It begins when the notion of a vacation destination on the barren sandbar was no more than a gleam in the eye of a local doctor, whose vision never included its evolution into a bastion of corrupt politics.
Boardwalk Empire: as classy as Mad Men, but with wrestling dwarves.
Critics are currently splashing the superlatives over Boardwalk Empire, the jazz-age television drama which has just begun in the States. It doesn’t air in the UK until January, but you can stream it online if you know where to look. And besides, this being an acclaimed HBO series in the vein of The Sopranos and Mad Men, you should probably work up an opinion on it now, since it’ll be the stuff of dinner party small talk from now on.
The Associated Press’ Wayne Parry tracked down Ed Devlin, a gentleman in Margate, New Jersey who, as a young man took bets and ran numbers for Nucky Johnson, the real man who was the basis for HBO’s new series main character, Nucky Thompson (played by Steve Buscemi).
His high school yearbook lists his name as Edward “Nucky” Devlin _ a nickname he earned because everyone knew Devlin had the ear of the biggest man in town.
While Enoch “Nucky” Johnson was running things in Prohibition-era Atlantic City _ including booze, prostitutes and gambling dens _ a teenager named Ed Devlin was getting a taste of Johnson’s real-life “Boardwalk Empire” from the periphery.
Ed Devlin
Before he finished high school, Devlin had already learned how to take bets from people and deliver money _ on time _ to the bookies, how much northside prostitutes charged for an encounter and, most of all, the one rule in Atlantic City: never cross Nucky.
“In my world, he was a god,” said Devlin, now 89 years old. “Atlantic City was my kingdom, and he was the king.”
What “The Sopranos” did for a pork store in northern New Jersey and “Sex and the City” did for a Manhattan cupcake shop, Atlantic City is hoping “Boardwalk Empire” does for the seaside gambling resort.
“It’s an hour-long commercial for Atlantic City, top-of-the mind awareness,” said Don Marrandino, eastern regional president of Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., which owns four of Atlantic City’s 11 casinos. “People will want to come here and see it for themselves, and we need to take full advantage of that.”
Coming only days after the premiere of the show, “Boardwalk Empire” has been renewed for a second season.
According to HBO, the 9 p.m. premiere episode of “Boardwalk Empire” on Sunday night averaged 4.8 million viewers. This was the largest HBO series premiere since “Deadwood”, which had the advantage of having “The Sopranos” as lead-in. If you include all three back-to-back airings on Sunday night, “Boardwalk Empire” was watched by 7.1 million viewers
Those numbers sound even more impressive when you consider that “Boardwalk Empire” was up against “Manning Bowl II,” which drew a huge rating in the same male-skewed demographic as the new series.
Details on when the next season of “Boardwalk Empire” will air are not yet available.
The Real Boardwalk Empire: Nucky Johnson’s Old Atlantic City
In Martin Scorsese’s new HBO series Boardwalk Empire, a politically connected mastermind named Nucky Thompson (played by Steve Buscemi) runs 1920s Atlantic City with an iron fist. In reality, Atlantic City was the fiefdom of Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, a Republican party boss and New Jersey kingmaker who held uncontested control of the South Jersey city from 1911 to 1941. Here: an aerial view of Atlantic City and its famed boardwalk and piers in 1940.
The new Martin Scorsese-produced television series “Boardwalk Empire”—about Atlantic City in the age of Prohibition and starring the lanky actor Steve Buscemi—premieres on Sunday on HBO. Like most HBO series, not to mention most projects from Mr. Scorsese, “Boardwalk Empire” has been eagerly awaited since it was announced last year. [WSJ]
