L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

by John Buntin

  Soon thereafter, in August 1956, Kennedy announced that the Senate investigations subcommittee would expand its attention to the broader field of labor racketeering.[18] His first target was the nation’s biggest and most powerful union—the Teamsters. Kennedy had heard rumors that mobsters had infiltrated various locals as part of an effort to gain control of the Teamsters’ $250 million pension fund. But there was a problem. His reporter friends notwithstanding, Kennedy had very little information to go on. The NYPD intelligence division had some information, but it was limited to New York. The Bureau of Narcotics had a wealth of information, but it was focused on narcotics. There was one police department, though, that had made a name for itself with its relentless war on organized crime—the Los Angeles Police Department. On November 14, 1956, Kennedy and former G-man-turned-congressional-investigator Carmine Bellino flew out to Los Angeles to meet Chief Parker and intelligence division head James Hamilton. To prevent the press from getting wind of their visit, the two men traveled in secret. Kennedy used an alias, Mr. Rodgers. It would prove to be an eventful meeting.

  PARKER took Kennedy’s visit seriously. He directed Hamilton and Lt. Joseph Stephens, who headed the department’s labor squad, to take the afternoon to meet with the Senate investigators. The men hit it off immediately. Kennedy and Bellino were impressed—and alarmed—by the material the LAPD had amassed. One example of the kinds of “strong arm” tactics employed by the mob in Southern California made a particularly vivid impression on Kennedy. It concerned a union organizer who’d gone to San Diego in defiance of warnings from the local mob. Soon after arriving, the man had been assaulted. According to Kennedy’s later recounting of the story, he woke up the next day “covered in blood” and with “terrible pains in his stomach.” With difficulty, he made it back to a hospital in Los Angeles, where doctors performed emergency surgery and, according to Kennedy, “removed from his backside a large cucumber.” The man was later warned that if he ever returned to San Diego, he’d come back with a watermelon.

  Urban myth or actual event? It didn’t matter. Kennedy believed it had happened. It steeled his resolve to act.

  At the end of the afternoon, Hamilton walked Kennedy out to the parking lot behind “the glass house” (as the new police administration building was called). It had been a productive day. The LAPD’s wealth of information about corruption in the Teamsters reinforced Kennedy’s belief that he was on to something big. So did subsequent meetings arranged by Hamilton and Stephens, which put Kennedy and Bellino in direct contact with a variety of employers, union leaders, employees, and confidential informants. Kennedy and Bellino heard from dissident members of the longshoremen’s union, who complained of the leadership’s radicalism and “red” sympathies. They heard from union organizers (again in San Diego) who’d been beaten up by goons after attempting to organize retail clerks and about a Los Angeles plumbers and steamfitters local that was resisting mob attempts to muscle in on building contracts. More to the point, they heard about how local Teamsters were colluding with selected employers—employers with strong mob ties—to corner the garbage removal market in Los Angeles. Hamilton concluded by suggesting that Kennedy and Bellino take their fact-finding mission to Portland, Oregon, where crusading journalists had uncovered a wealth of incriminating evidence about corruption in the Teamsters local.

  Hamilton and Kennedy met as strangers but ended the day as friends. Henceforth, the LAPD intelligence division would be an important (if largely unheralded) source of intelligence to Robert Kennedy. Kennedy’s relationship with Chief Parker was different. The two men would never be friends in the way that Hamilton and Kennedy were; their personal styles were too different. But ideologically, the two men were largely in sync. In addition to sharing a faith (Roman Catholicism) and a creed (anti-communism), the two men shared a worldview: Both saw the underworld as the enemy within.

  There was another similarity. Both men were battling their own internal enemies. Bobby was prone to depression (“Black Bobby,” his older brother rather insensitively called him) and also to fits of anger that occasionally propelled him to violence. As a young man, Parker had shared this impulse to violence too. But the more dangerous demon for Los Angeles’s proud chief of police was the demon of drink. Nowhere was that demon more in evidence than at an annual event called the Mobil Economy Run.

  The Mobil Economy Run (sponsored by the Mobil Oil corporation and the U.S. Auto Club) was a coast-to-coast race designed to test the fuel efficiency of automobiles under real-life driving conditions. Automakers competed fiercely for the right to proclaim their cars the most fuel efficient in their class. But the Mobil Economy Run had another, less advertised, purpose as well. It was also a tremendous booze-fueled junket. Every year, Mobil rented a train for VIPs that ran north from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Yosemite, and Sun Valley (and thence onward east) or west to Albuquerque and then to Sun Valley and points east. Every year, Mobil invited the LAPD’s chief of police and deputy chief for traffic.

  On the job, Parker was a straight arrow. He took a dim view of patrol officers receiving “gifts” from merchants on their beat (though they still did). He abhorred ticket fixing and insisted on observing the strict letter of the law. Off the job (and with a little liquor in his system), he could be quite different. The Mobil Economy Run’s VIP trains were all about liquoring up company guests. As soon as the train left L.A.’s Union Station, the shades came down and the bar opened. It remained open, 24/7, for the remainder of the trip.

  As if determined to avoid temptation, Parker stayed away from the Mobil Economy Run during his first year as chief. In 1952, however, he succumbed. Two years later, he went along with traffic chief Harold Sullivan. The Examiner’s automotive reporter, Slim Bernard, came too. Bernard was a character much beloved for his high jinx, so no one was surprised when, after a few drinks, Bernard somehow produced Salvation Army uniforms at the stop in Albuquerque and set out to recruit “soldiers” to solicit donations at the station. What was surprising was that Parker was happy to join the fun. Completely sloshed, he pounded away on a drum while his fellow revelers collected donations. It was a scene that made Parker’s traveling companion Harold Sullivan, who didn’t shy away from a few drinks on occasion himself, distinctly uncomfortable.

  It got worse. By the time they reached Sun Valley, Parker (drinking all the while) was ready to lead a conga line through the hotel lobby and down the escalator. From Sullivan’s perspective, Parker’s behavior went well beyond boozy good fun. “He was drinking, and he had a problem,” says Sullivan simply of Parker on that trip.

  Parker himself presumably saw things in a different light. From that year forward, he was a Mobil Economy Run regular.

  Fast-forward three years.

  One day in the spring of 1957, the special bell on Sullivan’s desk rang to indicate that the chief wanted to talk to him immediately. Such summons were dreaded by the deputy chiefs. Parker didn’t hold regular staff meetings. By 1957, he had become quite hands off about the management of divisions that weren’t under his direct control. Sullivan sometimes went weeks without discussing traffic matters with the chief. When Sullivan or another deputy chief was summoned, it typically meant that Parker was angry about something and intended to chew him out. Nonetheless, Sullivan promptly hurried down the hall to Parker’s office. He was relieved to find the chief looking pensive.

  “I’ve got a little problem,” Parker told Sullivan, almost sheepishly.

  “What is it?” Sullivan replied.

  “Mayor Poulson wants to go on the Economy Run,” Parker replied. Sullivan didn’t see the difficulty. Mobil Oil would surely be delighted to have the mayor come along for the ride.

  “Just call the manager and tell him that,” said Sullivan. Although he was disinclined to ask favors, Parker did. Just as Sullivan predicted, the Mobil Economy Run was more than happy to extend an invitation to Mayor Poulson At the last minute, though, Poulson bowed out and sent a press aide in his stead. The aide w
as astonished by how much Parker drank—and (in Sullivan’s words) by “what an asshole he made of himself.” In short, he reported to Poulson that Los Angeles’s lauded police chief was a common drunk of the worst sort. When Parker got back, the mayor confronted Parker about his public drinking, saying it was an embarrassment to the city. Parker vowed to sober up, but the binges (which typically began after work hours at the speaking engagements that filled Parker’s evenings) continued—until his drinking habit brought him face to face with the possibility of a violent death.

  The turning point came during a family trip to Tucson. Parker was there with his wife, Helen; his brother Joe; and his sister-in-law. The four of them were at a restaurant in Phoenix. Parker was “pulled as tight as a rubber band” that evening. The Mafia, he explained to Joe, was moving into Los Angeles. Parker was glum. He had a few B&Bs—Benedictine and brandies—too many to drive home. The next day, a subordinate called to say that one of the Los Angeles papers was reporting that a Mob figure had spotted Parker, drunk, in a Phoenix restaurant. Horrified, Parker never had another drink again.

  PART FOUR

  All the Way or Nothing

  20

  The Mike Wallace Interview

  “I killed no men that in the first place didn’t deserve killing.”

  —Mickey Cohen to Mike Wallace, The Mike Wallace Interview

  CHIEF PARKER WAS RIGHT TO BE WORRIED. Mickey Cohen was looking for a way to get rid of him. But not with a bullet. He needed something subtle, like the Brenda Allen scandal in 1949. It was a difficult assignment. Los Angeles in 1957 was a very different city than it had been in 1949. Cohen was weaker, and the LAPD was immeasurably stronger. It would take an act of God to topple Chief William Parker. Fortunately, in the spring of 1957, Mickey Cohen got precisely that in the form of an invitation from the Rev. Billy Graham.

  When Mickey Cohen first met Graham in 1949, Cohen was the West Coast’s most famous gangster while the handsome young preacher’s celebrity was still in its first blush. By 1957, the situation had changed. Graham had parlayed the success of his Los Angeles campaign into a nationwide movement. After his appearances in Los Angeles, Hearst papers across the country picked up the story of the lantern-jawed, jet blond man of God. Time magazine likewise hailed “the trumpet-lunged North Carolinian” with the “deep, cavernous voice” and made coverage of Graham’s crusades a recurring feature of the magazine. Graham barnstormed across the country, drawing huge crowds wherever he went. No venture seemed too ambitious. He went into the movies, setting up his own production company (Billy Graham Films, later World Wide Pictures) and building a small film lot just across the street from the Walt Disney studios in Burbank; the project got so big that Graham soon teamed up with MGM for help distributing the film. He also launched a radio program on ABC, The Hour of Decision. But it was in 1952 that Graham took the step that would make him a household name.

  One of Graham’s closest friends was the Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson. Richardson was a man with a cause: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Richardson wanted him to run for president—and he wanted Graham to convince the general to do it. Graham took up the task assigned to him by “Mr. Sid” with alacrity, firing off a letter to the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Brussels that was so impassioned that Eisenhower wrote Richardson to ask who this Graham fellow was.

  Richardson responded by saying he’d send Graham over so Eisenhower could find out himself. The two men hit it off. When Eisenhower decided to run, he asked Graham to contribute Scripture verses to his speeches. Graham did so, but he also pressed Eisenhower about his own faith. The general confessed that he’d fallen away from the church. Graham gave him a Bible and recommended a congregation in Washington. After he was elected president, Dwight and Mamie joined it. Graham’s moment as a spiritual counselor to presidents had arrived.

  Graham enjoyed the perquisites that came with his proximity to temporal power, golfing at Burning Tree with Ike or his vice president, Richard Nixon; visiting American troops abroad; and establishing the National Prayer Breakfast as a de rigueur event for Washington politicians. Figuring out what to do next, though, was somewhat more challenging. First, he did a series of campus campaigns at colleges and universities across the country. Then he looked overseas. In 1954 and 1955, he toured the United Kingdom and Europe. In 1956, he visited Asia. By the time 1957 arrived, he needed something new. Graham and his advisors decided to go for something big: They would launch their biggest campaign yet in the biggest city in the world—New York City.

  New York City would be the ultimate challenge. It was the citadel of secularism, with more agnostics than any other American city. It was the center of the world’s media. It was a stronghold of Catholicism, with a larger Irish population than Dublin, a larger Italian population than Rome, a larger Puerto Rican population than San Juan. It was also the Jewish metropolis, home to one out of every ten of the world’s Jews. Only 7.5 percent of the population belonged to mainline Protestant denominations, and most of these nominal Protestants were far removed from Graham’s conservative, back-to-the-basics creed. From an evangelical standpoint, bringing New York City to Jesus was the ultimate challenge.

  Protestant leaders in the city were generally supportive. A decision was made to launch the campaign in Madison Square Garden, starting on May 15. Graham and his advisors wanted to begin with something big—by saving someone who would turn every eye in New York (if not the country) toward the Manhattan crusade. Who better than the country’s most notorious Jewish gangster, Mickey Cohen?

  Graham and Cohen had renewed their acquaintance after Cohen’s release. Cohen’s apparently sincere desire for repentance was catnip to the evangelist and his circle. Graham confidant W C. Jones began to press Mickey even more ardently to choose Christ. He and other Graham backers also offered thousands of dollars in “brotherly love gifts.” Cohen was open to the idea. Being born again had certainly worked out well for his former wiretapper, Jimmy Vaus, who was now a celebrated speaker and a published author. Vaus’s memoirs had even been made into a movie, Wiretap-per (1956). A Madison Square Garden conversion would certainly gratify Mickey’s undiminished desire for attention from the press. There was also, purportedly, money at stake: $15,000 to attend the Madison Square Garden crusade and another $25,000 if he converted to Christianity. That seemed like a more than fair price for Mickey’s soul.

  In the spring of 1957, Cohen flew to Buffalo to meet with Graham and explore the possibility of attending the upcoming Madison Square Garden campaign. The New York Herald Tribune broke the story: “Mickey Cohen and Bill Graham Pray and Read Bible Together,” cried the headline. It quoted Mickey praising Graham for having “guided me in many things” and for being “my friend.” The story also suggested that further communion between the two would be forthcoming.

  “He’s invited me [to the May crusade],” Cohen told the paper, “and I think I will be here for it.” Cohen added that he was “very high on the Christian way of life.”

  The saga of L.A.’s most notorious gangster-turned-florist accepting Jesus as his personal savior promised to be the most sensational story of the summer. It demanded the attention of a journalist who would do it justice—someone who didn’t hesitate to sit down with unsavory characters and ask the point-blank, personal questions that Americans wanted answers to. In short, Mickey Cohen seemed the perfect guest for Manhattan’s newest media star, ABC newsman Mike Wallace.

  IN THE SUMMER of 1956, Mike Wallace was the anchor of the seven and eleven o’clock news reports for New York City’s Channel 5, WABD. Ted Yates, a sinewy ex-Marine from Cheyenne, Wyoming, was his producer. Wallace had been on the job for a year. Yet already he and Yates were bridling at the restrictions imposed upon them. Decades earlier George Bernard Shaw had noted that “the ablest and most highly cultivated people continually discuss religion, politics, and sex” while the masses “make it a rule that politics and religion are not to be mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person
would attempt to discuss sex.” Shaw’s description of Victorian England was doubly true for 1950s television, and it frustrated Wallace and Yates. The two men began to sketch out a different approach. Why not interview the people viewers most wanted to meet? Why not ask the questions viewers really wanted answers to?

  That fall, Yates and Wallace managed to convince Channel 5 to replace the eleven o’clock news broadcast with an interview show. The format featured Wallace and an interesting guest—a personality from the world of politics, sports, entertainment, or religion. Yates dubbed the show Night Beat. It was an immediate succés de scandale. New Yorkers watched, mesmerized, as Wallace confronted bristling union leaders with pointed questions about their personal lives, quizzed actresses about their sex lives, and asked novelists about their views of God. Wallace courted conflict. His questions were relentless, his work ethic indefatigable. (Night Beat featured two guests for a half hour each, four nights a week.) The networks noticed. In early 1957, ABC offered Wallace a half-hour national slot that would air Sunday nights. The show would be called The Mike Wallace Interview. ABC president Leonard Goldenson assured Wallace that he would have the same freedom he had previously enjoyed at Night Beat. (“Mike, you will not be doing your job properly unless you make this building shake every couple of weeks,” Goldenson reportedly told him.) Wallace jumped at the opportunity. In late April, Wallace and Yates released a list of Wallace’s first guests. It included the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, the actor and director Orson Welles, the singer Harry Belafonte, and Mickey Cohen.