Being the wife of a wanted criminal in the 1920s was equal parts alluring and terrifying. You were constantly in danger, or at least your spouse was in danger of being shot on the street or “taken for a ride.” If you chose this life you were probably one of three kinds of woman. Someone who really had no clue what the man they loved did, chose to see what the man they loved did and pretended not to know about it or knew what they did and embraced it. For the most part women who married the bootleggers of prohibition turned a blind eye to their husband’s escapades for one reason or another. It took a special kind of personality, one that, it might be argued wasn’t that different from those that they were partners in life.
Erin Finlen explains.
Images to click on before you start:
George Moran and Lucille: https://images.app.goo.gl/nTCYpeTnHW1Qt6bHA
Cecelia Drucci: https://images.app.goo.gl/agLdrHV5DAwHnTpX6
Hymie Weiss and Josephine Simard: https://images.app.goo.gl/XD61BpZUuxECbdXq7
Dean O'Banion and Viola: https://images.app.goo.gl/WKR137gBQypWFiRD9
Viola O’Banion
Viola O’Banion was born Viola Kaniff in Chicago, Illinois on March 27,1901. When she was school age she went to boarding or finishing school in Iowa. She was home on her Christmas break in December of 1920 and she and some girlfriends went to cafe on the North Side, where she caught the eye of Dean O’Banion. Viola could be described as the female of version of her husband. She had dark blond hair and blue eyes and an infectious attitude and penchant for trouble. She radiated a joy for life. Dean was instantly in love and the two were married in February of 1921.
There is a real possibility that Viola had no idea her husband was in the bootlegging business. She even told a reporter who came to visit O’Banion when he was under house arrest pending the trial for the murder of John Duffy that there was no way he could have done it, the police just didn’t like him.
The two vacationed together on the infamous trip where Dean is credited with finding the Tommy Gun and ordering some to be brought to Chicago, but there is no reason to suggest that she was involved with his criminal activities in anyway. When Dean was murdered she claimed that the only reason he ever carried a gun was for protection in the dangerous city, something Dean could have told her and she probably believed, it was a plausible reason in the city where money controlled the cops and the money was controlled by the gangsters. For better or worse the pair were a good match and both loved each other dearly. Viola would never be quite the same after his death.
That’s not to say that she was lost her mischievous streak by any means. In 1926, she married a man on a dare only to discover he was already married and promptly divorce him. In 1929, she was arrested for driving over 66 mph through a residential neighborhood and using the sidewalks as well, an activity that her late husband had also engaged in. Then, in 1934 she watched as her sister jumped off a bridge. When her sister was rescued she accompanied her to the county hospital. They refused to say why her sister was in the water and Mrs. O’Banion Carter, as the papers called her, answered with, “I don’t like the police and we were just celebrating a wedding.” A dislike and distrust of policeman and a joyful outlook on life made her the perfect and possibly blind eyed wife to Dean O’Banion and his gangland kingdom.
Josephine Simard
For the purposes of this article I am going to call Josephine the fiancé of Hymie Weiss, splitting her version of events and what can be proven cleanly down the middle. Marie Josephine Simard was, like Dean and Viola, a bubbly outgoing young woman who was born on October 23, 1902 in Massachusetts. She joined the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City, a comedy troupe of chorus girls, who were considered risqué at the time, and in the fall of 1925, the tour was visiting Chicago where she met Earl “Hymie” Weiss. It’s probable that the vivacious personality of Simard was what drew him to her, she brought out the good side of the otherwise angry, violent, and serious man, a much needed light after the death of his best friend the year before.
There is a lot of speculation about the relationship that the pair actually had. Josephine said that she spent the happiest days of her life to that point with Weiss, that even though he was a bootlegger he enjoyed quiet nights at home with her and that if you didn’t know who he was you would never guess. At no point did she hide that she knew what he did or who he was, instead she said it didn’t matter because she loved him. Their friends all said that they were very happy together and a picture of the two in Miami, Florida taken between the winter of 1925 and fall 1926 shows an extremely happy couple. They were reported to have heated arguments but only because, as Rose Keefe says in her book, The Man Who Got Away, they were such different personalities. The famous scene in the 1931 film, The Public Enemy, where James Cagney shoves a grape fruit in Mae West’s face supposedly came from an incident where Weiss shoved an omelet in Josephine’s face because she was talking too much early in the morning.
According to Josephine, the pair were so in love that they eloped in Florida in the winter of 1925, but she was never able to provide a marriage certificate, saying that Weiss had a priest brought to their room. Stating that she was his widow, she insisted that she had a right to his estate when he died. His mother and the executor of his will, Mary Weiss was not having it, going so far as to have her son in law, James Philip Monahan go get the car that Weiss had bought for her. The pair faced off in probate court, no small feat for the Follies Girl, since all signs point to Mary Weiss being a fierce woman who didn’t back down from a fight. The case was eventually dismissed. It is worth noting that Weiss was meticulous about his will. It makes sense seeing as he had terminal cancer. If the marriage was legally binding it’s doubtful that he would have neglected to add her to it.
She never hid who she had married. Her second husband, Samuel Marx, remembered her as crying a lot when they met due to losing Weiss. For Simard it was either love or money that kept her with Weiss, not a notion that he wasn’t the bootlegging kingpin that he was. Most people at the time said it was the money, but from her heartfelt statement after his death, it’s clear she loved him dearly.
Cecilia Drucci
The wife of Vincent Drucci is actually harder to track than her husband. In fact, she is downright impossible to find any factual information on. There is no record of their marriage until she says at his funeral that they gave him a swell send off and yet, if you were to think of the kind of woman Drucci were to marry, it would be Cecilia.
There isn’t much know about her, besides that she was blond and feisty. There is an anecdote that sees her threatening a dinner guest with a butchers knife. When a dressmaker was telling people that Drucci had robbed her store, he showed up with an unknown blond woman and told her to teach the woman a lesson. The woman turned the shop over and Drucci herded the customers to the backroom before the pair fled in a taxi. There is a chance that this woman was Cecilia. Although, blond doesn’t tell us much. While his friends were faithful to their partners once they found them, Drucci was not and was reputed to have a different blond on his arm every night.
When Drucci was buried his wife said “We sure gave him a swell send off,” and then disappeared without a trace. There isn’t much to tell about her but Cecelia Drucci exemplifies the woman who worked alongside her husband in the Chicago Underworld.
Lucille Moran
George Moran’s wife is not Cecilia Drucci nor is she Viola O’Banion. However, neither does she quite fit the same mold as Josephine Simard. She wasn’t a high strung, quick tempered moll, a naive young lady who had no idea what her husband did and she also wasn’t as willing to pretend that Moran didn’t have a criminal record that he was actively adding to during their marriage. She loved and supported her husband and knew what he was to the Chicago Underworld, it was less important to her though than the fact that he was a good husband and a great father to her child.
Born in 1899, Lucille was a recently divorced mother of one when she met George, in 1923. He was instantly smitten with her according to their love story and, while she was at first worried that he wouldn’t accept her son, Moran was just as infatuated with him. The boy spoke French, which Moran had grown up speaking and helped him learn English.
Though he seems to have been an ideal partner there was no hiding what he did for a living, especially when he was arrested on suspicion of attempting to assassinate Johnny Torrio. After that he moved to a hotel and when Weiss was assassinated in 1926, he was arrested there after he left the funeral without telling anyone and rumors abounded as to his future plans. Lucille was supportive, loving and there for every step of her husband’s life, even picking him up when he was released on bail or watching in court. Then, in 1929, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre happened. She had to wait for news that he was alive and then he fled to Canada, leaving her and her son at the hotel, to be watched over by his underlings. When he returned, she tried to remain just as strong as she had been but after another trial in 1930, Moran was advised to leave Illinois all together and she had had enough. She decided that she couldn’t live like that anymore and served him divorce papers.
And they all lived…
Well, not happily ever after. The life of the women who called a gangster her husband was high stress and fraught with danger, whether they accepted it or not. Of the four women discussed only one didn’t see her marriage end in tragedy and it was the scare of doing so that made her finally pull the trigger on her divorce (so to speak). Viola, Josephine, Cecilia and Lucille were also, strangely, all perfect fits for the men they married, at least from a historical perspective. Viola and Dean, fun loving partners in life with hot tempers and a disrespect for the law. Josephine and Earl, volatile, quick tempered people who balanced each other out and brought out the best in each other. Cecilia and Vincent, who were so alike as to be almost uncanny. George and Lucille, each there for each other when they were needed, level headed and perseverant. Four different couples and four different but intriguing female figures of the 1920s.
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Sources
Binder, J. J. (2017). Al Capone’s Beer wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition. Prometheus Books.
Burns, W. N. (1931). The one-way ride: The Red Trail of Chicago Gangland from Prohibition to Jake Lingle.
Keefe, R. (2003). Guns and roses: The Untold Story of Dean O’Banion, Chicago’s Big Shot Before Al Capone. Turner Publishing Company.
Keefe, R. (2005). The Man who Got Away: The Bugs Moran Story : a Biography. Cumberland House Publishing.
My Al Capone Museum. (n.d.). https://myalcaponemuseum.com/
Sullivan, E. D. (1929). Rattling the cup on Chicago crime.
