"It was just a bunch of s***."

April 21, 2016 2:02 PM

"They called me once and said, 'We found a torture chamber!' I go over there and it was a fuse box." An oral history of that two-hour live television special in which Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone's vault.

The Chicago Tribune will be revisiting and live-tweeting the show at 7:00 Central time this evening.

posted by mudpuppie (36 comments total)

I was about eight years old when I watched this live with my family. This might have been my earliest memory of schadenfreude.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 2:07 PM on April 21, 2016 [13 favorites]

"There was nothing in Al Capone's vault
But it wasn't Geraldo's fault!"
posted by Roentgen at 2:07 PM on April 21, 2016 [17 favorites]

Came here to check for Homer quotes. Metafilter does not disappoint.
posted by Talez at 2:09 PM on April 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wow. Thirty years.
posted by yhbc at 2:12 PM on April 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

“It was just a bunch of s***.”

This would have been much more exciting.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:15 PM on April 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

I keep thinking I have memories of this and I can't possibly. Did Geraldo break into a pyramid about ten years later?
posted by griphus at 2:16 PM on April 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sheldon Cooper (Then-President, Tribune Entertainment)

I wonder if there is some connection?
posted by TedW at 2:16 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Did Geraldo break into a pyramid about ten years later?

I vaguely remember something about Geraldo and a live exorcism or something too.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:19 PM on April 21, 2016

Came here to check for Homer quotes

It is very Canadian of me that my first thought was of Maestro Fresh Wes. "they broke into the vault of Capone. Didn't find jack so they all went home"
posted by Hoopo at 2:22 PM on April 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

I was rather young in the 80s and really not very good at paying attention to pop culture "moments." However, I am very proud of having seen both the opening of Al Capone's vault and the Royals/Yankees pine tar incident on live television. They were iconic 80s moments for me that I watched as they happened.
posted by deanc at 2:22 PM on April 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

I actually also remember watching the "Capones' Vault" thing when it aired; I remember Geraldo trying to jump in and DO stuff a lot of the time, like when he was standing around and a foreman barked an order to the workers, Geraldo actually chimed in and repeated the order in some desperate bid to be ACTIVE, it felt like.

But then I remember that when they had concluded that there was nothing in the vault, and they were wrapping up the show, Geraldo tried leading everyone in singing some random song, and played it off like "we all made a bet that if we didn't find anything we'd sing this". But I cannot for the life of me remember what that song was, and only maybe two or three other guys chimed in.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:24 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

It is very Canadian of me that my first thought was of Maestro Fresh Wes. "they broke into the vault of Capone. Didn't find jack so they all went home"

Honestly the high point of Geraldo's career was to be references by the Maestro.

I feel bad for Geraldo. He seemed like he might have had a career as an actual journalist once upon a time.
posted by GuyZero at 2:28 PM on April 21, 2016

But I cannot for the life of me remember what that song was, and only maybe two or three other guys chimed in.

Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town....

(Last video on the page, about two minutes in. VERY awkward.)
posted by mudpuppie at 2:29 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

That show gets ridiculed now, but compared to some of the crap on supposedly educational channels, it really wasn't bad, what with the documentary potions and all. And it was definitely more real than what's termed "reality" TV now.
posted by TedW at 2:29 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Say what you will about Geraldo
posted by griphus at 2:31 PM on April 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

Came here to check for Homer quotes

How about Weird Al quotes?
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:33 PM on April 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Now that's what I came here for.
posted by deadaluspark at 2:54 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

And then they let him be a war correspondent where he accidentally revealed classified positioning information over the air and some other dumb shit between these two events and somehow he still gets jobs in broadcasting.
posted by absalom at 2:54 PM on April 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Geraldo was a pretty horrid journalist from what I saw on TV. I remember him from the 80's for stoking the fake moral panic about Satanism; and for his gung-ho-ing the Reagnomic War On Drugs, tromping along with the SWAT troopers on a home invasion to the wrong address, and saying: "We haven't found the drugs yet, but we'll let you know when we do!" He was a pioneer of some of the worse aspects of reality TV.
posted by ovvl at 3:36 PM on April 21, 2016 [15 favorites]

Other than very early in his career, the title of this FPP pretty much describes Rivera.
posted by Splunge at 3:41 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would've been 11, and I think I got permission to stay up past my bedtime to watch all the way to the end. Because history!

"My reply is that there was a 50 share in that vault" TeeeeeeeeVeeeeeeee, y'all.
posted by epersonae at 4:23 PM on April 21, 2016

Today's generation's equivalent is The Safe (not safe for arachnophobes), I guess?
posted by BungaDunga at 4:27 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't forget Geraldo getting his nose broken by a flying chair that time a Trump rally^* broke out on the set of his talk show.

* OK, technically it was a fight involving a bunch of neo-nazis.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:28 PM on April 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

Geraldo did a fine piece in 1978 with Elvis Costello & Attractions so there is that.
posted by parki at 4:54 PM on April 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I live next to Al Capone's sister's house. To my knowledge, Geraldo has never tried to break into the basement.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:09 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I remember us all watching that when it went down. His attempt to cover the fact that this had gone awfully, spectacularly wrong was just delicious and cringe-worthy at the same time.
posted by xingcat at 5:38 PM on April 21, 2016

Road maps!
posted by dr_dank at 7:02 PM on April 21, 2016

What a pity metafilter wasn't around then.
posted by merelyglib at 7:08 PM on April 21, 2016

That's okay, metafilter's schadenfreude DEFIES THE LAWS OF TIME.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:21 PM on April 21, 2016 [7 favorites]

I want to know what happened to the cat at the end.
posted by Apocryphon at 7:35 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

We had a watching party for this when I was in college. It was so over hyped for weeks and then when we tune in, he's standing there in a dank empty basement trying to come up with anything to day.
posted by octothorpe at 7:35 PM on April 21, 2016

Kurt Vonnegut can't be wrong here about his former son-in-law:

"He's obviously a scumbag, because he started making love to other people and betraying my daughter and her innocence from the very beginning. If I see Jerry again, I'll spit in his face."
posted by resurrexit at 8:42 PM on April 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

30 years and it still blows my mind that they didn't do the slightest bit of testing or checking to see whether it would go really badly south on them. I just......don't get it at all. Even watching it live as a youngin I couldn't believe that they could be caught unawares like that.
posted by nevercalm at 6:20 AM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was in middle school at the time and oh yeah- I remember this all too well becuz they hyped the hell out of this event for weeks. By the time it finally aired, I had devoted a significant portion of my obsessive psyche in anticipation of it. Not sure why. (None of my friends seemed to give a shit.) I remember having to do some serious negotiation with my sister to be able to usurp the usual evening lineup of sitcoms. But the hours roll by and, yep, still no vault. No guns. No buried treasure or catacombs. Nothing. Geraldo keeps coming back from commercial breaks a little more frazzled each time. A little more desperate and weary. My bedtime comes...and goes...Eventually I am the only one awake in the whole house, mindlessly eating Oreo's there in the wan flicker of the t.v. when Geraldo admits defeat. Then station identification. Stars and stripes. Static.
posted by Bob Regular at 7:07 AM on April 22, 2016

Honestly the high point of Geraldo's career was to be references by the Maestro

Well, the flying folding chair gets my vote. Anyhow, he did seem to be one of the founding fathers of the reality show format we all enjoy nowadays. Reality shows, by definition, have little to do with reality, and they aren't really shows.

An affable clown, but with flinty-eyes and twisted grin. The chair deal is significant because he put two polemics together to watch the sparks fly, and he didn't really give a shit about those people, who got hurt, who got upset, whose demons he invoked. He just liked to poke the critters to watch them jump.

So, yeah, fuck Geraldo. I'm glad Capone didn't put anything where Geraldo could find it.
posted by mule98J at 8:28 AM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love how the local historian told them they were wasting their time, but they kept plowing onward.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:53 PM on April 22, 2016