Dark Victory

by Moldea, Dan E. ; Miller, Mark Crispin;

  Haddock concluded his letter by telling his West Coast colleagues that before the Justice Department “can proceed intelligently with further investigation, it will be necessary to outline with greater clarity the theory upon which the investigation is based.”4

  The Los Angeles Antitrust Division was buoyed by a four-part story about MCA that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in August 1946. Entitled “Star-Spangled Octopus,” it was written by David G. Wittels.

  According to a former top official at MCA, the agency had been approached by Wittels early in his investigation. He gave its executives the option of cooperating and allowing their version of the facts to be known—or not cooperating and letting the chips fall where they may. “At first,” the MCA executive said, “the decision was made to give him the runaround, send him to the PR department and the general counsel’s office, that type of thing. Then, Stein decided to open up to the Post. As things turned out, we probably came out of it a lot better. The story probably did us a lot of good.… The only bad thing was that people got wise to our operations and saw how we worked.”

  Much of Wittels’s information appeared to come from the reports prepared by the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, except that Wittels was able to go further with detail and piece together the story of Frank Sinatra’s experience with MCA.

  Sinatra had originally been a vocalist for Harry James, who became an MCA client. Later, Sinatra went with Tommy Dorsey, who was also under contract with MCA. But, although Sinatra was a big hit with both James and Dorsey, MCA never offered him a personal contract. Finally, in 1942, Sinatra left Dorsey and went out on his own.* However, there was a price for his freedom. Sinatra had to give one-third of his future earnings to Dorsey—and another ten percent to Dorsey’s manager.

  However, Mafia leader “Lucky” Luciano wrote in his memoirs that he was instrumental in the rise of Sinatra’s career. “When the time came when some dough was needed to put Frank across with the public,” Luciano wrote, “the guys put up.… He needed publicity, clothes, different kinds of special music things, and they all cost quite a bit of money—I think it was about fifty or sixty grand. I okayed the money and it came out of the fund, even though some guys put up a little extra on a personal basis. It all helped him become a big star and he was just showin’ his appreciation by comin’ down to Havana to say hello to me.”5 Sinatra has denied any contact other than meeting Luciano once.

  The following year, Sinatra was signed by the General Amusement Corporation and became a huge success. At that point, MCA approached Sinatra, telling him that MCA could do a better job for him than GAC. Sinatra tried to get out of his contract with GAC, but GAC refused. The singer then pretended that he had a bad throat and couldn’t sing. The MCA agent went to GAC and told its executives that Sinatra was unhappy with them, and that MCA was going to start booking Sinatra for no commission. Still, GAC refused to relent.

  “Above all, there was the matter of the 33⅓ percent to Dorsey, ten percent to Dorsey’s manager, and now ten percent to the booking agents,” Wittels wrote. “That made a total of 53⅓ percent before taxes—not counting what he [Sinatra] was paying a press agent, writers, and Alex Stordahl, a crack arranger who had left Dorsey to follow him. The money was rolling in beyond his wildest dreams, but he was practically broke.”

  Sinatra then threatened to go to his union, the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA), the vaudeville union. Under union rules, if a performer can show that his agent is not getting him work, he can demand his release from the agency. GAC’s dilemma was clear: if it battled Sinatra in front of the AVGA and lost, they would lose Sinatra and a lot of money. If GAC won, Sinatra might still refuse to perform, and GAC would still lose.

  MCA’s squeeze of GAC worked.

  Screaming “foul,” GAC finally capitulated and gave Sinatra to MCA—with the proviso that GAC would receive a cut of Sinatra’s future business. “In return for relinquishing its client, General Amusement gets half of MCA’s ten-percent commissions on Sinatra until November 30, 1948, the expiration date of the old contract. If Sinatra signs again with MCA after that, General Amusement is to get one quarter of MCA’s commissions as long as he remains an MCA client.”6

  However, the Antitrust Division’s investigation of MCA could not be saved by the Wittels series. Once again, the case remained dormant.

  Meantime, earlier that summer, Tom C. Clark, who had become U.S. attorney general,* gave a speech before the Chicago Bar Association, announcing that the United States was the target of “a sinister and deep-seated plot on the part of the communists, ideologists, and a small group of radicals.” Adding that he had received evidence of a conspiracy to take over labor unions, to provoke workers to strike, and to challenge civil authorities, he attacked those lawyers who offered their legal services to those involved.7

  Clark’s comments signaled a call to arms, one which would deeply affect Hollywood in the years to come.

  *The Lea Act was passed by Congress in 1946 after Petrillo attempted to compel radio station WAAF in Chicago to employ three persons not needed.

  *Sinatra was allegedly helped in his departure from Dorsey’s band by New Jersey mobster Willie Moretti, a neighbor of Sinatra’s. According to published reports, Moretti supposedly made Dorsey an offer he could not refuse, forcing the bandleader to cancel the contract at gunpoint. Sinatra has denied this story, and Moretti was murdered in a gangland-style slaying in 1951.

  *In 1949, Clark was appointed as an associate Supreme Court justice by President Harry Truman.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was founded on June 30, 1933, as a result of demands by the motion picture studios the previous March that all contract and free-lance actors accept a fifty-percent and twenty-percent cut, respectively, in wages. In response, the actors/organizers held a series of secret meetings in secluded locations. Such safeguards were taken because previous attempts to form an actors’ union were received with actor blacklists drawn up by studio executives.

  The first SAG board of directors was composed of Leon Ames, Clay Clement, James Gleason, Lucille Gleason, Boris Karloff, Claude King, Noel Madison, Ralph Morgan, Alan Mowbray, Bradley Page, Ivan Simpson, Alden Gay Thomson, Richard Tucker, Arthur Vinton, and Morgan Wallace. Ralph Morgan was selected as SAG’s first president; Kenneth Thomson—who was later accused of being “a friend of the mob” but was credited with having a hand in driving Bioff out of Hollywood—was appointed its executive secretary; and Laurence Beilenson, the attorney for the Screen Writers Guild—which had also been created in 1933—became its general counsel.

  Within months of SAG’s creation, other actors joined, including Edward Arnold, Ralph Bellamy, James Cagney, Eddie Cantor, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Groucho Marx, Robert Montgomery, Paul Muni, George Raft, and Spencer Tracy. By the end of its first year, SAG had nearly 2,000 members.

  In the midst of its efforts for recognition from the studios, SAG became a member of the American Federation of Labor in 1935. Two years later, on May 7, 1937, a mass information meeting of actors was held at the Hollywood Legion Stadium; earlier, ninety-eight percent of the membership voted to strike if the studios failed to negotiate a contract with the new union. Dramatically, as in a scene from a movie, Robert Montgomery, who had succeeded Eddie Cantor as SAG president in 1935, walked up to the podium and read a letter from the studios to the large crowd. “We wish to express ourselves as being in favor of the Guild shop.… We expect to have contracts drawn between the Screen Actors Guild and the studios before the expiration of this week.” The letter was signed by Louis B. Mayer and Joseph M. Schenck. Montgomery declared that the moment was “the victory of an ideal.”

  From the outset, SAG fought hard for its membership, particularly those who had not achieved star status. In its first contract, which was signed by thirteen producers, minimum-pay rates were set and continuous employment guaranteed, as well as the establishment of an arbitration clause. Before this contract, some a
ctors were making very little money with no benefits, amidst slave-like working conditions. If these lower-paid actors complained about their long hours of work and the cavalier treatment of them by the studios, they could easily find themselves back out on the streets, ending their dreams of Hollywood stardom.

  The Guild was not a typical labor union. It was run at the top by mostly wealthy, established stars—who were largely politically conservative—while the majority of the rank and file was comprised of struggling or out-of-work actors, who were generally far more liberal.

  Ronald Reagan joined the Screen Actors Guild soon after receiving his first movie contract with Warner Brothers in 1937. Although he was then supposedly a moderate, he had come to SAG at first only with reluctance. “I must admit,” Reagan said, “I was not sold on the idea right away. I was doing all right for myself; a union seemed unnecessary. It was Helen Broderick, that fine actress, who nailed me in a corner of the commissary one day at Warners, after I’d made a crack about having to join a union, and gave me an hour’s lecture on the facts of life. After that I turned really eager and I have considered myself a rabid union man ever since.”1

  Born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911, Reagan was the son of Jack Reagan, a hard-drinking, first-generation Irishman, and Nelle Reagan, a kind and sensitive, well-read woman of Scotch and English descent. In 1920, the Reagan family moved to Dixon, ninety miles from Chicago. A football star in high school, Reagan received his undergraduate degree from Eureka College, a Christian church school in southern Illinois. An athlete and an actor in school plays, Reagan—nicknamed “Dutch”—began working as a radio announcer with station WOC in Davenport, Iowa, and then later with WHO, a 50,000-watt station in Des Moines, Iowa, as a sports announcer. On Saturday nights, Reagan sometimes hosted WHO’s popular barn dance, which featured dance bands and other entertainment. In his free time, Reagan frequented Si’s Moonlight Inn and, on occasion, “he visited the nearby Club Belvedere, which had a casino,* [but Reagan] didn’t gamble.”2

  Reagan’s entry into the film industry came quite innocently. One night Reagan met Joy Hodges, a former WHO employee who had gone to Hollywood and started a singing career with Jimmy Grier’s orchestra. She encouraged him to look her up in Los Angeles when he went on spring training with the Chicago Cubs. Later, she introduced him to talent agent William Meiklejohn, who thought he had discovered another Robert Taylor and set up a screen test for him at Warner Brothers.

  Warners hired him at two hundred dollars a week. In his first film, Love Is on the Air, he played Andy McLeod, a radio announcer who was trying to expose the mob’s control of local politicians.

  Reagan’s executive producer at Warners was Bryan Foy, a former Democratic ward politician from Chicago. Known to have business and social contacts with Chicago Mafia figures, including Johnny Roselli and Willie Bioff, Foy produced the first one-hundred-percent-talking movie, Warners’ Lights of New York, in 1928 and later became known as the “King of the Bs,” because of his money-making, second-rate movies. He was the eldest son of Eddie Foy and part of the family vaudeville act, the Seven Little Foys.*

  “I soon learned,” Reagan said, “that I could go in to Brynie and tell him that I had been laid off, but couldn’t take it at the moment because of all my expenses. He would pick up the phone, call a couple of his henchmen, and actually get a picture going on four or five days’ notice—just to put me back on salary.”4

  Reagan starred in thirty-one movies between 1937 and 1943, and became known as “the Errol Flynn of the Bs.” His most heralded roles were in Brother Rat in 1938, Dark Victory† in 1939, and Knute Rockne, All-American, portraying the tragic George Gipp, in 1940. With his role in the 1942 production of King’s Row—playing a man whose legs have just been amputated and who exclaims, “Where’s the rest of me?”—Reagan achieved a degree of star status.

  During the first four years of his acting career, when his earnings rose from eight hundred dollars a month to $1,650 a week, Reagan had been represented by William Meiklejohn. In 1940, MCA bought out Meiklejohn’s agency and absorbed his clients—who included Reagan, Jane Wyman, and William Demarest. Meiklejohn then became head of MCA’s studio talent department, and Lew Wasserman became Reagan’s principal agent. Based on the success of King’s Row in 1942, Wasserman renegotiated Reagan’s contract with Warner Brothers, obtaining a deal that paid Reagan $3,500 a week for seven years. The deal gave Reagan the distinction of being Wasserman’s first “million-dollar client.”

  MCA executive Taft Schreiber explained that Reagan had possessed an unusual quality, which had endeared him to the MCA management team from the start. Unlike many other actors, Reagan accepted MCA’s career guidance without a fuss. “He had only this one agency,” Schreiber said. “This was it. It wasn’t the agent’s fault if things didn’t go well. Most actors blamed their agents. He understood. He had a very sound grasp of the situation.”5

  Reagan spent most of his time during World War II serving his military tour of duty stateside. Reagan explained, “Lew Wasserman of MCA reminded me of a war that was going on, of Hollywood stars like Jimmy Stewart who had already been drafted, and of my own reserve-officer status. He said, ‘We don’t know how much time you have—let’s get what we can while we can.’”6 Because of bad eyesight—which disqualified him from combat—he was stationed at Fort Mason in San Francisco as a liaison officer before being transferred to Hollywood by the Army Air Corps to narrate military training films. He served as a lieutenant in the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps, located at the nine-acre studio in Culver City once owned by producer Hal Roach and thus nicknamed “Fort Roach” and “The Culver City Commandos.” His commander was Albert Paul Mantz, the famous movie stunt pilot who was later killed while performing. Other stars, like Alan Ladd, Clark Gable, Gig Young, and Van Heflin, joined Reagan in filming morale-boosting movies for the army.*

  On August 8, 1946, after Reagan returned from the service, Billy Wilkerson, the right-wing publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, who had admitted his working relationship with Willie Bioff, wrote an editorial, calling the American Veterans Committee, of which Reagan was a member, “fronters,” a euphemism for communists. Reagan defended the AVC, saying, “At the recent AVC National Convention in Des Moines, Iowa, a tentative pink infiltration was met and dealt with in true democratic fashion.… Of course, to deny that there are some ‘commies’ aboard would be ridiculous as those guys inkle [sic] in just about every place.”

  The following week, an anonymous letter from “A Wounded Marine” was published in The Hollywood Reporter as a cheap-shot reply to Reagan. “I remember during the war how Reagan, as a Cutting Room Commando at Fort Roach, so bravely fought the war from the polished nightclub floors of Hollywood, while some of us wallowed in the blood and guts of a dark South Sea Island front.… I went to a couple of meetings of AVC and if that isn’t loaded with Molotov vermin then Joe Stalin is getting ready to become a minister.”

  On August 22, actors/combat veterans Eddie Albert, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Melvyn Douglas, William Holden, and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy, among others, wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “The attack on Ronald Reagan is an attack on all in our community who served during the war in work for which their valuable motion picture training fitted them, work which had to be done at home.”*8

  In the midst of this fracas, the Screen Actors Guild held nominations for its executive board. Robert Montgomery, who had been SAG president from 1935 to 1938, was elected to replace outgoing president George Murphy, who had served since 1944. Ronald Reagan was nominated to serve as SAG’s third vice-president.

  Reagan had become increasingly involved in union politics through his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, who was a member of the SAG board and convinced its members to appoint him to a vacant alternate seat in 1941.†

  Prior to his election as third vice-president of the SAG board, Reagan had been appointed as an alternate board member on two other occasions. In
February 1946, he was named alternate to actor Rex Ingram, and the following month he became Boris Karloff’s alternate.

  Reagan has always maintained that he volunteered his services to SAG for totally unselfish motives. However, some of his critics, including some SAG board members, have charged that, under the surface, he viewed the Guild as a source of power and status. “Undoubtedly, Reagan’s film career shows,” one observer said, “that he went into politics only when he was washed up as an actor.”9

  *According to an Iowa law-enforcement official, the gambling operations of the Club Belvedere were conducted “by the Chicago Mafia.… The man who ran things for the Capone people in this state at the time was [Charles] ‘Cherry Nose’ Gioe [later convicted in the Bioff/Browne/Schenck scandal].” According to a government report, Gioe, a close friend of Sidney Korshak, had interests in hotels and restaurants in the Midwest. In 1928, he became the Chicago mob’s representative in Iowa, “bootlegging liquor into Iowa from Wisconsin,” according to the report. After Prohibition, Gioe remained in Iowa until 1939 to oversee the Chicago underworld’s gambling interests at such places as the Club Belvedere. There is no evidence that Reagan and Gioe were acquainted, although it was well known that Chicago underworld figures operating in Iowa “had a special interest in college athletes and sports writers,” according to a Chicago law-enforcement official.

  Among those writers approached was crime reporter Clark Mollenhoff, who worked for Iowa’s Des Moines Register and later won a Pulitzer Prize. Mollenhoff said that he was approached by one man, who he did not know was a Mafia figure, who “offered to pick up the tab for me for a weekend ‘you won’t forget’ in St. Louis or Chicago. I am sure now that I never would have forgotten that weekend; I wouldn’t have been permitted to do so. But at the time it seemed like a generous offer made by a nice fellow who was misunderstood by the Chicago police.”3