by Gus Russo
Playboy agreed to pay Berger $5,000 to represent them to the New York authorities, and when his fee did not arrive promptly, Berger, according to his later testimony, called Marshall Korshak, who made it happen. Epstein arranged for Hefner and Lownes to meet with him at the SLA office in New York. When they arrived at the building, they saw a protester outside with a placard that read THE STATE LIQUOR AUTHORITY IS CROOKED AND CORRUPT. Lownes later said, "By the time we came out, I felt like joining him." At the meeting, SLA chairman Epstein asked for $50,000 for the license. And there was more: in subsequent meetings, Playboy was informed that the New York Republican state chairman and aide to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, L. Judson Morhouse, wanted $100,000 plus the lucrative concessions in all the Playboy clubs' gift shops in exchange for his help.
After protracted negotiations throughout the fall of 1961, Epstein eventually settled for $25,000, and Morhouse, $18,000. When the officials were finally placated, the precious certificate arrived just hours before the December 8 opening. However, the fix became unraveled during a grand jury proceeding looking into corruption at the SLA. Eventually, Berger was charged with conspiracy to bribe Epstein and received one year in prison. Epstein was considered too old (seventy-five) and infirm to be charged. Morhouse was also convicted but saw his prison sentence commuted due to his poor health. No one at Playboy was charged; neither were the Korshaks, despite their being named in the testimony.16
The FBI summarized, "If Berger was able to exert any influence with certain members of the State Liquor Authority [SLA] . . . he undoubtedly would do so as a representative of the Korshaks and not in his own right. It was believed that any conniving Berger might do with the New York SLA or with the Illinois State Liquor Control Board would be done on behalf of and under the instructions of the Korshak brothers."17
Despite the embarrassment, Hefner was obviously satisfied with the performance of Sid Korshak; years later, Hefner would again engage the services of Korshak, who, for a $50,000 fee, attempted in vain to settle a film copyright case with Universal Studios, which was run by his old friend Lew Wasserman.
Success followed success for Korshak. Typically, his triumphs were unknown to the public at large, who were nonetheless affected by them in ways large and small. In Los Angeles, he staved off labor strikes at area racetracks, where the Teamster-dominated culinary workers could bring an operation to its knees. When Hollywood Park Racetrack was hit with a work stoppage by the Pari-Mutuel Clerk Union in 1960, Korshak's Hillcrest friend and Hollywood Park Racing Association president Mervyn LeRoy enlisted Korshak to address the stalemate that twenty-eight previous lawyers couldn't resolve. Betsy Duncan Hammes, one of Johnny Rosselli's lady friends, recently recalled how it occurred: "Mervyn LeRoy called me and asked me to call Sidney and ask him to call the Hollywood Park strike off," said Hammes. "So I called Sid, and he said, 'Don't worry, you can go on Monday' "18 As promised, the Fixer settled it in forty-eight hours, somehow convincing the strikers to accept another sweetheart contract. In December 1960, Korshak settled his first labor dispute for Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, when employees threatened a walkout. According to an FBI source, Korshak received "interest in the racetrack" as his fee.19
One Korshak power play with Chicago racetrack labor would have repercussions over the next two decades. By 1960, Ben Lindheimer was the acknowledged sachem of Chicago-area racing, owning the two thoroughbred tracks Arlington Park and Washington Park under the banner of Chicago Thoroughbred Enterprises (CTE). Lindheimer was a well-known reformer and outspoken opponent of the Chicago Outfit's attempts to infiltrate his operation. Exacerbating the bad blood was the fact that Lindheimer was an assimilated German Jew with an inbred dislike of Russians like Korshak. Nonetheless, he could do little about the mob-connected unions that plied their trades in the parking lots and elsewhere (or the fact that Jake Arvey owned six thousand shares of stock in Arlington),20 but he drew the line at allowing convicted hoods onto the racing grounds; one of Sid Korshak's Outfit mentors, Jake Guzik, was barred for life from Lindheimer's CTE tracks.
However, on Sunday morning, June 5,1960, when the Korshak-represented mutuel clerks threatened a strike at Washington Park, an extremely ill Lindheimer was forced to deal with the devil: he immediately called Korshak to ask that he avert the work action. But this time Korshak took the union's side against the antimob track owner and allowed them to walk off the job. That same night, Ben Lindheimer died of a heart attack. His stepdaughter Marge Lindheimer Everett, who inherited her stepfather's empire, blamed Korshak for her father's death and fired him after she took over. "We'd never had a strike before, never," Everett later said. "I think it killed him."21 After later moving to Beverly Hills (a move believed to be influenced by the similar relocation of her great childhood friend, Nancy Davis Reagan), Marge Everett told the Bistro's Kurt Niklas about what she believed Korshak had done: "He killed my father by refusing to call off the strike. All Korshak had to do was pick up the telephone, but he didn't. As far as I'm concerned, it was the same as murder."22 It would be the beginning of a lifelong feud between Marge Everett and Sid Korshak.23
Another sports venue became part of Korshak lore when he made certain that an important new L.A. sports franchise got off to a smooth start. Soon after his election, Governor Pat Brown, Korshak's pal in the statehouse, pledged to sell thirty-six acres in L.A.'s Chavez Ravine tract to the city in furtherance of the plans of Walter O'Malley, who had just relocated his Brooklyn Dodgers to the West Coast. O'Malley was determined to build his dream baseball stadium, and that enterprise hung on the upcoming referendum known as Prop B. Just prior to the vote, on June 1, 1958, the Dodgers aired a live, five-hour "Dodgerthon" from the airport as the Dodger team plane arrived from the East. Helping O'Malley extol the virtues of Prop B were numerous celebrity associates of Korshak/Ziffren/Brown, including Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Ronald Reagan, and Debbie Reynolds. Two days later, the referendum narrowly passed (351,683-325,898) and was immediately appealed (all the way up to the Supreme Court) on the grounds that the city's granting of the land use did not follow a "public purpose" clause in the federal government sale to the city. When the high court finally dismissed the appeal on October 19, 1959, the state began evicting squatters who lived in the ravine, and ground was broken for Dodger Stadium.24
By the time of the April 10, 1962, opening day, O'Malley had, not surprisingly, engaged Sid Korshak as his $100,000-per-year labor consultant, responsible for keeping the cars parked, the lights on, and the food service employees behind the concession stands. When it came to parking, Korshak had a special influence, as that concession was awarded to a Nevada corporation, Concessionaire Affiliated Parking Inc., of which Korshak was a 12l/i percent owner with Beldon Katleman, owner of Las Vegas' El Rancho Vegas Casino.25 Affiliated, which had contracts at Dulles Airport outside Washington and the Seattle World's Fair, had been given the contract when O'Malley was threatened with an opening-day strike by the first company he had hired. With Affiliated, O'Malley was able to cut a typical Korshak sweetheart contract, wherein the parking-lot attendants received one third of what the original workers had demanded.
O'Malley explained that he hired Korshak to resolve the strike threat since it was not good business to open a stadium without the proper workers and he thought it was the right thing to do to settle it quickly. O'Malley told Sy Hersh in 1976, "We did what any ordinary businessman would do. [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." 26 After Korshak and Katleman were awarded the contract, they celebrated with a quick tour of Europe, according to the FBI.27 (Five years later, when the new baseball players union met with team owners at Chicago's Drake Hotel, O'Malley held a private meeting with his fellow owners, in which he trumpeted a man who could counsel them on how to deal with the upstart players union. With that, O'Malley left the meeting an
d returned with Korshak, who had been waiting outside. For the next four hours, Korshak advised the owners on how to deal with the union. Korshak went on to become good friends with Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who lunched with him at the Bistro.)28
Upon his return from Europe, Korshak negotiated a quick deal that would pay huge dividends. According to court documents, Joe Glaser, owner of Associated Booking Company (ABC), then the nation's third-largest theatrical agency, assigned all of the "voting rights, dominion and control" of his majority stock in the concern to Korshak and himself. The agreement meant that Korshak, who through the 1960s had seemed merely to be the agency's legal counsel, would assume complete control over the company upon Mr. Glaser's death.29
Since the thirties and forties, ABC had specialized in representing important black musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Under Korshak's regime, ABC would add Creedence Clearwater Revival and Barbra Streisand to its talent roster. Freddie Bell was one of the longest-running ABC acts, coming to Vegas from Philly in 1954. Bell carved out a legendary career with his lounge band, The Bellboys, opening for Don Rickles for ten years, and writing the revised lyrics to the song "Hound Dog," which Elvis Presley heard in Vegas and used for his hit recording.
"I was the token white guy with ABC, with them for nineteen years," Bell recently recalled. "When Joe died in 1969,1 left." Bell has distinct memories of both Korshak and Glaser: "Sid and Joe were very close—they built the La Concha Motel next to the Riviera. But I thought Sid was the power behind the throne, mostly involved in the money end. Joe was a loud-talking tough guy from Chicago, and Sid was just the opposite. It's hard to talk about Sidney because he was so quiet. Nobody really knew the man."30
Korshak's association with ABC was also advantageous for his Chicago mob patrons, who used it to acquire talent, not only for their Vegas holdings, but also for events on their home turf. In the late fall of 1962, when Sam Giancana held a monthlong gambling party—actually a skim operation—at his suburban Villa Venice Restaurant, he called on Korshak to supply some of the talent. Giancana asked Korshak to pressure Moe Dalitz at the Desert Inn to release Debbie Reynold's husband, singer Eddie Fisher, to him for the stint. As usual, Korshak's intercession with Dalitz was successful, and Fisher joined Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Jimmy Durante for the November-December gig.31 However, as seen with the Dinah Shore faux pas, Curly Humphreys, as heard by the eavesdropping feds, once again called Korshak to put him in his place.
"Anything you want to do for yourself, Sidney, is okay," Humphreys dictated, "but we made you and we want you to take care of us first. When Chicago calls, we come first." (The FBI noted that Korshak attended Reynolds's opening at the mob's Riviera in January 1963.) Years later, boss Accardo told Vegas functionary Tony Spilotro, "Korshak sometimes forgets who he works for, who brought him up."32
Sidney Korshak — DoubIe Agent
What Humphreys and Accardo may have suspected, but could not know for sure, was that Korshak was playing a most dangerous game in his efforts to assure his own legal immunity. According to a recently released FBI document, it is now clear that Korshak had been having secret meetings with Clark County (Las Vegas) sheriff Ralph Lamb, to whom he was feeding a measured dose of intelligence on his Chicago bosses, with the knowledge that Lamb would, in turn, act as conduit to the FBI. A 1962 Las Vegas FBI Field Office memo stated, "[Sheriff Lamb] furnished the following information which should not be disseminated outside the Bureau nor should any indication be given to anyone outside the Bureau that Sidney Korshak has been talking to Sheriff Lamb, inasmuch as he furnished the information on a very confidential basis." In one report, describing a Lamb-Korshak conversation at the Riviera on July 22, 1962, Korshak advised Lamb that a recent letter regarding Sam Giancana's movements in Las Vegas, which Lamb's office had sent to the Chicago Police Department, had made its way immediately into the hands of Giancana—Korshak knew because Giancana had showed it to him. Korshak warned Lamb not to trust the Chicago PD. Korshak also tipped to Lamb that Moe Dalitz was building a home in Acapulco, Mexico. The memo went on to say:
Korshak was interested in the overall gambling situation as it pertains to Nevada and would like to prevent any individuals of hoodlum status from gaining a foothold in Las Vegas, and would probably like to see those already established be forced to leave Nevada.
Lamb stated that at no time in his contacts with Korshak has Korshak endeavored to obtain any favors from him or obtain any information regarding Sheriff's Office activities from him. Sheriff Lamb was also of the impression that Korshak possibly furnished him this information so that it could be furnished to the FBI, since on his last contact with Korshak, Korshak had inquired of Lamb as to his association with the FBI in Las Vegas. Sheriff Lamb told Korshak on that occasion that he worked closely with the FBI and that the FBI could have any information in possession of the Sheriff 's office, or any assistance whatsoever. Korshak again told Lamb that he felt that the cooperation between the Sheriff's Office and the FBI was the way law enforcement should be handled . . . Korshak classified [DELETED] as a "punk" and told Lamb that he should not tolerate any type of interference from ["Peanuts"] Danolfo or anyone connected with the Strip hotels.33
Apparently, the Lamb-Korshak relationship continued for years. Five years later, when Lamb barred Rosselli from Vegas for all but one day per month, Korshak told a friend that he could "square it with Lamb," but chose not to bother.34 In actuality, Rosselli was himself becoming increasingly skeptical of Sidney Korshak's true loyalties.
The Korshak-Lamb connection was not the only evidence of a Korshak relationship with the Bureau. Eli Schulman, owner of Eli's Steakhouse, one of Korshak's favorite Chicago eateries, once told a mutual friend that Korshak had secretly ratted out L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen, who had also been friends with Guzik in Chicago and Dalitz in Cleveland, to the FBI in 1951.35 "Mickey was becoming an all-around pain in the ass, setting up crap games [in L.A.] just to rob the players," said a Schulman friend, who asked not to be named. Cohen spent the next four years at the federal prison on McNeil Island.*
The Italians think of Korshak as a sort of god and expect him to work miracles, and someday when he fails them, there is going to be a real problem.
FBI INFORMANT36
According to an FBI informant planted inside the Outfit, Korshak's private dance with the feds was not the only action that threatened his relationship with the Outfit. In a telephone interview, the source told his FBI contact that Korshak "set up a racetrack and Korshak took $250,000 that was not his and was caught. As a result of this, a contract to kill Korshak went out, but Korshak was able to stop it and consequently paid back the money. Because of this Korshak always carries a gun and it would appear that he is somewhat apprehensive of the Chicago hoodlums."37 Still another informant added, "Sidney Korshak has turned out to be a rat and has broken away from LCN (La Cosa Nostra) influence."38
Korshak's closeness to Accardo may likely have been his salvation, but even Accardo, who was known to bludgeon victims to death with baseball bats, had finite patience when it came to traitors. All things considered, the foregoing Korshak covert activities may better explain the intense security at Korshak's Bel-Air manse.
At the time of the Walter O'Malley affair, the senior staff of the TosAngelesTimes was finally becoming interested in Sid Korshak and the influx of curious Midwesterners to their city. In the early sixties, the Times boasted a tough-as-nails investigative unit housed in the paper's city desk and run by managing editor and ex-marine Frank McCulloch, who had recently come to the paper from his post as Time magazine's L.A. Bureau chief. McCulloch, one of the greatest journalists of the twentieth century, was often referred to as "a journalist's journalist," and author David Halberstam called him "a legend."39
Until this time, the paper's philosophy had been dictated by its founder, Norman Chandler, with an assist from his wife, Buff. "It was an instrument of the Republican Party, and an acknowledged one," McCulloc
h said recently. "The City Hall reporter at that time was a Republican lobbyist. That's how bad it was. Norman and Buffy paid very little attention to the newspaper as a totality. Norman published it, but he saw it as a business enterprise." 40 It was also well-known that Chandler had reached a beneficial arrangement with labor fixer Sidney Korshak. Journalist and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Knut Royce, who would later investigate both Korshak and the Pritzkers, recently said of the Chandler-Korshak connection, "Sid kept unions out of the L.A. Times for Norman Chandler."41
However, after the Chandlers' son Otis took over, he made a bold move toward serious journalism, hiring McCulloch to forge a team of serious reporters. Unquestionably, the unit's crack reporters were Gene Blake and Jack Tobin. In 1961, Blake had written a searing five-part expose of the redbaiting John Birch Society. The controversial series cost the paper advertisers and over fifteen thousand subscribers. Tobin, another ex-marine, had earned his stripes as the country's leading investigative sports journalist. "Tobin and Blake were a great team," McCulloch remembered. "Jack was a sports reporter first. I used to use him as a stringer when I was at Time-Life. He was very quiet. The best records man I've ever known. I became real impressed with him." Ed Guthman, former investigative reporter, press secretary to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and later national editor of the Los Angeles Times, has a similar opinion of Tobin. "Jack Tobin was a great investigative reporter—great with records," said Guthman. "The police and the FBI used to go to him for help."42
