While many of the crimes against the cinema I previously mentioned were inadvertent or at least done without malice, the same cannot be said of those perpetrated by the Mob. Throughout history organised crime have found their way into many industries where there are easy profits to be made and the cinema was on their radar from the early days.
The relationship began during the Prohibition era when Joseph Kennedy (patriarch of the Kennedy clan) was running whisky from Canada to America’s West Coast, coming into contact with numerous Hollywood identities. This piqued his interest in filmmaking and he began financing and working with Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studios in 1920. By 1926 Kennedy along with Chicago mob boss Frank "The Enforcer"Nitti sought and obtained a controlling interest in the studio in order to get involved in its running.
Kennedy sold off his interests, at great profit, at the time of the merger between FBO and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) which created RKO Pictures. But this was only the beginning of organised crime’s involvement in Hollywood.
Hollywood was neither a passive victim nor an innocent by-stander caught up in the activities of the Mafia. They made the first significant move in what was to become a very awkward dance between the two.
In the Thirties, gangsters were brought in by the studios to manage their workers and avert the possibility of a strike. In the process the Mob established themselves within the unions, using it as an excellent vantage point from where they could remain on the lookout for future ‘business’ opportunities.
When, in 1945, the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) went on strike in Los Angeles there were bitter confrontations between strikers and both police and strike-breakers. One of those strike breakers was Ronald Reagan, a one time union firebrand who crossed the lines because he saw the strike as a 'Soviet effort to gain control over Hollywood and the content of its films'.
Reagan parlayed this into a number of appearances before HUAC where he insisted Hollywwod had been infiltrated by Communists, named names, and later employed a similar approach into his political career which included stints as the Governor of California and US President. His ideology was marked by a willingness to denigrate others, including working men and women.
Around this time studio chiefs had growing concerns about the power of the unions, portraying demands for better pay as Communist-inspired and part of a plot to control film-making. They hired heavies to break strikes, including Bugsy Siegel who had a reputation as a hitman and muscle for hire.
This fraught relationship was well characterised by Orson Welles:
A group of industrialists finance a group of gangsters to break trade unionism, to check the threat of socialism, the menace of Communism or the possibility of democracy... when the gangsters succeed at what they were paid to do, they turn on the men who paid them.
In Hollywood, Siegel was extremely well connected, known to associate with George Raft, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant, studio executives Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner, and was admired by up and coming celebrities like Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra.
Siegel would extort money from movie studios by taking over local trade unions (such as the Screen Extras Guild and the Los Angeles Teamsters) and stage strikes to force studios to pay him off. He borrowed money from celebrities but never payed them back, knowing that they would never ask for the money, and racked up more than $400,000 in loans.
Siegel made enough enemies in Hollywood to necessitate a move to Las Vegas, a town he helped to form. He oversaw the construction of Vegas’ first casino The Flamingo but an estimated construction over-run of US$1 million left the Mob suspicious that he had been skimming money. In June 1947, Siegel was shot and killed by a sniper while at home in his Beverly Hills mansion.
Willie Bioff also made his way to Hollywood. He was a Chicago pimp and corrupt union leader working under Chicago Outfit boss Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti. In the 1930s Nitti sent Bioff to California as an enforcer for Mafia-controlled union leader George Browne, who later became President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Bioff became the collector for the Syndicate-controlled unions in Hollywood, extorting millions of dollars from major motion-picture studios, while keeping several hundred thousand for himself.
As head of the movie production workers' union Bioff later threatened a strike against New York movie theaters, demanding two projectionists in each theater. When owners complained the cost would send them broke, Bioff agreed to a cut in projectionist wages, plus a large kick-back for himself.
By the late 1930s, a newspaper campaign brought attention to the Bioff’s extortion operation, creating a huge scandal in Hollywood. Though Bioff’s big mistake was that he ‘went Hollywood’ in a big way, wearing fancy suits with solid gold business cards, eventually attracting too much attention.
In 1943, Bioff was indicted for tax evasion, extortion and racketeering, along with a number of his associates but rather than face prison, he testified against them. The defendants received 10-year sentences with Bioff’s boss Nitti committing suicide shortly after Bioff's testimony.
Bioff received a reduced sentence and on his release moved to Arizona with a new identity, but soon reverted to his old ways. On November 4, 1955, shortly after the release of his former partners in crime, Bioff was killed in an organised bombing that left little trace of Willie.
The man at the centre of much of this activity, Frank Nitti, was a source of fascination for Hollywood despite the grief he caused them. His story played out in an episode of the TV series The Untouchables (The Frank Nitti Story) and in the 1988 film Nitti: The Enforcer.
There’s a saying among screenwriters (made by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch but often attributed to William Falkner)…. Murder your darlings.
For a time in Hollywood, a number of their Darlings were Murderers.
Fascinating stuff. I never knew Ronald Reagan had been a union firebrand once upon a time..!