Rothstein was, without question, the most powerful and influential gangster in America until he was murdered in 1928. Rothstein grew up in a well-to-do, genteel family in NYC's upper West Side, but he spent all his time gambling and carousing on the lower East Side. There he came to the attention of Big Tim Sullivan, last of the old-time Tammany political bosses on the lower East Side. Sullivan set him up in gambling operations around the city, and AR, or "the Brain," as he was called, also was big in importing Scotch whiskey and dope. His high-class upbringing gave him manners and entree to polite society, where he plied his gambling, booze and drugs. But his genius lay in recruiting proteges, whom he set up in similar businesses catering to the less-well-to-do. Charlie Luciano worshipped him: "Arnold taught me how to dress, how to talk, how to act...he woulda made a gentleman outta me if he'd lived." Hearing theat Meyer Lansky was a skilled truck mechanic, AR set him and Bugsy Siegel up in the booze transport business--the rest is history. Vito Genovese and Frank Costello were among his other proteges. One word from AR could settle a strike or fix a politician. His only flaw: a degenerate gambler, which cost him his life.
BTW: though he is immortalized in "The Great Gatsby" as "Meyer Wolfsheim, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series," AR didn't fix the series. He knew about and profited from the fix, but it wasn't his doing.
