Supermob

by Gus Russo

  Bob—I would be ecstatic at the prospect of purchasing Parvin . . . Do you think this could really be accomplished? I just assumed that the critics of monopoly would rule it out.

  If this could be accomplished, I think it would be a ten strike and might change all of my plans.

  Please reply. Most urgent,

  Howard58

  The Hughes purchase never materialized.

  While Sid Korshak anticipated the SEC's inquiry, at least a couple of gratifying occurrences improved both his personal and business life. His youngest son, Stuart, received his BA from Yale, graduating magna cum laude. (In 1975, he would receive his law degree from UC Davis and take a position in the firm of his father's pals Eugene Wyman and Greg Bautzer.) For a time, he and his brother dated Jake Factor's niece, Eileen.

  Sidney's oldest son, Harry, after returning from a Far East stint in the Peace Corps, took up with Virginia Berman, the free-spirited stepdaughter of recently deceased legendary film producer Pando S. Berman* "Harry brought acid back from Indonesia and turned the whole world on—including me," said Virginia. She recalled that the couple's hippie lifestyle did not go over well with the Korshaks, especially Bee. "[Bee spoke] so poorly of her son Harry, and I would think, 'Boy, if she's saying that about her blood, what the hell is she saying about me?' " Virginia, however, passed muster with Sidney, who seemed to appreciate her feisty nature. "Sidney did not scare me or intimidate me, and I think that's why he liked me," Virginia remembered.

  "Also, I was the niece of Sidney Buchman, the blacklisted screenwriter who worked for Harry Cohn, Sidney's great friend. So I was okay.^

  According to Virginia, when the couple married in 1968 and moved into a $275 apartment in "the slums of Beverly Hills," Korshak did his best to improve the living situation. "He had a top decorator come in and decorate it for eighty thousand dollars—wallpaper, chandeliers, but tastefully done," recalled Virginia. "Great apartment; had an upstairs and downstairs." When Harry and Virginia adopted a daughter, Katie, in 1970, Sidney bought them a proper home that had formerly belonged to jazz legend (and fellow Chicagoan) Mel Torme.

  Harry and Virginia divorced after four and a half years, with Virginia taking custody of Katie. Still, the Korshaks continued to support their ex-daughter- in-law and new granddaughter, even persuading Virginia to not move away with a new boyfriend. But everything changed when Virginia suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm in March 1976, two months after her thirtieth birthday, and endured subsequent surgery. After a few years of trying to raise Katie despite her illness, Sid and Bee showed up with "papers," adopting Katie at age twelve and raising her as their own daughter. "I didn't have it in me to fight," said Virginia. "My mother was the one who was fighting." Sadly, as the years progressed, Virginia's contact with her daughter decreased until it faded away altogether.59

  After the June 6, 1969, death of his Associated Booking Company (ABC) partner, Joe Glaser, Korshak assumed control over ABC and thus became the sole user of its office on 9477 Brighton Way in Beverly Hills, an office with an unmarked door, where he tended to the occasional clerical necessities. Korshak was listed as the executor of Glaser's probate, filed in Los Angeles, while the conservator was designated as Mary Oppenheim, then a partner in Sidney and Marshall Korshak's Chicago firm. The attorney for the L.A. estate was Paul Ziffren's attorney, Isaac Pacht. Glaser's probate listed his net worth at $3 million, with numerous investments in companies represented by Sidney, such as Hyatt Hotels and the Parvin-Dohrmann Company. In Glaser's will, Sidney's sons Harry and Stuart received savings bonds valued at $11,000 each.60

  Producer Jerry Tokofsky, who often had to meet with Korshak at the Brighton Way office, recalled that more than musical acts were booked out of Korshak's ABC operation. "Every Friday, a parade of beautiful women would ride the elevator up to ABC's office," Tokofsky said. "Sidney would be slouched behind the desk, where he'd give each woman a packet of money. That embarrassed me, since I knew about two thirds of them." According to Tokofsky, the women weren't singers, but hookers, living on stipends from Korshak*61 Sidney's daughter-in-law Virginia (Harry's wife) also got a glimpse of the girl action when she was dating Korshak's son. "I saw Sidney in the presence of girlfriends of mine, up at my home, bringing out wads and wads of money," Virginia said. "It was in my house; one was an actress who's no longer with us, who used to turn tricks for George Raft. Sidney was getting them work with men—as prostitutes."62

  That summer, Korshak successfully mediated—via the sweetheart deal—strike threats by Las Vegas Teamsters, which comprised front-desk clerks and switchboard operators. As per his custom, Korshak negotiated a deal for the Riviera in which the employees ended up with a substandard contract. The Nevada Resort Association, which represented other hotels, held out and got better terms.63

  On the negative side, two minor nuisances appeared in the form of seminal investigative books by Ovid Demaris and Ed Reid. Demaris's study of Chicago corruption, Captive City, was the first book to call attention, albeit in passing, to the Bazelon-Ziffren-Greenberg real estate partnerships. Reid's Grim Reapers was a state-by-state explication of the hidden partnerships between the organized crime syndicate and the business world. Reid paid particular attention to political corruption in Chicago, California, and Las Vegas, where he named both the owners of record and the secret investors in the casinos. Although the books were met with critical acclaim, they failed to inspire official action, especially in "law and order" President Nixon's Department of Justice, run by Attorney General John Mitchell.

  Whereas Korshak and the Supermob had succeeded in crafting an invulnerable world for themselves, their original underworld facilitators were in the early stages of their endgame. The proverbial "nail in the coffin" was the passage of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, the most important aspect of which was a section entitled Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, crafted largely by one of Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department subordinates, G. Robert Blakey Now the feds would be able to indict not only entire crime organizations by showing a pattern of criminal activity over ten years, but also anyone who could be shown to be involved in said organization. Such associations would not be easy to prove, but at least it was now possible to make war on the "organized" part of organized crime.

  Combined with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, Title III of which sanctioned court-approved wiretaps, RICO would eventually decimate criminal organizations in every major city. (During the next decade, over twenty Mafia bosses were indicted and most were con­victed.) The FBI heard one New York mob boss complain, "Under RICO, no matter who the fuck we are, if we're together, they'll get every fuckin' one of us." Interestingly, the first prosecutor to successfully navigate the intricacies of RICO was an Italian U.S. attorney in New York City named Rudolph Giuliani, who worked tirelessly for years to create the templates for the first RICO convictions.

  Nonetheless, the likes of Korshak, Ziffren, Hart, Bazelon, and the rest were deemed off-limits, despite the mass of FBI data and local intelligence reports such as a recent LAPD memo that noted Detroit mob boss Anthony Giacalone's stay at Korshak's villa at La Costa.

  Throughout the summer of 1969, Sid Korshak began to tire in his role as the go-to man regarding the Acapulco Towers. "You know, the problem here is that all the partners keep calling me," he complained to Phil Levin. "I don't know anything about it. Al Hart is the fellow that is in charge of it, but they all bother me." Korshak then asked Levin if Transnation would be interested in buying the hotel outright if Korshak could convince his L.A. consortium and Moe Morton to sell for their original purchase price. "Fine," said Levin. "It is a million-dollar deal."64

  Korshak was able to convince the partners to sell, and on September 9, 1969, the Acapulco Towers investors signed a contract to release the condo to Levin's G&W spin-off, Transnation, for $1 million. But that was not the only Transnation transaction consummated on September 9. Since the spring of 1969, Chicago Thoroughbred Enterprise (CTE) p
resident Marge Everett had been seeking a buyer for her debt-ridden operation. By coincidence, Chicago native Ed Weisl Sr., the same Gulf & Western counsel who had assisted in the Paramount purchase, was also a director of CTE.65 Soon, Everett was steered to Gulf 's Transnation as a potential buyer. Everett, like her father a staunch anticrime activist, had no idea that her nemesis Sidney Korshak was behind Transnation's Levin, nor was she aware of Levin's own questionable connections. After Levin succeded in hooking Transnation, he spent the summer buying up shares of CTE for himself and his wife, Janice.

  When the Levins stopped buying on September 9, they owned 79,200 shares, or 30 percent of the company, and on September 22, Transnation bought another 42 percent. Transnation also bought huge blocks of Santa Anita, Hialeah, and Hollywood Park racetracks in Southern California. The buying spree continued as Transnation also bought the Madison Square Garden Corporation and, with Korshak's help, obtained a $16 million Teamster loan for the construction of a thousand-room hotel near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Although Gulf officials admitted to the New York Times that they paid Korshak a $150,000 finder's fee, no paper record of it was maintained in their files. (Five years later, Korshak would become the G&W's $50,000-per-year labor consultant, which Bluh­dorn engineered by firing Theodore Kheel, whom columnist Jack Newfield called "the best labor attorney in the city." Soon after Korshak's hiring, G&W's Washington Park and Arlington Park tracks were granted more racing days by the Illinois Racing Board: increased from 50 to 67, and 84 to 109, respectively.66

  Still unaware that Korshak was in the shadows, Marge Everett received $21 million for her stock in CTE and was given a $50,000-per-year job as an executive.

  On September 15, 1969, less than a week after these deals were consummated, a long-overdue profile of Korshak appeared in the Los Angeles Times, entitled SIDNEY KORSHAK: THE MAN WHO MAKES THINGS HAPPEN. In the piece, written by staff writer Paul Steiger, Korshak was portrayed as a shadowy power broker, about whom nothing illegal could be proven, despite his obvious relationships with the Capone gang. Ed Guthman, then national editor of the paper, recently spoke of how the article came about.

  "I had first heard of Korshak when I came to L.A. in 1965," Guthman said in 2004. "It was understood whom he represented, and that when he came into a room, his wishes were carried out. When the Dodgers bought the new stadium, Korshak said, 'This is the way it's going to be'—and it was. He had incredible power. And I don't know any place else where somebody had that kind of power. And I don't know why he had it here, but he sure as hell had it."67

  For his part, Paul Steiger, now the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, became aware of Korshak through his coverage of the ongoing Parvin-stock roller-coaster ride and the SEC investigation. Steiger traveled to Chicago and Washington over four months in his effort to "background" his subject. "The public record on him was enormously slim," Steiger said.68 Guthman summarized the Korshak research, saying, "The reporter [Steiger] never found his name on a public record: no property, no civil suits, no nothing."

  Nonetheless, Steiger soon learned that the private accounts of Korshak were ubiquitous. "I discovered that he was everywhere," he remembered. "When Walter O'Malley had parking problems at Dodger Stadium, there was Korshak to work out a deal with the Teamsters; he was involved with the casinos in Vegas; he was a mob lawyer in Chicago." Then, just as Frank McCulloch had experienced when he dared to surface Korshak's role in the 1962 Dodger Stadium episode, Sidney's good friends weighed in, trying to apply the velvet hammer.

  "I got a call from Gene Wyman," recalled Steiger, "who said, 'I understand that you're doing a story on my good friend Sidney Korshak. I just want you to know that this guy is the subject of a lot of false and malicious rumors—he's really a sweetheart of a guy. Why don't you come over to the Hillcrest Country Club and we'll have lunch and I'll tell you about him?' Here I am a kid reporter who's never been to Hillcrest, and my head was spinning with all these retired stars and power brokers who were there. I said, Td really love to talk to Mr. Korshak.' He said, 'Well, as soon as we get a better sense of what questions you want to ask him—he doesn't really give interviews—I might be able to prevail upon him, depending.' "

  Declining the Hillcrest offer, Steiger soon learned of another Korshak in­terloper: "All of a sudden I become aware of the fact, I think from a senior editor, that Lew Wasserman called Otis [Chandler] and said, 'This brat you have in the business section has been asking slanderous questions about Sidney Korshak. Yeah, there's this history in Chicago, but he's an important guy in the community . . .' and so on. Now, Wasserman calling is pretty heady stuff." The last person to try to instill fear in Steiger was the Dodgers' Walter O'Malley, who literally yelled at the young reporter on the phone, "You don't know what you're dealing with here, kid!"

  Korshak never responded to Steiger's requests for an interview. "I never met or heard from Korshak," Steiger said. West Coast Teamster boss and Korshak associate Andy Anderson remembered how reporters used to ask him to intercede with Sidney. "They'd come to me and say, Andy, we've got some money to give you if you can make a connection for us.' I said, 'You want me to make a connection with Sidney?' 'Yeah.' I said, 'I won't do it. You guys are big boys, you go call him up, and if he wants to be interviewed, he'll tell you.' He would never give an interview to anybody on the L.A. Times or anywhere else."69

  Steiger forged ahead and wrote an article that assiduously avoided outright accusations. "When Paul wrote the story," remembered Guthman, "the lawyers looked at it and the publisher looked at it, and they determined that we didn't really have the stuff to back up what we believed to be the case. I just remember the frustration that they had that there was nothing. Of course, when we did it, he was still alive." Guthman was alluding to the fact that Korshak's FBI files were then unobtainable.

  Steiger actually believed there was much more to the Korshak story, but could not say so in print. In 2004, with Korshak now gone and his FBI file open, Steiger felt free to say what he couldn't write in 1969. "He was a mobbed-up bad guy, involved with La Costa, Vegas—" he concluded in a recent interview. "Sweetheart contracts were wrong. He used the glamour of Hollywood and the panache of his connections to front for some bad people. I have no doubt that he was involved in illegal and criminal-minded stuff in the Parvin case. That case was pretty well made. It's certainly plausible that there was some conning going on, letting his reputation precede him. But he was not averse to going across the line, but how often and to what extent, I don't know."

  Before his story appeared, Steiger considered any number of ways it might be received by Los Angelenos, but afterward, he was shocked by a reaction he could not have anticipated. "I got three calls after the piece ran from people who wanted to know if I could give them his address or phone number because they wanted him to represent them," said a bemused Steiger. "Everybody thought it was an advertisement," Korshak boasted to one associate.

  Steiger's piece left Korshak shaken but not stirred. "Sidney was very upset about the articles over Parvin because the bad publicity had an impact on those investments," said friend and fellow attorney Leo Geffner. "He thought he got a raw deal on that lawsuit, that the SEC was prejudiced because of the L.A. Times article."70 According to one source, Korshak made certain it never happened again.

  Not long after the Steiger profile appeared, Tos Angeles Times matriarch Buff Chandler showed up at the Bistro in her ongoing effort to coax contributions from the well-heeled clientele for her Los Angeles Music Center. According to a companion who accompanied her, when Chandler approached Korshak, he made it known that he did not appreciate the recent expose. "She approached Sidney at the Bistro one day when he was lunching there with [Teamsters president] Frank Fitzsimmons," said the companion. "He took out his checkbook and told her he'd give her $25,000 on the spot on one condition: his name would never appear in the Tos Angeles Times again. Buff agreed, and he handed over the check."71 Unlike his previous attempt to buy anonymity from the paper, th
is time Korshak's payout did the trick; the check was not returned, and the paper never published another article about the Fixer in his lifetime.

  On October 16, 1969, one month after Steiger's article, the SEC issued a press release detailing a multiple-count charge against Coleman, Korshak, et al. The complaint maintained that Coleman had filed false and misleading reports with the SEC and the American Stock Exchange, concealed the true identity of the participants in his takeover group as well as the dates on which some of them had joined the group, and withheld the circumstances surrounding the fact that some were able to buy the shares at a deflated price. In addition, numerous Parvin-Dohrmann press releases were distributed that were false or misleading, with the cumulative effect being to manipulate the price of P-D stock.

  With regard to the insider tips given to Korshak's pals, the SEC added that the defendants sought to "manipulate the market price of shares of Parvin-Dohrmann and then engage in a fraudulent plan to confer a substantial benefit upon certain Parvin-Dohrmann shares in the form of a payment of a cash premium for their Parvin-Dohrmann shares at the same time that the uninformed public shareholders of Parvin-Dohrmann were to receive a stock package of shares of Denny's Restaurants, Inc., worth substantially less."

  As the days progressed, the news got worse for Coleman and Korshak, with baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn simultaneously opening an inquiry into the Parvin stock holdings of team owners Bartholomay and Finley. Lastly, a Parvin-Dohrmann stockholder, Dr. David Gardner of New Mexico, filed suit against Coleman, Korshak, and six other P-D officers, charging them with illegal stock manipulations. Dr. Gardner sought $100 million in damages.72 (Meanwhile, in 1969, Justice Douglas quietly resigned from the Albert Parvin Foundation, explaining that it was "too heavy a work­load" for him.)