Kintner, a former newspaper columnist with recognized strengths as a news programmer, denied that the meeting ever took place. He may have had reason to do so. An ex–MCA agent told how Kintner became president of NBC. “They began with Manny Sacks,” he explained. “He was a former MCA man who moved over to Columbia Records. MCA took him out of Columbia and put him in at RCA [NBC’s parent company]. Then they cultivated Kintner, who was head of ABC, and sold him to Sacks. They said, ‘Listen, Manny, what you need as president of NBC is a man with vision, a Kintner, or somebody like him. You take him and we’ll give you all our goodies.”7
Shortly after Kintner took over at NBC, he was invited to Lew Wasserman’s “birthday party” in Hollywood. “On the night appointed,” recalled an industry source, “Kintner came in his best bib and tucker, and there he found every big star on MCA’s roster.…’ In the midst of this glittering assemblage, Wasserman stood up and announced to the multitude, ‘This is not a birthday party for Lew Wasserman. This happens to be a surprise party for my good and true friend Robert Kintner to celebrate his having taken over the throne at NBC.’”8
In the midst of NBC’s love affair with MCA, the William Morris Agency protested to the network, “We’re being discriminated against; you’re locking us out.”9
Former NBC president Pat Weaver, who had been responsible for the network’s special programming and “spectaculars,” said that to accept the fact that MCA had an exclusive deal with NBC in which the network was forced to take all of MCA’s product, “one would have to assume either that Bobby Sarnoff was dumb or that Kintner is crooked.” Weaver said that he could not believe either theory. Weaver contended that Kintner was a “newspaperman” and knew little about entertainment. When he went to his friend Sonny Werblin, he was talking to someone who did.10
Nevertheless, MCA’s production income jumped from $8.7 million in 1954 to a $49,865,000 gross in 1957. MCA’s talent agency, which had earnings of $8.8 million in 1954, remained the same in 1957.*
In 1957, William Morris reported its revenues to be $41,371,000 and nearly $4 million in commissions.†
Within MCA, business had become extremely competitive. According to an MCA agent, “We were supposed to be battling for commissions with the William Morris Agency, the General Artists Corporation, and other talent agencies, but I found that my most ruthless enemy was the man in the next office at MCA. I’d go to an advertising executive and sell him a TV show, and then a fellow MCA man would go to him and say, ‘Why do you want to buy that piece of junk? The show I represent would be much better for you.’ We were pitted against each other by the nature of the agency, and it was like living in a snarling, cannibalistic, primitive society where your survival depended on your brutality and guile. We got comparatively small salaries plus a big Christmas bonus which we received at the end of the year. The bonus was based on what you had sold during the year to contribute to the profits of the company, and it could amount to as much as fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. Thus we were all out scrambling for the bonus, and if you had to assassinate one of your colleagues to up your bonus, you assassinated him. Spying, memo-stealing, eavesdropping were all common practice. Once I was talking to an executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a deal. Two minutes later, I got a call from my superior at MCA, berating me about what I had said to the Metro man. He had the conversation almost verbatim. Later, I learned that my colleague in the next office had flattened himself against the wall outside my door and had listened to every word of my conversation with the MGM executive. Then he had reported it to my boss.”11
Even Wasserman was beginning to feel the heat. During a meeting with CBS executives in New York, focusing on “a deal for purchasing Paramount pictures for all of CBS’s O & O [owned and operated] stations, Wasserman called in from the West Coast and insisted that they break up the meeting, because he was afraid to do business with a station group as such. Merle Jones [a CBS executive] asked sarcastically, ‘Is it all right if we stay for a cocktail?’ The meeting took place in MCA’s suite in the Hotel Pierre.”12
“You have to understand,” explained a former top MCA executive. “We knew that the antitrust people in Washington and Los Angeles were starting to breathe down our necks. We were doing everything we could do to avoid antitrust problems. It was something we were sensitive to. Wasserman was aware of it, and he made sure we were, too.”
After not receiving a reply to the government’s request for detailed information about the Paramount backlist purchase, federal antitrust lawyer John Sirigano, Jr., requested on July 10, 1958, that the Federal Communications Commission supply the government with data on MCA filed by those television stations doing business with the firm.
“At about 4:30 P.M., August 5, 1958,” Sirigano wrote in an internal Justice Department memorandum, “I received a long-distance call from Mr. [Cyrus R.] Vance of Simpson, Thatcher of New York City, who stated that he was representing MCA and was aware of our request to the FCC and stated that MCA was perturbed over the possibility that confidential information regarding MCA operations might be available [to a competitor].”
Sirigano replied that the Justice Department was within the law requesting the information under the “Federal Reports Act,” but that Vance and MCA would be better served to appeal directly to the FCC. “Mr. Vance stated that to avoid any controversy MCA would offer to supply us with any information relevant to their activities in film distribution on a voluntary basis if we would withdraw our request to the FCC to examine MCA reports. I stated that as a matter of policy we could not make an exception for MCA.”
After the Sirigano-Vance conversation, MCA notified the FCC “that while it believed that disclosure by the FCC of material supplied by MCA to [the Justice Department] was unauthorized it was waiving any objection to such disclosure.”13
*MCA’s top television clients included Art Linkletter; Robert Cummings; Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and their sons, David and Ricky; Fred MacMurray; Donna Reed; Phil Silvers; George Gobel; Alfred Hitchcock; Jack Benny; George Burns; Betty Furness; and Ernie Kovacs and his wife, Edie Adams.
†William Morris’s television and motion picture clients included Sammy Davis, Jr., Danny Kaye, Lloyd Bridges, Anita Ekberg, Jean Simmons, Barbara Stanwyck, Spencer Tracy, Melvyn Douglas, Glenn Ford, Barry Nelson, Laraine Day, and Frank Sinatra, who had left MCA in a huff.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On NBC’s popular, big-money quiz show, Twenty-One, contestants went head-to-head, answering questions in a variety of categories with degrees of difficulty ranging from a rating of one to eleven and trying to get a total score of twenty-one. Any contestant, for instance, answering a question with an eleven rating and a second with a ten rating was guaranteed a tie. To heighten the drama, as well as the visuals, contestants stood in isolation booths on stage. The winner from each show kept returning the following week until defeated by a challenger. Among the early winners was Herbert Stempel, who in 1958 enjoyed a long run on the show. Stempel’s reign was ended by Charles Van Doren. After tying Stempel three times, Van Doren finally defeated him during the fourth week and became an overnight sensation in America. A year later, while Van Doren—who was then represented by MCA, as had been the producers of Twenty-One, Jack Barry and Dan Enright—was filling in on NBC’s Today show for host David Garroway over the summer, Stempel charged that Twenty-One was fixed and that Van Doren had been given answers to questions in advance of the show.
In the wake of allegations against other quiz shows—NBC’s Dotto, and CBS’s The $64,000 Challenge and The $64,000 Question—a special committee of the U.S. House of Representatives* subpoenaed Van Doren. He confessed that he had been fed answers by a producer of the show, because the knowledgeable Stempel was too good and couldn’t be beaten but had become unpopular with Twenty-One’s audience.
TV Guide later ran an editorial entitled “Now Is the Time for Action.” In part, TV Guide stated: “Now that television’s dirty quiz linen has been washed in public, it might n
ot be amiss for the industry itself to clean out the rest of the hamper. Why wait for a few months until the quiz matter dies down and then be subjected to more headlines and investigations and public resentment on other dubious practices that could just as readily be aired and corrected now?
“Item: Talent agencies control—directly or indirectly—more than forty percent of nighttime network TV. With the networks so dependent upon MCA and William Morris and a few smaller talent agencies, it is possible for the agencies to sell them routine shows on the basis of special deals, talent tie-ins, or just a good ‘in’ …
“At the heart of the matter is the question of exactly who is to control the medium.”1
On December 16, 1958, MCA and Revue Productions purchased the run-down 367-acre backlot of Universal Pictures—which had been merged with Decca Records in February 1952—for $11,250,000. The buildings on the property were of solid steel, brick, and stucco construction and included sixteen sound stages, as well as a variety of geographic and historical set designs. As part of the purchase agreement, Universal was to pay MCA $1 million a year for ten years for leasing rights to the property. Previously, Revue had owned the one-acre lot at Republic Pictures, which had stopped producing films. MCA sold its Republic property for a reported $9 million. Soon after the contract was signed, Universal received a glut of MCA-represented clients for its motion pictures. It was another incredible deal for MCA.
Wasserman authorized an enormous rehabilitation program for Revue’s new home, ultimately costing $110 million. “Very few companies in the industry had spent money on capital-improvement programs,” Lew Wasserman said. “The theory had been ‘don’t spend any money you can’t charge off to a film.’ I’m not going to say we can walk on water, but we were defying conventional thinking.”2
An industry source reflected that “MCA made a big mistake when it bought the Universal lot. When they did this they went into a different business. Thus MCA got away from its function of representing talent. Jules Stein always used to tell the MCA salesmen: ‘Never forget that what we began with was representation of talent; that is our main function and it must remain so.…’ MCA had forgotten this admonition of Stein’s and [had] now made production its main function.”
On January 8, 1959, the U.S. Justice Department finally authorized a full-field FBI investigation of MCA. The formalities were included in a letter from Assistant Attorney General Victor R. Hansen of the Antitrust Division in Washington, D.C., to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hansen wrote that “MCA may be restraining trade (a) by refusing to book its artists in productions competing with those under MCA control, (b) by compelling producers to hire writers and directors in order to obtain [acting] talent, (c) by compelling producers to hire talent in order to obtain scripts, writers or directors, (d) by obtaining representation of talent through predatory practices, (e) by refusing to book talent at terms satisfactory to the talent but not to MCA (which practice may be accomplished by failing or omitting to inform talent of offers), or (f) by monopolizing the talent agency and the booking business.”
Included in the letter to Hoover was another addressed to MCA, requesting “the examination of the books, records and files of the Music Corporation of America.”
While Hoover and the FBI began their work, the Antitrust Division received information about the power MCA wielded during the casting of the Twentieth Century–Fox production of The Young Lions. According to an industry source, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Maximilian Schell, and Tony Randall had been slated for the leads of this World War II drama, based upon Irwin Shaw’s best-selling epic novel. Directed by Edward Dmytryk, the only member of the Hollywood Ten who had recanted and named names before HUAC, in 1951, The Young Lions filming was delayed when MCA asked its producers to change a member of the cast for one of its clients. When Twentieth Century–Fox protested, MCA threatened to pull Brando and Clift, both MCA clients, out of the movie. The studio ultimately capitulated to MCA, removing Tony Randall from the cast and adding MCA’s Dean Martin, who had just split up with his comedy partner, Jerry Lewis, and was looking for work.
MCA Artists was making a ten-percent commission from its clients; Revue Productions received twenty percent of its shows’ profits from the networks; and MCA-TV, Ltd., the corporation’s distribution company, received another ten percent for distributing MCA’s film library. MCA took all of its fees off the top, leaving fewer dollars to be divided among program producers and stars who negotiated ownership interests in the shows they worked.
Although the William Morris Agency, as well as MCA, had been the subject of the federal investigation, the Antitrust Division backed off from William Morris and concentrated on MCA. According to a Justice Department memorandum, “William Morris, MCA Artists, Ltd.’s, principal competitor, deducts any fees the owner of the show must pay to a distributor for reruns before it computes the fee.… Some of the stars represented by William Morris own a certain percentage of the film for rerun purposes. In no case does William Morris take more than ten percent of the show’s profit, as contrasted with … MCA.”3
*Also, during 1950–60, Congress investigated the “payola” scandal in which deejays were accused of accepting bribes to play record companies’ music. Actually, the deejays were scapegoats for a wider range of corruption in the industry. The payola scandal had its roots in the longstanding war between the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), which were competing for the lion’s share of the recording market. (See Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, Rock ’N’ Roll Is Here to Pay.)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
During 1959, Sidney Korshak was still working with the Teamsters Union, and he and his brother Marshall were often seen with the president of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa, who had been elected in 1957. Sidney had kept his clout in the labor movement and was known to have also been doing work for the United Steelworkers Union upon request of its president, of whom Korshak was a close friend. The Chicago attorney was representing the Hotel and Restaurant Workers and Bartenders Union Local 450 in Cicero, Illinois, as well as Chicago’s liquor salesmen. According to a confidential IRS report, “Korshak is a man with many influential friends and can make peace in many disputes through his friendships in the fields of labor, management, and government.”1
In May 1959, the FBI received reliable information that Korshak had negotiated a contract between Chicago’s Premium Beer Sales, Inc., and local Mafia boss Tony Accardo, in which Accardo was hired as a “salesman” and given a $65,000-a-year salary.* Korshak had appeared before a federal grand jury investigating the connection between Accardo and Premium but “denied that he had drawn up the original contract between Premium and Accardo, stating that [an executive of Premium], whom he had known for many years, had contacted him and presented a contract, asking for Korshak’s legal opinion as to whether it was a good contract or not. Korshak stated he studied the contract, suggested some revisions, and returned the contract.…” Korshak added that he had been given five hundred dollars for his services.2
The FBI had also learned that Korshak and his brother Marshall were attorneys for American Distillers. American Distillers was also represented by Paul Ziffren, another Chicago attorney who was a close friend of both Korshak and Lew Wasserman.
Paul Ziffren was born in Davenport, Iowa, on July 18, 1913. He received both his undergraduate and law degrees at Northwestern University. He attended law school with a scholarship from the Pritzker Foundation. In 1938, he was admitted to the Illinois bar. His first job was in the office of the chief counsel for the IRS in Chicago. There Ziffren worked on the successful income tax evasion case against Moe Annenberg. He later became an assistant U.S. attorney and head of the tax division in the U.S. Attorney’s office. On March 22, 1941, Ziffren resigned from government service and became a member of the law firm Gottlieb and Schwartz, specializing in corporate law.
Ziffren left Chicago and came to California in 1943, when he was thirty y
ears old. In May 1944, he was admitted to the California bar and spent less than a year with a Los Angeles firm. He then opened a partnership—Schwartz, Ziffren, and Steinberg—in downtown Los Angeles while he simultaneously maintained a legal partnership with his political mentor, Jake Arvey, the mob-connected head of Chicago’s Democratic Party and a long-time friend of Korshak’s. According to several sources, Ziffren “was like a son” to Arvey.
Ziffren was also a close friend and associate of Alex Louis Greenberg, a reputed front man for Chicago Mafia boss Frank Nitti, and a business partner of Arvey. Ziffren and Greenberg, according to income tax records uncovered by the Kefauver Committee, were partners in a real estate interest, Store Properties, Inc., located in San Bernardino, California, which had holdings in several states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, and Utah. The president of their firm was Samuel Genis, a known front for Greenberg, who had been previously arrested for embezzlement and for passing bad checks. Genis was not convicted on either charge. He was also a known associate of underworld figures Abner “Longy” Zwillman, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky. At one point, Ziffren loaned Genis—who was killed in a car accident in 1955—$93,000 for their business.*
By 1950, Ziffren had opened his own office in the Heyler Building of Beverly Hills. That same year, he became the chief fund-raiser for Helen Gahagan Douglas, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, whose Republican opponent was Richard Nixon.
Despite Douglas’s defeat, Ziffren remained involved in California politics. During the early 1950s, an attempt was being made to recall the mayor of Los Angeles, who had been clamping down on the local Mafia. During the campaign, the intelligence division of the Los Angeles Police Department learned that the crusade was being engineered by close associates of the Chicago underworld. The hotel from which the recall operation was being run was owned by close associates of the Capone mob who were closely linked to Ziffren.†
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