Greater Astoria Historial Society 35-20 Broadway, 4th Floor | L.I.C., NY 11106 718.278.0700 | www.astorialic.org Gallery Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays 2-5 PM Saturdays 12-5 PM Exhibits ~ Lectures ~ Documentaries ~ Books Walking Tours ~ Historical Research Unique & Creative Content For more information visit us on the web at www.astorialic.org This image adapted from an invitation to the Long Island City Athletics 33rd Annual Masque Ball, 1909. 32 APRIL 2016 i LIC COURIER i www.qns.com Legends Willie the Actor Truth, as the old adage goes, is often stranger than Fiction, and, being one whom makes a practice of combing through the record, I can attest this is often true. In this addition of ‘Legends’ we will profile a habitual criminal, William Francis “Willie” Sutton, Jr., who is best remembered for robbing a bank in Sunnyside. It is ironic that, for someone who earned an honest paycheck for perhaps all of 18 months in his life, is also the namesake for “Sutton’s Law,” a management principle used in business and medical practices around the word. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Born in the fourth child of five in an Irish household in 1900 Greenpoint, Brooklyn, things were never easy for Willie, who, never much interested in school, left after the eighth grade. People liked him. He was described as a “bright eyed” guy, a fast talker who chained smoked cigarettes as he dispensed legal advice to anyone who would listen. That was a smart move as his more than forty-year criminal career earned him a cot in prison for more than half his life – but, then, that record is not as bad as it might seem. He managed to escape three times. You see, Willie had quite the talent at disguises that gained him two nicknames, “Willie the Actor” and “Slick Willie.” Once, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment at a maximum security prison near Philadelphia, he and a fellow inmate managed to grab two pairs of prison guard uniforms and a ladder. They waited until a moonless night to carry the ladder across the prison yard to a wall. Halfway through the yard a searchlight caught them. Quick thinking Willie shouted “it’s all right!” No one stopped them. Legendary mobster actor James Cagney could have not done a better con job. Of course any good thing has it limits. Years later when a writer asked him if he carried a gun on his bank jobs, he applied in the affirmative, “you can’t rob a bank on charm and personality.” That being said, he did have his personal code. The gun was never loaded because, “someone might get hurt” he explained. It was said he never robbed a bank if a baby cried or a woman screamed. Fellow prisoners remembered him reminiscing about the “good old days” during the violent decades of the 1920s and 1930s when Al Capone and “Lucky” Luciano made the criminal underworld the bloodiest era in recent history. Of course, Willie, a talented bank robber, was no slouch himself having robbed over $2,000,000 – that would be more than $20,000,000 in today’s money. While incarcerated in prison, the younger inmates looked up to him, and the hardened mobsters enjoyed the witty and charming gentleman’s company. Willie was safe in jail – the word was out that no one could touch him. As a matter of a fact, when clothing salesman and amateur sleuth, Arnold Schuster, went on television to explain how he helped apprehend Willie, who was on the lam after yet another jail break, mob boss Albert Anastasia took such a dislike to the ‘squealer’ that he ordered Schuster murdered. How he robbed the Corn Exchange Bank of Sunnyside.
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