Supermob

by Gus Russo

  mobster Mickey Cohen that Harry Cohn had put out a mob contract hit on his son. "He said Harry Cohn is going to send some guys to break both my knees," said a hysterical Sammy Davis, "and put out my other eye if I don't

  find a black girl to marry within forty-eight hours!" With that, Davis quickly offered $10,000 to a black Las Vegas singer he barely knew if she would agree to marry him for one year only—and just for appearances. The girl, ironically named Loray White, had a crush on Davis and quickly agreed, thinking (wrongly) that the bond might last.33 Davis's mother, Elvera, later said, "He married her because, if he had not, they would have broken his legs." According to Davis's autobiography, Yes I Can, just before the wedding, Davis received a call from his friend Sam Giancana, who told him, "You can relax, kid. The pressure's off." However, on their wedding night, Davis got blind drunk and tried to strangle his new bride.

  On February 27, 1958, six weeks after the Davis-White vows, Harry Cohn died of a heart attack. When over a thousand showed for the intimidating mogul's funeral on the Columbia lot, comedian Red Skelton quipped, "Well, it only proves what they always say—give the public something they want to see and they'll come out for it."34 Sammy and Kim continued to sneak around for a few months, but the situation proved untenable and the affair ended. "I don't think Sammy ever took anything harder in his life than the breakup with Kim Novak," wrote Arthur Silber. And one year after it began, the marriage to Loray White was over.

  Movie Business

  Just as he had with the stars, Korshak solidified his relationships with the movie moguls. With the studios at the mercy of the mob-controlled craft unions and talent agencies, dealing with Korshak became the first order of business for any studio that wished to stay solvent. Korshak's indispensable mediating skills set a trend in Hollywood that exists to this day. As many a producer can attest, in modern Hollywood, the entertainment business is now virtually run by attorneys. And the Teamsters are still ubiquitous on movie sets. One Hollywood insider recently joked, "In Hollywood, they cast a lawyer like they cast an actor. And they probably cast the lawyer first."

  Typical of Korshak's clout was his effort on behalf of an anonymous Hollywood agent who recalled being threatened by mob muscle over an entertainment deal that had fallen through: "I went to Sidney and explained the situation, told him I was concerned, and he made a phone call, I never heard from them again."35

  Former Los Angeles FBI agent A. O. Richards recently recalled what he was told by informants regarding Korshak's utility in Hollywood: "We knew he was strong and he had a lot of power and was a big man and all of that, but he kept a fairly low profile out here. The two big areas that Kor­shak was close to, that we could determine, were the unions and the movie industry. That was his forte. It was one of those things we knew, that he was practically behind everything that happened and knew about everything that happened. He could control them so that there wouldn't be a strike. That was his style—behind the scenes."36

  Fellow L.A. FBI man Mike Wacks exhibited some frustration when he remembered the industry collusion with the Fixer. "It was well-known in the industry that if you were going to make a movie, the talk around town was that you'd have to use the Teamsters," Wacks said. "Of course, you better get it straightened out with Sidney before you get those Teamsters over there, or you could have problems. He'd get a consulting fee from both ends—the producers as well as the Teamsters. I wish we could have proved that, but that was what the talk around town was, that he got paid off by both sides."37

  Certainly Korshak's strongest and most potent mogul friendships were those with Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman. According to Roy Brewer, the IATSE representative in L.A. in the fifties, Korshak helped MCA obtain Teamsters Pension Fund loans when it ramped up its production wing after Reagan and SAG granted the all-important waiver.38 A measure of how much Korshak was revered by Stein was reported by L.A. County district attorney investigator Frank Hronek, a story confirmed by veteran Tos AngelesTimes reporter Jack Tobin and others. "Frank Hronek was our 'overcover' Hollywood guy in the DA's office," recalled former DA John Van DeKamp. "He and his colleague would go from bar to bar and pick up all the gos­sip." 39 Hronek, a former Czechoslovakian freedom fighter in World War II, had befriended Stein's Czech secretary, who became the first to tell him of a revealing incident in Stein's MCA suite. According to the secretary, when Korshak entered the office, Stein stood up from behind his desk and walked around to Sidney, saying, "Sidney, you sit there. That's your chair, not mine. You sit there. That is your chair behind the desk." Korshak, without hesitation, made himself comfortable in the chairman's seat.

  "The woman was flabbergasted!" Hronek later recalled. "Here's the man who created MCA and he is saying to Sidney, 'That's your chair!' And of course Sidney didn't say, 'Oh, no.' He went over and sat down." According to the secretary, a short time after Korshak made himself comfortable, another visitor entered the room, a man of diminutive stature. After serving coffee and liqueurs, the secretary left the room with Stein. Now, Korshak and "the little man" were alone together behind closed doors for about twenty minutes, after which the man left, met downstairs by a waiting limo, and Korshak summoned Stein back into his own office.

  Alone with the secretary later, Hronek showed her some photos, hoping she might be able to identify "the little man." One police mug shot caused the secretary to nod her head vigorously; she was certain that this one man, whoever he was, was the man alone with Korshak in Stein's office. The man in the photo was Meyer Lansky.40

  Interestingly, it is believed by some that Stein drew the line at being seen publicly with the lawyer so obviously in league with the Chicago Outfit. The late Chicago judge Abe Marovitz, himself no stranger to "the boys," said just before his passing, "Jules had to do certain things to not be harmed, to be able to do business . . . Jules wouldn't want someone like Korshak bragging that Jules is his friend."41

  Stein's MCA heir Lew Wasserman was, if anything, closer to Korshak than to Stein himself. Several people who knew both men asserted that Kor­shak was Wasserman's closest friend, period. Former senior MCA executive Berle Adams said that the tall trio of Wasserman, Korshak, and Paul Ziffren were together so often that they were nicknamed the Three Redwoods.42 When NBC News obtained Wasserman's MCA phone logs years later, they revealed that Wasserman spoke with Korshak religiously at the beginning and the end of each business day. "Lew and Sidney were joined at the hip in the fifties," former MCA agent Harris Katleman told Wasserman biographer Connie Bruck. "Sidney did whatever Lew needed."43

  Former Los Angeles DA John Van DeKamp was well aware of the Korshak-Wasserman relationship. "Wasserman used to go to Korshak quietly when "And for some reason he was regarded as the person who could fix these things, and how he'd fix them you never knew. Of course, you can be a mediator without being a criminal fixer. On the other hand, the suspicion always was that some money must have changed hands. But you could never prove it."44

  Typical entry from Lew Wasserman's daily MCA phone logs (confidential source) there were labor problems in the industry," Van DeKamp explained recently.

  Occasionally, Korshak's favors for Wasserman were only partially related to business. "Sid did something really interesting for Lew Wasserman once," remembered Jan Amory, "when Lew and Edie wanted to go to the Hotel du Cap in Antibes [French Riviera], which Sidney also loved, at a time when the unions were threatening a strike. Lew said to Sidney, 'I don't know what to do. Edie is dying to go to the Hotel du Cap.' And Sidney said, 'When do you want them to strike?' Lew said, 'Well, we'll be back September second.' Then Sidney said, 'Okay, they'll be striking on September third.' And that was it."

  If Korshak and Wasserman were somewhat considered equals, another Kor­shak relationship is usually described in clear paternal terms. His camaraderie with then actor (and co-owner with his brother Charles and tailor Joe Picone of women's pants manufacturer Evan-Picone) Bob Evans would grow stronger from their first meeting in the fifties until their estrangement four deca
des later, during which time Evans rose to the top of Hollywood moguldum, only to crash and burn in the hedonistic excesses of the 1980s. According to Evans, during the intervening years, Korshak wras, in Mafia patois, "my consiglieri." Evans adds, "He said he was my godfather too."45 He maintains that, for the next thirty-plus years, the two met every day for an hour when they were in town, or, if one was not in L.A., they spoke by phone daily. Journalist, and later Paramount executive, Peter Bart explained Evans's attraction this way: "Evans idolized gangsters, but he was fascinated with Jewish gangsters—Bugsy Siegel—not Italian ones."*'46

  Bob Evans (born Robert J. Shapera), the son of a successful Harlem dentist, has described a vivid memory of his first glimpse of the man he reverently calls The Myth one blistering-hot Palm Springs afternoon in the early fifties. The occasion was a mixed-doubles tennis match at the Palm Springs Racquet Club, where Evans observed the four players finish their match and walk over to an elegant man "as if they were looking for approval." In his autobiography, Evans described the barely smiling sphinx as a "ruggedly handsome man, at least six foot three," wearing a black silk suit, with a starched white shirt and tie. "He wasn't even perspiring," wrote the infatuated Evans. "In all the years I'd gone to Palm Springs, never had I ever seen anybody dressed this way." When the quintet headed into the clubhouse, Evans inquired of him at the reception desk.

  The desk clerk was barely able to utter the name. "S-S-S-S . . . Sidney K-K-K-K . . . Korshak," he stuttered.

  "Who is he? What does he do?" asked Evans. But the clerk rushed off without answering, thinking the better of it. Nonetheless, the two soon met and initiated a long friendship.47

  A few years later, Korshak assumed his "protector" role for Evans when Sid and Bee dined with Evans at Le Pavilion in New York, which at the time was the finest and most elite French restaurant in the city. Another couple, unknown to Evans, were also in the party, the male half of which "made John Gotti look like a fruit." Evans, nothing if not narcissistic, began flirting with the man's beautiful date, much to Korshak's consternation. The next thing he knew, Evans was being kicked hard in the shins by the Fixer, who then played out a scene with the randy young actor.

  "Bobby, you're late," Korshak said, looking at his watch. "The script—you were supposed to pick it up twenty minutes ago."

  "What script?" asked an obtuse Evans, who was soon blasted with an even more painful kick under the table. "Then I got the look, the Korshak look," Evans later wrote. "Houdini couldn't have disappeared quicker."

  The following morning, Korshak called Evans and let him know how close he had come.

  Robert Evans, actor, 1958 (Photofest)

  "Schmuck, if you'd stayed one more minute, you'd have gotten it to the stomach," Korshak informed him. "Not a punch—lead!"

  "Who's the guy?" asked Evans.

  "It's none of your fuckin' business," Korshak answered. "His broad's got one tough road ahead. Been married a week and the doorman won't even say hello to her—that's how tough the guy is. And you, schmuck, you're coming on to her. Tony was gettin' hot—I could see it. You're lucky your eyes are open." (The epilogue was that after the woman and her tough husband divorced a few years later, no matter where the divorcee relocated—Chicago, Los Angeles, Hawaii—no one had the guts to date her, despite that she was drop-dead gorgeous.)48

  This incident was to be the first of many of Korshak's rescues of the reckless Evans over the next thirty-plus years. When Evans's brief acting star began to fade in the late fifties, Korshak tried to resuscitate it by interceding with Columbia chief Harry Cohn to hire Evans. "Are you kidding?" Cohn supposedly said. "The kid's a bum. He never even called me back when he was big."49

  "Sidney was like a godfather to him," suggests Jan Amory. "I think he was trying to set him on the straight path. I just don't know, but I think Sidney liked the glamour and the girls at Bobby's, but Sidney was not into any of the drugs or any of that stuff. He would have two whiskeys and that would be it."

  Evans relished the vicarious thrill of being in the company of a force such as Korshak. "We were at '21' one night," Evans recounted. "Sidney used to stay at the Carlyle, and he said, 'Let's walk.' He had two hundred thousand-dollar bills in his pocket. I said, "Are you crazy? How can you walk with all that money?" And he said, "Who's gonna take it?"

  *Evans likely had a familiarity with the hoodlum element from his experience in the New York clothing business, where his company was somehow allowed to flourish with nonunion workers in a town where that industry was totally controlled by gangster-dominated unions.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jimmy , Bobby, and Sidney

  WHILF ZIFFREN, GRFFNBFRG, and the rest continued their assault on Western real estate, Sidney Korshak was practically living out of airports and hotels as he expanded the Supermob's inroads into American labor. With the Chicago underworld fast establishing outposts on the West Coast, the gang increasingly relied on Korshak to represent its unions in L.A. one day, and in Chicago the next.

  In the early fifties, the Supermob's "labor consultant" racket was largely confined to Chicago and Hollywood, where the remnants of the Bioff-Browne takeover still held sway over many craft unions. In fact, the Bioff-Browne template was what likely inspired the Supermob's move to expand its labor power nationally, giving Korshak his Platinum Club frequent-flier status. The Hollywood takeover strategy came so close to succeeding—brought down largely by the inclusion of Willie Bioff—that the Chicago Outfit and the Supermob thought it was worth another try. This time the target would not be just Hollywood, but every city dependent on keeping peace with organized labor. Instead of IATSE, the target wrould be the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT); and in place of Willie Bioff and George Browne, the new facilitators would be a Detroit Teamster leader named James Riddle Hoffa and a Chicago insurance salesman named Paul "Red" Dorfman.

  In operation since 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, commonly known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, or simply the Teamsters (named after the w7agon drivers who commanded a "team" of horses), was involved in numerous violent strikes during a period when employer abuse of workers enjoyed a free rein. In one 1905 example, a tragic hundred-day strike against the Chicago-based Montgomery Ward Company left twenty-one dead and cost about $1 million ($20 million in 2006 dollars). After establishing strongholds in Detroit and Chicago, the Teamsters set about forcing independent unions to capitulate and antiunion companies to reconsider. Often these "negotiations" utilized violence as a tactic of first choice. Teamster rank-and-file passions were fueled by the success of their union in creating better working conditions, including standardized contracts, shorter workweeks, and the right to overtime pay. When the automobile came into widespread use in the twenties, the IBT expanded to include truck drivers, and its membership skyrocketed to over 1 million by the time Sidney Kor­shak became involved in the early fifties.

  The Supermob infiltration strategy consisted of providing underworld support for amenable Teamster leaders in exchange for a deal wherein Kor­shak would become the union's key "labor negotiator" (of course, Korshak would secretly cut sweetheart deals with employers). The Teamsters would set up a fund from which the mob and Supermob could make massive low-interest commercial loans. In return, the fund accrued the interest on the loans, and the chosen Teamster leaders would receive not only financial kickbacks, but also mob muscle with which to guarantee their leadership positions. Few underworld eyebrows were raised when the chosen instruments turned out to be Red Dorfman and Jimmy Hoffa.

  Red Dorfman's willingness to partner with the underworld was a given. As titular head of a number of labor unions including the Waste Handlers Union (controlled by Sid Korshak's immediate superior, Murray Humphreys), Dorf­man was, according to the FBI, one of the five or six closest men to boss Joe Accardo. A Chicago Teamster described him as "a hood's hood," while another Teamster said, "He was a small, thin, red-haired guy who'd walk i
n and throw two bullets on a guy's desk and tell him, 'The next one goes in your fuckin' head.'" He had been indicted in 1928 for election fraud and in 1942 for a brass-knuckle assault on a fellow union boss.* Dorfman's purchase with the mob made him a perfect match for Teamster up-and-comer Jimmy Hoffa when the two met in 1949.

  James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa was born on February 14, 1913, in Brazil, Indiana, the son of a coal driller who died of an occupational respiratory disease when Hoffa was only seven. Quitting school after the ninth grade in order to help support his family, Hoffa went to work in a grocery warehouse, where he first became involved in the labor movement at age seventeen when he organized a strike. This was during the era when company goons, labor goons, and police goons were constant physical threats. "When you went out on strike in those days, you got your head broken," Hoffa remembered to the Detroit News. "The cops would beat your brains out if you even got caught talking about unions." In these formative years, Hoffa's car was bombed, his office smashed, and he was once arrested eighteen times in a single day.

  But Hoffa was a tough fireplug of a man, seemingly born to lead the fledgling labor movement. Rising quickly up the ranks, Hoffa was appointed by Teamsters president Dan Tobin as a trustee in charge of examining the union's financial books in 1943, an appointment that would be key to his appeal to the Supermob. In 1946, Hoffa became president of a Teamsters local in Detroit, working under the corrupt union president Dave Beck. In this position, Hoffa was involved in a second critical Teamster evolution when he helped restructure the previously autonomous locals to consolidate power within the central organization. By 1952, Hoffa had won election as international vice president of the Teamsters under Beck, who was already under investigation by federal agencies.