Supermob

by Gus Russo

  From the perspective of Sidney Korshak and the Supermob, the most seminal events were those surrounding Mooney Giancana and Curly Humphreys, the two men with the most long-standing and direct Outfit links to Korshak. Both bosses were withering under the nonstop harassment of Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department. For Giancana, the Bureau had devised "lockstep" surveillance, following him everywhere in plain sight, hoping to make the volatile boss crack. Finally, in the spring of 1965, the feds formulated a brilliant plan: they brought him before a grand jury and gave him immunity. The tactic made it impossible for Mooney to plead the Fifth and required him to testify against the Outfit or be imprisoned for contempt. After much soul-searching, Giancana chose the latter, going away for a year. After he was released, Giancana went to Mexico for the next eight years, banished by Accardo, never again to retake the Chicago underworld throne.

  If the removal of Giancana loosened the reins on Korshak et al., what happened next all but severed them. Sixty-five-year-old Curly Humphreys was ill, weakened from heart disease and therefore considered, like Gian­cana, vulnerable to federal pressure. Thus, one month after Giancana went off to prison, the gang's architect of labor racketeering was arrested for failing to appear before the grand jury—he had been lying low at his Norman, Oklahoma, retreat. After posting bail, Humphreys was able to stall for five more months before being rearrested, after putting up a mild struggle, on Thanksgiving Day, 1965. That night, after posting $45,000 bail, the rapidly aging genius of the Chicago Outfit suffered a fatal heart attack while pushing a vacuum in his luxury fifty-first-floor apartment in the Marina Twin Towers, overlooking the Chicago River. (Eight months prior, Korshak and Humphreys had been observed having breakfast together in Chicago. According to the FBI, "During the meeting, Humphreys and Korshak [were] visited by several local judges and politicians who happened to be having breakfast at the same restaurant. Korshak informed Humphreys that he made $800,000 in his law practice last year.")5

  The death of Humphreys and the virtual death of Giancana were seen as giving Korshak a much larger degree of independence from those who had been overheard upbraiding him on the phone to Las Vegas. One of Kor­shak's oldest Chicago friends summed up what the events of 1965 meant to the Outfit's fair-haired boy: "Humphreys may have had a hold on Sidney, but after he passed on, he was succeeded by two of Sidney's closest friends—Gussie Alex, who would do anything for Sidney, and Joe Accardo, who loved Sid like a brother. So Sidney was really on his own."6

  Nonetheless, according to Andy Anderson, Korshak continued to pay homage to his original Chicago underworld patrons. "On Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, he'd have to go to Chicago to see the boys," Anderson said. "I always understood it was something he had to do, to go meet with the boys, as a way of expressing his loyalty. If he had said, 'No, I have something else to do'—well, that would not have been what they expected of him.' "7

  But practically speaking, Korshak was now two giant steps closer to becoming free of his Chicago overseers. Now the Outfit treated Korshak as an equal, a rare trusted adviser as comfortable on the inside of underworld confabs as on the outside. Although some contended that a degree of subservience still existed, most insiders believed that Sidney, using his hard-earned cachet, was happy to foster the perception of his mob-based power. It seemed to many that Korshak fully grasped the concept that perception is often as good as reality, especially in Beverly Hills. The misinterpretation of Korshak as a full-time mob employee was shared by a large segment of the corporate world, which valued Korshak's uncanny ability to solve intractable problems, whether the mob's or anyone else's.

  Korshak's stature continued to rise in the film capital, and he now counted many of the acting elite among his best friends. In 1965, Korshak, as an honorary chairman of the Beverly Hills B'nai B'rith, feted his pal actor Kirk Douglas (ne Issur Danielovitch Demsky) as that organization's Man of the Year. Other notable chairmen with Korshak were his friends Al Hart, Pat Brown, Conrad Hilton, Tony Martin, Stanley Mosk, Pierre Salinger, Sargent Shriver, Billy Wilder, Eugene Wyman, and Frank Sinatra.

  Douglas has recounted how he often attended barbecues at Korshak's mansion, where he encountered the likes of actor-cum-mob-wannabe George Raft. Douglas, a resident of Palm Springs, was curious about Sidney's mob friends and asked to meet them, but Korshak refused. "Frankly, I felt that he was extremely considerate of me, protective, and felt that it would be better for me not to," Douglas later wrote. "He knew that whatever he did was watched. And if he took me someplace for a meeting—many of them were living in Palm Springs at the time—it would just give the government a record of the visit.8 Douglas also described how he had sailed around Sicily in 1967 with Bee Korshak and Dinah Shore aboard Ralph Stolkin's luxury yacht. Douglas was in Italy filming the mafia movie The Brotherhood. After the movie opened, Korshak told Douglas that the real underworld bosses were impressed with the picture. "They felt it captured the spirit of their organiza­tion," Douglas wrote in his autobiography, The Ragman's Son. "They particularly liked my portrayal of a Mafia don. They wanted to meet me."

  Douglas added that at one point, Korshak's famous loyalty came to the forefront. "Korshak said that he would like to do me a favor and sell me, at a very reasonable price, four points in the Riviera." Although it was obvious how much money he would have made, Douglas and his wife were wary of whom they might have been getting into business with and declined the generous offer. "We never regretted it," Douglas wrote.

  The Douglas friendship eventually drew the Korshaks into becoming Palm Springs residents, after Kirk's wife, Anne, persuaded the Korshaks to purchase a six-bedroom house next door to the Douglases, at 535 Via Lola, one of the most exclusive streets in the Springs.* "My husband and I were staying with Frank Sinatra when Kirk and Anne Douglas showed us a house that was for sale on their street," Bee said years later. "Sidney wasn't looking to buy a house, but they convinced us."9 Pulling the deed, the FBI learned that Sidney had purchased the home on August 4, 1976, from Mrs. Polly Kahn for $220,000 in cash, then immediately placed the property in Bee's name. The Bureau also sought to learn if neighboring homes were suitable for surveillance of Korshak.10

  When not in use by the Korshaks, the house was rented to friends such as the Johnny Carsons. After four years' residency on Via Lola, the Korshaks sold the abode for $800,000.

  In February 1966, Korshak left his desert retreat in Palm Springs for his desert office in Las Vegas to insert himself in an intractable labor dispute that was aggravating tourists and costing the city millions. The action originated in the wree morning hours of August 1, 1965, when Vegas casinogoers emerged from the pits to find themselves stranded after the five major local cab companies had been struck at midnight by their two-hundred-plus Teamster drivers over wages and pensions. For the next seven months companies hired scabs, who were met with Molotov cocktails, fistfights, slashed tires, and overturned vehicles. 11 After months had gone by with the Teamsters not being accommodated by the owners, an FBI informant reported that Korshak contacted his secret friend Clark County sheriff Ralph Lamb and threatened to bring in outside strikebreakers. The source believed that "this was a maneuver by Korshak to bring pressure to get the strike settled." On March 2, 1966, the FBI learned that Sidney Korshak came to Vegas on February 27 and 28 and told an informant that "he had settled the taxi cab strike." The Bureau added, "It should be noted that the cab strike was reputedly settled on March l."12

  Korshak's name appeared nowhere in the press, and the exact nature of his involvement never came to light.

  Chicago Meets Chicano

  In the spring of 1966, Korshak was called upon to mediate with an unlikely labor entity, California's migrant workforce. At the time, Cesar Chavez, the thirty-nine-year-old leader of the nascent United Farm Workers, was bringing his band of Mexican-American laborers (known as Chicanos) into an alliance with Filipino farmworkers in Delano, California, where one of Sid Korshak's clients, Schenley Industries, faced a shutdown of its grape fields by the strikers
. The UFW chose Schenley as its main target because its well-known "label" products, which included S&W Canned Foods, made it easy to boycott nationwide. Schenley had been founded and owned by Lewis Rosensteil, a former New York bootlegger often linked with Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky, and Korshak associates Sam Giancana and Al Hart. After Prohibition, Rosensteil had built up Schenley into the leading U.S. distillery, netting $49 million a year by the midforties.13

  Chavez, who hailed from Arizona, was one of hundreds of thousands of migrants who made the annual trek to California for the grape, lettuce, and citrus harvests. At the time of the founding of the UFW, migrant workers, with an average life span of just forty-nine years, were being paid ninety cents per hour (28 percent below the minimum wage for the rest of the na­tion) for their backbreaking work. Other conditions were even more de­plorable: child labor was rampant; farms lacked portable toilets; workers drank from a common beer can in the field; they paid two dollars or more per day for unheated, racially segregated, mosquito-infested metal shacks with no indoor plumbing or cooking facilities. Not surprisingly, many workers were injured or died in easily preventable accidents.

  By the fall of 1965, the Filipinos of Delano had had enough, and with the support of Chavez's new UFW, some thirty farms were struck, with several thousand workers leaving the fields. Korshak's client Schenley, one of the biggest growers in Delano, initially reacted by treating the strikers like mere pests, spraying them with agricultural poisons. Like Schenley, Korshak's pal Governor Pat Brown also declined to support their movement and, despite the workers' requests that he meet with them the following spring, he instead went to the Palm Springs home of Korshak's and Giancana's good friend Frank Sinatra to celebrate Easter.14

  To call attention to their plight, which came to be known as La Causa, Chavez organized a march to the state capital of Sacramento, 240 miles away. Seventy strikers left Delano by foot on March 17, 1966, led by Chavez, but before they reached Sacramento twenty-five days later, two events shaped their fortunes. Once again, those events linked the names Kennedy and Korshak.15

  At the time of the strike, Robert Kennedy, now the junior senator from New York, was assigned to the less-than-prestigious Migratory Labor Subcommittee of the Labor Committee. Persuaded to visit Chavez in Delano before the march commenced, Kennedy was taken, not only with the migrants' horrid situation, but also with Chavez personally. Chavez and Kennedy would remain friends and mutual inspirations until Kennedy's death just two years away Paul Schrade, leader of the United Auto Workers and a Robert Kennedy campaign aide, vividly remembered the day the two met. "When we held the meeting in a school gym, Bobby looked at me and I could just tell that a fire had been lit," said Schrade. "Afterwards, he went out and walked the picket line with Chavez."16 Kennedy's biographer Arthur Schlesinger wrote, "By the end of the day, Kennedy had embraced Chavez and La Causa."17 Over the next few weeks, the Kennedy-Chavez alliance helped swell the ranks of marchers to over five thousand.

  However, Rosensteil had already decided against settling. Since the De­lano properties were only a small part of his conglomerate, he instructed Korshak to sell Schenley's Delano properties outright. But Korshak informed him that there was word that Herman "Blackie" Leavitt's Bartenders' Union Local 249 was set to boycott the Schenley brand.* "Sidney called Rosensteil in Florida and wras persuaded by him to settle," said Kor­shak friend and fellow labor attorney Leo Geffner.18 Rosensteil then gave Korshak the go-ahead to settle the strike.19

  On April 5, as the protesters approached Modesto, 163 miles from De­lano, Chavez was told that there was a telephone call for him. When the aide was instructed to take a message, Chavez was informed that the caller wished to speak to Chavez immediately.

  "The guy said that he wants to talk to you, because he wants to sign a contract. He says he's from Schenley," the aide told Chavez.

  "Oh, the hell with him! I've heard that story before," a road-weary Chavez shot back.

  Five minutes later, the phone rang again.

  "Cesar, he's got to talk to you!" Chavez was told. Finally, Chavez took the phone and spoke with a man he had never heard of before.

  "Hello, this is Sidney Korshak," the caller said. "I want to talk to you about recognizing the union and signing a contract."

  "Oh, yeah? What else is new?" answered the feisty Chicano, hanging up on a man who was rarely hung up on.

  Seconds later, the phone rang again. This time Chavez took it; it was the same voice on the other end.

  "No, no, look, I'm serious," Korshak said.

  "How serious are you?" Chavez asked.

  "You want me to prove it? Come down to Stockton." Chavez replied that he could not.

  "Okay. If you can't, then forget it," Korshak replied. In his autobiography, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of Ta Causa, Chavez described what happened next: "After I asked a lot of questions, [Korshak] finally convinced me and gave me the address to meet him in Beverly Hills the next day. I got a hold of my people, had a meeting, and took a vote to see if they'd let me go to negotiate. Then I took off with Chris Hartmire, who drove while I fell asleep in the back seat. We didn't leave until about one in the morning, I guess, but we got to Beverly Hills in time."20

  Chavez aide Leroy Chatfield recalled that on the drive to Korshak's mansion, AFL-CIO representative Bill Kircher schooled Chavez as to Korshak's connections. "Soon, Cesar began referring to Sidney as the Fixer," said Chat-field. "By the time he arrived in Bel-Air, he knew Korshak was connected, and he had great confidence that he could resolve the problem. And he did."21 In a recent interview, Wayne "Chris" Hartmire, an aide to Chavez from 1961 to 1989, remembered, "It was a big, beautiful home, and Korshak was very gracious. We had heard that Korshak represented all sorts of people, if you know what I mean—I am glad I got out of that house alive. But he was a friendly host—offered us drinks and munchies. It was pretty clear that he had come to resolve this thing and that he had the authority to resolve this thing. We were there for only an hour or so. It was kind of an outof-body experience for me; an evening I won't forget."22

  Chavez picked up the story in his autobiography:

  Korshak had Bill Kircher (AFL-CIO representative) and the Teamsters there. He had this huge house and all these drinks and food laid out. But Bill wouldn't be caught in the same room as the Teamsters. They had an argument, and I just said, "To hell with it!" I went over to the table and started playing pool. They argued for about an hour. Finally Korshak said, "Damn it, look. You should be making love to me, I'm the company, I'm ready to sign a contract, and you guys can't get together! You get together, and when you do make up your minds who's going to sign it, then I'll deal with you." "I'm leaving!" I told him at that point. "There's no reason for me being here. You sign a contract with whomever you want, but the boycott stays on!" And I started to walk out. "Wait a minute!" he said. "We're going to sign with a union." "No, talk to me about my Union, not the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters." Then the Teamsters came on very strong and supported our position. Apparently somebody was pushing to have the AFL-CIO sign a contract. The fellow in charge of the Federation in Los Angeles came and tried to sweet talk me into signing with AWOC and I said, "No! You must be kidding. You're trying to tell me to give you a contract, when we fought for it, bled for it, and sweat for it. You must be out of your mind!" So he got mad, and he said, "Well, if you don't give us a contract, we'll just destroy your Union." Finally, Bill and I hit on a compromise. I didn't care if I was helping him to save face as long as I had the contract. "We sign it ourselves, it's our contract," I said. "It means a lot to the workers. But I'll let you witness the contract if you want to." So Bill witnessed it. The preliminary agreement was not even a full page. It was only about three-quarters full.23

  "The next day, Cesar and I drove back and caught up with the march," remembered Hartmire. "They held up a rally so Cesar could announce the resolution. There were many cheers because it was the first great victory." The walk to Sacramento was thus called off with thirty miles to go,
as protesters cheered and tore up their anti-Schenley placards. The Korshak-Chavez settlement was hailed as "historic" and "monumen­tal." In fact, the Bel-Air agreement was but a letter of intent, and specifics were to be worked out over the next month. Korshak told then New YorkTimes reporter Peter Bart that those details would be easy to resolve. "We are mindful of the plight of the workers," Korshak said.24 Paul Schrade recalled that the fine points were finally put on the agreement at the Beverly Rodeo Hotel at 360 N. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills* "Korshak, Kircher, and Blackie [Leavitt] were upstairs—I believe talking on the phone with Rosensteil—while Cesar and I waited downstairs," said Schrade. Regrettably, Kircher's AFL-CIO refused to play ball with the Teamsters as a matter of principle, due to long-standing turf disputes. Had they been less petulant, the UFW might have averted the next ten years of strife with the Teamsters. One participant in the Rodeo Hotel meeting observed, "Sidney Korshak was there and he could have tied up all the loose ends."

  Nonetheless, the UFW was elated with Korshak's performance. Thanks to the Fixer, a grassroots, farm-labor union had, for the first time in American history, gained recognition by a U.S. corporation. The Schenley agreement recognized the UFW, gave the workers an immediate wage increase of thirty-five cents an hour, and added credit union privileges. Behind the scenes, rumors swirled as to why Schenley capitulated. Some claimed that it was the potential of a bartenders' boycott, but most interestingly, it was whispered that Robert Kennedy personally influenced Schenley to sign. Given the various linkages between the Kennedys and the Korshaks, it is possible that the two got together on the terms of the deal. (In addition to the previously stated connections, Bobby's father, Joseph Kennedy, himself a former bootlegger and then distributor of Haig & Haig Whiskey, knew Schenley's Rosensteil well, not only from New York, but from Palm Beach, Florida, where both were winter residents.)25 After the boycott was settled, Pat Brown belatedly offered his support for Chavez.26