Yet another FBI report indicated that the threatened strike at Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia, California, had been averted after Korshak intervened. As a reward, an FBI source alleged, “Korshak apparently obtained a substantial fee or interest in the racetrack as a result of his efforts. This source stated … that Korshak was also making himself available to the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.”7
Korshak’s relationship with the Los Angeles Dodgers came through his involvement in the ownership and operation of parking lots in the Los Angeles vicinity, in which he was a partner with Las Vegas casino owner Beldon Katleman and other businessmen in Affiliated Parking, Inc. During the building of Dodger Stadium, Korshak, according to an FBI report, “was represented to Mayor Samuel Yorty of Los Angeles as the attorney for Walter O’Malley, president of the Dodgers. At a meeting between Yorty, O’Malley, and other city department heads, O’Malley denied that he was represented by Korshak, and it developed that Korshak and others associated with him were interested in offering an attractive bid for the parking lot concession at the stadium.”
The FBI report stated that O’Malley had originally contracted another parking lot company, “but, as opening day for the stadium approached … O’Malley … was going to have to pay fantastic wages to the attendants, who would be required to join a Teamsters Union local operating in the entertainment field. However, the group to which Korshak belonged could provide [sic] workers out of a different Teamsters local having a contract which could be extended to include the Dodger facility.
“The offer from the Korshak group was accepted by O’Malley.”8
O’Malley later said, “We did what any ordinary prudent businessman would do.” He added that Korshak “had the reputation as having the best experience in this area. He provided us a little insulation.… As far as we’re concerned, he does a good job. And unless he’s been convicted of a crime, we’re not going to do anything.”9
Korshak also had an interest in another national parking concern, the Duncan Parking Meter Company, which “was controlled by the ‘Outfit,’ specifically Gus Alex … and Sidney Korshak.” The FBI learned that the owner of the company, a Canadian millionaire, had been “muscled” out of the company by the Chicago mob—which then put in their own front men to run the business.10
In an interview with FBI agents, Korshak admitted that he was involved with Duncan—but as its “legal counsel.” According to the FBI, the business had since been sold to legitimate interests.
In the January 27, 1963, issue of Parade Magazine, a reader asked: “I would like to know if a Chicago mouthpiece named Sidney Korshak represents both Jimmy Hoffa and the Chicago syndicate in Las Vegas.—F.L., Chicago, Illinois.”
The reply was short. “Attorney Sidney Korshak reportedly represents the Cleveland interests in the Desert Inn and Stardust hotels of Las Vegas. He is reportedly the attorney for the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Korshak is also a friend of such theatrical personalities as Dinah Shore and Debbie Reynolds. His exact relationship with Hoffa is not known.”
Dinah Shore had appeared at the Desert Inn on February 3, 1961. The FBI speculated that Korshak might have “handled her contract on behalf of the Chicago group with whom Korshak was associated.” Soon after, Shore and her husband, actor George Montgomery, threw a birthday party for Korshak at their home.
Debbie Reynolds appeared at the Riviera in January 1963, and Korshak was present for her opening performance. Korshak and his wife had purchased their Bel Air home in 1959 from Harry Karl, the president of Karl’s Shoe Stores, Ltd., and Reynolds’s second husband after her divorce from singer Eddie Fisher. Karl was a close friend and traveling companion of Korshak’s.*
On June 28, 1962, the dapper Karl, an expert gin rummy player, went to the Friars Club, where he was greeted by singer Tony Martin, who was to be Karl’s second. Karl’s opponent that day was real estate developer Maurice Friedman, a former part-owner of the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.
Friedman had developed a scam for his game with Karl. A hole had been drilled in the ceiling, covered by an air vent, over. Karl’s shoulder. An accomplice of Friedman, George Emerson Seach, crouched flush against the peephole and, with the help of a zoom lens, would observe Karl’s cards. Friedman was wired with a small receiver taped to his chest, through which he would receive a prearranged set of impulses in the pattern of a special code, indicating the status of Karl’s hand. In one thirteen-hour session, Karl lost $18,000 to Friedman. Friedman continued his scheme over the next few weeks. In all, Karl was cheated out of nearly $80,000. Another club member, Ted Briskin, was taken for nearly $200,000. Karl and Briskin were followed by Tony Martin, who lost $10,000; Zeppo Marx, who was fleeced for $6,000; and theatrical agent Kurt Frings, who dropped $25,000. Actor Phil Silvers also lost but never revealed how much. Still others lost even more.
In the midst of Friedman’s cheating operation, several others were brought in as part of the scam to play more sophisticated games, including Benjamin Teitelbaum, the owner of Hollywood Film Service, a film-studio equipment company, and a partner of Korshak in Affiliated Parking. Another co-conspirator who cut himself in for twenty percent of the action was mobster Johnny Roselli, who had figured out what Friedman and his associates were doing.
The Friars Club cheating scandal lasted for five years—until Beldon Katleman learned what was going on and, for unknown reasons, told FBI agent George Bland, who later managed to convince Seach to turn state’s evidence. Federal agents raided the Friars Club and made arrests. The government’s principal interest was Roselli, who was later indicted and convicted of racketeering and sentenced to yet another prison term.11
While Roselli was frequenting the Friars Club—and being seen on occasion with Korshak—he was also working in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency in the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Cuban premier Fidel Castro. Roselli had been brought into the plots by Robert Maheu, a top aide to billionaire Howard Hughes, in August 1960, while Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Roselli brought Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana into the CIA web, and Giancana solicited the services of Florida gangland boss Santos Trafficante.
Maheu had met Roselli in 1958 when he was sent by Hughes to Los Angeles. In California, Maheu had a meeting with Greg Bautzer, a Beverly Hills attorney, who occasionally represented Hughes. Bautzer offered Maheu an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas to serve a subpoena on Beldon Katleman. Unable to get a reservation at Katleman’s El Rancho Vegas, Maheu called a lawyer friend, Edward Bennett Williams, of Washington, D.C., who had also been a college buddy of Maheu’s at Holy Cross. Williams then called Roselli, who then telephoned Maheu. Roselli confirmed reservations for Maheu and his wife at the El Rancho Vegas on the appointed weekend. The reservations had been personally approved by Katleman—whom Maheu was to subpoena for Bautzer.
Maheu recalled that after he arrived and was given Katleman’s first-class treatment, “I had a quick decision to make. Was I going to be a son of a bitch and serve the subpoena? Or was I going to go back and explain what happened? To me, it wasn’t a big decision. There was no way in the world that I was going to compromise my friendship with Ed Williams and the man I had just met, Johnny Roselli, under those circumstances.”
Maheu gallantly decided not to serve the subpoena and enjoyed his visit to the El Rancho. When he returned to Los Angeles, he explained to Bautzer what had happened in Las Vegas and returned the attorney’s expense money.
“Bautzer laughed like hell,” Maheu said, “and subsequently he told the story to Roselli. Then Roselli said he wanted to find out more about this guy Maheu. After that we became friends.… When he and I began discussing the Castro plots, I was straight up with him. I wasn’t about to cross this guy or any of his friends.”12
During a conversation with Los Angeles crime boss James Fratianno, Roselli warned, “Well, you watch that fucking Korshak. He’s Gussie Alex’s man.… One thing you’ve got to keep in mind with Korshak. He’s made millions for Chicago and he’s g
ot plenty of clout in L.A. and Vegas.… Sid’s really burrowed in. He’s real big with the movie colony, lives in a mansion in Bel Air, knows most of the big stars. His wife plays tennis with Dinah Shore, and he’s been shacking up with Stella Stevens for years.… He calls himself a labor-relations expert, but he’s really a fixer. A union cooks up a strike and Sid arbitrates it. Instead of a payoff under the table, he gets a big legal fee, pays taxes on it, and cuts it up. All nice and clean. This guy ain’t never going to the joint, believe me.… In other words, if you’re going to fuck with this guy, you better watch your step.”13
Sidney Korshak was also a silent associate of the cool, gravel-voiced Bautzer in his Beverly Hills law firm, Wyman, Bautzer, Finell, Rothman & Kuchel. Married to actress Dana Wynter, Bautzer made his reputation as a Hollywood divorce attorney for such stars as Ingrid Bergman before shifting gears and concentrating on corporate law. He also represented Joseph Schenck of Twentieth Century–Fox, as well as the Flamingo hotel/casino in Las Vegas.
Eugene L. Wyman, the senior partner in the firm, had succeeded attorney Paul Ziffren as California’s representative to the National Democratic Committee. Wyman was also elected as California’s Democratic state chairman.
An FBI report stated that “Korshak is allegedly a close friend of both [California governor] Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and Gene Wyman. They are said to be frequent breakfast guests at his home.”14
Consistent with that, another 1963 FBI document stated that an underworld informant close to Chicago racketeer Murray Humphreys and Sidney Korshak told federal investigators that Korshak had become “one of the biggest guys in the country today who has a pipeline right to the government in Washington.”15
*Debbie Reynolds, was Karl’s fourth wife, after two marriages to Marie McDonald and another to Joan Cohn, whose 1959 wedding was held in Korshak’s Chicago apartment. Korshak had also advised Karl on his 1957 divorce from McDonald, after which McDonald was kidnapped—while she was having an affair with Michael Wilding, Elizabeth Taylor’s second husband. On the night of McDonald’s abduction, both Karl and Korshak were observed at her home. When she was safely returned, she and Karl were remarried. No reasons for the kidnapping were ever given, and no arrests were ever made.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
In its first year under MCA’s control, Universal Pictures—with its $50 million expansion well under way—produced several critical and box-office successes under production chief Edward Muhl, including Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds; Charade, which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn; A Gathering of Eagles, featuring Rock Hudson; The Thrill of It All, with Doris Day and James Garner; and The Ugly American, starring Marlon Brando.
Although none of these films won any Academy Awards, the most highly publicized film of the year and most expensive production of all time—which won four Oscars—was Cleopatra. Despite the steamy off-camera romance between the movie’s stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the international gossip this romance ignited, the $44 million Cleopatra was a financial disaster, causing heads to roll at Twentieth Century–Fox, which was later forced to sell its backlot in order to pay the film’s creditors. Spyros Skouras was forced out as the president of the studio, which was taken over by Darryl Zanuck from New York while his son, Richard, became its production chief on the West Coast.
That same year a fate similar to Skouras’s befell MGM chief Joseph Vogel, whose Waterloo was the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty. It cost over $30 million and was also a box-office failure.
Paramount had also fallen on hard times, forcing Barney Balaban—who had been president of the studio since the days of the payoffs to Willie Bioff, George Browne, and IATSE—to be kicked upstairs as Paramount’s chairman of the board.
But the tragedies within the top management of Hollywood in 1963 were nothing compared to the national tragedy that fall.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in an open convertible in Dallas, Texas. His assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had close ties with the Carlos Marcello Mafia family in New Orleans, particularly with Charles Murret, a top man in Marcello’s Louisiana gambling network. Oswald had also been seen by numerous witnesses meeting with Marcello’s personal pilot just days before he murdered the president.
Within forty-eight hours after the shooting, Oswald, who panicked after the assassination and was captured by police, was killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who had a long-standing relationship with numerous associates of the Chicago Mafia and had worked as an organizer at one time for Paul Dorfman, the stepfather of Jimmy Hoffa’s associate Allen Dorfman, in the Chicago Wastehandlers Union. During the days and weeks before the Kennedy killing, Ruby was calling and being called by top aides to Marcello, Florida mobster Santos Trafficante, and Hoffa—all of whom were known to have discussed plans with their associates to murder either John or Robert Kennedy. A U.S. House select committee investigating the Kennedy assassination later concluded that “Carlos Marcello,* Santos Trafficante, and Jimmy Hoffa† had the motive, means, and opportunity” to murder the president.1
“The mob did it,” said G. Robert Blakey, the committee’s chief counsel. “It is a historical fact.”3 The committee’s final report put forth the theory that Kennedy was killed to end the U.S. Justice Department’s relentless assault on the underworld. The official investigation by the Warren Commission that followed never addressed the underworld ties to Oswald and Ruby. Many of those on the panel had been directly involved with the CIA in the CIA-Mafia plots to murder Fidel Castro—which the Kennedy brothers had no knowledge of until May 1962, at which time they ordered them stopped.
Meantime, Lew Wasserman had tried to revive Reagan’s failing movie career. His last starring role had been in 1957, when he appeared with his wife in Columbia’s Hellcats of the Navy. In 1961, MCA managed to get him the token role of narrator in The Young Doctors, a hospital soap opera with a surprisingly good cast, including Fredric March, Ben Gazzara, Eddie Albert, and George Segal in his screen debut.
In 1964, Reagan made his last feature film appearance in Universal’s The Killers, with Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, and Angie Dickinson, which was adapted from an Ernest Hemingway short story. A remake of a 1946 film—starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner—The Killers had originally been made for television but was considered too violent for home viewing. Consequently, it was dumped into second-rate theatres around the country, despite the fact that it was actually as good a picture as the original version. Reagan’s last part was his first and only bad-guy role in his fifty-five films. He played an unrepentant mobster who refused to run away from two hit men.
Reagan was becoming increasingly involved in Republican politics, particularly in Barry Goldwater’s campaign for president. As he saw a growing response to his brand of political conservatism, he became more politically motivated, and his political rhetoric began to gel. His years as General Electric’s spokesman, delivering addresses across the country and molding his political philosophy, culminated on Tuesday night, October 27, 1964—a week before the general election. That night, Reagan gave what has become known as The Speech: “A Time for Choosing” during a half hour on network television. An emotionally charged defense of Goldwater’s ultra-right-wing politics and American conservatism in general, The Speech helped raise $8 million in small contributions for Goldwater and catapulted Reagan into the national political limelight.
“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny,” Reagan said that night. “We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”
Reagan had also been buoyed by the stunning 1964 victory in California of actor and song-and-dance man George Murphy in his bid for the U.S. Senate. Murphy, a conservative Republican and a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, had defeated Pierre Salinger—the former press secretary to President Kennedy, who had been appointed by Governor Brown to fill the unfinished
term of Senator Claire Engel—by over 200,000 votes.
Jules Stein and Taft Schreiber were also enthusiastic Goldwater supporters, but, from past experience, MCA had learned its lesson. The antitrust problems the corporation had had would be eliminated in the future by maintaining good relations with both political parties. A television executive said, “Ever since the Justice Department busted them up, they play both sides of the political fence so they have a friend whatever party is in office.”4
While Stein and Schreiber covered the GOP, Wasserman was busy making friends among the Democrats. He became a close friend of Lyndon Johnson, a relationship he has never discussed, and became a key fund-raiser for the Democratic Party.*
Wasserman was still interested in remaining a behind-the-scenes powerbroker and continuing to build the MCA empire. As the daily television viewing habits of the American public reached an average of over five hours, the MCA brass began to restructure their production company. Revue Productions was renamed and became Universal-Television, and Revue’s studios became Universal City Studios, Inc. In its first year, Universal unveiled The Virginian, the first ninety-minute Western drama. The success of The Virginian in the television ratings was great enough for MCA to order Wagon Train to be expanded to ninety minutes as well.
MCA-TV continued to be the name of MCA’s telefilm syndication company, but its president and long-time MCA vice-president, Sonny Werblin, had gone into professional football, buying twenty-three percent of the New York Titans in March 1963 and changing its name to the New York Jets of the American Football League. Werblin was named as the Jets’ president and chief executive officer, and gave the team his favorite colors, green and white, the colors of paper money. Werblin would be best remembered for signing Alabama quarterback sensation Joe Namath to a $427,000 package with the Jets—which included $150,000 of MCA stock.
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