(horn blaring) - [Narrator] Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, January 17th, 1899, to Italian immigrants Gabriel and Teresa.

- My grandfather had been raised as a Catholic, very traditional Italian-Catholic upbringing.

And he was very hungry for his parents' approval and to please them.

- His family was a solid family, two parents, hardworking, trying to get by with nine kids on a barber's salary.

And like most immigrant families, as soon as the kids could help raise some money, they sent the kids out to do that.

- Papa was the fourth oldest.

And his mother said to him, "I need help, and you're the only one I can count on."

And so from the time he was about 10 years old, that responsibility was something that he took very seriously.

- [Narrator] Capone left school in sixth grade, fell in with local street gangs, and picked up odd jobs to support the family.

- Capone happened into some jobs working at a box factory, working eventually at a place called the Harvard Inn, a saloon on Coney Island.

That was actually a really rough place.

He starts there as a dishwasher, but this is a key moment in his life because he meets some people there who are serious players in the underworld, serious criminal figures.

- [Narrator] People like his boss, Francesco Ioele, an Italian gangland heavy, better known as Frankie Yale.

- He's the one who decides to name this saloon the Harvard Inn because his name is Yale and he thinks that's funny and it sounds like an Ivy League kind of an operation, which it definitely is not.

- [Narrator] At the Harvard Inn, the beefy teenager from Brooklyn graduated to a whole new world of vice and crime.

- But by that time, he was physically imposing.

He was tough, he was not afraid to fight, and so he earned his keep.

- [Narrator] Capone tended bar and met a regular named Johnny Torrio.

17 years his senior, Torrio was already a seasoned gangster who worked closely with Yale.

- And then begins to find himself in a position where he's, you know, doing some more dangerous work for guys like Torrio and Yale.

- [Narrator] Capone was straddling two worlds.

By day, he was an all-American teenager working a dull job in a box factory.

By night, a criminal apprentice.

(gentle music) In the spring of 1918, he fell head over heels for Mae Coughlin, a devoutly Catholic Irish girl.

- He met my grandmother when he was only 18.

They worked together at a box factory in Brooklyn.

And I think it was kind of love at first sight.

- Capone definitely could have gone either way.

He's still an American immigrant's kid who loves America, who loves the sports, loves to run in the streets with his friends.

If the box factory where he worked had offered him a promotion, had offered him a better salary, maybe he stays there.

There's nothing to suggest that he was a psychopath, that he was maniacal, that he had to be involved in criminal activity, nothing like that.

- [Narrator] But by that summer, Mae was pregnant, and money was tight.

- Suddenly, making money becomes a lot more important.

He's got a family to provide for now.

He doesn't have a great education.

He's gonna have to do what he has to do to get by.

- [Narrator] Capone became a father on December 4th, 1918, at age 19.

Weeks later, he married Mae in her family's church.

But their only child, Albert, nicknamed Sonny, was born two months premature, reportedly with congenital syphilis, an STD Capone unknowingly passed to Mae.

- Capone at 18, 19 is a wild man.

He's impulsive, he's taking crazy chances.

He's sleeping with women, he's sleeping with prostitutes.

So he's getting into trouble.

- [Narrator] And plenty of it.

Just four days after Sonny's birth, Capone hit on the wrong girl at the Harvard Inn.

- And the girl's brother comes after Capone, slashes him with a knife three times across the left side of his face, and they were visible forever, and Capone became known as Scarface, a nickname that he, of course, despised.

- [Narrator] Working the bar as muscle for his boss, Frankie Yale, Capone's bravado grew along with his criminal resume.

By then, Yale's buddy Johnny Torrio was working in Chicago as the underboss for his uncle, Vincenzo Colosimo, better known as Big Jim.

- He was the first of that type of gangster.

But what Colosimo really was, everybody thinks gangster, and he was more of a pimp.

- [Narrator] Johnny Torrio recognized talent and saw it in Al Capone.

He offered him a job in Chicago.

The timing couldn't have been better.

- He was wanted for questioning in a murder.

We don't know for sure whether he was guilty or not, but there's plenty of suggestion that he might've been.

So he's living on the edge.

- He was only 20 when he left Brooklyn and went to Chicago and then started sending more money back to the family in Brooklyn, until ultimately he could afford to bring my grandmother and my father out.

- [Narrator] Capone's father, Gabriel, died one year later, leaving Al as the breadwinner for his whole family and Mae's.

- He's suddenly thrust into adulthood, literally scarred by this period in his life.

So, all of a sudden, childhood is over