Harry Goldberg - the real "Noodles"

It's claimed that "The Hoods" is the autobiography of a real gangster written whilst its author, Harry Grey, a Jewish Gangster from Manhattan's Lower East Side, was in Sing Sing prison.  In a meeting with Sergio Leone, Harry Grey, real name Harry Goldberg, said that he had been associated with Frank Costello and the sole liberty he had taken with the truth in the Hoods was Max's death. Leone was thrilled at meeting the real "Noodles" but commented:

"The grotesque realism of this elderly gangster who, at the end of his life, couldn't stop himself using a repertoire of cinematic citations, of gestures and words seen and heard thousands of times on the big screen, stimulated my curiosity and amused me.  I was struck by the vanity of this attempt and by the grandeur of its bankruptcy."

Parts of "The Hoods" are true, some parts have been unconsciously reworked by the author, some may be fiction.  By the 1950s very few gangsters had dared to tell their life story and Harry Grey was careful to avoid using precise names and details where these could identify him in a crime or provoke retribution from other gangsters.

The book begins in 1914 with Noodles Max Cockeye Patsy and Dominick in an East Side school classroom (7th grade).  Their teacher, Safety-Pin Mons, mentions that she read in last night's paper about the execution of Left Louie and Dago Frank. These are the actual names of real gangsters who died in the electric chair on 13 April 1914.

This would indicate that Grey was born in 1901 or 1902 but when Leone met him in 1968 he thought he was over 70 by some distance.  Also the gang start talking in school about being in the Wilson v Hughes election year which was actually 1916 and helping Monk Eastman, who by this time was criminally not very active.

According to Grey, by 1932, the gang operated six speakeasys, had more than a million dollars in savings and were associated with very high profile gangsters.  A summary of the life of Noodles is given here.  Whilst there were hundreds of small time gangsters from Manhattan's Lower East Side about whom very little is known, it seems odd that his name does not appear more prominently in books about organised crime of the period.  There are even 10 pages in "The Hoods" in which Grey describes how he and Max disposed of the body of Supreme Court Judge Joseph Force Crater, a major unsolved mystery of the time.

A Harry Goldberg is mentioned on page 3 of Albert Fried's The Rise And Fall Of The Jewish Gangster In America in a list of Jewish criminals who frequented Segal's cafe in 1912/13.  However if Goldberg was born in 1902, he would have only been 10 or 11 at the time. Further details of the criminals who frequented Segal's cafe are given here.  

The position is complicated by the practice of many gangsters to adopt names other than their own. Sometimes done to confuse the police, sometimes so as not to bring shame on the family name, sometimes to stop parents and relatives finding out about their criminal activities.   For example Louis Shomberg went by the name of Henry, Harry and Dutch Goldberg.  Ron Arons, author of "The Jews Of Sing Sing", maintains a database of inmates of Sing Sing Prison on his website.  There are several Goldbergs listed but they were born in the 1880s and 1890s and served prison sentences earlier than Harry Grey/Goldberg would have done. 

There is no mention of Sing Sing prison in "The Hoods", Noodles spending 18 months at a correctional facility known as The Jewish Home, Cedar Knolls, Hawthorne, New York between 1918 and 1920.  There are some italian websites which describe a meeting between Ernesto Gastaldi, an uncredited writer of "Once Upon A Time in America" and Harry Grey in the 1970s.  At this meeting it is claimed that Grey revealed that he and his gang had killed 29 people and after fleeing New York, he had gone to Florida.  He lived there for several years and was then contacted by the Combination.  They offered to cancel the contract on his life if he did one last job for them.   He was told to return to New York and kill an American member of Congress.  Grey agreed to this, eliminated the Senator but was chased by the police.  He evaded capture by driving his car into the Hudson River.  This was to be the opening scene in the movie - an old gangster is chased by the police and drives his car into the river.  The camera follows the car as it sinks to the river bed.  There we see lots of other cars which gradually change into antique vehicles.  The camera then rises to the surface and we see the opening titles:

Once Upon A Time In America

Leone tells it a little differently claiming that he wrote the scene with American screenwriter Robert Dillon who immediately afterwards practically stole the whole of the first part by giving it to 99 and 44/100% Dead... which had at the beginning the sequence Leone wanted to make, a cemetery under the water of the Hudson River.

At one of Leone's meetings with Grey, 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 confirmed 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.

Filming of the movie was due to commence on 14 June 1982 and prior to this, Sergio Leone tried to contact Harry Grey to let him know the good news.  Grey's wife told Leone that her husband had died a few weeks earlier.

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