Depending on your age, if you know the name Eliot Ness, you
probably see him in your mind’s eye as actors Robert Stack, Kevin Costner or,
from a 1990s TV reinvention, as Tom Amandes: charismatic and incorruptible in
all of these incarnations.
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| ROBERT STACK |
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| TOM AMANDES |
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| KEVIN COSTNER |
But none of those gentlemen really attempted to embody the
actual Eliot Ness, treasury agent and eventual safety director of Cleveland…also,
failed mayoral hopeful in his later-life run for top office of “The Mistake on
the Lake.”
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| THE REAL ELIOT NESS DURING FAILED MAYORAL CAMPAIGN |
Ness was a dapper and affable man, by all accounts. He was
more than a bit of an egoist, possibly even a fabulist, and—ironic for a man
noted for his efforts to enforce prohibition—a quite practiced drinker. (Flight
from the scene of a DUI crash fatally wounded his public safety director
career.)
In short, the real Eliot Ness was a decent man with
decidedly clay feet. He never really took the toll on Al Capone various films
and TV series would have you believe. He was never the family man depicted on
film and in at least one TV series.
Ness scored some real successes in Cleveland in his early
days as the youngest public safety director of a U.S. major city, but he was also
undermined, at least partly, by his failure to capture the infamous Cleveland
serial killer, “The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.”
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| ELIOT NESS, THE LAW ENFORCEMENT YEARS |
Word on the street is Dennis Lehane is mounting a TV series
about Ness that will presumably come closer to the real and “touchable” Ness
than previous incarnations ever contemplated.
The first novel I wrote many decades ago, PARTS UNKNOWN,
focused on the Cleveland murder cycle—based on tales my grandmother told of the
killings when I was a child. I time shifted the action to the 1980s and
invested my title character, Chris Lyon, with many of Ness’ weaknesses—a bit of
a skirt-chaser…a fairly steady guy but a little too fond of drink…
A few years ago, I returned to the topic of Ness and the Cleveland
killings for a recently released Hector Lassiter novel, THE RUNNING KIND.
Ness is an on-page character in that book, and we meet him
at something like his nadir. By 1950—the year in which my new novel is set—Ness
was very much on the ropes: out of law enforcement and struggling to make ends
meet by working in bookstores and at various other odd jobs. His drinking was a
big problem, then.
Eliot Ness died in 1957 at the too-young age of 54 from a
massive heart attack. His death came very shortly before publication of Oscar
Fraley’s “The Untouchables,” which eventually led to that TV series with Robert
Stack. Dying before becoming a folk hero was sadly typical of Ness’ later-life
lucklessness.
For years, Ness and his family’s ashes lingered in a
cardboard box in family member’s garage before eventually being recovered and
scattered with appropriate ceremony at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland in 1997.
There’s still strong debate about just how effective a
lawman Ness was and whether he deserves his posthumous reputation.
Indeed, last January, efforts to rename the ATF building in
Washington, D.C., after Ness went off the rails when faced with some fairly
strong opposition, some present-day critics citing Ness’ rather “checkered
career” after bidding farewell to federal law enforcement.
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