Culture and art. This program was started on the suggestion of one of our members, one of you all and it fit into the institutions history for nearly 200 years our Historical House served as an Important CommunityGathering Place for prominent cincinnati families such as those of martin home, nicholas longworth, david, and of course charles and anna taft. Each resident played an Important Role in shaping the history, art and culture of cincinnati and this celebrates their legacy is as well as the new wave city continues to devolve and change. The complete schedule of all of our programs including our upcoming lunch and learn sort of rebuttal on the website which is taft museum. Org and i would like to tell you about the talk today. Today we have the author of newly released book the bourbon king of the life and crimes of george remus, prohibitions of evil genius. Bob is here with us today to share the story of george remus the criminal mastermind and bootleg kingdom to build a kinga bourbon empire that stretched from the cincinnati mansion across america at the don of prohibition. Batchelor is a critically acclaimed bestselling cultural historian and biographer. Hes published widely on American History and literature including books on stan lee, bob dylan, the great gatsby, madmen and john updike. Batchelor earned his doctorate in English Literature from the university of south florida. He teaches in the media journalism and Film Department at Miami University in oxford ohio. The literacy projects can donate books to the disadvantaged reader every time a book is purchased in the organization he will also be available to answer questions and sign your copy of the book following the lecture. I cant think of a better place in cincinnati than the museum to talk about george remus. If i forget, then somebody please ask that question. I am a historian. I love the hundredth anniversary celebrations 50 years, so as we prepare for the 100th anniversary of the age and the 100th anniversary of the act in prohibition there isnt a better time than to study somebody that history has forgotten. We saw him working out down at the Athletic Club and theres a lot of sightings but there is almost no recognition at all so one of the goals in writing this book is to bring this fascinating character to life. Its an interesting set of circumstances about george remus, so we will have a little discussion today about that. The first thing that people ask me is how can you get interested in this person, how did you come across george remus, and about 17 years ago a very prominent historian who became famous for investigating about watergate. The dictionary of American History that is where they used to send their students to find out about American History. He was putting out a new edition and asp would you mind writing an essay on bootleggers and i was at why would we want to talk about that . And Math Research 17 years ago, i ran across remus and like a bad song from the 1980s, its stuck in my head for the teen years. I was going nuts thinking about this guy and later i wrote this biography of the great gatsby and treated them awful as if it were a person and wrote about this experience from this Great American novel, and remus again comes up because some people say he was the model, some people say he was a model. We will get into that mortgage ramore ranacross him again and i was looking for my next book project i thought to myself, i want to discover somebody whos been forgotten, whose story and tell us something so interesting about todays world and you can learn so much about what we are facing in the 2020s from studying the 1920s, so remus became it and thats how we get to george remus. And i think im probably not telling you anything you dont know, but there are no heroes in this story. Its a very complex story with a lot of bad characters, even people who seem good for a long time all of a sudden i wouldve read a story or Something Else in the paper in the six months after they were doing something heroic they were doing something terrible. They are incredibly complex just like we are today. It helps us understand the 1920s and today so we are going to dive right into the bourbon king. The story is large and there is no way we can go through this whole story. I think the audio book, if you are into audio books it is like 16 hours long so we can tell all the stories here. I thought i would do a live down to six numbers. These will give you a flavor of george remus and hopefully make you want to learn more because it is a fascinating story. The first number is the number 13. The number 13 is significant because george was a german immigrant and his family after bouncing around a little but settled down in chicago. At age 13, remus had become on the road band of the family because his father had Health Problems and drinking problems. We are not supposed to talk about those. But his father had some problems. He couldnt support the families. So, remus takes over at age 13 he had to drop out of school. Luckily for him, his uncle owned a pharmacy in suburban chicago. Even though he wouldnt look like an athlete he was about five, five and a half, while over 200 pounds. He was an amazing athlete and he did athletic things im sure none of us could have done on our best days so it is an interesting side story. He begins this career in the pharmacy and when he comes of age he passes the licensure to become a pharmacist. The interesting thing is that this places him at the heart of the community. He liked the attention and the money and when he passed the licensure that he lied to get his license and he made himself two years older he was 19 and apply it to say he was 21. He is ambitious. Remember german immigrant who dropped out of school. This was about the best life he could have. He was already gaining wealth. He started speculating in real estate deals and these sort of things. Very interesting early history. But what he does is besides ive had enough of the pharmacy even though hes more successful and he decides to become a lawyer of all things. He decides to become a lawyer because he was a person who shall himself as bigger than life. He determines i want to be president of the United States and he works hard to get to that position. I want to be bigger than life into him becoming a lawyer was a step in that direction. So then the 300 is important because after he became one of the famous criminal Defense Attorneys in america from chicago to cincinnati. Its the gateway to bourbon country and he realized as a criminal defense attorney that if these petty thugs can pay their fines by whipping out roles of hundred dollar bills and tearing them off the top and paying the judge on the spot if they can make hundreds or thousands if i apply my genius to this principle, i can make millions or tens of millions. Cincinnati is his gateway and he set up headquarters half a mile from here in the headquarters so that is the first connection. The hotel owned by the family and that is the headquarters for this entire run through the 1920s. He always keeps the rooms at the hotel a suite of rooms. 300mile radius, the best in the world and he realized because he had been a pharmacist and he was such a stellar lawyer there are actually legal ways to get alcohol into the marketplace. They called a medicinal alcohol and bourbon come isnt that great, i want some medicinal alcohol, wouldnt it be great in that timeframe there wasnt a scientific advancement we have now and there are some therapeutic benefits to alcohol. There are uses especially in the era when a lot of advancements are yet to be made. He knew from his own days as a pharmacist doctors and pharmacists could write prescriptions and it would allow people even during prohibition to take out a little bit of whiskey or bourbon or other substance. So if he got access to those certificates come if i get access to these certificates, id can take this out of the government warehouses and put it into the marketplace. But remember the prohibitions evil genius at the same time he realized if i hire my own man to rob my other men at gunpoint, i can take this legal bourbon into the black market. So he set up a series of distribution points. His major distribution point is a place that comes to be known as death valley because he had a fortified like an army fort, he hired an army as he started to make money and this is about to say 13 miles northwest of the city. He set up on an old farm and then he set up smaller depots all over cincinnati. All these places many of you have traveled. He had a depot in hamilton, glendale, different locations throughout this area where he then fanned out nationwide and he built this entire from this 300mile gateway out into the National Market place. One journalist at the time devoted george remus is to bourbon what jd rockefeller was to oil. Remus, why i think that hes an evil genius as he understood the business even though he had no Business Training outside of running his own pharmacies. So, he set up a system that he called the circle what jd rockefeller. Rockefeller. If you control production, distribution can you control pricing, you control every piece of the circle you make all the money and he found ways to make all the money and its very interesting. Many of you probably visited the trail. I visited my wonderful wife and i love to go down to bourbon country and to see the tours. When they give you the tour and they started to mumble and a fumble when they hit 1920 and are not sure how to explain it, these were very proud families have started a very proud people but from the distilleries. Its americas great industry but in 1920, the thing that happened but they dont want to talk about when you go to bourbon country is probably george remus had come in and found a way to buy up to bourbon and found a way to get it into the black market. My thinking as though george remus story becomes more public is that the distiller should embrace the story. Its part of their history. Theres nothing you can do about it now so you might as well find out what the truth was. They were proud people and the government declared them public enemy number one. They could have wished for a fire or electricity Lightning Strike was the only thing to save them. Their entire inventories were basically worth nothing. So, remus which is kind of a strange thing there are some people, myself included, that believe that in some ways even though he was giving it all behind the scenes, he saved the industry by giving it at least some Foundation Throughout prohibition. This is a long 13 years for america. He gave the industry a little bit of a slide through that era. This next number might blow you out of your socks off of it but bear with me. 9. 62 billion. Thats a large number. 9. 62 billion is the number if you calculate it todays money what he was able to acquire in the two and a half years, 9. 62 billion. This is as if he founded facebook or google or a hightecfor ahightech company d a half years built it into one of the Biggest Companies in the world all from his mansion in price hill. Its an amazing facet of the story and i think if people realize because in todays world we are all kind of numb by numbers. Somebody says that person is a millionaire. Big deal. But remus at the high end was in excess of 200 million in 1920s money and if you use the latest economic calculations, 9. 62 is kind of the midrange. It could have been more than that. There were stories that they made so much money so quickly their suits were stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars because the banks wouldnt accept any more deposits. They have limitations so they are running around with giant stacks stuffed in their coats and pants because theres nothing else. What do you do with the money. Its coming in so fast that they cant even make a place to hide at all. Its pretty amazing. And what this 9. 62 billion allowed him to do plus as we could imagine, live a big place. He had power, he built an army, he built a nation Wide Distribution Network and live like a king. He basically gutted it and put a countless amount of money into remodeling the mansion. He made it into one of cincinnatis most Beautiful Homes and invited the cream of the crop of another tie to taft. They never accepted the invitation to the price hill mansion, but he always invited them. The centerpiece of the price will mansion was our fourth number, 175,000. This is the highend number when people say how much did george remus papered in ground pool he put in for his mansion. 175,000 in 1920 money. It was luxurious, perfumed water, special heating units, and this allowed him to really live a gatsby lifestyle. People loved to come to the mansion and swimming poo swim id see the pool. It was quite a thing at that time. In 1920 when you wanted to be really fabulous, what did you winwould you mindthe pool with . Title because thats the mark of really having aided. This was the signature. Title blaming the pool. 175,000. The parties that he threw became legendary. The papers and cover them with much, so people will tell you, and you may have heard newspapers covered it, there were lots of reporters there. They really didnt. They became part of the folklore into so much of the remus story is built on folklore and people telling other people and recollections later saw one of the things i was able to do as a historian is dig through all of these materials for five years ago nobody could have done or ten years ago because today because of digital resources, you can pull together different story papers, newspaper articles come you can pull together archival information and kind of look at the remus story like a giant literary historical detective jigsaw puzzle. I stand a lot of time piecing together the stories. At the mansion becomes a center point of that. The night that they debuted the pool to the public, which george called the energy and bath after his second wife who was a samet et al. And also not a sweethea sweetheart. She is very much an interesting person and she targeted george when they met in chicago. One of my favorite quotes, soon after meeting george remus, she said to one of her friends im going to roll him for his role. I will marry him if i have to. I always joke with my wife i put it in 1920, like this. He was surrounded by thugs that actually did talk like that. Its funny when you see a transcript they put it in there so its really fun to read. And a gene was a person who wanted to be famous and in the early 20th century, youve got to same by being in the newspapers. One of the things i uncovered that people havent seen before, i was able to trackback for about a decade she kept using different personas and identities to change her personality and who she was in d trying to get into the newspapers. One time she might try to get into the newspapers as gussie holmes which was her first marriage name and nickname. Other times, she might be mrs. Gina holmes and other times she used in a gene. Other times she used all different personas to try to get into the newspapers. When she met george remus, the shooting star attorney turned bootlegger and this person who wanted to be famous and wealthy, they intercepted in a way that would lead to one of the biggest marriages of the 1920s and also one of the most despicable ends of a marriage in the 1920s. So it was a shooting star, but it took a decade and that is one thing people dont realize. If you look at the newspapers and the number of words written about george remus, he probably wasnt quite as famous as babe ruth, but he was at least as famous as warren g. Harding. The number of words spent covering him were astronomical and it lasted the entire decade because he was famous in chicago on the front page of the tribune on the papers nationwide and he only got more famous. His fame was his own doing because like so many people who gained a lot of money, he couldnt stay out of the newspapers. He courted the media. He was a masterful public relations. He was able to charm the socks off of these hardened straightlaced newspaper reporters because remember when i said he was so complex, he was charming. They said he had a moonbeam smiled and this is a quote from the front page of the tribune. A moonbeam smiled. One of the most charismatic men people have ever met, but at the same time hell will face. Brass knuckles and he had a gold tipped way to obtain. He had no limp. That way it was so he could beat people with the cane and there are many instances which he bludgeoned the people. One man almost to death for potentially supposedly maybe fooling around with his wife. So that is the kind of person he was. I dont know any living character that i could describe him like. Somebody asked me about a couple weeks ago. I said maybe he was a little bit like Lyndon Baines johnson. Maybe a little bit of johnson h stalin and maybe a little bit like Hannibal Lecter from silence of the lamb because he could be so charming and he really made people with him. To this day people will tell you that he was a good guy, but he was not. He was a scary guy. The next number is five and this is an important number because when like today a beautiful morning, sunny, not a cloud in the sky, when he stopped outside of the hotel which at the time was one of the very finest Luxury Hotels in the United States, when he stopped her from that moment and then chased her through the park in a crazy chase in the 1920s movie scene and forces her car off the road and gets out and she pushes her young daughter whos 20th birthday is the next day back into the car, jumps out, he approached the car, she goes to swing at him, he grabs her right arm with his left fist, punches her and then as she screams come he reaches in the pocket, pulls out a gun, sticks it in her stomach, pulls the trigger. Five minutes from the time he stopped her outside of the hotel to that point that he shoots her. Five minutes. And youve probably all driven path and walked it. She essentially is a shot right on the other side of the road from the spring house gazebo. People think they were coming down the other way bu that they were