Filled with mayhem, mountains of illicit cash, and rivers of bourbon, “Tales of the Bourbon King” presents the life and crimes of George Remus, bootleg king of the Jazz Age, a dazzling true crime spectacle. With gunfights and fisticuffs, he turned America into his violent playground, grafting his way into Warren Harding’s White House. A model for Jay Gatsby, Remus’s story epitomizes the spectacular 1920s – until it came crashing down in an improbable tale of deceit and rage, centered on the dastardly G-man who stole his wife, leading directly to a fateful gunshot that ended her life.
Read moreOnly 10 Days Until 100th Anniversary of Prohibition!
Only 10 Days Until 100th Anniversary of Prohibition!
On January 17, 2020, the nation went dry...at least legally!
Media Alert: 100th Anniversary of Volstead Act Implementation Centennial of Law that Launched Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties, Rampant Lawlessness, American citizens transformed into Criminals
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to examine the day the nation went dry and the tremendous consequences it had on the rest of American history.
What: The Volstead Act, enacted into law on October 28, 1919, defined the parameters of the Eighteenth Amendment. By passing the Volstead Act, Congress formally prohibited intoxicating beverages; regulated the sale, manufacture, or transport of liquor; but still ensured that alcohol could still be used for scientific, research, industrial, and religious practices.
When: Congress voted to overrule President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, passing the Volstead Act on October 28, 1919. Legal enforcement of Prohibition began on January 17, 1920.
Why: Chaos reigned in the early twentieth century. In America, the tumultuous era included millions of immigrants streaming into the nation, and then a protracted war that seemed apocalyptic. The backlash against the disarray sent some forces searching for normality. Liquor was an easy target. Supporters of dry law turned the consumption of alcohol into an indicator of widespread moral rot.
Bob Batchelor, author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius (Diversion Books) is available for commentary and discussion of Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties. The Bourbon King is the epic tale of “Bootleg King” George Remus, who from his Gatsby-like mansion in Cincinnati, created the largest illegal liquor ring in American history. In today’s money, Remus built a bourbon empire of some $5 to $7 billion in just two and a half years.
People all over the world know the name “Al Capone,” but without George Remus and his pipeline of Kentucky bourbon, there may never have been a Capone. Although largely forgotten today, Remus was one of the most famous men in American in the 1920s, including the shocking murder of his wife Imogene and subsequent high-stakes trial that set off a national sensation.
QUOTES:
George Remus: “My personal opinion had always been that the Volstead Act was an unreasonable, sumptuary law, and that it never could be enforced.”
George Remus: “I knew it [the Volstead Act] was as fragile as tissue paper.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald: “America was going on the grandest, gaudiest spree in history…The whole golden boom was in the air—its splendid generosities, its outrageous corruptions and the tortuous death struggle of the old America in prohibition.” From the essay “Early Success” (1937)
Bob Batchelor: “Prohibition turned ordinary citizens into criminals. Media attention turned some criminals into Jazz Age icons. At the top of the heap stood those few, like George Remus, who took advantage of the new illegal booze marketplace to gain untold power and riches.”
Bob Batchelor: “During Prohibition, ‘bathtub gin’ often contained substances that were undrinkable at best and deadly at worst. A band of rumrunners selling ‘Canadian’ whiskey were actually peddling toilet bowl cleaner. Tests on booze obtained in one raid revealed that the liquor contained a large volume of poison.”
Bob Batchelor: “Remus may have been singularly violent and dangerous, but his utter disregard for Prohibition put him in accord with how much of American society felt about the dry laws. Within the government, the lack of resolve for enforcing Prohibition started at the top with President Warren G. Harding and his corrupt administration.”
“Bob Batchelor’s The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius might as well be the outline of a Netflix or HBO series.”
– Washington Independent Review of Books
Two interviews that provide an overview conducted with national, well-respected interviewers:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-history-author-show-27301458/episode/bob-batchelor-the-bourbon-king-49050931/
https://soundcloud.com/leonard-lopate/bob-batchelor-on-his-book-the-bourbon-king-about-infamous-bootlegger-george-remus-9319
ABOUT BOB BATCHELOR
C-SPAN 2’s Book TV:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?464406-1/the-bourbon-king
Bob Batchelor is a critically-acclaimed, bestselling cultural historian and biographer. He has published widely on American history and literature, including books on Stan Lee, Bob Dylan, The Great Gatsby, Mad Men, and John Updike. Bob earned his doctorate in English Literature from the University of South Florida. He teaches in the Media, Journalism & Film department at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) and lives in Blue Ash, Ohio.
ABOUT THE BOURBON KING
Critics have called The Bourbon King "riveting," "definitive," and "rollicking," among other accolades. This is THE story of Jazz Age Criminal mastermind George Remus!
“The fantastic story of George Remus makes the rest of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ look like the ‘Boring Twenties’ in comparison. It’s all here: murder, mayhem—and high-priced hooch.”
—David Pietrusza, author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents
“Guns, ghosts, graft (and even Goethe) are all present in Bob Batchelor’s meticulous account of the life and times of the notorious George Remus. Brimming with liquor and lust, greed, and revenge, this entertaining book might make you reach for a good, stiff drink when you’re done.”
—Rosie Schaap, author of Drinking with Men
“The Bourbon King is a much-needed addition to the American mobster nonfiction bookshelf. For too long, George Remus has taken a backseat to his Prohibition-era gangster peers like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. Read here about a man who intoxicated the nation with a near-endless supply of top-shelf Kentucky bourbon, and then got away with murder.”
—James Higdon, author of The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate’s Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History
“Al Capone had nothing on George Remus, the true king of Prohibition. His life journey is fascinating, a Jazz Age cocktail that Bob Batchelor mixes for readers within these pages. Remus went from pharmacist to high-profile defense attorney to bourbon king to murderer.”
—Tom Stanton, author of Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society That Shocked Depression-Era Detroit
100 Years Ago: Prohibition Becomes Law with Volstead Act
The Hamilton Daily News Announces Passage of “Dry Bill”
On October 28, 1919, the Senate voted to override the veto of President Woodrow Wilson. The United States would become a dry nation after ratification of the law in January 1920.
The Volstead Act, enacted into law on October 28, 1919, defined the parameters of the Eighteenth Amendment. By passing the Volstead Act, Congress formally prohibited intoxicating beverages; regulated the sale, manufacture, or transport of liquor; but still ensured that alcohol could still be used for scientific, research, industrial, and religious practices.
Legal enforcement of Prohibition began on January 17, 1920.
Chicago Tribune Editors Have Fun with a Witty Headline
Why Did the US Go Dry?
Chaos reigned in the early twentieth century. In America, the tumultuous era included millions of immigrants streaming into the nation, and then a protracted war that seemed apocalyptic. The backlash against the disarray sent some forces searching for normality. Liquor was an easy target. Supporters of dry law turned the consumption of alcohol into an indicator of widespread moral rot.
Bob Batchelor, author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius (Diversion Books) is available for commentary and discussion of Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties. The Bourbon King is the epic tale of “Bootleg King” George Remus, who from his Gatsby-like mansion in Cincinnati, created the largest illegal liquor ring in American history. In today’s money, Remus built a bourbon empire of some $5 to $7 billion in just two and a half years.
October 28, 1919, Headline in the Chicago Tribune
Quotes:
George Remus: “My personal opinion had always been that the Volstead Act was an unreasonable, sumptuary law, and that it never could be enforced.”
George Remus: “I knew it [the Volstead Act] was as fragile as tissue paper.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald: “America was going on the grandest, gaudiest spree in history…The whole golden boom was in the air—its splendid generosities, its outrageous corruptions and the tortuous death struggle of the old America in prohibition.” From the essay “Early Success” (1937)
Bob Batchelor: “Prohibition turned ordinary citizens into criminals. Media attention turned some criminals into Jazz Age icons. At the top of the heap stood those few, like George Remus, who took advantage of the new illegal booze marketplace to gain untold power and riches.”
Bob Batchelor: “During Prohibition, ‘bathtub gin’ often contained substances that were undrinkable at best and deadly at worst. A band of rumrunners selling ‘Canadian’ whiskey were actually peddling toilet bowl cleaner. Tests on booze obtained in one raid revealed that the liquor contained a large volume of poison.”
Bob Batchelor: “Remus may have been singularly violent and dangerous, but his utter disregard for Prohibition put him in accord with how much of American society felt about the dry laws. Within the government, the lack of resolve for enforcing Prohibition started at the top with President Warren G. Harding and his corrupt administration.”
The Bourbon King
“Bob Batchelor’s The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius might as well be the outline of a Netflix or HBO series.”
– Washington Independent Review of Books
The Bourbon King, The Inside Story: George Remus and Al Capone
How does George Remus compare to Al Capone?
Without George Remus, there is no Al Capone.
Every city in America had underworld operatives long before Prohibition. Bootlegging existed, whether it was running the product of home stills to avoid government taxes or bringing cheap liquor into the United States from Mexico.
When the dry laws kicked in, rumrunning became big business. In America’s largest cities, like Chicago, bosses like Johnny Torrio quickly realized that America’s thirst needed quenched and by smuggling liquor, they could make untold millions.
Rather quickly, criminal kingpins realized that they needed booze to thrive. Remus provided that liquor and enabled men like Torrio, and his successor Al Capone to create empires. Other liquor masterminds existed, so Remus was not alone in getting booze to mob bosses, but his network was extensive and centered on selling the highest quality Kentucky bourbon.
Selling “the good stuff” led to connections between Torrio’s Windy City operation and Remus’s headquarters at Death Valley. George Conners, Remus’s top lieutenant, spoke at length about his salesman trips to Chicago to funnel bourbon into the large market there. Torrio also had ties to the Cincinnati metro area, marrying a woman from Northern Kentucky and having family in the area.
While George and Al had similar interests in selling booze and making as much money as possible, on a personal level, Remus was a generation older than Capone and some of the other “name” mafia bosses, like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the friends who operated at the feet of criminal mastermind Arnold “the Big Brain” Rothstein in New York City. After Rothstein’s murder, Luciano and Lansky became kingpins themselves. Men like these were career criminals. When bootlegging turned vicious, they were more willing to kill or incite violence and murder to achieve their end goals.
Remus, although no stranger to gunfights or ordering his men to protect his product with gun play, was a product of the Gilded Age. George’s first instinct was to respond to a threat with his fists or the gold-tipped, weighted cane that he carried as both a style statement and weapon. As Prohibition went on, it became a shoot-first world.
People often ask why Remus didn’t get back into bootlegging in June 1928 after his stints behind bars and at the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. There are many potential answers, but most directly: without money or henchmen, Remus could not reestablish his bourbon empire after winning his freedom. George would have needed an army to reclaim even a portion of his empire, but after Imogene and Franklin Dodge decimated his fortune, he could not afford to rebuild.
This is only a small tidbit of the complexity of Remus’s interactions with his mafioso colleagues. The full story will make more sense after reading The Bourbon King.
The famous Rathskeller bar in the Seelbach Hilton Hotel in downtown Louisville. Allegedly, Remus and Capone drank together at the Rookwood Pottery tile-encrusted grotto, one of the most stunning displays of Rookwood from the early twentieth century.
The Bourbon King, The Inside Story: The Birth of a Bootleg King
How did George Remus become “Bootleg King?” What drove him to criminality—Hubris? Greed? Love of alcohol?
George Remus moved decisively into bootlegging.
As Remus’s legal career flourished, he became celebrity in Chicago, then nationally. [I like to joke that he was kind of the Johnnie Cochran of early twentieth century Chicago.] The fame and money were not enough to satisfy his desires — he expected to become a larger than life figure. Remus thought of himself in almost presidential terms, as if he were anointed to greatness.
Remus began defending small-time Windy City bootleggers in his law practice. Like court employees, attorneys, and probably even the judges themselves, George looked on bemused when these hoodlums would pay fines by pulling large rolls of cash out of their pockets and quickly counting out huge sums of money. Rolls of hundreds…
Legend has it that Remus realized if the two-bit thugs could make thousands of dollars, then he could use his intelligence to make millions.
As a top defense attorney, George’s annual salary reached more than ten times the cost of the average home in America, but he wanted more…more fame, money, and the toys the good life made possible.
Remus had no moral position on bootlegging or breaking the law. He often claimed to be a teetotaler, but many witnesses could have testified to that standing as yet another Remus “little white lie.” He liked to share a stiff drink and a fat, black cigar with friends, despite the public histrionics about not drinking liquor.
George needed to play intellectual games to justify his positions on various issues. For example, he believed that acting outside the bounds of decorum in court battles was okay, because doing so enabled him to spare his clients the death sentence. The end goal made the means of attaining it justified in his mind.
Similarly, Remus didn’t think Prohibition was a just cause. His early attempts at bootlegging in Chicago proved that enforcement was difficult and that people would continue to demand liquor, regardless of the law.
George also knew that the money would give him power and influence. He set out to exploit the loopholes in the Volstead Act as a way to fulfill the flashy life he dreamed of…and his young paramour Imogene Holmes yearned for her entire life.
The Bourbon King, The Inside Story: Why Write about George Remus
How did you discover the story of George Remus, and why did you decide to write a book about him?
Imagine having a topic in your head for 17 years!
I stumbled across George Remus about 17 years ago when Stanley Cutler, an esteemed American historian and scholar, asked me to write about bootlegging for the Dictionary of American History.
Remus’s story was so epic that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. The “Bootlegging” entry had to be concise, so I didn’t get much of an opportunity to expand on the Remus story, but I snuck him in, as well as mentions of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
Here’s that bit from the essay:
Given the pervasive lawlessness during Prohibition, bootlegging was omnipresent. The operations varied in size, from an intricate network of bootlegging middlemen and local suppliers, right up to America's bootlegging king, George Remus, who operated from Cincinnati, lived a lavish lifestyle, and amassed a $5 million fortune. To escape prosecution, men like Remus used bribery, heavily armed guards, and medicinal licenses to circumvent the law. More ruthless gangsters, such as Capone, did not stop at crime, intimidation, and murder.
— “Bootlegging” Dictionary of American History, 2003
Although researched and written so long ago, I still see bits of my personal writing style that persists. “Pervasive lawlessness” is a stylistic point, as well as the pacing of the sentence.
Later, in 2013, I published a biography of The Great Gatsby, which I had been researching and writing for years. Obviously, the work on the book forced me to continue thinking about this crazy bootleg king, particularly since so many people began writing that he was the inspiration for Jay Gatsby, rather than just one of several.
[Spoiler alert: the link between Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and George Remus is an important discussion in The Bourbon King and the beginning of one of America’s great literary mysteries that readers will really enjoy.]