David "Noodles" Aaronson

David "Noodles" Aaronson is a fictional character featured as the protagonist of the 1952 novel The Hoods by Harry Grey, and later in the book's film adaptation,[1] Once Upon A Time In America,[2][3][4] where in the film he was portrayed by Robert De Niro.[5][6]

Character fictional life

Early life

According to the novel and film in which he appears, David "Noodles" Aaronson is born in the early 1900s into poverty in a Jewish enclave in Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1920, when Noodles is age 14 or 15, he forms a gang with his friends Phillip "Cock Eye" Stein, Patrick "Patsy" Goldberg and a young Italian boy named Dominic. Together the group rolls (robs) drunks in a bar run by local Irish-American mobster Bugsy, whose protection racket they help maintain. When about to roll a drunk, Noodles met Maximilian "Max" Bercovicz. The two cross paths later, become friends, and together blackmail a policeman, forcing him to pay for their times with a local prostitute and to cover up their crimes.

When they begin to operate independently of him, Bugsy has some of the gangs underlings beat them and steal their money. Needing protection from Bugsy, Noodles and Max meet with the Capuano brothers, successful bootleggers and show them a method by which the bootleggers might salvage crates of booze when tossed into the sea when the rumrunners cargo boats were confronted by the Coast Guard. Having been paid for their services in protecting the Capuanos' shipment, they stashed part of their payment.

After stashing their money, the group was chased by Bugsy, who opens fire on them and kills Dominic. Enraged, Noodles stabs Bugsy repeatedly, almost disemboweling him. However, when Bugsy fires a round from his gun it alerts nearby police officers who then come to the scene. Noodles murders Bugsy and then takes on two police officers, stabbing one and then being battered unconscious by his partner. Noodles is then sent to prison.[1][3]

1933

After serving 12 years for the murder, Noodles is released from prison and picked up by Max. He returns to working with his gang. Mobster Frankie Minaldi gives the gang an assignment to rob a Detroit jeweler of some jewels together with 'Joe from Detroit' and then kill him. The gang does the job, Noodles rapes the woman who gave Joe the information needed to pull off the job, and they later shoot Joe and his gang in a car, with Noodles personally gunning down one of Joe's henchmen who had escaped the car and fled into a factory.[3]

The gang becomes further involved with the Mafia, and Noodles become re-involved with Deborah, a girl from his old neighborhood with whom he had had a relationship. He goes with her on an extravagant date, but he is left feeling rejected after she informs him she is leaving for Hollywood and becomes enraged when he learns he cannot have her heart and rapes her.[3]

Max is eager to advance the gang's position, while Noodles has misgivings about what they are doing. After the repeal of Prohibition, Noodles balks when Max suggests that they rob the Federal Reserve Bank. After Noodles places an anonymous call, Max, Patsy, and Cockeye are killed in a gunfight with the police. Noodles' new girlfriend is murdered by the Syndicate, and Noodles hides out in an opium den. He escapes his pursuers and goes to retrieve the loot the gang had stashed years previously. When he finds the money gone, he flees to Buffalo, where he lives for 35 years under the name 'Robert Williams'.[1][3]

1968

Years later, Noodles returns to New York from hiding. He visits the mausoleum where his friends' bodies were moved and discovers a plaque dedicated to them by him (something he had not done) and a key to the same money locker he had found empty in 1933. In the locker he finds money and a note stating it is pre-payment for a murder-for-hire.

He learns that Deborah has become a famous actress, and while meeting with Deborah after a performance, he reconciles with her and she confesses that she has forgiven him. He also learns that Max survived the shootout, faked his own death with help from the Syndicate, stole the money and became "Bailey", a man currently under investigation for corruption. Bailey had left the money to hire Noodles to assassinate him - thus allowing Noodles to obtain his revenge, as well as to let Max, as "Bailey," die with dignity. However, when Noodles refuses, Max follows Noodles outside and, as a garbage truck drives past him, he has presumably jumped into the back of it, killing himself.

Analysis

The Boston Phoenix notes that the character of Noodles, as an underworld Hamlet, develops through the story to become one of its two heroes.[7] In speaking of POV shifting backward and forward in time in such movies as The Godfather Part II, it is noted in Bullets Over Hollywood that the shift in Once Upon A Time In America is done through the memories of lead character David "Noodles" Aaronson, and how Noodles is haunted by his involvement in the deaths of his childhood companions.[2] It is written in The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies that the film deals with its story in three chapters set decades apart, with the central character of each being Noodles Aaronson. They note the interplay between the characters of Max and Noodles in the third chapter makes in the weakest of the three due to its implausibility.[3]

In speaking in Acting for America: Movie Stars of the 1980s toward Robert De Niro's being cast for the role of Noodles, they wrote that De Niro had to convince director Sergio Leone of his ability to portray Noodles in both the character's twenties and his sixties, and how he was focused on character authenticity.[6] Other actors originally considered for the character were Gérard Depardieu, and James Cagney for the older Noodles.[3]

In Cinema and Multiculturalism, it is offered that while the story Once Upon A Time In America is ostensibly about the "children of immigrants scraping the bottom of the American melting pot" and about "Jewish criminal kingpin David "Noodles" Aaronson, who dreams of greatness 'once upon a time', and spends the rest of his days wondering why his salad days wilted", they offer that the film is more "about time itself, and how Noodles learns that its more important to make sense of your life, your own history".[4]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Harry Grey (1952). The Hoods. Crown Publishers.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 McCarty, John (2005). Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to "The Sopranos". Da Capo Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-306-81429-7.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 George Anastasia, Glen Macnow, Joe Pistone (2007). The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies: Featuring the 100 Greatest Gangster Films of All Time. Running Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN 978-0-7624-4154-9.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Jesús Héli Hernández, Sheryl Lynn Postman (2001). Cinema and Multiculturalism: Selected Essays. Legas / Gaetano Cipolla. ISBN 978-1-881901-26-6.
  5. ↑ Schwab, Karl E. (June 9, 1984). "'Once Upon A Time' is not a Fairy Tale". Youngstown Vindicator. Retrieved March 18, 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Robert Eberwein, Rebecca Bell-Metereau (2010). Acting for America: Movie Stars of the 1980s. Rutgers University Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN 978-0-8135-4760-2.
  7. ↑ Gleiberman, Owen (June 12, 1984). "Kosher Nostra". Boston Phoenix. Retrieved March 19, 2012.

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