JULY 11, 1960
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
5:00 P.M.
The most powerful man in Hollywood is on the phone.
Fifteen miles away, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world is on display for all to see.
The day has been hot, and the City of Angels is wreathed in smog. Now, as evening falls, more than seven thousand Democrats from all across America crowd into the Sports Arena, soon to be the home of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. They are here to select a presidential nominee. Sixteen primary elections have been held in the past four months, with John F. Kennedy winning ten of them. The Massachusetts senator appears to be the front-runner among those vying to gain the nomination.1 Joseph Kennedy, leaving nothing to chance, has stopped in Las Vegas en route to the convention and placed a massive $1 million bet on his son to win the presidency, thus ensuring that the oddsmakers will tout JFK as the favorite.
Ironically, the Kennedy patriarch will not be making an appearance at the convention. His strong anti-Semitic beliefs have made him a political pariah. At such a pivotal moment in the campaign, his son cannot risk the controversy Joe Kennedy’s presence will elicit.
For while John Kennedy may appear to be the front-runner, recent developments are endangering his candidacy. The popular Texas senator Lyndon B. Johnson announced his own run two days ago, as did Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson from Illinois. The winner will be decided over the next two days of argument, debate, and roll calls in Los Angeles.
But before the politicking begins, it is time to entertain the delegates, Hollywood-style.
At 5:00 p.m. the crowd grows quiet as a military color guard brings forth the American flag. Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union just one year ago, so the standard has a unique new look, with fifty stars instead of forty-eight.
In addition to delegates, the crowd is packed with movie stars—among them three members of the Rat Pack. Last night, at a one-hundred-dollar-per-plate gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin entertained a crowd of twenty-eight hundred enthusiastic Kennedy backers. For the closing night of the convention, the three singers have arranged for an all-star chorus consisting of thirty major Hollywood stars to serenade the delegates.2
For the city of Los Angeles, hosting the convention is a bid at seeking world-class legitimacy. L.A. is mostly known for making movies and for whimsical attractions like nearby Disneyland. Indeed, the delegates are treated to backstage tours at the Hollywood studios and have flocked to the Magic Kingdom during their brief stay. Late night parties at watering holes like Chasen’s and Romanoff’s will include icons like Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Gary Cooper, and Lauren Bacall. The connection between Hollywood and Washington that will soon become pivotal to national politics can be said to have begun with the glamour and glitz of the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
To mark the beginning of the proceedings, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin are introduced, along with a dozen other celebrities. Democratic Party leaders hope to dazzle the audience watching on national television with this display of Hollywood wattage. The spectacle backfires temporarily when Davis is booed by pro-segregation southern delegates—because he is openly dating the white actress May Britt.
But Frank Sinatra ends the rancor. He is given a prolonged round of applause as he steps onstage. The house lights are brought all the way down. Then, under a lone spotlight, Sinatra performs “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 3
Thus begins three nights of democracy in action as the deeply divided delegates argue and feud before eventually choosing their candidate. With so few states holding primaries, the majority of voters are free to select whomever they want. And as the delegates battle, John Kennedy stays above the fray, cavorting with Marilyn Monroe and Judith Campbell in an apartment on Rossmore Avenue borrowed from actor Jack Haley. But by July 13, it is done. John Fitzgerald Kennedy wins a majority on the first ballot. In the Hollywood mansion of Marion Davies, where Joseph Kennedy and Frank Sinatra get the news together, the singer jumps up and down, shouting, “We’re going to the White House!”
Thus, the man whose father assured Sam Giancana that the president of the United States would owe him a favor is now just one general vote away from taking up residence in the White House.
Yet, on this historic night, Kennedy is not the most powerful man in Hollywood.
That distinction belongs to a shadowy figure known as the Fixer.
Very few people know the name Sidney Korshak, a.k.a. the Fixer, which is exactly how he wants it.
The tall, immaculately dressed Mafia attorney lives in the wealthy Los Angeles enclave of Bel Air. Korshak is fifty-three years old, a Chicago-born Jew of Lithuanian descent. His FBI case file number is 92-789. He and his wife, Bernice—Bee, to friends—live lavishly. The walls of their newly purchased home on Chalon Road are decorated in original works by Renoir and Chagall. Their wine cellar is stocked with the most expensive vintages. Their exclusive annual Christmas party is attended by the likes of Peter and Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Dinah Shore, Robert Evans, Tony Curtis, and Cubby Broccoli—the producer currently working on his first movie about a British secret agent named James Bond.
Like most homes in Bel Air, the Korshak property is ringed by an impenetrable wall of shrubs and towering trees, offering complete privacy. Unlike other homes in the neighborhood, however, the front door is answered by a security guard armed with a loaded pistol.
Korshak’s garage is filled with a Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Mercedes, and a Cadillac, but he prefers to hire a car and driver when traveling to meetings with top mobsters like Sam Giancana. The actions of Sidney Korshak are veiled in secrecy and are difficult to document, but his success hinges on his uncanny ability of convincing people to do what they don’t want to do.
An example of his influence is the time comedian Alan King attempted to check in to a plush Paris hotel but is turned away by the front desk citing lack of availability. A frustrated King calls Korshak from a lobby pay phone. Before the comedian can even hang up, a clerk is standing outside the phone booth, ready to guide King to a suite.
But more frequent are calls no one knows about, thus Korshak’s reputation as the Fixer. “A nod from Korshak,” Hollywood producer and Korshak protégé Robert Evans will later write, “and the Teamsters change management. A nod from Korshak and Vegas shuts down. A nod from Korshak, and the Dodgers can suddenly play night baseball.”
Six years from now, in 1966, it will be a call from Korshak that will elevate Robert Evans to the position as the chief executive at Paramount Pictures.4
In a city like Hollywood, where fame is the calling card most residents crave, Sidney Korshak shuns the spotlight. He never allows his picture to be taken. As the Outfit’s legal counsel, Korshak not only consorts with mobsters like Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, but also with labor leaders like Ronald Reagan, currently president of the Screen Actors Guild. By controlling unions such as SAG, the Mafia runs Hollywood. It is Korshak, in a conversation with Lew Wasserman, Reagan’s agent, who insists that Reagan seek a second term as SAG president—which he does.
And it is not just the Hollywood labor unions. Korshak has deep ties to Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. In show business there are many who believe that the dapper lawyer is more powerful than the union president. This will be clearly evidenced in October 1961, when Korshak travels to Las Vegas and checks in to the Riviera Hotel during a national conference for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Korshak requests the presidential suite, even though it is currently occupied by Jimmy Hoffa. Within moments, the labor leader’s belongings are moved to smaller accommodations.
The truth is, Korshak’s influence is everywhere. A decade ago, it was the lawyer who presented Senator Estes Kefauver with photographic blackmail—pictures of him with a mistress—thus bringing about an abrupt end to the Kefauver hearings against organized crime. And it is Korshak who knows the names and motivations of Bugsy Siegel’s killers, even as the Los Angeles police struggle to find a single clue.
Organized crime has been a fixture on the Hollywood scene since the early days of cinema. Cedric Belfrage, a British writer who arrived in the 1920s, described the pervasive “gangster element” in the movie world. The Jewish movie moguls of Eastern European birth are like the Sicilian mobsters in many ways, in particular their tight ethnic culture, immigrant origins, and outsider status in America. Traditional banks do not lend money to people like that.
Thus, the studio heads turn to the Mafia. As Sidney Korshak well knows, the film industry needs the Mob for financing. Traditional banks are loathe to make loans to movie studios because the success or failure of a film is never certain and, as stated, they don’t like “the element” in charge.
However, organized crime could not care less about that. It is looking for ways to launder cash accrued illegally, so investing in a motion picture offers an ideal opportunity. In addition, just like in their Las Vegas casinos, the Mob adds to its bottom line by skimming money off a film’s profits. In some instances, actors are not paid their full salary, a brutal yet effective way for the Mob to make even more money. Few actors complain because those who do soon find themselves unable to work.
“Nobody can skim as well as Las Vegas, because they invented it,” director Richard Brooks will comment, “but Hollywood is second.”
New York mobster Henry Hill will one day write of Hollywood: “On the surface, this world seems as far away from the gangster life as you can imagine. But the slime below the surface is sickening. It recently occurred to me that my adventures [in the Mob] prepared me nicely for swimming with the sharks on Wilshire Boulevard.”
Organized crime in Los Angeles began just after the turn of the twentieth century, with an Italian American gang making big money bootlegging alcohol. In time, the gang grew in power, enabling its boss, Tom Dragna, born in Sicily, to secure a spot on the Commission—the national crime syndicate founded by Lucky Luciano in 1931. No other individual west of Chicago was so honored.
But the arrival of Bugsy Siegel in 1937 spawned a rivalry. The Los Angeles crime family was slowly replaced by Siegel and his New York connections. The first Hollywood labor unions were just beginning to organize and Dragna was slow to insert himself. But Siegel managed to do so almost immediately. A Hollywood film is a cooperative effort requiring writers, carpenters, painters, electricians, teamsters, and many more skills specific to motion pictures. Movies do not get made without these artisans. By controlling the unions as well as providing movie funding, the Mafia effectively runs Hollywood.
In fact, big stars like Debbie Reynolds, Dinah Shore, and Jill St. John are just a few of the many celebrities benefiting—at least indirectly—from the power of organized crime. Kirk Douglas is among Sidney Korshak’s closest celebrity friends, a list that also includes Warren Beatty, Jack Benny, Cyd Charisse, David Janssen, and Vincente Minnelli. It pays to be a friend of the Fixer: when Frank Sinatra’s acting career appeared to be over in the early 1950s, it was a phone call to Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn that secured him the supporting role in From Here to Eternity that won Sinatra an Oscar. Likewise, when Korshak entered into a sexual affair with Ms. St. John, he convinced the actress to buy shares in a Las Vegas casino operation. This meant that when making the film Diamonds Are Forever, she will actually be part owner of the casino where the movie is being filmed. Korshak’s insider information eventually makes the actress very wealthy when the Parvin-Dohrmann casino group is purchased by the Stardust Hotel.
No group benefits more than the Mafia when union membership in Los Angeles leaps from 20,000 in 1936 to 125,000 in 1938. Actor George Raft, who is very often cast as a mobster, is one of Bugsy Siegel’s best friends and helps the newcomer navigate the world of Hollywood politics.5 Though the territory still technically belongs to Tom Dragna and his L.A. crime family, Siegel slowly assumes control.
After Siegel is murdered in Beverly Hills, a man named Mickey Cohen seizes power, but he is sent to prison in 1951 for tax evasion. Dragna, in turn, dies of a heart attack in 1956.
The demise of Tom Dragna and Mickey Cohen presents an opening for the Chicago Mob. The Outfit is represented by Johnny Roselli, taking orders from Sam Giancana. And while Giancana has been head of the Chicago Mob since 1957, he prefers the sizzle of Hollywood to life in the Windy City and spends a great deal of his time consorting with movie stars and his singer girlfriend, Phyllis McGuire of the famous McGuire Sisters. Roselli and Giancana are both enamored with celebrity nightlife, preferring to let someone else manage day-to-day business arrangements.
That someone is Sidney Korshak.
There is nothing the Mob boss does not control in Hollywood—craft unions, casting, talent agencies, and even studio heads. Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn, a longtime associate of Roselli, borrowed half a million dollars from the Mob to obtain control of the studio. The deal was structured in a way that the Mob secretly retained one-third ownership. Roselli and Cohn were such good friends that they wore the similar pinky rings as a sign of brotherhood. Upon Cohn’s death in 1958, Sidney Korshak was appointed legal adviser to the mogul’s estate.6
“It was well known in the industry,” FBI agent Mike Wacks will later recall to journalists, “that if you were going to make a movie, the talk around the town was that you’d have to use the Teamsters. 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 proven that.”
In fact, Korshak’s name has come up in more than twenty investigations of organized crime, yet he has never been indicted. This is a credit to his discretion. When other Mafiosi gathered in New York for the Apalachin Summit, Korshak thought it too public a gathering and stayed away. When the FBI succeeded in bugging the Outfit’s Chicago headquarters, Korshak’s voice is never heard on tape because he refuses to go there. In fact, Korshak is so cautious about security that he will never use a telephone he believes might be tapped. On one occasion, federal agents watch in amazement as he enters a phone booth carrying a large bag filled with loose change to make a number of calls. To frustrate law enforcement officials even further, Korshak does not use credit cards, often carrying as much as $50,000 on his person in large bills.
On occasion, however, investigators are successful in peeling back the layers behind Korshak’s activities. During a federal extortion trial concerning Mafia involvement in the motion picture industry and organized labor, union official Willie Bioff testifies that he was told by the Chicago Mob that “Sidney is our man, and [we] want you to do what he tells you. He is not just another lawyer, but knows our gang and figures our best interest. Pay attention to him, and remember, any message he may deliver to you is a message from us.”
In the recording of one FBI wiretap, federal agents overhear members of the Chicago Mob giving directions to mobster Leslie “Killer Kane” Kruse: “never personally contact Sidney Korshak, hoodlum attorney.”
Which points to the very reason Sidney Korshak remains a free man, even as other Mafiosi are being sent to the penitentiary: he protects himself. The Justice Department will refer to the attorney as “the most significant link in the relationship between the crime syndicate, politics, labor, and management.”
In time, Korshak’s client list will expand to include Hilton and Hyatt Hotels, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Madison Square Garden Corporation in New York, owner of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers hockey team.
Yet lower-level mobsters are forbidden from even speaking to him. “Sidney was up on a plateau we never really got to,” one law enforcement officer will later remember. “It never came down to our level; we never ran across him. We never saw Sidney meeting with the guys … Sidney was always meeting with lawyers, with legitimate people.”
This is how the secretive Sidney Korshak runs Hollywood.
Desi Arnaz does not take Korshak’s call, much to his peril.
The Cuban-born star of the sitcom I Love Lucy is one of the biggest names in television—so famous and powerful that he fears no one in Hollywood. In addition to taping his own show with his wife, the comedienne Lucille Ball, he now produces several other television programs. Among them is a crime drama called The Untouchables. Based on a true figure—Treasury agent Eliot Ness, played by Robert Stack—the production follows fictitious Prohibition battles in Chicago. The law enforcement group headed by Ness is made up almost entirely of white males, with the agent known as Rico the only individual with obvious ethnic Italian heritage. Ironically, this agent is played by an actor of Greek ancestry.
The bad guys in the show are almost all Italian American. In addition, the actor portraying Al Capone, Neville Brand, acts like a vicious psychopath. This not only enrages Capone’s widow, Mae, but also makes Sam Giancana very angry. Coincidentally, Desi Arnaz was once a good friend of Sonny Capone, the gangster’s only son. The Capone family believes they were instrumental in helping the Arnaz family flee Cuba in 1933 and are wounded by the depiction of their late father.
The pressure begins. In New York, union leader Tony Anastasia, brother of the assassinated Albert, orders longshoremen not to unload crates of cigarettes manufactured by Liggett & Myers, a sponsor of the program.
In Hollywood, Frank Sinatra moves his production company off the lot at Desilu-Gower Studios, owned by Arnaz. “What do you want me to do?” Arnaz screams at a furious Sinatra, “make them all Jews?” The two men nearly come to blows when Arnaz calls Sinatra “a television failure.” But the singer knows better than to punch him. Through the many highs and lows in his career, Sinatra has learned that challenging power is not a recipe for success.
In Chicago, the pressure also builds. Sam Giancana actually orders Desi Arnaz killed! Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno, just released after six years in San Quentin, is assigned the job.
“Have you seen that TV show, The Untouchables?” asks Johnny Roselli when he sits down with Fratianno to discuss the situation.
“I don’t have time to watch that shit,” replies the Weasel.
“Let me tell you something, Jimmy. Millions of people all over the world see this show every fucking week. It’s even popular in Italy. And what they see is a bunch of Italian lunatics running around with machine guns, slopping up spaghetti like a bunch of fucking pigs.”
“Nobody pays attention to that shit,” Fratianno says. “It’s like a comic book. A joke. Who cares?”
Roselli responds immediately: “I’ll tell you, Jimmy: Sam cares … what I’m about to tell you has been decided by our family. The top guys have voted a hit … we’re going to clip Desi Arnaz, the producer of this show.” 7
A stunned Fratianno knows he must follow orders. But he is wary of the publicity surrounding the murder of a celebrity. The police investigation is sure to be intense. A return to the penitentiary is the last thing he wants right now.
So Fratianno stalls, hoping that Sam Giancana might somehow have a change of heart and call off the hit.
Meanwhile, unaware that his life is in danger, Desi Arnaz begins to realize that The Untouchables is losing money. Sponsors are backing out, refusing to purchase commercial time. Hollywood unions are also threatening to not allow their members to work on The Untouchables, which would shut down production entirely. These setbacks are carefully orchestrated by Sidney Korshak.
So in an act that will save his life, a desperate Arnaz schedules a meeting with Johnny Roselli and Frank Sinatra. The three gather in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“This is getting crazy,” Arnaz begins. “What do you want me to do? How can I make this work for you?”
“Stop every week with these terrible Italian mobsters,” says Roselli. “It’s an insult to the good Italian people.”
“Okay, we’ll change all the names,” Arnaz replies. “We’ll call them Smith and Jones from now on.”
“And while you’re at it, make one of the good guys an Italian,” Roselli responds.
“I already got an Italian Untouchable. His name’s Rico,” Arnaz tells the mobster.
But Roselli is ahead of him. “Not so fast. That actor’s Greek. You got to get an Italian actor.”
“Who do you want me to put in?”
“Well, let me think a minute,” Roselli responds. “There’s a pal of mine … he’d be great in there.”8
Arnaz complies. Roselli’s friend is cast. The hit is called off. And while members of the Mafia will recount the details of the ordered murder for years to come, Desi Arnaz will never know how close he came to death.
The Democratic National Convention ends with John F. Kennedy in triumph. Hollywood and Sidney Korshak return to business as usual. But, in Illinois, Sam Giancana gets set to enter a different business—politics. The mobster throws his support—and power—behind the Kennedy campaign.
That will alter history.