TOWHEADED MONSTER: This photo of Whitey Bulger, second from left, shows the gangster in the early 1940s in Southie.
Young Whitey Bulger caught ... on camera
By Howie Carr | Tuesday, June 21, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com
No, this photo is not an early publicity shot of the Bowery Boys, with their little sister in the front row.
That blond kid, second from the left — that’s the young Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger, in what is the earliest known photo of the future serial-killing gangster to be made public.
Think of it as the portrait of the underworld boss as a young boy.
The photo was obtained by the Herald from a woman in North Attleboro who was left the picture by the little girl in the front after her death. I traded a copy of my new book, “Hitman,” for the snapshot.
In the photo, Whitey appears to be about 12 years old, which means the photo was probably taken sometime in the early 1940s. (Whitey was born in 1929, and will turn 82 in September.)
Check out the hats. How far did the guy to Whitey’s left have to chase Jughead (or maybe the Bowery Boys’ Satch) to steal that hat? The guy on the far left of the photo is wearing “Slip” Mahoney’s chapeau. The photo was taken somewhere near the Old Colony housing projects in Southie, where Whitey and Billy et al lived. The names of the other youths are unknown.
In this period of his life, the young Whitey was studying the careers of gangsters — Hollywood gangsters, anyway. As he told his associates in the Winter Hill Gang 30 years later, he used to go to Jimmy Cagney’s Warner Bros. movies and try to memorize his mannerisms.
This amused his fellow thugs greatly, since when they compared “Jimmy” to famous cinematic gangsters of yore, it wasn’t to Cagney characters such as Rocky Sullivan or even the post-war Cody Jarrett of “White Heat.” Whitey, they figured, was a lot closer to Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo in “Kiss of Death.”
You know, the guy who pushed the old lady in the wheelchair down the stairs while giggling.
Catherine Greig, beware!
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1346890