In 1953, Ziffren, a respected liberal with a strong record in support of civil rights and civil liberties, became California’s elected member of the Democratic National Committee, on which he sat with Arvey, who held the same position in Illinois.
Two years later, on December 18, 1955, Greenberg was shot four times in his left arm, head, chest, and groin in an obvious gangland slaying—after his autobiography, “My 46 Years with Chicago Gangsters,” appeared in The Chicago Tribune. At the time of his murder, Greenberg was the owner of the Canadian Ace Brewing Company in Chicago, which reportedly grossed $10 million annually.
During Ziffren’s term as California’s representative on the Democratic National Committee, California’s Democratic Party enjoyed great success: Pat Brown, the first Democratic governor since 1940, was elected in 1958,‡ and both houses of the California State Legislature were captured that same year for the first time since 1885. Lauding Ziffren, Paul Butler, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in 1960, “Paul Ziffren has been the greatest single force and most important individual Democrat in the resurgence of the Democratic Party in California.”4
Thought by many to be the heir-apparent to Butler, Ziffren cut his public political career short after the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. However, his hand was forced when reporter Lester Velie, who had earlier written a revealing story about Sidney Korshak, published a story in Reader’s Digest, chronicling Ziffren’s long-standing ties to major organized crime figures.*
In April 1959, Korshak accompanied Mary Zwillman, the widow of Zwillman, to Las Vegas, where Korshak was helping her dispose of her husband’s interest in the Sands hotel/casino. Her husband, facing a long stretch in prison for income tax evasion, had been found hanging from a water pipe in the basement of their mansion. Although law-enforcement authorities ruled Zwillman’s death a suicide, others were not so sure. There was nothing nearby—no box or platform of any kind—from which he could have jumped.
According to a confidential report of the Los Angeles Police Department, “In 1959 Korshak had an interest in the American National Bank of Chicago. Held 1500 shares in Merritt, Chapman & Scott Co. [a large building contractor]. Had shares in the City National Bank of Beverly Hills and had an oil partnership with Roy Huffington, Inc., 2119 Bank of the Southwest, Houston, Texas.”6
During an FBI investigation in June 1959, Korshak was interviewed by FBI agents. At that time, according to the FBI report, Korshak indicated “that he and his law partners maintain on a permanent basis Room 2001 in the Essex House in New York City. He also advised at this time that he always maintains permanent rooms in the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, and that he maintains permanent space in the Ocotillo Lodge in Palm Springs, California. Since the purchase of his home at 10624 Chalon Road in Bel Air, Korshak no longer maintains residence at the Beverly Hills Hotel on a permanent basis.… Information available indicates that Korshak also maintains residences in New York, Las Vegas, and a summer home in Paris, as well as residences in Los Angeles and Chicago.”
Korshak also told the FBI agents that his law practice “consists largely of representing labor unions and theatrical people.”
In 1959, Joan Cohn—the widow of Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn, who died in 1958—married shoe manufacturer Harry Karl in Korshak’s Chicago apartment: According to a confidential FBI document, “After about three weeks, Joan Cohn Karl filed divorce proceedings against Harry Karl in Los Angeles Superior Court. At that time information was received by the Los Angeles office that possibly the marriage was a sham engaged in for the financial convenience of people behind the principal [Korshak]. The speculation was that Harry Cohn was fronting for Chicago investors in Columbia Pictures and when he died his estate went into probate and the marriage of Karl and Cohn was contrived as a method through which the real investors in Columbia Pictures could regain title to their property without disclosing themselves on public records.”
At the conclusion of the FBI interview, Korshak told the agents that he, his wife, and their two teenage sons “were taking off with Dinah Shore, television entertainer, and her oldest child, for a two-month tour of Europe. Concerning his associates, Korshak advised that he has been linked with many people and has become friendly with many people because he will not ‘back away from anyone or repudiate anybody.’”7
*Accardo’s daughter was a secretary in Korshak’s Chicago law office.
*Ziffren was divorced in 1947 from his first wife, Phyllis, who was also a Los Angeles attorney. According to a Los Angeles Police report, Ziffren paid his ex-wife five hundred dollars a month in alimony and another $250 a month in support for their two children. Greenberg personally intervened on Ziffren’s behalf, trying unsuccessfully to save the marriage. Soon after Ziffren married his second wife, Genis paid back his loan. Ziffren deposited the interest in the names of his second wife and mother-in-law for unknown reasons—although no law was broken by doing so.
†“One partner who was listed on the hotel liquor license with Ziffren,” said one report, “was the wife of Fred Evans, a Capone money adviser and fence who was executed in a gangland killing in 1959. Another had been an officer in an investment company that converted underworld loot into real estate and other assets.” This setup, the report continued, was the first disclosure of “a momentous money migration: Chicago underworld cash was flowing into California and was putting solid, legitimate enterprises secretly into some of the uncleanest hands in America.”3
‡During the gubernatorial race, Ziffren’s underworld ties were repeatedly questioned by the Republican candidate, California senator William F. Knowland. During the campaign, Brown distanced himself from Ziffren, saying, “I am the architect of my own campaign. Paul Ziffren has no connection with it. Mr. Ziffren needs no defense from me. He is perfectly capable of taking care of himself.”
*Regarding Sidney Korshak, Ziffren said, “My relationship with Sid is essentially a social relationship. I consider him a friend of mine, but he never discusses his business with me, nor do I with him.”5
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In November 1959, in anticipation of a battle with motion picture and television producers over actors’ residuals for the broadcast of old movies and a badly needed actors’ pension and welfare fund, Ronald Reagan was elected to an unprecedented sixth term as president of the Screen Actors Guild. He was unopposed and generally considered SAG’s strongest voice within the Hollywood community.
At first, Reagan recalled, he did not want to be SAG president again. But to help him make a decision as to whether to become head of the labor union, he asked management for its advice. “Finally,” Reagan explained, “I called my agent, Lew Wasserman—who else? I knew that he shared my belief that my career [in films] had suffered. To tell the truth, I was positive he’d reiterate that belief and I could say ‘no’ with a clear conscience. Well, I pulled the ripcord and the chute didn’t open. Lew said he thought I should take the job. It was still a satisfactory answer because down inside me there was a certain knowledge that I wouldn’t like me very much the other way.”1
Within a month of his election, Reagan became the target of controversy within the guild because of his activities with GE Theater. Although GE Theater had fallen from third in the Nielsens in 1956–57 to twenty-third in 1959–60, the show was still secure in its Sunday-night prime-time slot. Because of the show’s earlier success, Reagan’s new contract gave him more responsibility for program production. As a result of charges that Reagan had an ownership interest in the MCA-Revue program and was producing shows, Screen Actor, the official voice of SAG, said in its December issue that Reagan, who had been an official with the union for the past thirteen years, had been the subject of “vile and unscrupulous tactics” and “false rumors” having no basis in truth.
Screen Actor continued, “Members are being told that Ronald Reagan, president of the Guild, produces and has an ownership interest in the television series, the Gener
al Electric Theater.… Ronald Reagan is a contract employee of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn. Under this contract he is required to appear as an actor, as a master of ceremonies, and to make personal appearances. He is paid a weekly salary. He has no ownership interest, percentage, participation or otherwise in the General Electric Theater, or any other picture or series. He is not the producer of the series and he has no voice in the selection or approval of the actors employed.”
The primary grievance of the Screen Actors Guild was the millions of dollars its members felt they were owed by the various production companies for old movies sold to the television markets. Since 1948, vocal SAG members had been demanding that the union negotiate an agreement with movie producers so that actors could be paid when their movies left the theatres and began running on television. By 1960, MCA’s shrewd 1958 purchase of Paramount Pictures’ backlist of pre-1948 films for $50 million had already grossed MCA an incredible $60 million. The actors felt that some of that money—as well as money from all movies made prior to 1960—belonged to them. “That’s why Reagan was elected president of SAG again in 1959,” said a SAG board member. “We knew how close he was to MCA and thought he could get us our best deal.”
MCA stood to be among the biggest losers if SAG struck against the industry and bargained hard for residuals. MCA quickly joined with a handful of smaller production companies to settle quickly with SAG, opting “to agree to agree with whatever was settled” between SAG and the larger studios, according to the SAG board member. But the major studios—which were led by Spyros Skouras Twentieth Century–Fox—refused to negotiate on the pre-1960 movie rentals.
The quick settlement between MCA and other smaller companies with SAG provoked charges by some SAG board members that Reagan was conducting selective bargaining. Powerful forces in the industry came to Reagan’s rescue. Frank Sinatra held a press conference and, with Reagan standing by his side, announced that he had authorized his film production company to sign a collective bargaining agreement with SAG. Sinatra’s company, Dorchester Productions, which had been filming Ocean’s Eleven at Warner Brothers, agreed to a five-percent actors’ residual after the film was released. Like MCA, Sinatra continued production. Sinatra then appealed to the other studios “to do a little compromising,” adding that “the Screen Actors Guild has already compromised greatly from its original contract demands.”2
After Sinatra’s company had signed the agreement, “the roof fell in,” according to Reagan. “Richard Walsh of the IATSE moved in—issuing an ultimatum to Frank and all other independents who had shown signs of going along.… Walsh’s act could hardly be excused. He [already] had a signed contract [with the producers] with months to run. We resented the effect it had of interfering with our negotiations.”
Reagan then contacted George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO; Meany talked to Walsh. At a subsequent meeting, Reagan remembered that he called Walsh “a lousy, damn strike-breaker.”3
When asked about these events as chronicled by Reagan, Walsh simply replied that they were “not told as they happened,” refusing to challenge Reagan’s statement specifically.
However, when pressed, Walsh sharply replied, “Korshak’s involved in that whole proposition you’re talking about there, and it would tie back into Reagan.… Reagan was a friend of, talked to Sidney Korshak, and it would all tie back together. That’s the whole thing that was going on at the time you’re talking about.… I know Sidney Korshak. I know where he comes from, what he is, and what he’s done. He’s a labor lawyer, as the term goes.”4
Pressed for more details about the relationship between Reagan and Korshak, particularly during the 1960 SAG negotiations, Walsh refused further comment.
Earlier, Milton Rackmil—a close friend of Korshak and the president of Decca-Universal, which had become increasingly dependent on MCA talent—told Reagan, during a private meeting, of a split among the producers. Breaking ranks, Rackmil agreed to give six percent of the post-1948 movies and seven percent of the post-1960 films to the actors, as well as a five-percent employee-paid contribution to the proposed SAG pension and welfare fund. When the other major studios refused to follow suit, the SAG membership voted to strike on March 7, 1960.
Several weeks into the strike, Reagan and SAG national executive secretary John Dales met at the Beverly Hills Hotel—where Korshak, by coincidence or not, conducted much of his business—again in private, with long-time Loew’s company man Joe Vogel, the president of MGM. At that meeting, the two sides reached a tentative agreement.
The final settlement, reached on April 18 after a bitter six-week strike—which superseded the SAG–Universal agreement—was later termed “The Great Giveaway” by the Hollywood acting community. The contract, which Reagan recommended, required the actors to forfeit all of their claims to residual payments for television showings of movies prior to 1960. In return for this huge concession, the studios promised to create a pension and welfare plan for actors with a one-time initial contribution of a mere $2.65 million. In the future, actors would be entitled to six percent of all future gross sales of theatrical movies to television—after the producers deducted their distribution costs, which sometimes were as high as forty percent.
The SAG membership approved the settlement. The SAG leadership, especially Reagan, assured their members that the best possible deal had been negotiated. The actors had also been warned that several of the studios could close permanently if the strike continued much longer. John Dales—SAG’s chief negotiator, along with Reagan, during the strike—defended the settlement and Reagan’s performance. “We came out of the 1960 strike with ninety percent of what we asked for,” he said. “We got substantial raises, an unheard-of pension and welfare plan at the time.… Some members were beginning to get destitute as the strike wore on. It was Ron’s judgment and mine that we should take the deal.”5
Older actors, who lost thousands of dollars when the pre-1960 pictures were sacrificed, were far less charitable about Reagan’s skills during the strike. One veteran television actor and SAG member said, “We spent twenty years correcting the Reagan contract. In no way did we win that strike—we lost it. Reagan was a conservative, management-sweetheart union president, and he ran SAG like a country club instead of a militant labor union.”6
Even Bob Hope, one of Reagan’s closest friends, was deeply upset about the 1960 settlement. “The pictures were sold down the river for a certain amount of money,” Hope said bitterly, “and it was nothing.… See, I made something like sixty pictures, and my pictures are running on TV all over the world. Who’s getting the money for that? The studios. Why aren’t we getting some money …?
“We’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars, and Jules Stein walked in and paid $50 million for Paramount’s pre-1948 library of films and bought them for MCA.… He got his money back in about two years, and now they own all those pictures.”7
As the 1960 strike wound down, charges against Reagan’s dual actor-producer role, particularly with regard to his status with General Electric Theater, again became an issue.
The negotiation of his contract with GE in 1959 had given Reagan twenty-five-percent ownership of the program, in addition to his salary. Reagan was technically no longer an employee of the BBD&O advertising agency. Instead, he had become an employee of Revue Productions and MCA.
When Wasserman was asked about the discrepancy between Reagan’s denials that he had not been producing and what was already on the record, the MCA president simply forgot. He said he could not recall whether or not Reagan had produced any GE shows. “I wouldn’t know how to draw the line between producing and being the host,” Wasserman said. “Being a host was kind of a combination.”
Wasserman also contended that he could not remember what ownership interest Reagan had received in 1959 when he renegotiated his GE contract. “I’m sure [Reagan] made the best deal his people were capable of making,” Wasserman said, distancing himself from his
own performance on Reagan’s behalf. “No, I don’t know what he received.”
Finally, when Wasserman was asked to comment on whether there had been any conflicts of interest between Reagan’s close ties with MCA and the subsequent SAG strike, he replied, “I am certain there was never any conflict of interest.”8
As the 1960 strike ended, Reagan left no doubt as to which side of the line he was on between actor and producer. On June 7, 1960, after serving only seven months of his twelve-month term, Reagan resigned as SAG president to become a partner in a joint production venture with MCA and Revue Productions.
In his July letter of resignation to SAG, Reagan stated: “The Guild has commenced negotiations with television producers. Up to now I have been a salaried employee with no interest in profits. Now I plan to change that status by becoming a producer with an interest in profits. Therefore, with deep regret, I tender my resignation as president and member of the board of directors of the Guild.”
At least one member of the SAG board was happy to see Reagan leave. Actor James Garner, who had been appointed to the board by Reagan, said, “[W]hen I was vice-president of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president, we used to tell him what to say. He can talk around a subject better than anyone in the world. He’s never had an original thought that I know of, and we go back a hell of a lot of years.”9
In the midst of the SAG strike, a major movement was initiated to merge two of the most powerful unions in the entertainment industry. While SAG had grown from 7,338 to 13,403 members since Reagan’s 1952 presidency, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)—which represented live TV and radio performers as well as record artists—had also swelled from 8,500 to 14,000 members during the same period of time. Two previous attempts to consolidate the two unions had been unsuccessful, primarily because of the conservative SAG leadership, which had had jurisdictional disputes with AFTRA over television actors. In several appeals to the National Labor Relations Board, SAG had been winning the battle for control.
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