9 Enter Bioffsky
oN THE MORNING OF Saturday, March 4, 1933, as the Disney animators were putting in their half-day at the studio, Franklin Roosevelt—one-time governor of New York—was inaugurated as president of the United States. “Let me assert my firm belief,” he told the nation, “that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
There was plenty to fear. The stock market had plummeted 85 percent. A quarter of the workforce was unemployed. More than a million people were homeless.1 It was the height of the Great Depression, and the day after his inauguration, Roosevelt closed all of the country’s banks for a four-day “bank holiday” while he and Congress devised a plan.
On March 9 Roosevelt enacted the Emergency Banking Act, the first act of his proposed New Deal, thus beginning his renowned “first hundred days.” Another of his first orders was the establishment of the National Recovery Administration—an agency that was authorized to set fair working conditions, maximum hours, and minimum wages. It required renewal in two years, at the approval of Congress.2
Throughout the nation, 1933 marked a surge of labor union news. The president’s National Industrial Recovery Act of June 16, in part, protected union negotiation rights between workers and employers. That July in Hollywood, the Screen Actors Guild was founded, and later that year, the Screen Writers Guild earned union status. But there was more than one union fighting to represent each craft in Hollywood. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) represented unions of stagehands and projectionists. However, it was at odds with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the two undercutting each other for jobs and salaries.3
At a time when powerful producers ruled Hollywood, union recognition was paramount. It enabled a large number of workers to bargain collectively as a single entity, and the management could not change contract terms without consent from the union. The union’s elected representatives (who were paid out of members’ dues) could bargain for terms like pay scale, safety conditions, working hours, and grievance procedures. On average, union members—especially at the bottom of the pay scale—earned more per week and had fewer accidents at work than non–union members.
Salary for sound engineers varied wildly, from $75 to $175 a week, so the IATSE audio workers demanded union recognition and a set pay scale. On Saturday afternoon, July 8, the IATSE sound engineers (of Sound Local 695) called a strike against one of the titans of Hollywood, Columbia Pictures. Movie production screeched to a halt. Frank Capra had to leave his director’s chair in the middle of filming It Happened One Night because there was no one to record his actors’ voices.
About four hundred other IATSE members walked out on July 8 in support of the striking sound engineers. On July 24 all IATSE members across Hollywood walked out. But instead of attempting negotiations, the producers brought in non-union sound engineers and members from the competing IBEW. The producers and the IBEW began approaching the IATSE strikers individually, offering attractive contracts to break the strike. Many strikers caved and took the contracts.
If the IATSE union had had more members in Hollywood, it may have succeeded. However, the producers began replacing the IATSE sound engineers with IBEW sound engineers (as well as all IATSE property and grip workers with the members of the Carpenters Local 946). When the IATSE strikers realized that they had lost not only the strike but also their jobs, they deserted the union. It was a sad reality that the sitting IATSE president was an ill-equipped leader.4
Like a saving grace, the government’s newly established National Labor Relations Board intervened and officially ended the strike on August 23, 1933. Producers were instructed to rehire the strikers without prejudice, but this edict was not enforced. Union rights were still unclear, and there was no single federal policy to handle labor disputes. Without such a policy, government intervention appeared to be just empty talk. Hollywood unionists were on their own, and after the failed strike, IATSE membership dropped from nine thousand to a couple hundred.5
On the streets of Chicago, a short, broad-shouldered mid-thirties roughneck barreled by. Named William Bioffsky, he was known throughout the speakeasies, casinos, and local precincts as Willie Bioff. He had come to Chicago as a child from Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, and at some point earned himself a scar on the left side of his chin. His overcoat flapped in the Windy City’s foul air as he secured a cigarette between his fat fingers and entered one of the swankiest joints in the city: the 100 Club.
Willie Bioff was a two-bit wiseguy. In his youth, he drove a bootleg beer truck for Al Capone’s henchman Nick Circella. In his twenties, he ran a brothel/speakeasy for mobster Jack Zuta. Bioff was caught, charged with pandering, and sentenced to six months in jail. But Bioff had connections and left jail after only seven days. In 1930, when Zuta was gunned down in his own car,6 Bioff moved on to greener pastures, forcing his way into the poultry handlers’ union. He made good money bribing and threatening poultry distributors, but the Chicago police caught up with him, and in February 1933 they listed him as a public enemy.7
Later that same year, Bioff read about motion picture unions—particularly the stagehands, projectionists, and electrical workers who were often threatening to go on strike. Then he met George Browne, head of Chicago’s branch of the IATSE.
Browne, a tall Irishman, had been a member of the IATSE since 1915. In 1932, he ran in the biennial race for national president of the IATSE and lost. Browne remained in control merely of the Chicago branch.
Bioff understood that a person in charge of a union could decide when that union goes on strike. Strikes were notoriously expensive for management—the lost income, the machine maintenance, the wasted rent. An employer might pay through the nose to prevent a strike from happening.
Once Prohibition was repealed in December 1933, bootleggers were out of business, and organized crime was looking for the next big score. In early 1934 union culture was novel, and the motion picture industry was in its infancy. Not many regulations were enforced on motion picture unions, and so Bioff and Browne had room to play.
Willie Bioff in 1937 (left) and George Browne in 1941 (right).
A local chain of Chicago movie theaters, Balaban and Katz, had a contract with IATSE members that was about to expire. The chain resisted wage negotiations for its projectionists, stagehands, electrical workers, and musicians. The owner, Barney Balaban, made a quiet offer to George Browne: salaries would remain unchanged, Browne would stave off a potential strike, and Balaban would gift him $100 a week. When Browne told Bioff, Bioff asserted, “We can get a lot more money than that—and get it all the time!” Browne and Bioff made Balaban a counteroffer. They started negotiations at $50,000 and settled for $20,000, which Bioff and Browne split down the middle.
The pair had tapped into a new scheme that was bound to make them both rich. That night, Bioff met Browne amid the glitz of the 100 Club. Between platefuls and glassfuls, the two celebrated their lucrative new venture. By the end of the evening they had blown $300—and caught the eye of the club owner, Nick Circella. Circella contacted his boss, Frank Rio. Rio was one of Capone’s bodyguards. While Capone was serving time for tax evasion, Rio was among the highest-ranking active members of the gang.
A few days later, Rio pulled his car up to Bioff and invited him to go for a ride. He drove Bioff to the edge of the river where they had a little talk. The deal was simple: if Bioff was to pursue this venture with Browne, he was now an employee of Capone’s syndicate, and the gang was going to get a cut for its support and protection. He and Browne would share a third of their total earnings, and the syndicate would keep the remaining two thirds.
Bioff agreed. He was determined to make this worth his while, and he had just the plan for how to do it.8
At a private table in Chicago, Willie Bioff eagerly sat with partner George Browne, opposite the top men of Al Capone’s gang. They included Nick Circella, Frank Rio, and Frank Nitti—all infamous in the world of organized crime.
It was the spring of 1934, and the biennial IATSE convention would be held in June. A new national IATSE president would be elected; Bioff wanted it to be Browne. Since Browne was only a regional head of IATSE in Chicago, their influence could only extend over Chicago unions. But Bioff was low on scruples and high on moxie. He suggested that the gang utilize their connections across the cities of the East Coast to influence the elections. There is much money to be made, he told them.9
The mobsters liked what they heard, and they pointed out that Browne’s clean background made him the perfect front man.10 When Browne had lost the national election two years prior, it was due to delegates in New York City, St. Louis, Cleveland, and New Jersey. Frank Nitti had contacts in all those places. Several union delegates across the country were already tied to the mob. If Browne won the election, Bioff’s scheme could potentially earn them $1 million in Depression-era currency. Nitti said that the election was in the bag.
That June, at the IATSE convention in a Louisville hotel,11 Browne won the national IATSE presidency by a unanimous vote. All the while, large men from Capone’s gang lurked in the hotel lobby. There would be no dissidents. Once his position was verified, Browne immediately installed Bioff as his personal representative.12