L.A. Noir

by John Buntin

  Richardson responded by saying he’d send Graham over so Eisenhower could find out himself. The two men hit it off. When Eisenhower decided to run, he asked Graham to contribute Scripture verses to his speeches. Graham did so, but he also pressed Eisenhower about his own faith. The general confessed that he’d fallen away from the church. Graham gave him a Bible and recommended a congregation in Washington. After he was elected president, Dwight and Mamie joined it. Graham’s moment as a spiritual counselor to presidents had arrived.

  Graham enjoyed the perquisites that came with his proximity to temporal power, golfing at Burning Tree with Ike or his vice president, Richard Nixon; visiting American troops abroad; and establishing the National Prayer Breakfast as a de rigueur event for Washington politicians. Figuring out what to do next, though, was somewhat more challenging. First, he did a series of campus campaigns at colleges and universities across the country. Then he looked overseas. In 1954 and 1955, he toured the United Kingdom and Europe. In 1956, he visited Asia. By the time 1957 arrived, he needed something new. Graham and his advisors decided to go for something big: They would launch their biggest campaign yet in the biggest city in the world—New York City.

  New York City would be the ultimate challenge. It was the citadel of secularism, with more agnostics than any other American city. It was the center of the world’s media. It was a stronghold of Catholicism, with a larger Irish population than Dublin, a larger Italian population than Rome, a larger Puerto Rican population than San Juan. It was also the Jewish metropolis, home to one out of every ten of the world’s Jews. Only 7.5 percent of the population belonged to mainline Protestant denominations, and most of these nominal Protestants were far removed from Graham’s conservative, back-to-the-basics creed. From an evangelical standpoint, bringing New York City to Jesus was the ultimate challenge.

  Protestant leaders in the city were generally supportive. A decision was made to launch the campaign in Madison Square Garden, starting on May 15. Graham and his advisors wanted to begin with something big—by saving someone who would turn every eye in New York (if not the country) toward the Manhattan crusade. Who better than the country’s most notorious Jewish gangster, Mickey Cohen?

  Graham and Cohen had renewed their acquaintance after Cohen’s release. Cohen’s apparently sincere desire for repentance was catnip to the evangelist and his circle. Graham confidant W C. Jones began to press Mickey even more ardently to choose Christ. He and other Graham backers also offered thousands of dollars in “brotherly love gifts.” Cohen was open to the idea. Being born again had certainly worked out well for his former wiretapper, Jimmy Vaus, who was now a celebrated speaker and a published author. Vaus’s memoirs had even been made into a movie, Wiretap-per (1956). A Madison Square Garden conversion would certainly gratify Mickey’s undiminished desire for attention from the press. There was also, purportedly, money at stake: $15,000 to attend the Madison Square Garden crusade and another $25,000 if he converted to Christianity. That seemed like a more than fair price for Mickey’s soul.

  In the spring of 1957, Cohen flew to Buffalo to meet with Graham and explore the possibility of attending the upcoming Madison Square Garden campaign. The New York Herald Tribune broke the story: “Mickey Cohen and Bill Graham Pray and Read Bible Together,” cried the headline. It quoted Mickey praising Graham for having “guided me in many things” and for being “my friend.” The story also suggested that further communion between the two would be forthcoming.

  “He’s invited me [to the May crusade],” Cohen told the paper, “and I think I will be here for it.” Cohen added that he was “very high on the Christian way of life.”

  The saga of L.A.’s most notorious gangster-turned-florist accepting Jesus as his personal savior promised to be the most sensational story of the summer. It demanded the attention of a journalist who would do it justice—someone who didn’t hesitate to sit down with unsavory characters and ask the point-blank, personal questions that Americans wanted answers to. In short, Mickey Cohen seemed the perfect guest for Manhattan’s newest media star, ABC newsman Mike Wallace.

  IN THE SUMMER of 1956, Mike Wallace was the anchor of the seven and eleven o’clock news reports for New York City’s Channel 5, WABD. Ted Yates, a sinewy ex-Marine from Cheyenne, Wyoming, was his producer. Wallace had been on the job for a year. Yet already he and Yates were bridling at the restrictions imposed upon them. Decades earlier George Bernard Shaw had noted that “the ablest and most highly cultivated people continually discuss religion, politics, and sex” while the masses “make it a rule that politics and religion are not to be mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person would attempt to discuss sex.” Shaw’s description of Victorian England was doubly true for 1950s television, and it frustrated Wallace and Yates. The two men began to sketch out a different approach. Why not interview the people viewers most wanted to meet? Why not ask the questions viewers really wanted answers to?

  That fall, Yates and Wallace managed to convince Channel 5 to replace the eleven o’clock news broadcast with an interview show. The format featured Wallace and an interesting guest—a personality from the world of politics, sports, entertainment, or religion. Yates dubbed the show Night Beat. It was an immediate succés de scandale. New Yorkers watched, mesmerized, as Wallace confronted bristling union leaders with pointed questions about their personal lives, quizzed actresses about their sex lives, and asked novelists about their views of God. Wallace courted conflict. His questions were relentless, his work ethic indefatigable. (Night Beat featured two guests for a half hour each, four nights a week.) The networks noticed. In early 1957, ABC offered Wallace a half-hour national slot that would air Sunday nights. The show would be called The Mike Wallace Interview. ABC president Leonard Goldenson assured Wallace that he would have the same freedom he had previously enjoyed at Night Beat. (“Mike, you will not be doing your job properly unless you make this building shake every couple of weeks,” Goldenson reportedly told him.) Wallace jumped at the opportunity. In late April, Wallace and Yates released a list of Wallace’s first guests. It included the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, the actor and director Orson Welles, the singer Harry Belafonte, and Mickey Cohen.

  Wallace’s interviews looked spontaneous, but in fact, Wallace and his production team deliberately shaped each interview into a dramatic encounter. The responsibility for researching guests and preparing a “script” of likely questions and probable answers fell to Wallace’s researcher, Al Ramrus. Ramrus typically started by calling retired journalist Bill Lang, who maintained his own personal “morgue” of newspaper articles on a remarkable variety of subjects. Ramrus then checked out the three major newsweeklies—Time, Newsweek, and Life—at Hunter College and, in the case of performers, the film and theatrical division of the New York Public Library. Finally, he did a preinterview with the guest. Afterward, he drew up the “script” for Wallace. Of course, it wasn’t a real script in the sense that a program like Dragnet was scripted. Wallace often kept the toughest questions to himself so that guests, lulled into complacency by the preinterview, would be caught off guard. Guests sometimes changed their answers. In general, though, most programs played out as Ramrus indicated they would.

  Cohen presented special challenges from the start. Lang’s New York-centric newspaper morgue didn’t have much on Mickey, and Ramrus didn’t have access to a West Coast newspaper morgue. While the national newsweeklies had plenty on Mickey during his “vicecapades” period and immediately afterward, they were sketchier on his recent activities. Nor did Ramrus have much success in talking with Cohen’s associates in crime. When he reached Bugsy Siegel’s ex-mistress Virginia Hill in Switzerland, Hill told him she didn’t know the man.

  Then there was the problem of dealing with Mickey himself.

  When Ramrus contacted Mickey in Los Angeles, Cohen wasn’t exactly up to speed on what a media sensation Mike Wallace had become. However, at the coaxing of the Graham camp, he event
ually agreed to sit down with Wallace during his trip to New York for the campaign. Cohen let Ramrus know that in doing so he was taking a big risk. New York was full of enemies. Cohen would travel under an alias—Mr. Dunn. Ramrus himself would need to meet him at the airport—in a limo—and then take him to his hotel; the luxurious Essex House would be fine. The entire operation would have to be hush-hush. With some trepidation, Ramrus agreed to these arrangements.

  On the night of May 2, 1957, Cohen’s reason for caution became abundantly clear. That evening, a burly ex-boxer named Vincent “Chin” Gigante walked into the foyer of the Majestic Apartments at 115 Central Park West and followed its most famous resident, Manhattan crime boss Frank Costello (widely known in criminal and law enforcement circles as “the prime minister of the underworld”) toward the elevator. As Costello was preparing to enter it, Gigante whipped out a .38 caliber pistol, yelled, “This is for you, Frank!” and shot Costello in the temple at what appeared to be point-blank range. As Costello fell to the ground, Gigante ran past the horrified doorman and leapt into a black Cadillac idling outside, which then sped away. Astonishingly, Costello lived. Startled by Gigante’s cry, he had jerked away at the last moment, and the bullet had merely grazed his scalp. But the underworld was badly shaken. So, no doubt, was Ramrus. He would now be risking his life by stepping into the free-fire zone around Mickey Cohen.

  WHEN COHEN FLEW into Idlewild Airport, Ramrus and the limousine Mickey had requested were there to meet him. Ramrus was nervous. He was relying on an old photo to spot the notorious gangster. To complicate things further, Ramrus had been informed that Cohen would be traveling “incognito.” What that meant Ramrus could hardly guess. Moreover, Ramrus had been warned that if and when he did identify Cohen, he was under no circumstances to greet the former gangster as “Mr. Cohen” or—heaven forbid—“Mickey.” Ramrus was eager not to make that mistake. On the drive from Manhattan out to Idlewild, Ramrus repeated Mickey’s cover name over and over: “Mr. Dunn, Mr. Dunn.” Worriedly, Ramrus awaited the arrival of the Los Angeles flight. Anxiously, he scanned the arriving passengers for the disguised gangster. Finally, a short little man dressed “in a garment district kind of way”—pudgy, broken nose, balding, “a tough little face”—walked off the jetway. It was Mickey Cohen. He was accompanied also by a far tougher looking traveling companion, whom Cohen identified only as “Itchy.” Nervously, Ramrus approached the traveling duo.

  “Um, Mr. Dunn?” he said. “Hi. Mr. Dunn?”

  Cohen gave him a look that made it clear he took Ramrus for some kind of dunderhead.

  “I’m Mickey Cohen, kid,” he replied, in a distinctly audible tone. With that the three of them were off to the Essex House on Central Park South. Ramrus had booked a one-room suite there for Mickey’s use. But when Cohen arrived, he took one look at the (smallish) bathroom and declared, “This ain’t gonna do.” Panicky lest his odd guest depart, Ramrus rushed down to the lobby and secured a larger suite for Cohen, which met with his grumbling approval.

  One task remained—conducting the preinterview. “Listen,” Ramrus said, pleadingly, as Cohen and his henchman ushered him out of their room. “I need to talk to you before the interview.”

  “Come up later tonight, and we’ll talk,” Mickey replied amiably.

  Ramrus returned several hours later—to a wild party. The suite was jammed with friends of Cohen, male and female, some of whom Ramrus recognized as fixtures of the New York and New Jersey underworlds. Mickey himself seemed to have secured the attention of “a young blonde girl,” though, truth be told, he seemed more interested in the pineapple cheesecake from Lindy’s, the famous showbiz deli on Broadway. Ramrus could see his point. The blonde looked tasty, but the cheesecake was scrumptious. Cohen waved Ramrus over. They could do the preinterview then and there, Cohen told him. Ramrus had never attempted to interview a guest in a room full of broads, wiseguys, smoke, and cheesecake, but it was clear that there was no point arguing with Cohen. So he did his best—and ate as much of the cheesecake as he could. The next day he turned over the material he had gathered to Mike Wallace. The Cohen interview was in Wallace’s hands.

  The next evening, on Sunday, May 19, Cohen presented himself at the ABC studios. The half-hour interview was broadcast live, with no delay. That left Wallace with no margin for error.

  The interview started slowly. Wallace pressed Cohen about his “friendliness” with Billy Graham. Mickey was reticent—and somewhat incoherent. (“I just hope and feel the feeling is likewise between Billy and I.”) Things picked up when Wallace turned to Cohen’s criminal background. When Cohen piously claimed that he’d never been involved in drugs or prostitution, Wallace pressed him about the criminal activities he clearly had been involved with:

  Wallace: Yet, you’ve made book, you have bootlegged. Most important of all, you’ve broken one of the commandments—you’ve killed, Mickey. How can you be proud of not dealing in prostitution and narcotics when you’ve killed at least one man, or how many more? How many more, Mickey?

  Cohen: I have killed no men that in the first place didn’t deserve killing.

  Wallace: By whose standards?

  Cohen: By the standards of our way of life.

  Wallace was pleased with how the interview was going. But when he urged Cohen to name the politicians whom Cohen had paid off, Mickey once again balked.

  “That is not my way of life, Mike,” Cohen replied firmly.

  Then Wallace asked him about the LAPD. It was as if Wallace had touched Cohen with a hot iron. Suddenly, Mickey erupted. Police harassment was making it impossible for him to run his floral business, and Mickey made it clear whom he blamed.

  “I have a police chief in Los Angeles who happens to be a sadistic degenerate,” he said provocatively, before wandering to other topics. Wallace picked up on the statement and returned to the subject of the “apparently respectable” Chief Parker a few minutes later.

  “Now, Mick,” began Wallace, “without naming names, how far up in the brass do you have to bribe the cops to carry on a big-time bookmaking operation?”

  “I’m going to give him much to bring a libel suit against me,” replied the fuming florist. He then named Chief Parker. “He’s nothing but a thief that has been—a reformed thief.

  “This man here is as dishonest politically as the worst thief that accepts money for payoffs,” Cohen continued. “He is a known alcoholic. He’s been disgusting. He’s a known degenerate. In other words, he’s a sadistic degenerate of the worst type…. He has a man underneath him that is on an equal basis with him.”

  Wallace interrupted to ask the name of this underling. After being asked several times, Mickey finally answered the question. “His name,” snarled Cohen, “is Captain James Hamilton, and he’s probably a lower degenerate than Parker.” Cohen described the intelligence division as the head of “what I call the stupidity squad.”

  Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Wallace pressed Mickey to expand upon his charges against “the apparently respectable Chief William Parker”: “Well, Mickey, you’re a reformed thief just as he’s a reformed thief. Isn’t it the pot calling the kettle black?”

  Cohen scowled at this description before the conversation moved on to other subjects.

  AFTER THE INTERVIEW was concluded, everyone agreed it had been an astonishing performance. Cohen had been raw, exciting, and revelatory. He had admitted on the air to killing people, to grossing anywhere from $200,000 to $650,000 a day through illegal bookmaking and gambling operations, to securing protection from someone “higher than the mayor of chief of police.” Ramrus and the other people on set were excited about having pulled off such a dramatic interview. The feeling of euphoria didn’t last long.

  Mickey Cohen wasn’t the only Angeleno in New York City that May 19. It just so happened that LAPD intelligence head James Hamilton was also visiting Gotham. (Parker would later deny sending him east to shadow Cohen, insisting instead that his intelligence head was in New York on vac
ation.) Hamilton tuned in to the evening broadcast. What he saw appalled him. The American Broadcasting Company was allowing—no, encouraging—Mickey Cohen, a known criminal, to slander Chief Parker and himself on national television. Moreover, despite concluding the interview with a statement that Cohen’s views on the LAPD were exclusively his own, Mike Wallace had made comments that seemed to endorse Mickey Cohen’s assessment of the police. An angry Hamilton immediately called Chief Parker in Los Angeles to tell him what was happening. He also called ABC to deliver a warning: Pull the program from your Los Angeles station or prepare to be sued.

  The Mike Wallace Interview was scheduled to air on the West Coast in less than three hours. ABC had only a short interval of time during which to make a decision. Executives immediately contacted Wallace producer Ted Yates, who in turn told Wallace about the problem they’d run into. Together, Yates and Wallace hurried over to Cohen’s suite at the Essex House to confer with him about Hamilton’s threats. Mickey had just stepped out of the shower. He greeted his visitors calmly, clad in nothing but a towel.

  Wallace and Yates explained their problem as Cohen listened calmly. At the end of their presentation, Cohen made his pronouncement.

  “Mike, Ted, forget it,” he said decisively. “Parker knows that I know so much about him, he wouldn’t dare sue.” So instead, the producers called Parker in Los Angeles and invited him to come on the show next week to defend himself. Parker indignantly refused, saying he had no intention of debating “an irresponsible character like Cohen.” He further warned ABC that if it proceeded with airing the show on the West Coast, it would open itself up to charges of criminal slander. The network disregarded this warning. Instead, a few hours later, Wallace’s interview with Cohen aired on the West Coast. At a news conference the next day, Chief Parker announced that he and Captain Hamilton were considering a lawsuit against ABC.