Joe Didn't Yell (11-9-1927)

 

Chicago in the 1920s could be a dangerous place if you got on the wrong side of the wrong people.  This was the day Smiling Joe Lewis found that out.

Lewis was an upcoming young cabaret singer and comedian.  For a year he had been the main attraction at the Green Mill in Uptown.  When his contract expired he signed on at the rival Rendezvous Lounge.

One of the Green Mill owners was Machine Gun Jack McGurn, a notorious gangster.  McGurn tried to entice Lewis back.  When that didn't work, he warned the entertainer that he would never live to open at the Rendezvous.

Lewis did open, and performed to packed houses.  A week later, on the morning of November 9, he was sleeping in his room at the Commonwealth Hotel.  There was a knock at the door.  Half dozing, he got up and automatically opened it.

Three strangers pushed past him into the room.  Two of them brandished guns, the other carried a ten-inch hunting knife.  "Just one favor, Joe," the third man said.  "Don't yell."

The third man punched the knife into Lewis's jaw and began carving.  It went on for maybe a half-hour.  When they were satisfied that Lewis had learned his lesson, they left.

Lewis managed to crawl out of the room.  The housemaid found him and he was rushed to the hospital.  He spent six hours on the operating table.  He stayed alive.

The attack on Lewis shocked unshockable Chicago.  Within a few months, the three attackers turned up dead.  McGurn was never positively connected with the crime.  But his boss, Al Capone, later gave Lewis $10,000 to help pay his bills.

Joe Lewis had suffered a fractured skull.  He had over a dozen knife wounds in his head and part of his tongue was cut off.  His right arm was paralyzed and his left wasn't much better.  His mind was cloudy.  He had to be re-taught how to speak.

Though his singing voice was gone, Smiling Joe eventually resumed his career as a nightclub comedian, under the name Joe E. Lewis.  Frank Sinatra portrayed him in a film bio called "The Joker Is Wild."

Machine Gun Jack McGurn was killed in a bowling alley in 1936.  Joe E. Lewis survived him by 35 years.

UNKNOWN CHICAGO SOURCE: Halper, The Chicago Crime Book (1967), pp. 45-64.