Bessie London who was then going with Meyer and had already established herself as "the cleverest booster gun-mol in the world" (booster meaning a female specialist in pilfering from department-store counters).

Similar hangouts to Segal's Cafe were:

Gluckow's Odessa Tea House, Broome St
The University Cafe, Rivington
Simmie Tischler's, Rivington
Max Himmel's, Delancey
Harry Blinderman's, Delancey
Blattberg's Saloon, Stanton
The Onyx, Stanton
Sam Boske's Hop Joint, Stanton
Dora Gold's candy store, First Street
Gucker's Saloon, Second Street
Sam Paul's, Seventh St

Leone's meeting with Grey took place in 1968 at a bar near New York's New Calvary Cemetery, just off Greenpoint Ave, which Grey had recommended. The bar was dark and sordid with people sitting at little tables in the shadows having secret conversations in whispers. The barman was fat in the shape of "Fat Moe" in "Once Upon A Time In America" and the place was similar to the 1968 version of Fat Moe's bar. They sat next to a window under a neon advertisement for Coca-Cola. Grey was over 70 and looked a bit like Edward G Robinson. Leone said that he had filmed "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly with "The Hoods" very much on his mind. Leone confessed that he had been trying to convince American Studios to back a film version of the book since before "Once Upon A Time In The West". Morsella asked Grey if he would be willing to act as a consutant and Grey, who was a man of very few words, gave a very slight nod although he did not seem very enthusiastic. After fifty minutes Harry Grey stood up and said goodbye.

From the late 1960s onwards Leone met Harry Grey several times - sometimes in a god-forsaken bar, other times in Central Park or under the neon advertisements of Times Square. On one occasion Grey invited Leone to his house and they had a meal of spaghetti badly cooked by Grey's wife. She was, as Leone remembered, tired of everything and silent - an elderly ex-schoolteacher who had lived her whole life waiting for him, shaking with nerves every time the phone or the doobell rang.

During the early 1970's, Leone introduced writer Medioli to Harry Grey, who this time was a little more forthcoming. Grey revealed that he had been associated with Frank Costello and the sole liberty he had taken in the Hoods was Max's death. Max had survived and was now 70 years of age. He still accepted one or two contracts a year to pay the rent but according to Grey, Max still had big ideas. So, at seventy years of age, Max proposed to Grey that they do a hold-up together. Harrys' wife said to him: "If you dare do that, at seventy, after all these years I've waited for you, I will leave you." And so Grey turned down the proposal, Max attempted the job himself and was subsequently arrested. The arrest was broadcast on TV.

[PolackTony]

I found this article a long time ago and I find it very interesting guys:

"The Hoods" claims to be an autobiographical account of the life of a Jewish Gangster from Manhattan's Lower East Side written under Goldberg's pseudonym of Harry Grey whilst Goldberg was in Sing Sing prison. Goldberg was born in the late 1890s or early 1900s and died in the early part of 1982.

Harry Goldberg is listed on p.3 of:

The Rise And Fall Of The Jewish Gangster In America by Albert Fried (originally from Judah P Magnes' The Magnes Papers, The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, Israel)

In August 1912, a group of influential NYC German-American Jews asked Abe Shoenfeld to head a team of private investigators who would check out and report on the Jewish criminals and vice lords of NYC's Lower East Side. Crime and vice there had gotten out of hand, newspapers carried front page scandalous stories on a daily basis and the situation threatened to bring all New York Jews, even the most respectable (the Germans), into disrepute.

At the time 344,000 people were living in overcrowded tenaments in one square mile of Lower East Side - the most concentrated mass of people in the world. At the end of Shoenfeld's assignment, he had written biographical vignettes on approx. 1900 people.

In 1912/1913 Shoenfeld sent to his employers this list of the people from the Lower East Side underworld who regulary visited Segal's Cafe on Second Avenue in the early hours of the morning:

Patsye Keegan - gun - pipe fiend - mack
Sadie Chink - ex-prostitute - owner disorderly house
Aaron Horlig alias Big Aleck - 50% owner
Louis Segal alias Little Segal - 50% owner
Charlie Auerbach - mack-strike breaker - life taker
Little Carl - right name Carl Hudis alias Harry Cohen - gun - mack
Bockso - gun
Charles Pearlstein alias Kopki - mack - strike breaker - doorman
Keever alias Little Keever - mack - gun - gunman - strongarm
McKinley - gun and mack
Mendel - gun
Lhulki - gun
Whitey Lewis - indicted and convicted - Rosenthal Affair
Lefty Louis - indicted and convicted - Rosenthal Affair
Jack Zelig - recently murdered
Dopey Benny - guerilla - life taker
Benny - guerilla - life taker
Valinsky - gun - brother to Harry Vallon of Rosenthal Fame
Little Mikie Newman - gangster
Louis Cruller - alias Little Cruller - gun and mack
Candy Kid Phil - gun
Sam Boston - gambler - owner - former fagin - fence - commission better
Meyer Boston - same as his brother Sam - their right names are Meyer & Sam Solomon
Crazy Jake - gun
Bennie Greenie - gun
Harry Goldberg - gun
Markey English - gun
Bobby Mendelsohn - mack
Little Natie - (not the one from Broome St.) - gun. Right family name is Lubin being related to Lubin the Philadelphia Moving Film Company.
Charlie Whitey - mack and strike breaker
Dinah Hudis - prostitute. Her mack is Little Carl.
Jennie Morris alias Jennie The Factory - former prostitute and at present disorderly house owner. Her mack is Harry Morris. Owner 249 Broome Street.
Bessie London - right name is Mrs Meyer Solomon - her husband is Meyer Boston - best gun-mol in the world.
Tillie Gold - right name Mrs Sam Solomon - her husband is Sam Boston - a gun-mol from Bessie London's School.
Tillie Finkelstein - gun-mol from Bessie London's School - married to Candy Kid Phil - do not know his family name.
Birdie Pomerantz - gun-mol - married to Philly Furst, a gun, now out of town working the rattlers and shorts and towns out west.
Big Nose Willie - gun
Herman Scheiner - alias Chaim The Mummey - gun
Yanish - gun
Schorr - gun
Tutsie - worker in a pool room or crap house.
Monahickey - gun
Dan The Stud Dealer
Willie Berkowitz - gambler

Explanation of terms:

Gun stood for pickpocket and all-around thief
(derived probably from the Yiddish word gonif)
mack stood for pimp
pipe fiend for opium smoker
doorman for someone who warns gamblers, brothelkeepers, etc., of trouble
guerilla for strong-armer or enforcer
gangster for member of a criminal gang
fagin for organizer of young pickpockets
gun-mol for woman pickpocket (usually working in collaboration with a man)

At this address people of the underworld from out of town pay visits when they come here, as for instance Celia Minsky and Pauline alias Pauline The Horse Car - both disorderly house madams of Philadelphia. At this address Gold the actor plays pinochle, and Greenberg a city employee also. Zelig was "framed up" in here. Red Phil was in here 20 minutes before he killed Jack Zelig.

Shoenfeld wrote detailed and sharply opinionated sketches of many of the characters e.g. The Solomon brothers, alias the Bostons (after the city of their birth), Samuel and Meyer, and their wives or gun-mols, Tillie and Bessie. Sam, at twenty-eight, three years older than Meyer, was short and pudgy (five feet four, one hundred sixty-five pounds) and had "rosy stout cheeks" and "a heavy underlip showing his innate lustful character." How lustful is proved by the fact that he once had been "noted for his propensities as a seducer" and deadly "maiden taker." Also, he had been a "full fledged pickpocket and fagin" who stole barrels, the zinc steps of tenement buildings, and the purses of mothers wheeling baby carriages. He had met Tillie Gold about six years earlier, when she hardly spoke English. But Tillie happened to be the friend, or rather protegee, of Bessie London who was then going with Meyer and had already established herself as "the cleverest booster gun-mol in the world" (booster meaning a female specialist in pilfering from department-store counters).

Similar hangouts to Segal's Cafe were:

Gluckow's Odessa Tea House, Broome St
The University Cafe, Rivington
Simmie Tischler's, Rivington
Max Himmel's, Delancey
Harry Blinderman's, Delancey
Blattberg's Saloon, Stanton
The Onyx, Stanton
Sam Boske's Hop Joint, Stanton
Dora Gold's candy store, First Street
Gucker's Saloon, Second Street
Sam Paul's, Seventh St

Leone's meeting with Grey took place in 1968 at a bar near New York's New Calvary Cemetery, just off Greenpoint Ave, which Grey had recommended. The bar was dark and sordid with people sitting at little tables in the shadows having secret conversations in whispers. The barman was fat in the shape of "Fat Moe" in "Once Upon A Time In America" and the place was similar to the 1968 version of Fat Moe's bar. They sat next to a window under a neon advertisement for Coca-Cola. Grey was over 70 and looked a bit like Edward G Robinson. Leone said that he had filmed "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly with "The Hoods" very much on his mind. Leone confessed that he had been trying to convince American Studios to back a film version of the book since before "Once Upon A Time In The West". Morsella asked Grey if he would be willing to act as a consutant and Grey, who was a man of very few words, gave a very slight nod although he did not seem very enthusiastic. After fifty minutes Harry Grey stood up and said goodbye.

From the late 1960s onwards Leone met Harry Grey several times - sometimes in a god-forsaken bar, other times in Central Park or under the neon advertisements of Times Square. On one occasion Grey invited Leone to his house and they had a meal of spaghetti badly cooked by Grey's wife. She was, as Leone remembered, tired of everything and silent - an elderly ex-schoolteacher who had lived her whole life waiting for him, shaking with nerves every time the phone or the doobell rang.

During the early 1970's, Leone introduced writer Medioli to Harry Grey, who this time was a little more forthcoming. Grey revealed that he had been associated with Frank Costello and the sole liberty he had taken in the Hoods was Max's death. Max had survived and was now 70 years of age. He still accepted one or two contracts a year to pay the rent but according to Grey, Max still had big ideas. So, at seventy years of age, Max proposed to Grey that they do a hold-up together. Harrys' wife said to him: "If you dare do that, at seventy, after all these years I've waited for you, I will leave you." And so Grey turned down the proposal, Max attempted the job himself and was subsequently arrested. The arrest was broadcast on TV.

Cool, thanks.

As a side note, I always thought that the term "Mack" (as in "Mack daddy" etc) originated in black slang. Seems from this that's not the case. I wonder if it was of Yiddish or Hebrew origin as with the etymology of gun/gonif here?

[SolarSolano]

Really interesting - one of the most underrated movies of all time.

[aleksandrored]

Once upon a time in America is my favorite film, I really like the book and I think it complements the film, I hope that one day they will release the 4 hour and 30 minute version of the film.
About Harry Gray I find his story interesting, even though I know that he possibly put a lot of fiction.

[aleksandrored]

What would "Hoods" be?

[PolackTony]

What would "Hoods" be?

Hoodlums.

[aleksandrored]

What would "Hoods" be?

Hoodlums.

were they independent thugs?