Supermob

by Gus Russo

  When he was tipped to Hart's possible connection to Meyer Lansky, L.A. district attorney crime investigator James Grodin did a background check and learned a fraction of the true story. "I went to the DA's office and ran a criminal history on Hart," Grodin remembered. "I learned that he went to prison in the thirties for some kind of land fraud in San Bernardino." Further proof of Hart's dubious associations comes from former L.A. private detective Ed Becker. When he needed a $10,000 loan, Becker was advised by Chicago's Johnny Rosselli to "go see Al." Becker said that Hart came through, despite being unable to read the business proposal. "He was illit­erate," said Becker.83

  With his client-friendly banking practices, Hart became the banker to the stars, often seen socializing with them. "Al Hart was a great friend of every­body," said acclaimed television comedy producer George Schlatter recently. "I managed Ciro's, and when we were running short, Al Hart would delay payment of the bill for liquor—which was not totally legal, but very friendly."84 Helping his friends with investments was just part of what made Hart a good friend. He was said to have had a $250,000 investment in the Broadway musical My Fair Tady, among others, and that he often tipped his friends and bank clients to similar opportunities. 85Hart's celebrity clients were, and are, countless, from Frank Sinatra on down. Sinatra's (and later JFK's) He was always using foul language, even in front of women. But the members tolerated him because he gave them no-interest loans from his bank."

  Despite the lack of deference to the distaff side, Hart had a reputation as a player. "Al Hart had many mistresses," said Peter Lawford's longtime manager Milt Ebbins. "And he made them a lot of money in investments."86 Sid Korshak's daughter-in-law Virginia Korshak is more blunt, saying that Hart was a serial womanizer: "Al Hart was a little dog. He was a little wreasel."87 MCA starlet Selene Walters, whose great looks made her one of Hollywood's most in-demand dates, knew Hart and went on one date with him.51' "Hart took out very young starlets while he was married," said Walters. "I didn't like him—he was crude and sinister. I was wary and afraid of him. His bank was the only one that terminated my account because he said it wasn't large enough. That hurt me very much because I had gone out with him."88

  Among those most frequently linked to Hart were actresses Martha Hyer and Pier Angeli. According to Hart's FBI file, one of his women reported that her home had been burglarized of $79,000 in furs, jewelry, and paintings on the evening of October 31, 1959. It was being widely reported that Hart, who admitted to the LAPD that he had a key to the house, had engineered the break-in after the affair fizzled. He allegedly told one friend, "[Name deleted] was no damn good, and if he [Hart] went to her house and took his things back, it would not be burglary since, after all, he had given them to her in the first place."89 The FBI was not allowed to pursue the case because there was no evidence of an interstate crime, and the Beverly Hills police typically treated Hart with the same preferential treatment afforded celebrities.

  With the exception of Charlie Gioe, who was gunned down on a Chicago street in August, 1954 was notable for Supermob close escapes. The next year was not so fortuitous. Among those whose luck ran out in 1955 was Willie Bioff, who had assumed a false identity after his Hollywood-extortion prison term and lived for a decade in Phoenix, where he befriended and advised Senator Barry Goldwater, who only knew him as William Nelson. In 1955, Bioff had the temerity (or lunacy) to take a job under the name of Nelson as an entertainment consultant for Las Vegas' new Riviera Hotel and Casino, built with $10 million in Outfit money, behind a front group of Miami investors. Interestingly, the Riviera land was leased from an L.A. consortium that included Greg Bautzer's law partner Harvey Silbert, who was also Frank Sinatra's personal attorney, and a close Korshak friend. When the Chicago Outfit ID'd Bioff, his days were numbered. On November 4, 1955, as Bioff left his Phoenix home's front door and entered his pickup truck parked in the driveway, he had no idea that the Chicagoans were onto the man who'd testified against them. If he had had that knowledge, he would never have cranked the ignition that blew him into a hundred pieces.

  A month later, on December 8, 1955, sixty-five-year-old Alex Louis Greenberg, the man who could link so many California up-and-comers to questionable Chicago investment money, was killed gangland-style as he and his wife, Pearl, were leaving Chicago's Glass Dome Hickory Pit Restaurant on the South Side's Union Avenue. As the couple walked to their parked car, two gunmen emerged from the shadows and dropped Greenberg with four .38-caliber bullets before calmly walking away; Paul Zifrren's real estate partner had been hit in the forehead, chest, left arm, and groin. Just months earlier, Greenberg had orchestrated the merger of Wisconsin's Fox Head Brewing Company, which was heavily invested in by Murray Humphreys and Joe Batters Accardo, and Fox Deluxe Beer Sales of Chicago. The new company served as a legit front and money-laundering sieve for the Chicago Outfit.90 At Greenberg's funeral, one of Frank Nitti's cousins stayed on to make sure the body was properly disposed of. He reported back to his family, "Now he's the richest son of a bitch in hell."91 In the coming weeks, police rousted over seventy-one hoods in their attempt to break the case. They never did.

  The Chicago Tribune's obituary concisely described Greenberg's legacy, although it has long since been forgotten: "Under his guidance, it is understood, the mob moved into ownerships of hotels, restaurants, laundries, cleaning establishments, and bought stock in banks, major industries, and entertainment enterprises. 92

  Alex Louis Greenberg handled all investments and financial matters of every type for and on behalf of Frank Nitti.

  NITTI'S WIDOW, ANNETTE, IN HER PROBATE LAWSUIT AGAINST THE GREENBERG ESTATE (1957)

  With so many diverse holdings, Greenberg's probate took over five years to sort out. However, as expected, the final accounting stated that the estate included $964,252 in stock in the Seneca, over $1 million in liquid assets, dozens of real estate parcels, and thousands of shares in a variety of blue-chip stocks. It came as no surprise to those familiar with the financial connection between the mob and the Supermob that the family of Frank Nitti, Al Capone's successor, made claims against the estate. The Chicago DailyNews wrote, "The widow of Frank 'the Enforcer' Nitti charged that Greenberg failed to repay more than $2 million entrusted to him by Nitti forin­vestments." (Author's italics.) The probate also noted that Paul Ziffren owed Greenberg's estate $19,939.50.93 Annette Nitti finally agreed to a $35,000 settlement in 1960.

  While Greenberg's murder hogged the Chicago headlines, Sidney Korshak continued to fight his battles in private. In 1955, he narrowly escaped prosecution for possible violation of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947. He and Murray Humphreys had been implicated in their dealings with Goldblatt Brothers, accused of using strong-arm tactics to prevent Goldblatt employees from unionizing.94 The Bureau learned that Pritzker was Goldblatt's attorney of record, but Pritzker would defer to Humphreys and Korshak whenever a stalemate occurred.95 Federal agents also noted that one union organizer at Goldblatt's had been murdered in 1933.

  Korshak was first put on Goldblatt's retainer in 1950 for $6,000 a year, increased to $10,000 by 1954. According to the FBI, the IRS had carefully been watching Korshak's finances for at least four years, but found nothing out of order. When interviewed by Bureau agents, Korshak admitted that he had known Humphreys since about 1929.96 Indeed, Korshak had been seen for years meeting with Humphreys at Fritzel's Restaurant. Prosecution of Kor­shak was ultimately (and typically) declined by the Department of Justice.

  Like the reporters whose editors blanched at the prospect of a Supermob expose, FBI agents knew all along that their superiors did not share their interest in men like Korshak. One memo generated by the L.A. Field Office stated the obvious: "Due to his position as a prominent attorney, and because of the Bureau's previous instructions that any Korshak investigation be handled in a circumspect manner, [the L.A. office] does not desire to write a report or make Korshak the subject of an active investigation under the Criminal Intelligence Program."97

 
; Sidney Korshak was not alone in his feeling of legal invulnerability. The same FBI kid-glove approach applied to Ziffren, despite what the LAPD was telling them. "He is considered by officials in the Los Angeles Police Department as a vociferous enemy of law enforcement," an FBI memo noted, "and has been described by LA Chief of Police William H. Parker as a 'force of evil.'"98 But Paul Ziffren had little to fear from the FBI, Chief Parker, Hamilton, or the rest—he simply informed his brother, the assistant attorney general, and his pal the attorney general, that he was upset. On May 22, 1956, Ziffren wrote a letter to his brother's boss, Attorney General Pat Brown, saying, "I want to congratulate you upon your decision to investigate law enforcement in Los Angeles . . . I have been increasingly alarmed by the activities of the Chief of Police of the city of Los Angeles, with particular reference to the mysterious and highly secret intelligence division operated under his direction."99 However, on this occasion, Ziffren's impressive connections failed him. Brown, who now seemed to want to distance himself from the Ziffren taint, responded vehemently, calling his blast "unfortunate . . . unjudicious . . . and unwelcome." It was to be merely the first salvo in Brown's attempt to discard any negative baggage that might forestall his quest for higher office.

  The national political stage was no less bothersome for Ziffren as Estes Kefauver, who was attempting to parlay his crime-probe celebrity into a presidential candidacy, began blasting Ziffren from the stump—something he had avoided in his vaunted investigation. In a speech given in San Diego on May 30, 1956, Kefauver singled out Ziffren in a stinging condemnation of "bossism" in California. Noting Ziffren's backing of his Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson, Kefauver declared that if Stevenson won, Ziffren and his associates would become "the czars of California democracy." Ke­fauver referred to Ziffren as "Arvey's protege here."100 A Chicago Tribune columnist wondered, "How much of a piece of Stevenson does [Arvey] own, and, by extension, how much of a piece of the candidate does Korshak own? And, if they have a piece, how much of that piece can the mob call theirs?"101

  *For a complete discussion of the Outfit's links to Truman and his parole board, see my previous book, The Outfit, chapters 10 and 11.

  *Interestingly, many of the Kefauver Committee's files, including some of the most sensitive, were looted before being transferred to the Library of Congress (Washington DailyNews, 3-17-55). When the holdings were opened for the first time for this writer, much of the Korshak and Greenberg files were gone, as were the photos the committee had obtained of Frank Sinatra in Cuba at a Mafia convention with Luciano, Lansky, et al.

  *Celebrity regulars included Errol Flynn, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Burgess Meredith, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Louis B. Mayer, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and Lana Turner.

  †IRS investigator Andy Furfaro watched Karl's career closely and recently opined, "Harry Karl didn't exist. It was what they called the orphan train. A lot of these guys like Ziffren and Karl had no parents; suddenly they're adopted by these high muckety-mucks. A big shoe man from New England adopts Harry Karl."

  **One FBI memo called Korshak "a director of the Hillcrest Country Club." (Memo from DELETED to SAC L.A., 12-8-75)

  * Peter Brown's book The Untold Story of Howard Hughes contains an appendix (p. 394) that lists forty-four of the most well-known Hughes lovers, among them Jean Harlow, Jane Russell, Ava Gardner, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Yvonne DeCarlo, Gloria Vanderbilt, Rita Hayworth, Jean Peters, Terry Moore, and Kate Hepburn.

  *Hughes was so anxious to unload the albatross that he let it be known that he would hold the mortgage on the remainder of the $7 million price tag, in addition to loaning the new buyer(s) $8 million in transition capital.

  †The punchboard consisted of an eight-inch-square, half-inch-thick piece of cardboard with hundreds of holes drilled into it, some of them supposedly containing a prize slip. The holes were covered with a sheet of paper, and the purchaser would punch out a hole with a nail in search of a prize—usually a cheap wristwatch, a pair of sunglasses, a pocketknife, or—rarely—cash.

  *A typical Koolish scam involved advertising, in bold letters, $25 A WEEK DISABILITY BENEFITS. But buried in the fine print were the terms: "For eight weeks after the seventh day of confinement in your home if you are over 60 and under 80, for chicken pox, mumps, diphtheria, measles, typhoid, yellow fever and undulant fever."

  * Korshak may also have had ill feelings for Hughes because of Hughes's 1932 movie production Scarface: The Shame of the Nation, which portrayed Korshak's friend Al Capone as a one-dimensional beast. He and his associates come off like ignorant, remorseless, and childish criminals.

  †Now known as Carol City (changed when Stolkin was threatened with a suit by the city of Cape Coral), the development today boasts a population of fifty-nine thousand.

  *In 1990, Werby avoided child rape charges in their entirety by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Werby agreed to pay a $300,000 fine and was sentenced to three years' probation. Originally, a grand jury had indicted Werby on twenty-two felony sex and drug charges stemming from his hiring of underage prostitutes and furnishing them with crack cocaine for sex. All the felony sex charges, with their potential for prison time, sex offender registration, civil commitment, etc., were quietly dropped.

  * According to the JFK Library, it would be likely that Robert Kennedy had some input into the decision not to proceed with the Bazelon appointment. Regrettably, the Kennedy family continues to withhold forty boxes of RFK's files, including voluminous "name files" that might provide the answer.

  *Typically, if a Chicago businessman wanted patronage contracts or help with striking unions, he was advised to buy insurance policies from Anco, and—presto!—their problems would go away.

  Once the FBI had installed bugs in the First Ward offices, they listened as Marcy and D'Arco received their marching orders from the Outfit bosses, especially Humphreys and Sam Giancana, who often strategized over which judges and police officials were corruptible. The Bureau also noted D'Arco meeting with the hoods at Postl's Health Club at 188 W. Randolph. (See especially Roemer, Man Against the Mob, chs. 13, 22.)

  * Among Walters's many suitors were George Raft, Howard Hughes, Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, and Greg Bautzer.

  CHAPTER 7

  Scenes from Hollywood, Part One

  SID KORSHAK'S LIFE IN Beverly Hills was developing into a contradictory combination of sphinxlike mysteriousness and high-profile socializing with the world's most famous celebrities.

  As Sid's gatekeeper to the underworld, Chicago's Curly Humphreys decreed that no one besides himself be allowed to communicate directly with the gang's golden boy. Korshak was so valuable that he had to stay insulated from gangsters. Soon, the Chicago FBI would succeed in wiretapping the Outfit's meeting places and discover that when Korshak communicated with Humphreys by phone, the two spoke in code, Korshak referring to his superior as "Mr. Lincoln."

  One of Korshak's closest Hollywood pals described how Korshak's wife, Bernice, obtained a glimpse of Sidney's furtiveness early on. After returning from the honeymoon, Mrs. Korshak read from a list of coded messages that awaited her new husband.

  "George Washington called, everything is status quo. Thomas Jefferson called, urgent, please call ASAP. Abraham Lincoln must speak with you, important. Theodore Roosevelt called three times, must connect with you before Monday."

  "Your friends sure have a strange sense of humor," said Bernice. "Who are they?"

  "Exactly who they said they were" was Sidney's terse response. "Any other questions?"

  According to producer Bob Evans, who was told the anecdote by Bernice, "Fifty years later, Bernice has never asked another question."1

  For his part, Korshak remained as low-key, blended-with-the-woodwork as possible. Among those few who traveled with him, Korshak's avoidance of cameras was notorious, as Dominic Dunne had discovered.

  Given that Los Ange
les was, and is, an "industry town" with the Super­mob pulling many of its strings via MCA, Al Hart's bank, and the cadre's links to so many swank hotels and properties, Sidney Korshak and associates now counted the country's top celebrities among their closest friends, among them Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin, the Kirk Douglases, Dinah Shore, David Janssen (Sidney was the best man at Janssen's 1975 marriage to Dani Greco, who called Korshak Janssen's "surrogate father"), Jack Benny, John Gavin, Vincente Minnelli, Dean Martin, John Ireland, Donna Reed (and husband Tony Owen), George Montgomery, Warren Beatty, Kor­shak mistresses Rhonda Fleming, Stella Stevens, and Jill St. John, and James Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. Hollywood gossip columnist Joyce Haber wrote, "Sidney Korshak is probably the most important man socially out here."

  Near the top of Sidney Korshak's list of chums was the skinny Italian crooner from Hoboken, New Jersey, Frank Sinatra. By the 1950s, Frank and Sid were already fast friends. Although the details of their initial meeting are unknown, they shared so many friends and commonalities—Giancana, Accardo, Humphreys, Wasserman (Frank's agent), the Chez Paree, and Las Vegas—that the two likely knew each other since the earliest times. Interestingly, although Sinatra projected the tough-guy "Chairman of the Board" persona, by all appearances one of the few men he deferred to was Sid Kor­shak. "Frank was definitely subservient to Sid," said one friend of both who asked not to be named. "They would say Sid was the only one even Frank Sina­tra knew not to fool with," recalled screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz.2 George Jacobs, Sinatra's valet from 1953 to 1968, saw an almost brotherly bond between the two. "Sidney and Frank were good friends," Jacobs said recently. "They were very dear friends. They used to hang out at La Costa [Country Club] because there was a lot of money from 'the boys' there."3 Early Korshak law partner Edward King told an acquaintance that he knew for a fact that Kor­shak interceded directly with Harry Cohn to land Sinatra the role that saved his career, some say his life, in 1953's From Here to Eternity.4