by Gus Russo
One year later, Lew Wasserman decided he wanted Martin and Lewis in the MCA stable. The MCA boss ordered two men to break into Greshler's
office to steal their contract, whereupon MCA made them a better offer. Although the duo ended up at MCA, Greshler obtained a huge legal settlement in the subsequent lawsuit filed against MCA. Of course, no one was about to charge Wasserman or Stein criminally, which should have occurred.4
As the second half of the century began, trouble for both the underworld and the Supermob loomed in the persons of journalist Lester Velie and ambitious politician Estes Kefauver, a freshman U.S. senator from Tennessee.
Forty-two-year-old Velie, an award-winning New York-based crime reporter, was an unlikely foe for the forty-one-year-old Korshak, given that he also hailed from Kiev and the University of Wisconsin, where he and Korshak were 1926-27 classmates. By 1950, Velie was writing crime exposes for Collier's magazine, where he was an associate editor. His most recent investigation, aided by Chicago Crime Commission director Virgil Peterson, was an in-depth profile of the Capone heirs' political connections. The seven-page article appeared in the September 30, 1950, Collier's issue and devoted the first-ever investigative ink to Sidney Korshak. The article noted Korshak's association with Jake Arvey, Alex Greenberg's Seneca, Charlie Fischetti, and others. During his research, Velie visited Korshak's LaSalle Street office, where he eavesdropped on visits and phone calls from Arvey, Arthur Elrod, George Scalise, Dan Gilbert, and "layoff " bookie Joe Grabiner.
The Velie investigation intrigued Kefauver, who was about to embark on a mammoth congressional probe of organized crime, with the subject of Sid Korshak. A legislator with presidential aspirations, Kefauver had persuaded Congress to have him oversee an ambitious, and first-ever, probe into the murky underworld. The senator and his investigators announced that they would crisscross the country in their efforts to clarify the state of American lawlessness.
Dalitz testifying before the Kefauver Committee in Los Angeles, February 28, 1951 (Cleveland State University, Special Collections)
Before Kefauver visited Chicago in October of 1950, he made it known that one of his prime targets would be one of Lester Velie's prey, the Supermob's Sidney Korshak. In July, shortly after receiving Velie's draft, Kefauver announced his committee staff's September trip to the Second City and obtained Korshak's tax records for 1947-49 from Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder.5 Those records showed that Korshak was declaring an average yearly income of approximately $94,000 ($1.4 million converted to 2004 dollars).6 His brother Marshall reported a $46,000 average for the same period. Committee investigators in Chicago also subpoenaed Korshak's financial records from 1945 to 1948, and Korshak promptly complied with the request. The full-court press continued as former Chicago detective William Drury was enlisted by a Miami newsman to monitor Korshak's movements, the reports of which were shared with Kefauver's investigators. The Drury surveillance operation ended abruptly on September 25, 1950, when Drury was shot to death in his garage. Thus, when the committee touched down in Chicago, the prospects for a Korshak inquisition were expected to intensify.7
Another potential pitfall for Korshak was the committee's interest in Dan Gilbert, Korshak's key connection in the Chicago State's Attorney's Office. Under oath, Gilbert admitted his gambling links with the Chicago Outfit, a disclosure that had to heighten the investigators' interest in his associates such as Korshak. But by the time the Kefauver Committee arrived in Chicago to conduct formal hearings, Korshak and the Outfit had devised a scheme to ward off the committee's namesake. Just like other Washington insiders, the Supermob was aware of Estes Kefauver's vulnerabilities.
Prior to his marriage to the former Nancy Pigott in 1935, Estes Kefauver had a reputation as a stereotypical Southern ladies' man, a landed-gentry Lochinvar. After his marriage, Kefauver cleaned up his act—at least in Tennessee. Charles Fontenay, who covered Kefauver for the Nashville Ten-nessean, wrote, "A lot of people knew of his propensity for women, but he was clean as a whistle in Tennessee."8 However, in Washington, and wherever else his travels took him, Kefauver was known as a legendary drinker and womanizer. William "Fishbait" Miller, the longtime House "doorkeeper," who supervised some 357 House employees, called him the "worst womanizer in the Senate." On Kefauver's premature death of a heart attack, Miller wrote, "He must have worn himself out chasing pretty legs."9 The senator himself provided the fuel for the talk. When on tour in Europe, Kefauver caused a scandal after escorting a famous call girl to a society ball. On another occasion, he trysted with a woman in Paris who was not told of his wife in Tennessee. Afterward, Kefauver recommended his courtesan to a friend who was about to tour France.10
On future campaign junkets, Kefauver became infamous for dispatching his aides to procure women. New York Times columnist Russell Baker recalled one night with the candidate on the tour bus when Kefauver was feeling particularly randy. On arrival in a small town "in the middle of the night," Baker overheard Kefauver telling one of his minions, "I gotta fuck!"11 Irv Kupcinet called Keef "the worst womanizer I've ever known. Whenever he came to town . . . he let the word out: 'Get me a woman!' He would have put Gary Hart to shame."12 Capitol Hill lobbyist Bobby Baker, who would become the first American to have a scandal named after him, wrote that Kefauver regularly put himself "up for sale." According to Baker, "[Kefauver] didn't particularly care whether he wras paid in coin or in women."13
On October 4, 1950, Kefauver and his senior staff descended on Chicago, where Kefauver took a room in the Kirkeby-owned Palmer House, while the rest of the staff and investigators stayed at the hotel that was also home to Outfit mastermind Curly Humphreys (as well as being the Outfit's former meeting place), the Morrison. Perhaps not coincidentally, Chief Counsel Rudolph Halley complained that the staff's phones were tapped. However, he never learned of the Outfit's planned setup of the committee's chairman. In June 1976, reporters Seymour Hersh and Jeff Gerth began to unravel the inside story of Kefauver and Korshak in a four-part profile of the well-connected Supermob lawyer in the New York Times. A close friend and business associate of Korshak's told the writers how Korshak and the Outfit blackmailed the ever-randy Kefauver. The informant, unnamed in the article, related that he had seen compromising photos of the senator taken in a suite at the luxurious Drake Hotel, which was of course owned by the Kirkeby-Cuba National-Lansky consortium. Recent interviews have shed more light on the incident.
The source who was shown the photos turned out to be none other than Joel Goldblatt, who, by the time he was approached by Hersh, had had a falling-out with his pal Sidney over Sidney's standing up for Joel's ex, Lynne Walker Goldblatt, in their divorce proceedings.14 Goldblatt was notoriously jealous, and Korshak's friendship with Lynne put him over the edge. "Sidney double-crossed him," remembered Goldblatt's then secretary and future wife, MJ Goldblatt. "He came into the courtroom and kissed Joel's ex on the cheek."15 It is now understood that Kefauver was enticed to the Drake, where two young women from the Outfit's Chez Paree nightclub entertained him. "The Outfit had a guy at the Drake, a vice cop who moonlighted as the hotel's head of security," a friend of the Korshak family recently divulged. "Korshak got the girls; the security guard set up an infrared camera and delivered the prints to Korshak." Sandy Smith, the veteran Chicago crime reporter, recently said, "I knew that district and its cops and the other people who were involved in that kind of thing."16
The confidential source added that a private meeting was arranged between Kefauver and Korshak. In the brief encounter, Korshak flung the incriminating photos on Kefauver's desk. "Now, how far do you want to go with this?" Korshak asked. Kefauver never called Korshak to testify before the committee, despite his being the first of eight hundred witnesses subpoenaed. A committee internal memo noted that they had hoped to interview Korshak, "but were forced to forgo that pleasure because of the chairman's recall to Washington."17
Finally, in October 1950, committee investigator George Robinson, who had merely intended to r
eturn Korshak's subpoenaed files, interviewed Korshak. Korshak told Robinson, and reporters afterward, that the committee's interest in him was generated by Lester Velie's article in Collier's.
Korshak informed Robinson that Velie not only exaggerated the facts, but often invented them. According to Sidney, Velie had a hidden motive for his broadside: he'd held a twenty-four-year grudge against Korshak since their college days at Wisconsin, where boxing champion Korshak punched Velie—then Levy—in the nose. Incredibly, Korshak told the press that he never met Scalise (whom Velie saw with him in Korshak's office) and never represented Charlie Gioe (Korshak had handled his Hollywood extortion difficulties). In a brilliant choice of words, Korshak declared, "My records will show that I never represented any hoodlums." Of course, Korshak was famous for his lack of record keeping. He called Velie's piece "a series of diabolical lies," and Velie "a journalistic faker and an unmitigated liar." Korshak's words to the press would be his last. If he had been discreet before, from now on he would be near invisible, his name all but vanishing from the public consciousness.18
Kefauver's kid-glove approach to Korshak was trumped by his virtual incompetence in dealing with another key Supermob member, Alex Louis Greenberg. On January 19, 1951, Greenberg testified before Kefauver and admitted to his co-ownership of both the Seneca and California's Store Properties with Paul Ziffren, Sam Genis, James Roosevelt, et al. His IRS statements in the committee's possession corroborated the partnerships. To what should have been an eye-opening revelation, Kefauver merely remarked, "I just marvel that you can have so many businesses." Greenberg replied, "Thank you."
Greenberg ended his testimony by offering the committee an invitation: "The next time the committee comes to Chicago, I would like to have the committee stop in the Seneca Hotel . . . We operate a very nice hotel . . . [we have] very liberal rates. We got good food over there. Might as well give the Seneca a boost."19 There was no follow-up questioning about Greenberg's investment role for Nitti, Capone, and the rest; no interest in the partnership with the notoriously connected Sam Genis or the myriad of properties obtained from Ziffren's close friend who headed the Office of Alien Property, Judge David Bazelon*20
M o v e to t h e West Coast
With Velie and Kefauver summarily dismissed, Sidney Korshak set about joining his compadres in California, albeit now with greater respect from the Chicago hoods.
"Sidney became a legend after the Kefauver incident," remembered a top Chicago PD detective. "It was the key thing that impressed [boss Tony] Accardo and the others."21
Korshak's gossip-writing pal Irv Kupcinet recently said about his highflying friend, "He knew and had the backing of Tony Accardo. Tony Accardo loved him; he depended on him. [He] was considered to be the fair-haired boy in the organization with the blessings of Tony Accardo."22
Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo (author collection)
Korshak's future success would require a delicate balancing act consisting of serving his Outfit patrons in Chicago, who felt they'd "made" him, and promoting the interests of himself and the rest of the Supermob, now becoming entrenched in California business and politics. It is one of the many great "unknowables" in Korshak's life: how much of his West Coast relocation was based on his own desires and how much came from an Outfit dictum. "Turned" mobster Joe Hauser voiced his opinion to a House subcommittee in 1983, saying, "Organized crime leader Tony Accardo, who I have known for many years as Joe Batters, told me on several occasions that he had sent Korshak to Los Angeles to represent the mob there." Frank Buccieri, brother of infamous Outfit juice collector Fifi Buccieri, recently said, "Sidney paid homage to Accardo. Accardo was telling him what to do. When Sidney was in California, he was still taking orders from Accardo. Absolutely."23
Leaving his sponsors behind, Korshak said good-bye not only to bitter Illinois winters, but also to the normal workplace. As the new fixer for both the Outfit and the Commission, Korshak only required a telephone, which he wielded like a scepter in the coming years, playing the highly compensated middleman between corporate supplicants and the hidden Eastern powers in Chicago's Outfit and New York's Commission.
By this time the Korshak family had expanded to include not only Sidney and Bee, but also their two young sons, Harry (b. 1945) and Stuart (b. 1947), on whom Sidney doted. For relaxation Hollywood-style, the Korshaks often joined the Ziffrens and pals at the hottest Hollywood nightspot, the Mo-cambo, located at 8588 Sunset Boulevard, and later immortalized in James Ellroy's T.A. Confidential. A sort of West Coast Chez Paree, the Mocambo, which opened in 1941, was described as "a cross between a somewhat decadent Imperial Rome, Salvador Dali, and a birdcage." The latter reference was to the club's aviary, which housed macaws and cockatoos. In addition to virtually every notable Hollywood actor,* mobsters such as Mickey Cohen, Ben Siegel, Johnny Stompanato, and Johnny Rosselli frequented the club and were in fact rumored to have a stake in it. Author and Beverly Hills native Don Wolfe said that, among the "in crowd," the Mocambo's true ownership was well-known. "Charlie Morrison had Bugsy as a silent partner," said Wolfe. "That's why it was one of the hoods' favorite hangouts."24 In 1943, Frank Sinatra made his L.A. singing debut at the Mocambo.
In August 1952, Korshak pal Harry Karl threw a bash at the club in honor of Sidney Korshak and Jake Arvey, who flew out West for the event. The Chicago Tribune covered the Korshak-Arvey lovefest at the club and reported, "The guests numbered some 300 from the Hollywood blue book, or telephone book, and some politicians."25 Karl, the adopted son of Russian immigrants Pincus and Rose Karl, had inherited his father's $7 million estate (and shoe factories and three hundred retail outlets) and moved from New York to Beverly Hills.^'26 According to a Karl family member, Korshak and Karl were "as close as brothers" since the 1930s, when both were chasing starlets in Hollywood. According to the LAPD, there were hidden dimensions to the Karl-Korshak friendship. An informant told officials (just before he was blown up) that "Karl's Shoe Store was a front for the Chicago mob and that Korshak was the contact man."27
Professionally, Korshak continued to network with the best of them, not skipping a beat when it came to courting important L.A. lawyers, judges, police officials, and corporate moguls. During these years, Korshak was also often seen at Hillcrest, working the power-wielding clique, as opposed to the celebrities who drew the attention of most.** While the showbiz types frequenting the "men's only" dining room were entranced by iconic regulars such as Groucho or Milton Berle or George Burns, Korshak was buying lunch for brokers he might need at some future time. Fellow L.A. attorney and Korshak friend Leo Geffner recalled meeting him for lunch one day: "This guy sits down with us—I didn't catch his name. He was very friendly with Sid. After he left, I asked who he was. The Beverly Hills chief of police!"28
Among Korshak's earliest dining partners was San Francisco district attorney and future governor of California Edmund "Pat" Brown, whom he met in the midforties. The commonalities of Korshak and Brown included their lenient views toward the underworld. Korshak's ethics were well-known nationally, and Brown's were certainly familiar to San Franciscans.
Among his other curious actions, in 1947 Brown asked that murder indictments be dropped against three Colombo crime-family members, after a jury was already thirty hours into deliberations. He then promised the prosecutors that he would resubmit the case—he never did.29 Brown, the son of a San Francisco gambler, would display this curious attitude as a private citizen in 1977, when he wrote a character reference letter for New Mexico organized crime boss John Alessio when Alessio applied for a racetrack license.30
By 1947, a new lunch partner, attorney and future L.A. Superior Court judge Laurence "Larry" Rittenband, had joined Korshak's entourage. After Korshak introduced Brown to Rittenband that year, the two formed one of L.A.'s most powerful law firms. Rittenband went on to become the most senior judge in Santa Monica. According to former Sacramento Bee reporter Richard Brenneman, who interviewed Rittenband extensively in 1976, "Rittenband topped the Santa Mon
ica courthouse seniority list, where he handled his pick of the criminal cases—he loved mysteries—and presided over the courthouse's weekly Friday-morning law and motion calendar, ruling on all pretrial motions and arguments for all the Superior Court civil departments in the building."31 Two decades later he would officiate at the marriage of Sidney's son Stuart. Pat Brown became California attorney general in 1951, and then governor of the state in 1959. Sid Korshak was a key supporter of both Pat's and his son Jerry's future political careers.
When Brenneman asked Rittenband how he justified his association with Korshak, given his ties to the Chicago underworld, the judge seethed. As Brenneman later noted, "His face burning, he made a dismissive wave of the hand and muttered, 'Hell, that's what you had to do in those days to get by.'"
Another new and important Korshak L.A. friend was the prominent Hollywood divorce lawyer Gregson "Greg" Bautzer. A Los Angeles native and son of a Yugoslavian fisherman, Bautzer began his legal career in the thirties, calling studio mogul Joe Schenck "my mentor." A partner in the Beverly Hills law firm of Bautzer, Grant, and Silbert, he was the prototypical Hollywood ladies' man: a handsome, impeccably dressed defender of maligned actresses caught up in nasty divorce squabbles. Among his clients were Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Ginger Rogers, and Jane Wyman (Reagan's ex). He never tired of telling his tale of deflowering Lana Turner ("I didn't enjoy it at all" was Turner's less-told side of the story).