Ernie Capponi had always loved the film and radio arts, and saw many of his Kenosha, Wisconsin contemporaries go on to acting fame. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ernie founded the Midwest Classic Radio Actors in Kenosha, which performed original works over area stations including WGN, Chicago. By the 1980s, Ernie had begun to build a modest acting career in films shot in the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor, usually portraying a street-wise detective or gangster in small roles, including his part as an Al Capone mobster in the well-remembered "Untouchables" round-table scene with Robert De Niro. Ernie found himself in growing demand for such parts, and he was proud to have completed his first lead role as a tough Chicago detective in an urban crime drama with the working title "The Mangler" (no connection to the later Stephen King-based film of the same name). He never saw the final results, because a neglected respiratory infection led to his sudden death by pneumonia at 69.