by John Buntin
Mickey was furious: Stoker, Thicker’n Thieves, 179. “Brenda’s Revenge,” Time magazine, July 11, 1949.
As Mickey started to: Mickey’s claim to have driven all the way back to Wilshire without looking up seems implausible given the two miles of curves he would have had to traverse on San Vicente Boulevard.
Cohen didn’t report: Cohen, In My Own Words, 122-23; Jennings, “Private Life of a Hood, Part III,” October 4, 1958.
The evening of: Cohen, In My Own Words, 125-29. Muir, Headline Happy, 202-10.
By 3:30: Some accounts of the shooting mention only the shotgun (or two shotguns). See Muir, Headline Happy, 205, 207-209; Cohen, In My Own Words, 126.
Later that night: Muir, Headline Happy, 202-209; “Full Story of Mob Shooting of Cohen,” Los Angeles Daily News, July 20, 1949.
The papers, of course: Howser was actively attempting to organize and extort money from Northern California bookmakers, slot machine operators, and other gamblers. Fox, Blood and Power, 291.
Brown was a big teddy: Author interview with Daryl Gates, December 10, 2004; McDougal, Privileged Son, p. 194.
“I had gambling joints: Cohen, In My Own Words, 146-47.
Cohen arrived in Chicago: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 418.
Chapter Two: The “White Spot”
“Wherein lies the fascination …”: Wright, “Los Angeles-The Chemically Pure,” The Smart Set Anthology, 101.
Other cities were based: Findley, “The Economic Boom of the ’Twenties in Los Angeles,” 252; “The Soul of the City,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1923, 114; Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis, 80; Davis, “The View from Spring Street: White-Collar Men in the City of Angeles,” Sitton and Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making, 180. The “white spot” metaphor began innocently, as a description of business conditions in Los Angeles in the early 1920s, but soon took on troubling racial connotations.
The historic center of: Percival, “In Our Cathay,” Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1898, 6. See also AnneMarie Kooistra, “Angels for Sale,” 25 and 29 for maps of L.A.’s historic tenderloin district, as well as 91, 174-75; Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 89; Woods, “The Progressives and Police,” 57; Sitton “Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles?” in Metropolis in the Making, 309.
The city also boasted: Hurewitz, Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics, 104; Mann, Behind the Screen, 89.
Congressman Parker’s position: “Col W. H. Parker Called By Death: South Dakota Congressman Passed Away Yesterday—Speaker Cannon Expresses Deep Regret,” clipping from Deadwood newspaper, William H. Parker Foundation archives.
As a child, Bill: The oldest Parker sibling, Catherine Irene, was born on August 29, 1903. Bill was born two years later, on June 21, 1905, followed by Alfred on May 29, 1908; Mary Ann in 1911; and Joseph on April 10, 1918. Author interview with Joseph Parker, Houston, Texas, December 12-13, 2004.
As an obviously intelligent: Sjoquist, “The Story of Bill,” The Link, 1994; Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 91.
In later years, Parker: See “Police Instincts of Bill Parker Flourished Early,” Los Angeles Mirror-News, June 18, 1957, for a typical (and improbable) account of this period in Parker’s life.
Los Angeles was Deadwood: In 1934, the United States Geographical Board recognized the most popular variant, today’s “Los An-ju-less.” Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 26. However, controversies about the proper pronunciation lingered into the 1950s. “With a Soft G,” Time magazine, September 22, 1952.
Whatever its pronunciation: John Anson Ford, who moved to L.A. in 1920 from Chicago, recounts the wagon trail-like quality of the migration in this description of the journey: “We had not expected to find so many other motorists, equipped very much as we were, all heading for California. On long level stretches of the dirt roadway each day we could see cars ahead and behind us, perhaps half a mile apart. Each car was followed by a long plume of dust. These automobiles, laden with camping equipment, household goods, and the unkempt appearance of both children and adults, made them easily distinguishable from local farmers or city dwellers. An amazingly large segment of the nation was on the move—and that move was to California.” Ford, Honest Politics My Theme, 52-53; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 75; Starr, Material Dreams, 80.
“The whole Middle West”: Garland, Diaries, 40.
“If every conceivable trick: http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/hollywoodsign/index.html.
Then there was the: Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis, 127. See also Tygiel, “Metropolis in the Making,” 1-9.
The Parkers settled first: “Champion ‘Ag-inner’ of Universe Is Shuler, Belligerent Local Pastor Holds All Records for Attacks Upon Everybody, Everything,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 1930, A2; Starr, Material Dreams, 136-39.
By 1910, the year: http://www.life.com/Life/lifebooks/hollywood/intro.html; Starr, Material Dreams, 98; Ross, “How Hollywood Became Hollywood,” in Sitton and Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making, 262.
Parker was plankton in: “Plans Submitted for Fine Theater: Picture Palace to Follow Elaborate Spanish Architecture,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1920, V1.
The first was Theodosia: “Milestones,” Time magazine, April 18, 1955.
As the movies heated: Dixon, “Problems of a Working Girl: Queer Aspects of Human Nature Exhibited to Quiet and Watchful Theater Workers, Says Love is Catching ’Like the Measles,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1919, 112.
As chief of police: Parker’s claim to have been born in 1902 rather than 1905 dates to this era, raising the possibility that he lied about his age so that he could claim to be slightly older than Francis. Divorce petition, Francette Pomeroy, Oregon City, OR.
Despite (or perhaps because of): Author interview with Joseph Parker, Houston, Texas, December 12-13, 2004. It should be noted that my account of Bill’s first marriage comes almost entirely from his wife’s divorce petition. Such accounts are invariably one-sided; exaggerating spousal cruelty was a common tactic for achieving a speedy divorce. It should also be remembered that Bill’s response to his wife’s behavior would have struck many men as wholly justified at the time.
Any attempt to heist: Reid, Mickey Cohen: Mobster, 39. See also unpublished notes for Mickey Cohen biography dated February 6, 1959, Ben Hecht Papers, Newberry Library, Box 7.
Chapter Three: The Combination
“The purpose of any political”: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 315, 341.
He was born Meyer: There is some confusion about Mickey’s birth date. Cohen himself generally claimed that he was born in 1913; however, his funeral marker says he was born in 1914. Still other evidence points to a 1911 birth date. See Lewis, Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, 1; Cohen, In My Own Words, 3. Other accounts of Mickey’s life say that his father was a grocer.
Fanny, Mickey, and sister: Boyle Heights’s Jewish population jumped from 10,000 in 1917 to 43,000 in 1923, making it home to about a third of Los Angeles’s Jewish population. Romo, History of a Barrio, 65. The current brick Breed Street Shul was finished several years later, in 1923.
Mickey soon became a: Clarke and Saldana, “True Life Story of Mickey Cohen,” Los Angeles Daily News, July 1949. This is the beginning of a nine-part series on Mickey that is a valuable, though not always reliable, guide to his life. See also “Cohen Began as a Spoiled Brat,” the second installment in the series.
Mickey’s entree came from: Mickey’s exact age at the time of this incident is somewhat unclear. In Mickey Cohen: Mobster, Ed Reid says that this occurred when he was seven (37-39). In his autobiography, In My Own Words, Cohen says that this incident occurred when he was nine (5).
What followed was a: Cohen, In My Own Words, Chapter One.
Clearly, Mickey had a: The FBI would later estimate his IQ to be 98. Cohen FBI files.
While Mickey started his: The following year Los Angeles would surpass it—a lead L.A. would maintain until the 199
0s. Klein, The History of Forgetting, 75. However, Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 73, disputes the belief, widespread at the time, that Los Angeles was suffering a crime wave.
“The white spot of …”: “The Soul of the City,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1923, 114.
By 1922, Harry Chandler: In 1909, progressive reformers had dismantled the old ward system that had allowed Democrats, Catholics, and Jews to be elected to political office in favor of a system that provided for only citywide at-large elections. The result was a city government dominated by Times readers—white, middle-class Protestant Republicans. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 9.
The Times newsroom claimed that Chandler was the eleventh wealthiest man in the world. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 125; “The White Spot Glistens Brightly,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1921, II; Taylor, “It Costs $1000 to Have Lunch with Harry Chandler,” Saturday Evening Post, December 16, 1939.
Now was just such: Sitton, “Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles?” in Sitton and Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making, 305.
At first, everything went: Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 219. Los Angeles mayors initially served only two-year terms, hence the high tally.
This was embarrassing: Sitton, “The ‘Boss’ Without a Machine: Kent K. Parrot and Los Angeles Politics in the 1920s.”
By firing Oaks and: Sitton, “The ‘Boss’ Without a Machine: Kent K. Parrot and Los Angeles Politics in the 1920s.”
Bootlegging had been a profitable: Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 60.
At first, much of: Anderson, Beverly Hills Is My Beat, 130. See also Nathan, “How Whiskey Smugglers Buy and Land Cargoes, Well-Organized Groups Engaged in Desperate Game of Rum-Running,” Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1926, B5; Rappleye, All-American Mafioso, 40; and Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 60. It is not surprising that Nathan neglects to mention Combination figures such as Guy McAfee, who had ties to the Chandler-favored Cryer administration.
In the big eastern: Law enforcement was too. Historian Robert Fogelson has argued that people engaged in both professions for similar reasons, notably out of a desire for upward social mobility. According to Fogelson, this is one of the reasons why graft and corruption were so prevalent in urban police departments: Many of the men who staffed them were as interested in getting ahead as the men who were paying them off. See Fogelson, Big City Police 29, 35.
For more on Crawford, see “Crawford Career Hectic, Politician Gained Wide Notoriety as ‘Pay-Off Man’ in Morris Lavine Extortion Case,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1931, 2. See also Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 305-6.
Crawford got back in: The exact relationship between Crawford and Marco is unclear. While Crawford seems to have kept a hand in prostitution, he was apparently more of a political fixer; Marco, in contrast, was more hands on. Most accounts of the era accord Crawford the position of primacy; however, some describe Marco as the leader of the Combination. Others point to Guy McAfee, “Detective McAfee is Exonerated,” Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1916, I9.
Cornero tried to buy: I say “seemed overt” because in this instance, Farmer’s claim of self-defense was actually quite plausible. Nonetheless, in general it was clear that Farmer enjoyed considerable advantages, including (somewhat later) having his personal attorney on the Police Commission. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 233, 237.
“Mr. Cryer, how much …”: “Bledsoe Hurls Defy at Cryer, Challenges Parrot’s Status as De-Facto Mayor,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1925.
“Shall We Re-Elect…” “Shall We Re-Elect Kent Parrot?” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1925, A1.
The Times publisher was: For a discussion of Parrot’s sway over the LAPD, see “Oaks Names Kent Parrot, Charges Lawyer Interfered in Police Department, ‘Dictatorial and Threatening,’” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1923, I14; “Dark Trails to City Hall are Uncovered: How Negro Politicians Make and Unmake Police Vice Squad Told in Heath Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1923, and “Kent Parrot Accused by Richards as ‘Sinister,’ Retiring Harbor Commissioner Names Him as Would-Be Boss,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1923, Sitton, “The ‘Boss’ Without a Machine,” 372-73.
In truth, each camp: Sitton, “Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles?” 312. See also Domanick, To Protect and Serve, 40-49, for an extended and colorful discussion of James Davis.
With a measure of: The arrest of councilman Carl Jacobson was a variant on a common police racket known as the badger game, an extortion racket made possible by the fact that extramarital sex was actually illegal in Los Angeles. The setup was simple: Working with an unmarried female accomplice, the police arranged an assignation, usually at a downtown hotel, and then burst in to make an arrest—unless, that is, they received a payoff. In this instance, however, Councilman Jacob-son boldly refused to go with the usual script. Insisting that he had been framed, he demanded a trial and was acquitted. He later sued Crawford, vice lord Albert Marco, Callie Grimes (the would-be temptress), and five police officers. However, they, too, were acquitted, leaving the question of exactly what happened in Ms. Grimes’s bedroom hopelessly unsettled. “Crawford Career Hectic,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1931, 2. See also Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 252-55.
Parker tried to focus: Starr, Material Dreams, 70.
Freed of his wife: Fogelson, Big City Police, 82, 103. Author interview with Joseph Parker, Houston, Texas, December 12-13, 2004.
On April 24, 1926: Fogelson, Big City Police, 102; letter from the Board of Civil Service Commissioners, September 28, 1926, William H. Parker Police Foundation Archives. Note that Police Commission minutes misrecord his name as “William H. Park.”
Chapter Four: The Bad Old Good Old Days
“[A] smart lawyer can …”: White, Me, Detective, 188; Sjoquist, History of the Los Angeles Police Department, 37.
“The name of this city …”: Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 26, quoting the diary of the Rev. James L. Woods, November 24, 1854 (at the Huntington Library).
“While there are undoubtedly …”: “Committee of Safety Makes Its Report,” Los Angeles Herald, November 8, 1900; Fogelson, Big City Police, 9.
In their defense: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 24.
The activities of plainclothes: Fogelson, Big City Police, 51.
In 1902, the LAPD’s: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 25. Reverend Kendall’s Queen of the Red-Lights, which is based on Pearl Morton, is an excellent introduction to the genre.
The decision to prohibit: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 49.
There were moments when: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 71.
One night soon after: For one of Parker’s several accounts of this episode, see Dean Jennings, “Portrait of a Police Chief,” 84. In the 1930s, Arlington was the reputed bagman for the Combination’s gambling interests.
Today the police beat: New York City was something of an exception. There the profusion of publications put reporters in a more supplicatory position. Muir, Headline Happy, 41.
Infuriated at the idea: Jacoby, “Highlights in the Life of the Chief of Police,” Eight Ball, March 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives.
“‘Come along, sister, and…’”: Quoted in Starr, Material Dreams, 170-71. That same year, the old police station/stockade was torn down and the new Lincoln Heights Jail was built in its place. Ted Thackrey, “Memories—Lincoln Heights Jail Closing,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, June 27, 1965.
Cops sometimes acted violently: White, Me, Detective, 188; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 225.
The existence of “the third degree” was a hotly debated topic at the time. Police chiefs denied its existence. Critics insisted that it was routinely used. To some extent, both sides were talking past each other. Police chiefs defined the “third degree” as torture, critics as coercive pressure. The analogy to current-day interrogation tactics for
suspected terrorists is very close. See also Wickersham Commission, 146-47; and Hopkins, Lawless Law Enforcement.
Remarkably, the LAPD was: Carte and Carte, Police Reform in the United States, 60. See also Hopkins, Lawless Law Enforcement.
Parker told the man: “Why Hoodlums Hate Bill Parker,” Readers Digest, March 1960, 239, condensed from National Civic Review (September 1959).
“Open the door so …”: Stump, “LA’s Chief Parker.”
Later that year: Wedding announcement, Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1928, 24.
The Great Depression intervened: Starr, The Dream Endures, 165.
“Statements from Bill kept …”: Letter from Helen, William H. Parker Police Foundation archive.
Chapter Five: “Jewboy”
“I wasn’t the worse …”: Cohen manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library. Mickey would later claim to have fought seventy-nine pro fights, including five against past, present, or future world champions. Cohen biographer Brad Lewis counts a more modest (but still impressive) record of sixty wins (twenty-five by knockout) and sixteen losses. Lewis, Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, 14.
As a condition for his: Unpublished Cohen manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.
Mickey was not: Cohen, In My Own Words, 6-8.
Yet despite this youthful: Reid, Mickey Cohen, 39-40.
Lou Stillman’s gym: Schulberg, The Harder They Fall, 90.
The men surrounding Mickey: “Lou Stillman, Legendary Boxing Figure, Is Dead,” New York Times obituary, August 20, 1969. The Times’s obituary credits the “open sesame to low society” remark to Damon Runyon, suggesting that perhaps Runyon used it first.