Supermob

by Gus Russo

  Wasserman, Korshak, Kuchel, and Reagan were not the only actors working to feather Hollywood's nest. Also looking out for the financial health of the movie moguls was Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Valenti was a former Houston, Texas, adman and special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, who was brought to the White House after the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963. In 1965, Wasserman and attorney Ed Weisl Sr. (the man who had assisted Kor­shak in working out the details of Bluhdorn's purchase of Paramount and was also a director the Chicago Thoroughbred Enterprises and was a longtime friend of Johnson's) obtained LBJ's permission to headhunt Valenti and bring him to Hollywood (Valenti had earlier recommended to Johnson that Wasserman be named secretary of commerce, which Johnson proposed, but Wasserman declined).

  A flamboyant attention seeker, Valenti took to Hollywood as if he were born there and for the next four decades would lobby hard in Washington for legislation that enabled the movie moguls to enjoy tax benefits (thanks to what was essentially protectionist lawmaking) unavailable to the average hardworking American. Valenti's view was that anyone involved in what he believed to be the precious film business was entitled to special financial treatment. And Wasserman's MCA-Universal profited more than any other; as one studio head put it, "The MPAA wagged to Lew's desires."8

  In the years that followed, another key player in offshore tax schemes was Peter Hoffman, a brilliant attorney who had in 1974-75 clerked for none other than Paul Ziffren's great friend U.S. district court judge—and former tax attorney—David Bazelon. Hoffman became a specialist in the Dutch Sandwich, using it to become the architect and CEO of Carolco Pictures, a major independent player that, as a result of creative offshore financing, was able to finance such hits as the Rambo pictures, Terminator 2: judgmentDay, Total Recall, Cliffhanger, and Basic Instinct. (In a December 1996 indictment for tax evasion and filing a false income tax return, the Justice Department charged that Hoffman treated income of more than $400,000 as "sham loans" to avoid paying taxes. In its trial brief, the government charged that Hoffman had created a "deferred compensation scheme" to obtain more than $1 million in tax-free income. Simultaneously, the IRS audited Carolco partners Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar and returned a $109.7 million tax assessment against them. The bulk of the claim focused on earnings by the partners' offshore companies that were set up in tax-haven countries such as the Netherlands Antilles—i.e., the Dutch Sandwich. In 1998, Hoffman pled guilty to one count of filing a false tax return and paid a puny $5,000 fine. Carolco had already closed shop.9 Under the banner of C-2 Productions, Kassar would resurface as the producer of such films as Terminator3 and The Kingdom of Heaven.

  In 2002, Paramount exec turned Variety editor Peter Bart described Hoffman's legacy: "Peter Hoffman, a lawyer-turned-producer, earned a certain renown years ago for creating such an arcane legalistic lexicon that no normal mortal could understand what he said. Now many lawyers have emulated the Hoffman model."10

  The new focus on international profits also had a chilling effect on the artistic merit of the movies that were now deemed most desirable by the new multinational studios; gone were the days when the major suppliers released the likes of To Kill a Mockingbird and On the Waterfront. In their place were now cartoonish action movies whose minimal dialogue required no translation in order to appeal to the lowest-common-denominator audience in many countries simultaneously. For astute observers, this effect represented the most insidious legacy of the Korshak-Wasserman international design, a trend that regrettably continues to the present day.

  In 1973, CIC was having problems convincing MGM to join its offshore party—MGM was demanding that its television productions be included in the operation, an idea that was not part of the original plan. The impasse forced Paramount attorney Art Barron to do what so many had done before: "I got out my Korshak number. I said, 'Sidney, this is where we're at.' He said, 'Hold your ground.' "

  Just as he had done for Bob Evans with the Pacino casting, Korshak once again called MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian, who was still struggling to pay for the construction on the MGM Grand in Las Vegas; Korshak knew the pending deal with CIC would give him enough cash for the project. According to Barron, within thirty minutes Kerkorian had taken MGM's demand off the table. Soon thereafter, Barron received a piece of SIDNEY KORSHAK, COUNSELOR-AT-LAW stationery that stated simply, "Fees—$50,000." Although a shock to Barron, who typically paid hourly fees to attorneys, the bill was paid on orders of Lew Wasserman.11

  In the following days, Kerkorian and Korshak worked out the fine points at the Bistro, where the deal was soon inked on October 25, 1973.12 For bringing aboard Kerkorian, an addition valued at $17 million to CIC, Kor­shak billed CIC another $250,000.13 Like Wasserman, Charles Bluhdorn had no problem with the fee. "Mr. Korshak was very close to Wasserman and Kerkorian and played a key role as a go-between," Bluhdorn later told Sy Hersh. "It was a very, very tough negotiation that would have been broken down without him."14 However, MCA senior executive Berle Adams bristled at the oft-heard suggestion that Korshak was responsible for the formation of CIC. "Sidney had nothing to do with it," Adams said recently. "I was there—it was all Bluhdorn's doing."15

  A world away from Dutch Sandwiches and heady CIC negotiations, UFW leader Cesar Chavez was locked in mortal combat with his Teamster rival for the hearts and minds of Northern California's migrant farmworkers. As he had in 1966, Chavez would once again enter the domain of Sidney Kor­shak, not because of Korshak's work for farmers like Schenley, but because of his long-standing allegiance to the Teamsters.

  Since the Schenley settlement, the UFW had engaged in a series of strikes and boycotts against growers (most notably of lettuce and table grapes) who refused to allow Chavez's organization to recruit workers into its fold. In 1973, grape growers began signing sweetheart contracts with the Teamsters, even though the workers had, for the most part, never asked for Teamster representation. "[The growers] knew the Teamsters would let them off easier than Cesar would," said one veteran labor activist. "And instead of telling the growers to go to hell, the Teamsters accepted their invitation. It was a straight steal on the part of the Teamsters. They had been in the farm industry for thirty or forty years and they hadn't done a thing for these people. Then, after Chavez knocks his brains out for them, they tried to take it all from him."16

  The move sparked violent confrontations between Teamster goons and migrant workers, resulting in injuries, deaths, and thousands of arrests for the Chicanos. In response, Chavez called for a nationwide boycott of table grapes. According to a nationwide Louis Harris poll, at one point some seventeen million Americans were boycotting grapes.

  What seemed to imply the presence of Sidney Korshak was that the Teamster enforcers were ostensibly working at the behest of Western Teamster boss Andy Anderson, who, in turn, was understood to be a functionary of Sid Korshak. (The thugs came to be known as Anderson's Raiders, a bit of wordplay based on a band of Confederate Civil War rogues that went by the same name.) As Duke Zeller, the former adviser to four Teamsters national presidents, recently said, "Virtually every Teamster leader on the West Coast, in the Western Conference, answered to Sidney Korshak. Everything really went through Korshak, who by all accounts was very astute and very bright. He knew what he was doing and knew how to play the game, certainly with the Teamsters." Mafioso Jimmy Fratianno told Teamster leader Jackie Presser that he knew Korshak had orchestrated the attacks. "[Frank] Fitzsimmons heard that Andy got a payoff from the farmers in the Delano area," Fratianno said. "They wanted Chavez out of there. Andy and Jack Goldberger [of the San Francisco Teamsters] got Sid Korshak to work it out."17

  The struggles played out for five more years. In 1978, newly elected DA John Van DeKamp was given a prognostication of the soon-to-be settlement, an eventuality that again conjured the Korshak name. "It's one of the most interesting Korshak stories that I remember," Van DeKamp said recently. "It involved [Herman] Blackie Leavitt, the interna
tional vice president of Bartenders' Union [Local 249] and a Las Vegas organizer. I didn't know him well—he had a checkered reputation. Blackie made an appointment to see me when I was DA. He came into my office in a sort of hush-hush way. He said, 'I want to tell you something. I want you to know that Sidney Korshak is going to be the intermediary between the Teamsters and the Farm Workers. I am going to tell you that in three months there is going to be a settlement between them that gets the Teamsters out of competition with the Farm Workers.' "18 Three months hence, Van DeKamp joined the ranks of those who marveled at the effect Korshak had on labor imbroglios when the two unions resolved the issue with an agreement giving the UFW sole right to organize farmworkers.

  However, membership in the UFW later fell, in part due to disputes between Chavez and his followers, some of whom accused him of nepotism. (On April 23, 1993, Chavez died peacefully in his sleep at the modest home of a retired San Luis, Arizona, farmworker while defending the UFW against a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by a large vegetable grower. Since his death, the plight of the farmworkers has again reverted to the preUFW conditions, largely because of the massive influx of undocumented alien workers, which now make up 90 percent of the force.)

  In 1973, after attending the February funeral of Ralph Stolkin in San Diego,19 Sid Korshak dabbled in a bit of nepotism, landing his son Harry a producer's job at Paramount. Harry (who some friends say was named after Harry Karl, not Sidney's father, Harry Korshak) had shown an early interest in the entertainment biz, appearing as an actor in episodes of the long-running television series The Donna Reed Show. Of course, Donna Reed and her husband were close friends of the Korshaks' and likely gave the nod to young Harry's TV debut.*

  Nine years afterward, Paramount production executive Peter Bart was paid an unannounced visit by Harry's father, who had shown up to help accelerate his grown son's fledgling movie career, this time as a producer. Kor­shak informed Bart of a project that Bart had never heard of, surprising given Bart's position at the studio. For this film—a thriller entitled Hit! —Harry was to be the producer, and the project was to begin immediately. Bart remembered Korshak saying, "Peter, my son has not produced anything before. I would be greatly in your debt if you kept an eye on him. He doesn't have your savvy." Bob Evans's right-hand man had no choice but to offer his assistance. "When Sidney Korshak asked a favor," Bart later wrote, "it wasn't smart to decline, especially when it was such a reasonable one."20 According to Bart, right after his decree, Korshak borrowed Bart's phone and placed a call on a direct line to the most powerful man in the industry, Lew Wasserman (Jules Stein had resigned from MCA on June 5, 1973, making Wasserman the new chairman). The call raised the possibility that Kor­shak was asking Lew to donate some MCA talent to his son's endeavor (which eventually starred Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor)^

  As it happened, Gray Frederickson, the coproducer of The Godfather, got the call to watch over Harry Korshak. Three years earlier, Korshak had prevailed upon Frederickson to hire Harry as a PA (production assistant) on the Paramount feature Tittle Fauss and Big Halsy, starring Robert Redford. Frederickson recently recalled getting the call from Sidney, who said, "We're sending Harry as a PA on the film." Now, during the start-up of the Hit! shoot, Frederickson said an incident took place that hinted that Daddy Kor­shak was also shepherding the film from afar. "This was a low-budget film and we were using nonunion drivers to cut costs," recalled Frederickson. "On the first night of the shoot in D C , the Teamsters showed up to demand work. This would have killed us financially, but they could have shut us down if we refused to hire them. Harry just said, 'I'll call Daddy.'"21 According to Frederickson, the Teamster contingent returned to the set soon thereafter, only this time their demeanor spoke volumes to the seasoned producer about the power of Sidney Korshak. "The Teamsters showed up and offered anything we needed for free," said a still awed Frederickson. "That's when it hit me."

  In the end, Frederickson paid dearly for all his help with Harry's producing bow—young Korshak began an affair with Frederickson's socialite wife, Tori, the half sister of Mrs. Conrad Hilton. The recently divorced Harry ended up marrying Tori and went on to produce just two more, inconsequential, films, Sheila Tevine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975) and Gable and Lombard (1976).

  On October 1, 1973, soon after the Hit! premiere, Sidney hosted at his home the seventy-eighth-birthday party for George Raft.22

  Eleven days later, the attention of Supermob watchers turned to Washington, where, on October 12, Judge Bazelon, chief of Washington's U.S. Court of Appeals, upheld Judge John Sirica's U.S. district court ruling, thereby forcing President Nixon to hand over the incriminating White House tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor, which he did on November 26, leading to his eventual resignation on August 8, 1974.

  Twenty-three hundred miles away, Sid Korshak made a ruling in his own Su­permob jurisdiction—Beverly Hills—the result of an altercation on a typical Beverly Hills late afternoon in the spring of 1974, as Bistro owner Kurt Niklas was preparing to make the transition from the lunch crowd to the dinner arrivals.

  On this particular evening, one lunchtime party refused to leave in time for the dinner setup—an occasional problem for restaurateurs. But what made this case exceptional was that the party was headed by the charming but dangerous Chicago mafioso Johnny Rosselli, a man Niklas called "the asp" for his deadly stare. "Johnny Rosselli came in regularly in the after­noons," said former Bistro maitre d' Jimmy Murphy. "He started coming in there about 1965."23 Bistro headwaiter Casper Morcelli said of Rosselli, "He was nice to us for the most part, but he was a rough guy."24

  Niklas said that Rosselli began getting habitually drunk and stiffing the bar, opting instead to fold the check into a paper airplane, floating it back to Niklas and barking, "Give this fucking check to your Jew friend Korshak!" Niklas said that he merely ate the loss, without telling anyone, especially Korshak.25 Actress and Rosselli "goddaughter" Nancy Czar explained Ros­selli's behavior recently, saying, "JR [Rosselli] was pissed at Sid—he thought Sid was taking over his territory."26 Jimmy Murphy said Czar knew what she was talking about, as she and Rosselli were constant companions. "Rosselli used to date these beautiful women, like eighteen-year-old Nancy Czar, who was with him a lot," said Murphy. "He was taking good care of her, and she dined with him often at the Bistro. "*

  Johnny Rosselli walking to his June 24, 1975, Senate testimony (Corbis/Bettmann)

  But, Czar's beliefs notwithstanding, there was another element to Ros­selli's fury at Korshak, for he was among those who suspected Korshak of playing both sides of the law—which, in fact, he was. When he was imprisoned on the Friars Club scam, Rosselli had told a fellow inmate that Kor­shak was an FBI informant; Rosselli's key reason, also noted by others, was "that he had had never been prosecuted by the Federal Government."27

  Czar was with Rosselli on the evening in question, as was Bugsy Siegel's pal Allen Smiley and mob attorney Jimmy Cantillon. "We got there before the dinner hour," remembered Czar, "when JR and Kurt, who he called 'the Nazi,' got into it." Murphy described how the situation evolved before a full house of patrons: "There was a section near the service bar where people could sit and have drinks. But by six or seven they had to vacate those tables because we needed them for dinner. One night Rosselli was there with a few friends who had a lot to drink, and he just said, 'No, I'm not leaving.'" Finally, Kurt came over and said, 'Look, you're leaving, I need this table.' As he was approaching the door, he turned to Kurt and called him an SOB. Out of nowhere, Kurt threw him a punch and hit him square on the jaw, knocking him through two doors. His head of white hair was all over his face. Rosselli got up, looked at Kurt, and said, 'This place is history!' " According to Niklas, the threat was much more frightening, with Rosselli, the man with the deadly stare, yelling back, "You're a fucking dead man, Kurt!"

  It suddenly dawned on the Bistro owner just how imprudent his punch had been. "He was the real thing and his threats scared me shitless," Nik
las later wrote. Morcelli saw the fear in Niklas's face. "Kurt was worried because Johnny was nuts," Morcelli recalled. said Niklas. "The one thing Sidney Roy Korshak was reputed to be able to do better than anyone else in the world was to talk privately to Johnny's

  Of course, there was only one man to approach with a problem of this magnitude—Korshak. "If Rosselli was the asp, Korshak was the asp-eater," boss, the legendary Chicago godfather, Sam Giancana."28 What Niklas couldn't know was that Giancana was still living in "exile" in Mexico, having been banished by the Outfit's capo, Joe Batters Accardo. But that mattered little, since Korshak was even closer to Accardo. As Chicago FBI man from the seventies Pete Wacks recently noted, "In the seventies, Korshak made monthly visits to his suite at the Drake, where he met with Accardo and the others."29