"Wanna be in our gang?" London Observer, November 24, 2002
New York's gangland has inspired everyone from PG Wodehouse to Martin Scorsese, whose latest film traces the immigrant roots of the city. Robert McCrum investigates the enduring fascination of hoods
New York, New York, says the song, is a wonderful town. The Manhattan of the musicals is a brightly lit proscenium just around the corner of our collective imagination. But there's a grimmer, backstage side, of mean streets and dark alleys, from Hell's Kitchen to the infamous Five Points.
Just as modern London had its violent, bloody, chaotic birthpangs - plague, fire, riots - so nineteenth-century New York was terrorised for almost a century by a succession of gangs who issued with their bludgeons and pistols from the criminal breeding ground bordered by Broadway, Canal Street and the Bowery.
Wave after wave of immigrants - Irish, Italian, Eastern European, and Irish again - only sharpened the ferocity with which the gangs of New York defended their turf. There were the Swamp Angels, swarming uptown out of the city's sewers on missions of mayhem. There were the Daybreak Boys, who specialised in recruiting cut-throats of 10 or 11 years old. Then there were the common-or-garden street toughs such as Stumpy Malarkey and Goo-goo Knox, downtown thugs who would team up with organisations like the infamous Dead Rabbit Gang, sallying forth to do battle, with their mascot impaled on a pike. One of the Dead Rabbits, Hell-Cat Maggie, prepared for action by filing her front teeth to points. Another, Sadie the Goat, butted her victims breathless before laying them out cold.
Much of the fighting in nineteenth-century Manhattan was atavistic feuding between Irish Catholics just off the boat and established Yankee Protestants, immigrant aristocrats who exploited and demeaned the new arrivals. The violence on the streets was fired up in an urban cauldron of soaring inflation, sweatshop squalor and working-class resentment.
In 1863, the spark that ignited all-out gang war directed against the state, was Abraham Lincoln's National Conscription Act, which made all able-bodied men eligible for the draft in the civil war with the Confederate South. To the Irish, who could not afford the $3,000 that middle-class New Yorkers were permitted to pay to dodge the draft, it seemed that poor white working-men were being forced to fight for the freedom of Southern blacks who would then come up north and take their jobs. The enraged Irish, led by gangs such as the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits, set fire to federal property, attacked newspaper offices (including that of the famous New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley) and beat up or butchered any blacks, including women and children, who crossed their path.
These Draft Riots were the worst civil disturbances in American history - for a week in July 1863 it seemed as though the entire city would burn to the ground - and they provide the backdrop and the climax to Martin Scorsese's long-awaited new film, Gangs of New York.
Scorsese believes the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Amsterdam Vallon and Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, has a contemporary parallel. 'It's a template for what's still going on today,' he said, 'with the rivalry between newer waves of immigrants and older assimilated groups. It's the spirit of the city: the struggle to be alive, and ultimately the struggle to be free, in an environment where so many races, colours, creeds come together. This is the big experiment of this country, and a lot of it happens in New York.'
Although in many ways it's the later gang warfare of New York that seems most cinematically picturesque, there is a kind of brutal poetry to the price list of intimidation found in the pockets of Piker Ryan, when this ace intimidator was finally brought to book:
Punching - $2
Both eyes blacked - $4
Nose and jaw broke - $10
Jacked out (knocked out with a black jack) - $15
Ear chawed off - $15
Leg or arm broke - $19
Shot in leg - $25
Stab - $25
Doing the Big Job - $100 and up
Piker Ryan was a member of the notorious Whyos, who were at the height of their power in the 1880s and 1890s. Other members included Hoggy Walsh, Fig McGerald, Googy Corcoran, Baboon Connolly, Big Josh Hines and Red Rocks Farrell, thugs and brawlers who were also expert sneak thieves, bank robbers and pickpockets.
The Whyos infested such neighbourhoods as the Old Brewery, Cow Bay and Gotham Court. As the city expanded northwards, they swarmed uptown, so that by the 1890s the greater part of Manhattan seethed with gangs of homeless men and women involved in every kind of criminal exploit.
By 1900, however, the fin de siècle boom had begun to make the city respectable at last. Old New York was cleaning up its act and sharpening its modern profile. The Flat Iron Building went up in 1902. The first subway was opened in 1904. When the wonder of the age, the Cunard Line's Lusitania , steamed up the Hudson in September 1907, the city that greeted its transatlantic passengers had buried its traditions of internecine warfare and was, apparently, designed for the twentieth century: cleaner, brighter and safer than it had been in living memory.
As the tide of violence receded, the gangs became more and more confined to the Five Points, a now forgotten intersection of three streets somewhere near the Foley Square courthouse. Dickens had been here a generation earlier. 'All that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here,' he wrote in American Notes.
Among the dance houses, sweatshops, brothels and Chinese gambling dens around Paradise Square, the gangs of New York would enjoy a glorious swansong before they were swept up in the cosmic violence of the First World War, and though they do not feature in Scorsese's film their scenarios and their dramatis personae are enthralling.
Between 1900 and 1914, the gangs of New York rejected their coarse traditions and became high-stepping dandies, shaved, manicured and brilliantined to kill. Johnny Spanish, for example, never left home without a 'lily of the field' in his buttonhole. The much-feared bruiser Biff Ellison was an inveterate fop who loved to sprinkle himself with a scent specially prepared for him.
And then there was Edward Delaney, alias William Delaney, alias Joseph Marvin, alias Joseph Morris, alias Monk Eastman (or Ostermann), the leader of a gang of 1,200. Eastman was a gangster straight out of the movies, but no picture, with a bullet-shaped head, a bull neck and scarred cheeks. During his career he had also acquired a broken nose, two cauliflower ears and a ferocious demeanour, which he accentuated with a derby hat several sizes too small, perched on top of his bristly, battered scalp. When he enlisted at the outbreak of the Great War and stripped for inspection, the doctors thought they were examining a Civil War veteran, and asked him what wars he had been in. 'Oh!' replied Eastman, 'a lot of little wars around New York.'
Like many thugs, Eastman was kind to animals. When he was not extorting or mugging, he kept a bird and animal store on Broome Street, owned more than 100 cats and 500 pigeons, and often went out with a cat under each arm, a blue pigeon perched on his shoulder. 'I like de kits and boids,' he would say. 'I'll beat up any guy dat gets gay wit' a kit or a boid in my neck of de woods.'
Monk Eastman was quite a New York celebrity in the first decade of the new century, but he would have passed into oblivion if he and his gangster fellows had not attracted the attention of Herbert Asbury, a minister's son from Missouri. Asbury, described by Adam Gopnik recently in the New Yorker as 'a low-life character with a high-end purpose', first came to notice in the 1920s on the publication of his controversial memoir, Up from Methodism, an American rendering of Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh. Subsequently, he wrote for William Randolph Hearst and for Harold Ross's New Yorker.
Then, settling on what Gopnik calls 'the suppressed history of American life', Asbury wrote Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, which has acquired a cult following. It was this book, first published in 1928 and long out of print, that inspired Scorsese, who said it captured 'the New York where I grew up'.
The director read the book in the Seventies and resolved to make a screen version. 'I was intrigued by the title. I started to read it, and I couldn't stop - I went through it in one day. I thought it would make a fantastic film. Since then I've been obsessed with this book.' Other unlikely fans include the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the American novelist Luc Sante, who says that Asbury 'owns a direct pipeline to the city's unconscious'.
Asbury was a realist and a Mid-Western moralist whose book is, as Gopnik notes, 'a kind of surrealist collage of the city's secret history' but whose intent, he believes, 'was not to intoxicate with tales of a lost and romantic Gotham, but to disintoxicate us with tales of brutality and violence'. Nonetheless, there was something about those gangs of New York that caught the imagination of a young Englishman with a taste for boxing named PG Wodehouse.
Wodehouse had first come to New York, aged 23, in 1904, as a journalist hoping to cover the big fight between 'Kid' McCoy and 'Philadelphia Jack' O'Brien. When he returned in 1909, he was a successful novelist in search of new material and a bigger, more lucrative audience. He took rooms a few blocks from the Five Points, and quickly immersed himself in the life of the city.
Wodehouse's Psmith Journalist features New York's criminal underworld, transformed into farcical moonshine. Psmith's laconic gangster ally, Bat Jarvis, 'a dealer in animals, birds and snakes', with 'a fancier's shop in... the heart of the Bowery,' is plainly modelled on Monk Eastman. Like Eastman, 'he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, which gave him the appearance of having no forehead at all.'
Wodehouse displays a confident knowledge of the gangs of 'the East Side, the Groome Street, the Three Points and the Table Hill'. It's clear, too, that he understands the dandy side of gang life: 'The bulk of the gangs of New York are of the hooligan class... but each gang has its more prosperous members; gentlemen who... support life by more delicate and genteel methods than the rest.'
From these 'gentlemen' it is a short step to the menacing characters who populate the movies - Goodfellas, Casino and Raging Bull - for which Scorsese is famous. As the director of The Age of Innocence, he is fully at home in an upper-class New York milieu. Psmith Journalist has never been filmed. With its brilliant innocence and sly magic it is more music-hall than movie. But in the hands of a director like Scorsese why should it not become a contender for Gangs of New York, The Sequel?
· Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York is published on 2 January by Arrow; the film opens in the UK on 10 January.
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article originally published by Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
"Marty, Leo and me," The Guardian, November 29, 2000
When he got the chance to appear in Martin Scorsese's new movie, currently shooting in Rome, Rory Carroll jumped at it. It would be 'such fun', he was promised. What he got was a dreary dawn start, a frugal breakfast, hours under a baking sun and a near-riot on set...
Tacked to a noticeboard in the cinema foyer, jostling with offers of English lessons, second-hand bicycles and a kitten called Alberto, is a small poster. Typed black letters explain that a Hollywood blockbuster is coming to Rome and would anyone interested in participating please phone the number at the bottom. There is no number, or a bottom, just a jagged rip. Gotta move fast in this business.
It takes a while to track him down, but the voice at the end of the line is welcoming. "There are still some vacancies. You'll have such fun!" And so a few days later I am on a metro rattling east of Rome. Emerging from the station, a sliver of moon hangs over the darkness. It is a cold 5.45am.
Dozens, hundreds of silhouettes tramp down the road in silence. We stop at the gate of a walled complex and wait for a bearded man in denim to finish scratching. "Everything in good time, children." In groups of six we are allowed to enter the fabled Cinecitta studios. The magical world of movie making beckons.
Believe the hype (we do) and what awaits is the box-office hit of 2001. The Gangs of New York has a $90m budget, Martin Scorsese (pictured) directing, Leo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson starring, and us. There isn't really a verb for us. We are extras. We be.
During the next few hours we will be part of Team Hollywood, giving our best in exchange for a peek inside the machine. Given the flight of productions from America to places where costs are lower, this could be a glimpse of the future. At this stage of production, secrecy is needed to allow suspense to build before the publicity blitz. Journalists and photographers are not welcome. Lucky for me that the producers want Irish-looking people. Freckles and red hair are gold dust.
Dawn seeps over us to unveil the day's first extraordinary sight. Ginger Romans. Perms, waves and buzz cuts are tinged orange. They glint in the sun, each strand painstakingly dyed. A hush of respect envelopes this minority. When returning to the real world they will be ridiculed. They will suffer for their art.
After signing away our rights to compensation should an act of God or Scorsese strike us dead, we file into three costume warehouses. The film is about rival immigrant gangs vying for control of 1850s New York. A few well-dressed Yanks are to be sprinkled among 600 soldiers and ragamuffins. We strip down to our underpants - boxer shorts for foreigners, Y-fronts for Romans - while dressers scour racks for coordinated outfits that fit. The female dressers affect a clinical, nurse-type demeanour. Their male colleagues, camp as a row of a tents, flirt. "You are a big boy; let's go to this dark corner and see what we find." Not even the tattooed Lazio fans dare object.
Attention to detail is fanatical. Shirt, waistcoat, jacket, trousers, socks and boots are matched. If the buttons don't look right, they are replaced. Archive pictures of Irish villagers during the famine are scattered on tables. My third outfit is deemed acceptable: brown boots, socks, trousers and braces, stripy white shirt, purple waistcoat and fudgey jacket. Everything itches. My hair is judged an asset so a bowler hat is discarded. Make-up teams smear grease on heads and three types of dirt on faces, hands and nails. Staring back from the mirror is what Oliver Twist would look like after being rammed up a chimney. In the trailer toilets a 20-year-old is desperately rinsing his tresses in the sink. "Ruined," he wails.
Breakfast is one, and only one, pastry each. Too late a veteran murmurs his wisdom. "Eat before make-up, then they won't recognise you when you go back for another." An extra with a handlebar moustache is caught taking a photo of his friend in leprechaun-green. The film is destroyed, the camera confiscated. Stuffing newspapers and books down trousers to read later, we are herded to the set.
Benito Mussolini wasn't totally daft. It was his idea in 1936 to turn 600 hectares of real estate into one of the world's greatest studios. After the second world war, Cinecitta incubated directors such as Fellini and Visconti and enjoyed a golden age with films such as Cleopatra, Spartacus, War and Peace, A Farewell to Arms and La Dolce Vita.
Dante Ferretti's set designs were famous. He is still here. Yawning up around us are New York tenement slums, bakeries, warehouses, docklands, ships. Streets are cobbled, laundry hangs from windows, stoves puff smoke. The lemons are real, the fish are not. The sign saying "P. Daily's Fish Market" is exquisitely faded. Green water laps the harbour. A blue screen blocks the horizon.
A production assistant on the verge of tears bellows at the milling crowd in Roman dialect. "Please, order, please." People in jeans, runners and sunglasses materialise from trailers, muttering into earpieces. They are the Americans. The director is on his way.
Scorsese made Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, but has never won an Oscar or had a global box-office smash. Gangs, based on the book by Herbert Ashbury, could be the one to change that. He arrives driving a golf cart with two personal assistants who will never leave his side. Wearing jeans, runners and a blazer, he hops out and backslaps the cast. He is very small.
Despite being seven days behind schedule, the entire day is devoted to one complicated shot where a single camera will track DiCaprio walking past rows of seated customs officials, follow new arrivals being led away, skim past a battalion marching through a fish market, glide up on a crane to catch soldiers entering a ship and glide down to catch coffins being lowered onto the docks. A lesser director would use five cameras and an editing suite.
Scorsese is sprawling in a chair during a lull when my mobile trills. An assistant turns white. "Christ, turn it off, Marty will get his axe and cut your head off." The assistant is trembling, though Marty appears not to have heard. An extra sidles up. "He looks friendly, but that's only with the actors. We don't exist. Last week he was walking through us and we didn't get out of the way in time. He shouted that we should know who he was."
A sudden silence announces the arrival of DiCaprio. Beneath a top hat his face is pasty and bloated compared to the way it looked in his last film, The Beach. Too much pasta and nightlife, say the Italian papers. Scorsese has put him on a diet but tolerates his smoking, forbidden to others. DiCaprio leans on a pillar and plays "chicken", the hand-slapping game, with another actor. In the film his father, Liam Neeson, is killed by Daniel Day Lewis. In reality DiCaprio and Day Lewis can't stand each other, goes the gossip. The star of My Left Foot is liked for mixing with the crew in the canteen, though his penchant for maintaining his character's accent off camera is greeted with giggles. So too DiCaprio's query to the linguistic consultant. "To insult him, should I use motherfucker or cocksucker?" (The latter.)
By 1pm the sun is melting make-up and patience at yet another lull. Actors disappear into trailers while extras sit outside. Immigrants slump on their luggage, soldiers point rifles at Scorsese and the horse urinates for the fourth time. A group of crones wrapped in shawls, extras since the spaghetti westerns, lecture the youngsters on professionalism.
The director is unhappy with a customs official's style of granting citizenship."You're supposed to be bored, it's not a big deal, it's routine, don't lean forward. Sit back." DiCaprio and Day Lewis have no lines today but are praised for their body language.
My job is to amble towards one of the ships while soldiers march past. After 19 takes the boots begin to hurt. A female immigrant appears to collapse and is led away. "Water for background people," orders Scorsese.
Veteran extras warn neophytes to beware the purges. Chatting too much, squeezing into the shot and smoking can incur banishment. A female extra allegedly caught having sex on set with a supporting actor was fired.
Many extras are wannabe actors who dream of catching the producer's eye. Others come out of curiosity, and most come for the £50 a day. A pittance by American standards but irresistible to a shop assistant on £1.50 an hour. The catch is that a day can stretch to 18 hours, by which time they've missed the last metro and must pay for taxis. After one such marathon the only one to say thanks was Cameron Diaz, says one extra.
By 3.30pm the scene is still not right. It's late October but the sun is roasting and lunch has yet to appear. We look and smell increasingly authentic. Discipline breaks down. Soldiers are marching out of step, an officer wears his cap back to front, a copy of Gazzetto dello Sport is left on a barrel.
Another shout of "cut" sparks mutiny. Moans of protest ripple and swell into curses. Lazio fans start chanting. The Americans are shocked. This is not the Hollywood way. A producer grabs a megaphone and defuses a riot by promising we can leave after lunch. It's a lie. Assistants pounce during dessert and herd us back to the docks where we remain until sunset. The forest of stiff limbs which eventually shambles back to the changing rooms is quiet. We've peeked inside the machine and the mystery is gone.
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