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, Once Upon A Time In America. In the film, he was portrayed by Robert De Niro. David Aaronson is born in the early 1900s into poverty in a Jewish enclave in Brooklyn. Noodles later forms a gang with his friends Phillip "Cock Eye" Stein, Patrick "Patsy" Goldberg and a young boy named Dominic. Together they roll drunks in a bar run by a local mobster named Bugsy, whose protection racket they help maintain. In 1921 Noodles and his gang are about to roll a drunk when Maximillian "Max" Bercovicz helps the drunk onto the back of his carriage. Noodles later finds Max as he is moving...