Black Hand Strawman: The History of Organized Crime in Kansas City
The message was simple: pay...or else!
2009 · 128 min · Crime, Documentary, History
The film shines a light on Kansas City’s less glorious past when it was a major distribution hub for heroin in the 1930s and 1940s. Black Hand Strawman explains how Kansas City’s Mafia exercised control over the Teamsters Union Local 41 from the 1950s into the 1980s.
Directed by Terence Michael O'Malley
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Terence Michael O'Malley Narrator - B Bill Ouseley Interviewee 1
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3h 59m togetherBoth from Terence Michael O'Malley.
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'Tom and Harry: The Boss and the President' is the only feature length documentary film that goes into great detail about the complex relationship between Harry Truman and Political Boss Tom Pendergast and the political machine that had a vise-like grip on Kansas City in the 1920s and 1930s. Tom Pendergast personally chose Harry Truman to run for the United State Senate in 1934. But by 1940, when Truman was seeking re-election, Pendergast was in prison and Harry Truman's political future hung in the balance as his two democratic primary opponents roundly decried Truman's association with the corrupt political machine. 'Tom and Harry: The Boss and the President' is chock-full of interesting film clips and photographs from the 19th century up to the 1940s. The film was released at four theaters simultaneously in Kansas City and is the definitive telling of the Pendergast Machine and Harry Truman's participation in it.
Shots Back in Time: The Union Station Massacre · 2008Shots Back in Time: The Union Station Massacre
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June 17, 1933: On Saturday morning by 7:15, Union Station Kansas City is already bustling with travelers as lawmen escort escaped convict Frank Nash through the station out to a car where he is to be driven back to Leavenworth Penitentiary. Suddenly, the group is attacked by gangsters and the resulting camage from the 30 second firestorm leaves Kansas City and the nation stunned. This film documents events giving rise to the massacre and tells the story of the complex relationship among the Pendergast machine, organized crime, and the gangsters who could feel safe laying low in Kansas City. As the FBI attempted to bring to justice the perpetrators of what J. Edgar Hoover called a "despicable and cowardly act," Kansas City and law enforcement in the United States were forever changed.
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