CHAPTER 7

Scenes from Hollywood, Part One

SID KORSHAK'S LIFE IN Beverly Hills was developing into a contradictory combination of sphinxlike mysteriousness and high-profile socializing with the world's most famous celebrities.

As Sid's gatekeeper to the underworld, Chicago's Curly Humphreys decreed that no one besides himself be allowed to communicate directly with the gang's golden boy. Korshak was so valuable that he had to stay insulated from gangsters. Soon, the Chicago FBI would succeed in wiretapping the Outfit's meeting places and discover that when Korshak communicated with Humphreys by phone, the two spoke in code, Korshak referring to his superior as "Mr. Lincoln."

One of Korshak's closest Hollywood pals described how Korshak's wife, Bernice, obtained a glimpse of Sidney's furtiveness early on. After returning from the honeymoon, Mrs. Korshak read from a list of coded messages that awaited her new husband.

"George Washington called, everything is status quo. Thomas Jefferson called, urgent, please call ASAP. Abraham Lincoln must speak with you, important. Theodore Roosevelt called three times, must connect with you before Monday."

"Your friends sure have a strange sense of humor," said Bernice. "Who are they?"

"Exactly who they said they were" was Sidney's terse response. "Any other questions?"

According to producer Bob Evans, who was told the anecdote by Bernice, "Fifty years later, Bernice has never asked another question."1

For his part, Korshak remained as low-key, blended-with-the-woodwork as possible. Among those few who traveled with him, Korshak's avoidance of cameras was notorious, as Dominic Dunne had discovered.

Given that Los Angeles was, and is, an "industry town" with the Supermob pulling many of its strings via MCA, Al Hart's bank, and the cadre's links to so many swank hotels and properties, Sidney Korshak and associates now counted the country's top celebrities among their closest friends, among them Cyd Charisse and Tony Martin, the Kirk Douglases, Dinah Shore, David Janssen (Sidney was the best man at Janssen's 1975 marriage to Dani Greco, who called Korshak Janssen's "surrogate father"), Jack Benny, John Gavin, Vincente Minnelli, Dean Martin, John Ireland, Donna Reed (and husband Tony Owen), George Montgomery, Warren Beatty, Korshak mistresses Rhonda Fleming, Stella Stevens, and Jill St. John, and James Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. Hollywood gossip columnist Joyce Haber wrote, "Sidney Korshak is probably the most important man socially out here."

Near the top of Sidney Korshak's list of chums was the skinny Italian crooner from Hoboken, New Jersey, Frank Sinatra. By the 1950s, Frank and Sid were already fast friends. Although the details of their initial meeting are unknown, they shared so many friends and commonalities—Giancana, Accardo, Humphreys, Wasserman (Frank's agent), the Chez Paree, and Las Vegas—that the two likely knew each other since the earliest times. Interestingly, although Sinatra projected the tough-guy "Chairman of the Board" persona, by all appearances one of the few men he deferred to was Sid Korshak. "Frank was definitely subservient to Sid," said one friend of both who asked not to be named. "They would say Sid was the only one even Frank Sinatra knew not to fool with," recalled screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz.2 George Jacobs, Sinatra's valet from 1953 to 1968, saw an almost brotherly bond between the two. "Sidney and Frank were good friends," Jacobs said recently. "They were very dear friends. They used to hang out at La Costa [Country Club] because there was a lot of money from 'the boys' there."3 Early Korshak law partner Edward King told an acquaintance that he knew for a fact that Korshak interceded directly with Harry Cohn to land Sinatra the role that saved his career, some say his life, in 1953's From Here to Eternity.4

Legendary television comedy producer George Schlatter remembered the informality of the relationship. "Frank used to call Bee [Korshak], Dinah [Shore], and his wife 'lady broads,' " said Schlatter, "which was the best of all worlds. You can't say that today."5 One friend of both men, who asked for anonymity, spoke at length about the relationship:

Sidney would talk about how Frank and his father's friends from the firehouse in Hoboken would sit around in the living room, tossing firecrackers at one another and roaring with laughter. Sidney also talked about Frank's mother, Dolly, and how she dominated the world's greatest lover's life. And the only peace the great man would ever have was during that time of the year when she'd go to her cottage at [Al Hart's] Del Mar. Sid used to say that when Dolly died in 1977, Frank was finally on his own.

When Sidney and Bee visited Frank and Barbara [Marx Sinatra] for the evening, Sidney would insist on going upstairs and watching his favorite TV program, which was Kojak. Sidney would go to watch Kojak while Frank was making spaghetti. I guess he was rather annoyed and offended that Sidney had left the table.6

Of course, the parties at Sinatra's were not immune from Korshak's demand for privacy. One exceptional faux pas was committed when the press was given a list of guests at a Sinatra birthday bash, a release that inadvertently included Korshak's name, which was supposed to have been redacted; according to one reveler, Korshak made his irritation known to Frank.

It was inevitable that a volatile performer like Sinatra would occasionally seek out Korshak's professional expertise, and his periodic wise counsel only strengthened their bond. Irv Kupcinet, who named Sinatra as one of Korshak's closest friends besides Wasserman and Ziffren, saw evidence of the tutelage. "I know Frank leaned on him a lot for political and legal advice," Kup said in 1997.7

One of the earliest known examples of this occurred when Sinatra was compelled to testify before a grand jury in 1955. It seemed that on November 4, 1954, Sinatra had driven a blind-with-jealousy Joe DiMaggio to Marilyn Monroe's place, where the ex-Yankee slugger had hoped to affect their pending divorce by catching Monroe in a sapphic assignation. When the duo and their two detectives forced their way into a neighbor's apartment by mistake, the incident became known as the Wrong Door Raid. Before long, Sinatra's personal thugs had beaten one of the detectives for leaking the story to the press. And Florence Kotz, the unaware neighbor, wanted her shattered door replaced.

The day after Sinatra was subpoenaed to testify before a March 1955 grand jury looking into the affair, the singer abandoned his legal team of record and called the Fixer, Sidney Korshak, who coached him for the appearance. Sinatra escaped indictment and started dating Monroe himself. He settled with Florence Kotz out of court.8

Korshak's rescue of Sinatra was just one of countless such interventions for which Korshak would become famous among the "in crowd." It seems that his snatching of Martin and Lewis from the mob's clutches in the forties was just the beginning of his Tinseltown altruism. Anecdotes abound describing Korshak's quick fixing of a problem for a celebrity or his or her child, especially when one of them fell behind with their bookie debts or crossed the legal line with powers that be. In 1958, when Kupcinet got pinched in L.A. for drunk driving, Korshak came to his rescue, referring him to his nephew, attorney Maynard Davis, who represented Kup in court as Uncle Sidney sat through the entire trial as a spectator—one of the few times he actually appeared in a courtroom. Although the judge intoned, "There's been an attempt to fix this case . . . cases cannot be fixed in L.A. Being from Chicago, the defendant may not be aware of this. But this is not Chicago!" Kup was acquitted.9

One of the most often cited celebs for whom Korshak played protector was a tough-guy actor from New York's Hell's Kitchen, George Raft (born Rollo). After a stint as a driver for bootlegging kingpin Owney Madden, Raft came to Hollywood, where gangster chic held sway, and quickly found film work portraying the stereotypical hood. His depictions were nothing if not authentic, benefiting from his friendship with the likes of Bugsy Siegel, who lived with Raft when Siegel first came out West to run the Chicago Outfit's race wire. By the 1950s, Raft was fronting a Cuban casino, the New Capri, for Meyer Lansky and New York mafioso Charlie "the Blade" Tourine. In 1965, Raft was convicted of tax evasion, but a benevolent judge fined him $2,500 instead of ordering a prison term.10 According to crime expert Hank Messick, "Raft became involved in some complicated crime deals that ultimately led to the murder of syndicate accountant Benjamin Berkowitz."11 (In 1967, Raft was barred from England as an undesirable after fronting for a large casino in London.)12

Although he occasionally acted in bona fide hits like Scarface, Ocean's Eleven, and Some Like It Hot, Raft was notorious for making horrendous career choices, among them turning down lead roles in such "bad scripts" as High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Double Indemnity (1944). No doubt due to his friendship with occasional Korshak client Bugsy Siegel, Raft became friends with Korshak and thereafter fell under Korshak's protective umbrella.

"George spent many Sundays at Korshak's, and Sidney often helped him out financially," said Raft biographer Dr. Lewis Yablonsky.13 Attorney friend Leo Geffner recalled a later period when Raft seemed to live at the Korshaks' home. "George had no money so he became Sidney's gofer," said Geffner. "He would answer the phone or just sit around like one of the family." 14 Fellow Korshak pal Kirk Douglas recalled one such Sunday at Chez Korshak. "After a barbecue at Sidney Korshak's house one day, I walked into the kitchen and was astonished to find George Raft doing the dishes," Douglas wrote in his autobiography. "I backed out and mentioned this to Sidney. He said, 'Oh, George likes to do that.'"15 When Yablonsky's authorized biography of Raft was published in 1974, Korshak was among only two people cited for special thanks by Raft. Calling him a "special friend," Yablonsky wrote, "Sidney Korshak has generously helped George through many difficult periods in recent years; without his compassionate support and wise counsel this book might never have been completed."16

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Korshak pals Bugsy Siegel and George Raft (Library of Congress)

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Irv Kupcinet interviews George Raft (Library of Congress, Look Magazine Collection)

Movie producer Fred Sidewater also took note of Korshak's charity toward Raft. "Sidney actually gave George a job as a messenger because his career was gone," Sidewater remembered in 2003.17 When there was talk of a potential Raft biopic, auditioning actors, such as Bob Evans, were submitted to Korshak for his approval.18 On the occasion of Raft's death in 1980, Korshak delivered the eulogy, saying, "He came from poor beginnings, but he never turned his back on anyone." Graciously calling Raft an "industry giant," Korshak added that Raft was actually a modest man who considered himself "such a lousy actor he never saw any of his pictures."19

Among other examples of "Sidney to the rescue":

• Lounge singer and girlfriend of Johnny Rosselli, Betsy Duncan Hammes, recently recalled Korshak's help for an ill-planned singing engagement: "I'd never been to Hawaii, so I took this awful job there, but I had to book my own room. When I got there, every place was sold out, so I was stranded. I called Sid at the Polo Lounge and he called over and got me a room at the Surfrider, one of the best places in Honolulu at the time. Then my friend Rita May, of the May Co., who came with me, was unable to cash her checks there until Sid made another call and set them straight. Sid helped out friends of friends too. I know this guy in Chicago who got caught writing bad checks. He was part of the Rosenwald family [Sears Roebuck Inc.]. I called Sid, who knew the family well, and he made a call and took care of it."20

• Jan Amory, former wife of Korshak client/partner Del Coleman (Seeburg Inc.), recalled a weekend she spent with a movie producer who began acting "weird" and started to frighten her. Amory called Korshak at one in the morning. "I'll be right over," Korshak said. As she waited by the open door for Korshak, the producer tried to pull her back inside. Amory then told him that someone was coming to pick her up. "Who is it?" he demanded. Suddenly Korshak appeared and said, "It's me, and move away from her. I'm taking her back with Bee and myself now." The producer immediately cowered and said, "I'm so sorry, Sidney." According to Amory, "All of the sudden, it was like the Red Sea parted."21

• Amory also recalled that when she and husband Freddie Gushing, a banker with Lehman Brothers, were living in Paris, Freddie lost his driver's

license after a speeding conviction. Amory called Korshak in L.A., and he asked for the name of the French prosecutor. "And all of the sudden, a week later Freddie's license was returned," Amory said with astonishment.

• One Korshak friend, who wished anonymity, joined the chorus with his story: "Once, when I took a photo to the best framer in L.A., somehow in conversation it came up that I was close to Sidney. The framer told me, 'I'd

be dead if it wasn't for Sidney. The French Mafia had put a contract out on me, and a friend of mine got in touch with Sidney, who got his Italian friends to get it called off.' He absolutely refused to accept payment from me."22

• Recently deceased world-famous comic Alan King recalled being turned away from a posh European hotel that claimed it had no vacancies.

King calmly walked to a lobby phone to call his Vegas pal Sid Korshak in Los Angeles. According to King, before he hung up the phone, the hotel desk clerk was knocking on the phone booth door—as if by magic, a luxury suite had become available.23

There was, according to some, one glaring exception to Korshak's Hollywood altruism, and surprisingly, it involved one of Sinatra's best friends, Sammy Davis Jr. By 1956, the African-American Davis was a bona fide song-and-dance star, with hit albums, a sellout live act in Vegas and elsewhere, and a legion of A-list friends. Even a 1954 auto accident that cost him his left eye failed to derail his skyrocketing career. But Davis was also on good terms with the hoods who had a lock on the country's nightclub business; he was known to be especially well connected in Chicago, where, in leaner years, he had often borrowed money from Sam Giancana. It was believed by many that the mob had their hooks so far into Davis that they practically owned him. George Weiss, the composer of Davis's breakout 1956 Broadway musical Mr. Wonderful, spoke of witnessing how Davis had to obtain the mob's permission to appear in the show.24

Sammy Davis was able to balance his mob flirtations, but not those with Caucasian blond women, for whom he had powerful attraction. Of course, midcentury America was the last place a black man wanted to be caught in an assignation with a white woman, but Davis forged ahead as though he were living in a more tolerant European capital. When his affections were aimed at the hottest ingenue in the Columbia stable of hotheaded Harry "White Fang" Cohn, it was quickly made clear that he had crossed the racial Rubicon.

Having just come off film triumphs Picnic and The Man with the Golden Arm (opposite Frank Sinatra), the Chicago-born Marilyn Pauline Novak, aka Kim Novak, was being groomed to be a huge earner for the mob-connected Cohn. But soon after a brief first meeting in Chicago at the Chez Paree, then a date at the home of Korshak's friends Tony Curtis and wife Janet Leigh, the twenty-three-year-old blond "sex symbol" Novak and the thirty-one-year-old black entertainer Davis had (according to Davis) fallen in love. The affair was fueled by the excitement of having to arrange furtive meetings wherever possible. But despite their best efforts, the word got out, and it got out first to Harry Cohn, who, rightly convinced that the affair would destroy Novak's career, immediately hired detectives to follow the lovers. The racial flames were fueled when Irv Kupcinet wrote in his January 1, 1958, column in the Chicago Sun-Times that the two were engaged, and that Kup had a copy of the marriage license to prove it (he never produced it).25

Cindy Bitterman, a close friend of Davis's, who was employed in Columbia's publicity department, recently recalled a dinner party she attended at the time with Cohn and other Columbia honchos. "At dinner, the names of Kim and Sammy came up," Bitterman told Davis biographer Wil Haygood.

"Cohn had no idea of my relationship with Sammy. He asked somebody at the table, 'What's with this nigger?' My stomach started cramping. 'If he doesn't straighten up,' he starts saying about Sammy, 'he'll be minus another eye.' I went to the bathroom and threw up. I threw up out of fear and greed and Hollywood money making."26

"Harry Cohn wanted him dead," said comic Jack Carter, Sammy's Broadway costar in Mr. Wonderful. "What he was cocking around with was the mob," said Jerry Lewis. "They had a lot of money in Columbia—namely Harry Cohn—and I knew it."

Among the first warnings came from Steve Blauner, an agent with General Artists Corporation, who railed at a nonplussed Davis, "You stupid son of a bitch! How long you think it'll be a secret? They'll kill you!" Soon, Harry Cohn summoned Davis's adviser Jess Rand to his office. "I know the right people," Cohn bellowed. "I'll see that he never works in a nightclub again." Back in Chicago, where Davis was doing a gig at the Chez Paree, a mysterious stranger paid a visit to Davis in his hotel room and warned the singer that his remaining eye was on the line because of the affair.

"If you fuck with my right eye," Sammy shot back with uncharacteristic bravado, "I'll kill you." Before leaving, the man made certain Davis saw his gun, saying, "Don't ever say that, kid, unless you mean it."27

Cohn, who apparently was not about to wait for Davis to fall in line, decided to confront Novak. In an interview thirty years later, Al Melnick, Novak's first agent, said, "There's no doubt about it. Harry called a very highly placed attorney, a man in with the mob, and he arranged a serious action against Sammy."28 For most knowledgeable insiders, that could only mean one man: Sid Korshak. According to actress Dana Wynter, the ex-wife of Korshak's close friend Greg Bautzer, the fixing talents of Korshak were indeed brought into play. In a recent interview, Wynter recalled a confrontation that bore the earmarks of an earlier power play with Estes Kefauver:

Harry Cohn called her in and said, "Look, knock it off." Apparently Kim didn't feel like obeying orders and it came down to calling her in again, this time with Sidney sitting behind the desk with Harry Cohn and saying to her, "Look, you absolutely got to stop this." And she said, "Why should I? It's my private life." At which point Sidney asked her to look at some pictures. Apparently Sammy Davis had cameras set up in the bedroom and had a whole file of these things, with various prominent white actresses, and this was his thing, and she looked at them and then started to tear them up, and then Sidney said to her, "Don't bother to tear them up, because we have the negatives." Then he said, "We're telling you, if he doesn't stop it, he'll lose his other eye."29

After the meeting, Korshak met with Greg Bautzer and laughed about the incident. "I heard Sidney say it, and to Greg and to me," said Wynter. "He had just come from Columbia and was crowing about it."

Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, who came to work alongside Korshak years later, heard another version of the story from Korshak. "We were sitting up late at night at the Riv in Vegas," remembered Mankiewicz, "and someone mentioned Sammy Davis, which I said may not be the best place to talk about it 'cause Sidney was sitting right there. So Sidney said, 'What, the I'11-put-your-other-eye-out story?' I turned red as a Coke machine. He said, 'I never said that. I threatened Sammy with something much worse. I told him if he ever saw Kim Novak again, he'd never work in another nightclub for the rest of his life. For a compulsive performer like Sammy, that's way worse than death.'"

This version is supported by Bob Thomas, Cohn's biographer, who said, "Sammy was presented with simple alternatives: end this romance or find himself denied employment by any major nightclub in America."30 And Sid Korshak was the attorney most connected to the lucrative venues of Las Vegas, Chicago, and elsewhere.

Whatever the details of Korshak's threats, the fact was that they were beginning to take effect. "What is it they want me to do?" Davis asked his longtime agent, Arthur Silber Jr. "Are they telling me that I'm not good enough to be seen with a white woman? Do they want me to get my skin bleached white? What is it? I'm a human being. Why can't I be with the woman I love?"31

Sinatra's valet, George Jacobs, an African-American, remembered when Sinatra heard about the Cohn threats. "When Sinatra got wind of it, it brought up a lot of bullshit," Jacobs said. "Frank came to his defense when that happened. He didn't call them, but he wouldn't hang out with the guys from Columbia anymore. He never invited them to anything he had going on. Frank would see them at parties at Romanoff's and he'd walk right by them like they weren't there. He didn't like them at all. Sammy was like a little brother to him, and he took very good care of him. The only time I saw Frank angry with Sammy was when Sammy was smoking weed. Sinatra was against narcotics."32

The word was now out that Davis not only had to break off with Novak, but also had to marry a black woman to end the threats once and for all.

"The gossip," remembered Annie Stevens (the wife of Sammy's conductor Morty), "was already backstage: Sammy has to get married—or he'll be killed." According to Arthur Silber Jr., Davis's father was warned by L.A.

mobster Mickey Cohen that Harry Cohn had put out a mob contract hit on his son. "He said Harry Cohn is going to send some guys to break both my knees," said a hysterical Sammy Davis, "and put out my other eye if I don't

find a black girl to marry within forty-eight hours!" With that, Davis quickly offered $10,000 to a black Las Vegas singer he barely knew if she would agree to marry him for one year only—and just for appearances. The girl, ironically named Loray White, had a crush on Davis and quickly agreed, thinking (wrongly) that the bond might last.33 Davis's mother, Elvera, later said, "He married her because, if he had not, they would have broken his legs." According to Davis's autobiography, Yes I Can, just before the wedding, Davis received a call from his friend Sam Giancana, who told him, "You can relax, kid. The pressure's off." However, on their wedding night, Davis got blind drunk and tried to strangle his new bride.

On February 27, 1958, six weeks after the Davis-White vows, Harry Cohn died of a heart attack. When over a thousand showed for the intimidating mogul's funeral on the Columbia lot, comedian Red Skelton quipped, "Well, it only proves what they always say—give the public something they want to see and they'll come out for it."34 Sammy and Kim continued to sneak around for a few months, but the situation proved untenable and the affair ended. "I don't think Sammy ever took anything harder in his life than the breakup with Kim Novak," wrote Arthur Silber. And one year after it began, the marriage to Loray White was over.

Movie Business

Just as he had with the stars, Korshak solidified his relationships with the movie moguls. With the studios at the mercy of the mob-controlled craft unions and talent agencies, dealing with Korshak became the first order of business for any studio that wished to stay solvent. Korshak's indispensable mediating skills set a trend in Hollywood that exists to this day. As many a producer can attest, in modern Hollywood, the entertainment business is now virtually run by attorneys. And the Teamsters are still ubiquitous on movie sets. One Hollywood insider recently joked, "In Hollywood, they cast a lawyer like they cast an actor. And they probably cast the lawyer first."

Typical of Korshak's clout was his effort on behalf of an anonymous Hollywood agent who recalled being threatened by mob muscle over an entertainment deal that had fallen through: "I went to Sidney and explained the situation, told him I was concerned, and he made a phone call, I never heard from them again."35

Former Los Angeles FBI agent A. O. Richards recently recalled what he was told by informants regarding Korshak's utility in Hollywood: "We knew he was strong and he had a lot of power and was a big man and all of that, but he kept a fairly low profile out here. The two big areas that Korshak was close to, that we could determine, were the unions and the movie industry. That was his forte. It was one of those things we knew, that he was practically behind everything that happened and knew about everything that happened. He could control them so that there wouldn't be a strike. That was his style—behind the scenes."36

Fellow L.A. FBI man Mike Wacks exhibited some frustration when he remembered the industry collusion with the Fixer. "It was well-known in the industry that if you were going to make a movie, the talk around town was that you'd have to use the Teamsters," Wacks said. "Of course, you better get it straightened out with Sidney before you get those Teamsters over there, or you could have problems. He'd get a consulting fee from both ends—the producers as well as the Teamsters. I wish we could have proved that, but that was what the talk around town was, that he got paid off by both sides."37

Certainly Korshak's strongest and most potent mogul friendships were those with Jules Stein and Lew Wasserman. According to Roy Brewer, the IATSE representative in L.A. in the fifties, Korshak helped MCA obtain Teamsters Pension Fund loans when it ramped up its production wing after Reagan and SAG granted the all-important waiver.38 A measure of how much Korshak was revered by Stein was reported by L.A. County district attorney investigator Frank Hronek, a story confirmed by veteran Los Angeles Times reporter Jack Tobin and others. "Frank Hronek was our 'overcover' Hollywood guy in the DA's office," recalled former DA John Van DeKamp. "He and his colleague would go from bar to bar and pick up all the gossip." 39 Hronek, a former Czechoslovakian freedom fighter in World War II, had befriended Stein's Czech secretary, who became the first to tell him of a revealing incident in Stein's MCA suite. According to the secretary, when Korshak entered the office, Stein stood up from behind his desk and walked around to Sidney, saying, "Sidney, you sit there. That's your chair, not mine. You sit there. That is your chair behind the desk." Korshak, without hesitation, made himself comfortable in the chairman's seat.

"The woman was flabbergasted!" Hronek later recalled. "Here's the man who created MCA and he is saying to Sidney, 'That's your chair!' And of course Sidney didn't say, 'Oh, no.' He went over and sat down." According to the secretary, a short time after Korshak made himself comfortable, another visitor entered the room, a man of diminutive stature. After serving coffee and liqueurs, the secretary left the room with Stein. Now, Korshak and "the little man" were alone together behind closed doors for about twenty minutes, after which the man left, met downstairs by a waiting limo, and Korshak summoned Stein back into his own office.

Alone with the secretary later, Hronek showed her some photos, hoping she might be able to identify "the little man." One police mug shot caused the secretary to nod her head vigorously; she was certain that this one man, whoever he was, was the man alone with Korshak in Stein's office. The man in the photo was Meyer Lansky.40

Interestingly, it is believed by some that Stein drew the line at being seen publicly with the lawyer so obviously in league with the Chicago Outfit. The late Chicago judge Abe Marovitz, himself no stranger to "the boys," said just before his passing, "Jules had to do certain things to not be harmed, to be able to do business . . . Jules wouldn't want someone like Korshak bragging that Jules is his friend."41

Stein's MCA heir Lew Wasserman was, if anything, closer to Korshak than to Stein himself. Several people who knew both men asserted that Korshak was Wasserman's closest friend, period. Former senior MCA executive Berle Adams said that the tall trio of Wasserman, Korshak, and Paul Ziffren were together so often that they were nicknamed the Three Redwoods.42 When NBC News obtained Wasserman's MCA phone logs years later, they revealed that Wasserman spoke with Korshak religiously at the beginning and the end of each business day. "Lew and Sidney were joined at the hip in the fifties," former MCA agent Harris Katleman told Wasserman biographer Connie Bruck. "Sidney did whatever Lew needed."43

Former Los Angeles DA John Van DeKamp was well aware of the Korshak-Wasserman relationship. "Wasserman used to go to Korshak quietly when "And for some reason he was regarded as the person who could fix these things, and how he'd fix them you never knew. Of course, you can be a mediator without being a criminal fixer. On the other hand, the suspicion always was that some money must have changed hands. But you could never prove it."44

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Typical entry from Lew Wasserman's daily MCA phone logs (confidential source) there were labor problems in the industry," Van DeKamp explained recently.

Occasionally, Korshak's favors for Wasserman were only partially related to business. "Sid did something really interesting for Lew Wasserman once," remembered Jan Amory, "when Lew and Edie wanted to go to the Hotel du Cap in Antibes [French Riviera], which Sidney also loved, at a time when the unions were threatening a strike. Lew said to Sidney, 'I don't know what to do. Edie is dying to go to the Hotel du Cap.' And Sidney said, 'When do you want them to strike?' Lew said, 'Well, we'll be back September second.' Then Sidney said, 'Okay, they'll be striking on September third.' And that was it."

If Korshak and Wasserman were somewhat considered equals, another Korshak relationship is usually described in clear paternal terms. His camaraderie with then actor (and co-owner with his brother Charles and tailor Joe Picone of women's pants manufacturer Evan-Picone) Bob Evans would grow stronger from their first meeting in the fifties until their estrangement four decades later, during which time Evans rose to the top of Hollywood moguldum, only to crash and burn in the hedonistic excesses of the 1980s. According to Evans, during the intervening years, Korshak was, in Mafia patois, "my consiglieri." Evans adds, "He said he was my godfather too."45 He maintains that, for the next thirty-plus years, the two met every day for an hour when they were in town, or, if one was not in L.A., they spoke by phone daily. Journalist, and later Paramount executive, Peter Bart explained Evans's attraction this way: "Evans idolized gangsters, but he was fascinated with Jewish gangsters—Bugsy Siegel—not Italian ones."*'46

Bob Evans (born Robert J. Shapera), the son of a successful Harlem dentist, has described a vivid memory of his first glimpse of the man he reverently calls The Myth one blistering-hot Palm Springs afternoon in the early fifties. The occasion was a mixed-doubles tennis match at the Palm Springs Racquet Club, where Evans observed the four players finish their match and walk over to an elegant man "as if they were looking for approval." In his autobiography, Evans described the barely smiling sphinx as a "ruggedly handsome man, at least six foot three," wearing a black silk suit, with a starched white shirt and tie. "He wasn't even perspiring," wrote the infatuated Evans. "In all the years I'd gone to Palm Springs, never had I ever seen anybody dressed this way." When the quintet headed into the clubhouse, Evans inquired of him at the reception desk.

The desk clerk was barely able to utter the name. "S-S-S-S . . . Sidney K-K-K-K . . . Korshak," he stuttered.

"Who is he? What does he do?" asked Evans. But the clerk rushed off without answering, thinking the better of it. Nonetheless, the two soon met and initiated a long friendship.47

A few years later, Korshak assumed his "protector" role for Evans when Sid and Bee dined with Evans at Le Pavilion in New York, which at the time was the finest and most elite French restaurant in the city. Another couple, unknown to Evans, were also in the party, the male half of which "made John Gotti look like a fruit." Evans, nothing if not narcissistic, began flirting with the man's beautiful date, much to Korshak's consternation. The next thing he knew, Evans was being kicked hard in the shins by the Fixer, who then played out a scene with the randy young actor.

"Bobby, you're late," Korshak said, looking at his watch. "The script—you were supposed to pick it up twenty minutes ago."

"What script?" asked an obtuse Evans, who was soon blasted with an even more painful kick under the table. "Then I got the look, the Korshak look," Evans later wrote. "Houdini couldn't have disappeared quicker."

The following morning, Korshak called Evans and let him know how close he had come.

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Robert Evans, actor, 1958 (Photofest)

"Schmuck, if you'd stayed one more minute, you'd have gotten it to the stomach," Korshak informed him. "Not a punch—lead!"

"Who's the guy?" asked Evans.

"It's none of your fuckin' business," Korshak answered. "His broad's got one tough road ahead. Been married a week and the doorman won't even say hello to her—that's how tough the guy is. And you, schmuck, you're coming on to her. Tony was gettin' hot—I could see it. You're lucky your eyes are open." (The epilogue was that after the woman and her tough husband divorced a few years later, no matter where the divorcee relocated—Chicago, Los Angeles, Hawaii—no one had the guts to date her, despite that she was drop-dead gorgeous.)48

This incident was to be the first of many of Korshak's rescues of the reckless Evans over the next thirty-plus years. When Evans's brief acting star began to fade in the late fifties, Korshak tried to resuscitate it by interceding with Columbia chief Harry Cohn to hire Evans. "Are you kidding?" Cohn supposedly said. "The kid's a bum. He never even called me back when he was big."49

"Sidney was like a godfather to him," suggests Jan Amory. "I think he was trying to set him on the straight path. I just don't know, but I think Sidney liked the glamour and the girls at Bobby's, but Sidney was not into any of the drugs or any of that stuff. He would have two whiskeys and that would be it."

Evans relished the vicarious thrill of being in the company of a force such as Korshak. "We were at '21' one night," Evans recounted. "Sidney used to stay at the Carlyle, and he said, 'Let's walk.' He had two hundred thousand-dollar bills in his pocket. I said, "Are you crazy? How can you walk with all that money?" And he said, "Who's gonna take it?"

*Evans likely had a familiarity with the hoodlum element from his experience in the New York clothing business, where his company was somehow allowed to flourish with nonunion workers in a town where that industry was totally controlled by gangster-dominated unions.