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Supermob

Page 51

by Gus Russo


  A defiant Korshak appeared for the appointed court show-up empty-handed, again invoking the Fifth. Korshak's attorney, Harvey Silets, contended that the records might incriminate his client, and that the IRS actually wanted the records not for a civil IRS case, but for a possible criminal probe.22 IRS attorney Michael Sheehy told the court that Korshak had admitted the same to him, but that he was most concerned that the records might be used in a criminal case against his brother.23

  In August 1973, six months after the IRS probe began, it ended suddenly when word came down from Washington that the agency had in fact been pursuing a criminal investigation, which allowed Korshak to invoke the Fifth and to refuse to deliver his records unless he was charged with a crime.24 The matter of Sidney's taxes was litigated over the next year and was settled just before the case went to trial in 1974, with the IRS dropping all the fraud charges against Korshak and agreeing to allow him to pay only $179,244, 20 percent of the initial demand.

  Interestingly, the period was marked by tax problems not only for the Korshaks, but also for Al Capone's former personal attorney Abraham Teit­elbaum, the man who'd introduced Sidney to the world of organized crime legal representation and mentored him in the labor-negotiating game. In the years since his recruitment of Korshak, Teitelbaum's star had risen and fallen precipitously. After Capone, Teitelbaum drew a suspicious $125,000per-year salary from the Outfit-controlled Chicago Restaurant Association, represented bosses like Joey "Doves" Aiuppa, and repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the McClellan Committee. In the sixties, the IRS hit Teitelbaum with a bill for over half a million in back taxes, forcing him into bankruptcy, and a divorce from his wife.

  In December 1972, Teitelbaum was convicted for real estate fraud and sent to serve a one-to-ten-year sentence at California's State Prison in Chino.

  In desperation, according to a close family friend, Teitelbaum had him make a call to the protege he had advised for three decades, Sidney Korshak, hoping he would come see Teitelbaum and employ his famous talents as the Fixer and make the conviction just go away. He located his high-flying re-cruitee, then living in Chalon Road luxury, and made his request. However, the voice on the other end of the phone was cold and dismissive.

  "I won't go anywhere near that place," Korshak said. "I wouldn't go visit him. I won't help him, and as far as I'm concerned, his days are over. I don't want anything to do with Abe Teitelbaum."25

  It is not known what turned Korshak against Teitelbaum, although it might be assumed that he was still bristling over Teitelbaum's $50,000 fee in Vegas in 1964. Also, Teitelbaum had famously had a falling-out with Kor­shak's great friend Chicago boss Tony Accardo, in 1953, prompting two Ac­cardo enforcers to threaten to push Teitelbaum out of his office window.26 After his brief prison stint, Teitelbaum stayed in California, where he lived in the $2.50-per-night Burton Way Hotel, sharing a kitchen with twenty other forlorn men. Teitelbaum died in 1980. 27

  Making Movies with Charlie , Bobby, Cubby — and Sidney

  The advent of 1971 saw Sid Korshak navigating the safer waters of his labor consultancy forte. At the time, Paramount's production chief, Robert Evans, was attempting to package a film project based on Mario Puzo's wildly successful novel The Godfather, for which Evans owned the movie rights. Three years earlier, as Evans tells it, he gave Puzo $12,500 to pay off gambling debts in exchange for a then unpublished 150-page manuscript entitled TheMafia. When Puzo's retitled book The Godfather took off, Paramount began assembling the film version in earnest. Flowever, the director, Cop­pola, was part of the new breed of film auteurs who were keen on creating paradigms at odds with executives such as Bob Evans, who were tied to the old traditions. As "New Hollywood" chronicler Peter Biskind aptly put it, "The casting of The Godfather was a battle between the Old Hollywood approach of Evans and the new Hollywood ideas of Coppola."28

  When considering the key role of Mafia scion Michael Corleone, Cop­pola's first choice was a young Bobby De Niro, who tested beautifully, but was considered too much of an unknown by the suits. The director's second choice was a diminutive young New York actor named Al Pacino, but this selection was also greeted with disapprobation, especially by Evans, who referred to Pacino as "that little dwarf." Like De Niro, Pacino tested well for the part, but Evans wouldn't accept him; Evans wanted the film to be anchored by a studio stalwart such as Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson. However, when Coppola went on a European vacation, Pacino's ThePanic in Needle Park opened and immediately convinced Evans that Cop­pola was right about the young thespian. But by the time Evans warmed up to Pacino, the actor had already signed with MGM to film The GangThat Couldn't Shoot Straight.29 And MGM's new owner, a Bluhdorn-like wheeler-dealer named Kirk Kerkorian, was not about to sell him to the competition.

  The Avis of Vegas

  Kerkor "Kirk" Kerkorian was born on June 6, 1917, in Fresno, California, the son of an Armenian grocer. Like Howard Hughes, Kerkorian became enamored of aviation, creating a charter flight service that carried gamblers like himself to Las Vegas. A stock swap with the Studebaker car company was the initial link in a chain of events that included Kerkorian's buying back the company and taking it public. The business would develop into Trans International Airlines (TIA), the object of Kerkorian's first great financial triumph. A former high-stakes gambler (said to have bet $50,000 at a craps table in one night), Kerkorian also shared Hughes's reputation as a womanizer, later being linked with actresses Priscilla Presley and Yvette Mimieux before his divorce from his second wife, Jean, and with Cary Grant's widow, Barbara, in the years since.

  Much like Wasserman, Kerkorian was more interested in power accumulation than the actual business itself. As Richard Lacayo wrote in Time, "For him it has always been the deal, not the business . . . Deal making seems to satisfy the gambler in Kerkorian, a man more at home in Las Vegas than in Hollywood."

  Kerkorian, however, was not without his own associations with underworld denizens, especially after a 1961 New York wiretap implied that he was making payments to the mob. A 1970 investigation in New York State revealed the nine-year-old recording of Kerkorian promising to send a $21,300 check to Charlie "the Blade" Tourine—a known enforcer for the Genovese crime family. When Tourine called Kerkorian, he used the code phrase "George Raft is calling." On this occasion, Kerkorian told Tourine that he (Kerkorian) would write a check to himself, endorse it, and have it sent to "George Raft" at New York's Warwick Hotel. Kerkorian said he did the payment this way so as to avoid Tourine's endorsement signature on the back, since, as Kerkorian said, "The heat was on."30

  The same year that The Godfather went into production (1971), New York businessman Harold Roth testified before the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Crime that Tourine had introduced Kerkorian to Roth twelve years earlier, with Tourine calling Kerkorian "a very good friend of mine." At the time, Tourine was hoping to have Roth help finance Kerkorian's purchase of an $8 million DC-8 jet. Kerkorian later told a friend that he indeed knew Tourine, whom he referred to as Charlie White. Kerko­rian explained that he was simply paying a gambling debt and was not involved in organized crime. A 1971 Forbes interview, in which Kerkorian asserted his innocence, was his last press interview to date.

  In 1969, Kerkorian sold his TIA stock for more than $100 million and, as per his custom, reinvested the profit right into his next brainstorm—Las Vegas. Thanks to the same Corporate Gaming Act of 1969 that gave other publicly traded companies a Vegas foothold, Kerkorian announced that he would be opening what was then the largest hotel in the world (1,512 rooms), the International (now the Las Vegas Hilton), on Paradise Road. Kerkorian had already purchased the Flamingo in 1967 as a training ground for the new colossus, from a group that included Meyer Lansky. At the same time, Kerko­rian asked Korshak pal Greg Bautzer to call MGM to discuss a possible sale of the studio. In this ore-Godfather, preblockbuster era, big studios were in decline. Some say Easy Rider, which was shot for $300,000 and grossed $30 million, started the trend toward less
expensive "youth market" movies. Kerkorian believed it to be a cycle that would reverse, and the time was right to buy cheap. A year later, Hughes asked Bautzer to do the same for him.

  The International was less than a spectacular success, and mounting debts forced Kerkorian to sell controlling interest to Hilton Hotels with the proviso he would not build a competing hotel in Las Vegas. All the while, Kerkorian was buying huge blocks of stock in troubled MGM, and by 1971 he had succeeded where Korshak partner Phil Levin had failed and now controlled MGM. And he had one more big announcement: he would—again—build the world's largest resort hotel (2,084 rooms), again on Paradise Road in Las Vegas. This time, he would have to do it behind the corporate veil of MGM in order to comply with his Hilton contract.

  Kerkorian thought to use the association with the MGM film GrandHotel to construct the new hotel, which assumed the name The MGM Grand. Kerkorian purchased the land from Realty Holdings, which was controlled by Merv Adelson, Irwin Molasky, and Korshak's great friend Moe Dalitz. "I don't see anything wrong with buying a piece of vacant property from these people," Kerkorian said. "What's wrong with Moe?"31

  Such was the setting when Paramount asked MGM to sell its Pacino contract to them, allowing the actor to become "Michael Corleone." Evans first called MGM's president, Jim Aubrey, who had been introduced to owner Kerkorian by the ever-present Greg Bautzer. "With the emotion of an IRS in­vestigator," Evans wrote in his autobiography, "he turned me down." The way Bob Evans saw it, he had no choice but to call his consigliere, Sidney Korshak.32

  As recounted in his memoir, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Evans, who was in New York at the time, placed a call to Korshak at his New York "office" "I need your help." in the Carlyle Hotel.

  "Yeah?"

  "There's an actor I want for the lead in The Godfather."

  "Yeah?"

  "I can't get him."

  "Yeah?"

  "If I lose him, Coppola's gonna have my ass."

  "Yeah?"

  Evans advised Korshak of his out-of-hand rejection by MGM's Aubrey, a revelation that elicited a nonstop recitation of "Yeah"s from Korshak.

  "Is there anything you can do about it?"

  "Yeah."

  "Really?"

  "The actor, what's his name?"

  "Pacino . . . Al Pacino."

  "Who?"

  "Al Pacino."

  "Hold it, will ya? Let me get a pencil. Spell it."

  "Capital A, little /—that's his first name. Capital F, little a, c-i-n-o"

  "Who the fuck is he?"

  "Don't rub it in, will ya, Sidney. That's who the motherfucker wants."

  As Evans tells it, twenty minutes after his call to Korshak, an enraged Jim Aubrey called Evans.

  "You no-good motherfucker, cocksucker. I'll get you for this," Aubrey screamed.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You know fuckin' well what I'm talking about."

  "Honestly, I don't."

  "The midget's yours; you got him."

  That was Aubrey's final statement before slamming the phone down on a befuddled Evans, who immediately called his mentor Korshak. The Fixer advised the producer that he had merely placed a call to Aubrey's boss, Kirk Kerkorian, and made the request. When Kerkorian balked, Korshak introduced his Teamster connections into the negotiations.

  "Oh, I asked him if he wanted to finish building his hotel," Korshak told Evans.

  "He didn't answer . . . He never heard of the schmuck either. He got a pencil, asked me to spell it—'Capital A, punk /, capital P, punk a, c-i-n-o.' Then he says, 'Who the fuck is he?' 'How the fuck do I know? All I know, Bobby wants him.'"

  Interestingly, after Pacino was released from the MGM picture, his replacement was Bobby De Niro, who had previously tested so well for Pa-cino's Michael Corleone role.

  Kirk Kerkorian stands in front of his under-construction Vegas hotel, the International, 1969 (UNLV Special Collections)

  Al Pacino in The Godfather (Photofest)

  On April 15, 1972, Kerkorian broke ground for the MGM Grand (now Caesars Entertainment's Bally's) and opened the hotel on December 5,1973, earning him the moniker Father of the Mega-Resort. The movie-nostalgia-based hotel boasted a twenty-five-floor tower with "walls of glass," and Rhett Butler and Lara suites. For the grand opening, Korshak friend Dean Martin appeared in the Celebrity Lounge. Many viewed with suspicion the fact that the hotel was completed just one day before a new code came into effect that would have mandated fire-suppression sprinklers be installed. Seven years later, eighty-seven MGM Grand guests and employees were killed and hundreds injured in a horrific fire that would likely have been minimized by the sprinklers. The tragedy is still referred to as the worst disaster in Las Vegas history.

  Although Kerkorian has typically been seen as second to Howard Hughes in the Vegas mogul sweepstakes, the reverse was true. "He's the second deep pocket who brought legitimate capital to town. [But] he's also the first person to come here and build as a hands-on operator," University of Nevada, Las Vegas, History Department chairman Hal Rothman said. "Howard Hughes doesn't count because he didn't build." Rothman added that Kerko­rian is no longer "the Avis of Vegas." Casino expert Bill Thompson pointed out that Hughes did not bring in the massive capital infusions that were ultimately successful in squeezing out the mob: "Kerkorian rescued us from Hughes. By making properties so big, he took them out of the reach of the Mafia. They were too big and too expensive."*

  As The Godfather proceeded into production with Pacino and the rest of the cast now assembled, Evans et al. faced their next hurdle, this time with antagonists even more intransigent than Kerkorian: the Italian AntiDefamation League and the Mafia. Mario Puzo had already warned Cop­pola, "Francis, when you work on this, the real Mafia guys are gonna come. Don't let them in."33 Coppola knew what Puzo was saying. "I remember when I was a kid—they're like vampires," Coppola said. "Once you invite them over the door, then you're theirs."

  As expected, the production felt the backlash, first in Los Angeles, where the famous Paramount gates were blown off their hinges by pro-Italian protesters. On their New York set, the moviemakers were stopped before they could start, while Evans received anonymous phone calls at his Sherry Netherland suite in which his son Josh's life was threatened. The voice on the other end warned, "If you want your son to live longer than two weeks, get out of town." The thought of his newborn son, Josh (with actress Ali MacGraw), being killed prompted another Evans call to Korshak for rescue.

  According to Evans, what opened up New York "like a World's Fair" was a phone call to the Mafia from Korshak. Suddenly, according to Bob Evans, everyone cooperated, "the garbagemen, the longshoremen, the Teamsters." New security people even showed up. Evans later wrote, "One call from Korshak, suddenly, threats turned into smiles and doors, once closed, opened with an embrace." In a 1997 interview Evans concluded, "TheGodfather would not have been made without Korshak. He saved Pacino, the locations, and, possibly, my son."34 Producer Al Ruddy remembered that Evans still couldn't relax. "Evans hid out on the whole fuckin' movie," Ruddy said. "He went to Bermuda with Ali."

  A lawyer friend of Korshak's who had been referred a number of hoodlum clients by Korshak told Los Angeles DA investigator Jim Grodin that Korshak was well compensated for his efforts, supposedly receiving a piece of the movie's gross profits.*

  But even Korshak could not predict that an upstart mafioso would exert his own Godfather-type power play in a bid to start a sixth New York crime family. Production assistant Dean Tavoularis has spoken of how the Italian Anti-Defamation League, which was run by mafioso Joe Colombo of the Profaci crime family, had his unions and supporters shut down the production in New York. The traditional five families were already disturbed by Colombo's affiliation with the League and his love affair with the press, a cardinal sin in the eyes of the traditional Mustache Petes. The problem's resolution came from an unlikely source.

  At the time, Las Vegas singer and occasional Mafia messenger boy Gi­anni Ru
sso was desperate to get a major role in the movie and had auditioned in vain weeks earlier. When he heard about the Paramount gate destruction and the intrusion by Colombo, Russo, a Brooklyn native and now a captain of the Italian Anti-Defamation League in Vegas, saw his golden opportunity. He took the first plane to New York and went directly to the Gulf & Western building, somehow finagling a meeting with Bluh­dorn and producer Al Ruddy. He convinced Bluhdorn that he had influence with Colombo and would broker a peace if he was given a plum role in the movie. The trouble was, Russo had never even met Colombo, but he knew his son and some of his underlings.

  With Bluhdorn's blessing, Russo visited Colombo in his Brooklyn office and convinced him to meet with Bluhdorn and the rest, where he could demand some script changes and Defamation League black-tie fund-raisers at every local premiere of the movie. "He bought the idea and loved it," Russo said. All Russo wanted in return was one of three coveted roles in the movie: Corleone's sons Michael or Sonny, or the wayward son-in-law, Carlo. Again, Colombo agreed.

 

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