L.A. Noir

by John Buntin

  “The white spot of …”: “The Soul of the City,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1923, 114.

  By 1922, Harry Chandler: In 1909, progressive reformers had dismantled the old ward system that had allowed Democrats, Catholics, and Jews to be elected to political office in favor of a system that provided for only citywide at-large elections. The result was a city government dominated by Times readers—white, middle-class Protestant Republicans. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 9.

  The Times newsroom claimed that Chandler was the eleventh wealthiest man in the world. Gottlieb and Wolt, Thinking Big, 125; “The White Spot Glistens Brightly,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1921, II; Taylor, “It Costs $1000 to Have Lunch with Harry Chandler,” Saturday Evening Post, December 16, 1939.

  Now was just such: Sitton, “Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles?” in Sitton and Deverell, eds., Metropolis in the Making, 305.

  At first, everything went: Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 219. Los Angeles mayors initially served only two-year terms, hence the high tally.

  This was embarrassing: Sitton, “The ‘Boss’ Without a Machine: Kent K. Parrot and Los Angeles Politics in the 1920s.”

  By firing Oaks and: Sitton, “The ‘Boss’ Without a Machine: Kent K. Parrot and Los Angeles Politics in the 1920s.”

  Bootlegging had been a profitable: Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 60.

  At first, much of: Anderson, Beverly Hills Is My Beat, 130. See also Nathan, “How Whiskey Smugglers Buy and Land Cargoes, Well-Organized Groups Engaged in Desperate Game of Rum-Running,” Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1926, B5; Rappleye, All-American Mafioso, 40; and Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 60. It is not surprising that Nathan neglects to mention Combination figures such as Guy McAfee, who had ties to the Chandler-favored Cryer administration.

  In the big eastern: Law enforcement was too. Historian Robert Fogelson has argued that people engaged in both professions for similar reasons, notably out of a desire for upward social mobility. According to Fogelson, this is one of the reasons why graft and corruption were so prevalent in urban police departments: Many of the men who staffed them were as interested in getting ahead as the men who were paying them off. See Fogelson, Big City Police 29, 35.

  For more on Crawford, see “Crawford Career Hectic, Politician Gained Wide Notoriety as ‘Pay-Off Man’ in Morris Lavine Extortion Case,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1931, 2. See also Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 305-6.

  Crawford got back in: The exact relationship between Crawford and Marco is unclear. While Crawford seems to have kept a hand in prostitution, he was apparently more of a political fixer; Marco, in contrast, was more hands on. Most accounts of the era accord Crawford the position of primacy; however, some describe Marco as the leader of the Combination. Others point to Guy McAfee, “Detective McAfee is Exonerated,” Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1916, I9.

  Cornero tried to buy: I say “seemed overt” because in this instance, Farmer’s claim of self-defense was actually quite plausible. Nonetheless, in general it was clear that Farmer enjoyed considerable advantages, including (somewhat later) having his personal attorney on the Police Commission. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 233, 237.

  “Mr. Cryer, how much …”: “Bledsoe Hurls Defy at Cryer, Challenges Parrot’s Status as De-Facto Mayor,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1925.

  “Shall We Re-Elect…” “Shall We Re-Elect Kent Parrot?” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1925, A1.

  The Times publisher was: For a discussion of Parrot’s sway over the LAPD, see “Oaks Names Kent Parrot, Charges Lawyer Interfered in Police Department, ‘Dictatorial and Threatening,’” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1923, I14; “Dark Trails to City Hall are Uncovered: How Negro Politicians Make and Unmake Police Vice Squad Told in Heath Case,” Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1923, and “Kent Parrot Accused by Richards as ‘Sinister,’ Retiring Harbor Commissioner Names Him as Would-Be Boss,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1923, Sitton, “The ‘Boss’ Without a Machine,” 372-73.

  In truth, each camp: Sitton, “Did the Ruling Class Rule at City Hall in 1920s Los Angeles?” 312. See also Domanick, To Protect and Serve, 40-49, for an extended and colorful discussion of James Davis.

  With a measure of: The arrest of councilman Carl Jacobson was a variant on a common police racket known as the badger game, an extortion racket made possible by the fact that extramarital sex was actually illegal in Los Angeles. The setup was simple: Working with an unmarried female accomplice, the police arranged an assignation, usually at a downtown hotel, and then burst in to make an arrest—unless, that is, they received a payoff. In this instance, however, Councilman Jacob-son boldly refused to go with the usual script. Insisting that he had been framed, he demanded a trial and was acquitted. He later sued Crawford, vice lord Albert Marco, Callie Grimes (the would-be temptress), and five police officers. However, they, too, were acquitted, leaving the question of exactly what happened in Ms. Grimes’s bedroom hopelessly unsettled. “Crawford Career Hectic,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1931, 2. See also Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 252-55.

  Parker tried to focus: Starr, Material Dreams, 70.

  Freed of his wife: Fogelson, Big City Police, 82, 103. Author interview with Joseph Parker, Houston, Texas, December 12-13, 2004.

  On April 24, 1926: Fogelson, Big City Police, 102; letter from the Board of Civil Service Commissioners, September 28, 1926, William H. Parker Police Foundation Archives. Note that Police Commission minutes misrecord his name as “William H. Park.”

  Chapter Four: The Bad Old Good Old Days

  “[A] smart lawyer can …”: White, Me, Detective, 188; Sjoquist, History of the Los Angeles Police Department, 37.

  “The name of this city …”: Fogelson, Fragmented Metropolis, 26, quoting the diary of the Rev. James L. Woods, November 24, 1854 (at the Huntington Library).

  “While there are undoubtedly …”: “Committee of Safety Makes Its Report,” Los Angeles Herald, November 8, 1900; Fogelson, Big City Police, 9.

  In their defense: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 24.

  The activities of plainclothes: Fogelson, Big City Police, 51.

  In 1902, the LAPD’s: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 25. Reverend Kendall’s Queen of the Red-Lights, which is based on Pearl Morton, is an excellent introduction to the genre.

  The decision to prohibit: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 49.

  There were moments when: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 71.

  One night soon after: For one of Parker’s several accounts of this episode, see Dean Jennings, “Portrait of a Police Chief,” 84. In the 1930s, Arlington was the reputed bagman for the Combination’s gambling interests.

  Today the police beat: New York City was something of an exception. There the profusion of publications put reporters in a more supplicatory position. Muir, Headline Happy, 41.

  Infuriated at the idea: Jacoby, “Highlights in the Life of the Chief of Police,” Eight Ball, March 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives.

  “‘Come along, sister, and…’”: Quoted in Starr, Material Dreams, 170-71. That same year, the old police station/stockade was torn down and the new Lincoln Heights Jail was built in its place. Ted Thackrey, “Memories—Lincoln Heights Jail Closing,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, June 27, 1965.

  Cops sometimes acted violently: White, Me, Detective, 188; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 225.

  The existence of “the third degree” was a hotly debated topic at the time. Police chiefs denied its existence. Critics insisted that it was routinely used. To some extent, both sides were talking past each other. Police chiefs defined the “third degree” as torture, critics as coercive pressure. The analogy to current-day interrogation tactics for suspected terrorists is very close. See also Wickersham Commission, 146-47; and Hopkins, Lawless Law Enforcement.

  Remarkably, the LAPD was: Carte and Carte, Police Reform
in the United States, 60. See also Hopkins, Lawless Law Enforcement.

  Parker told the man: “Why Hoodlums Hate Bill Parker,” Readers Digest, March 1960, 239, condensed from National Civic Review (September 1959).

  “Open the door so …”: Stump, “LA’s Chief Parker.”

  Later that year: Wedding announcement, Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1928, 24.

  The Great Depression intervened: Starr, The Dream Endures, 165.

  “Statements from Bill kept …”: Letter from Helen, William H. Parker Police Foundation archive.

  Chapter Five: “Jewboy”

  “I wasn’t the worse …”: Cohen manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library. Mickey would later claim to have fought seventy-nine pro fights, including five against past, present, or future world champions. Cohen biographer Brad Lewis counts a more modest (but still impressive) record of sixty wins (twenty-five by knockout) and sixteen losses. Lewis, Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, 14.

  As a condition for his: Unpublished Cohen manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.

  Mickey was not: Cohen, In My Own Words, 6-8.

  Yet despite this youthful: Reid, Mickey Cohen, 39-40.

  Lou Stillman’s gym: Schulberg, The Harder They Fall, 90.

  The men surrounding Mickey: “Lou Stillman, Legendary Boxing Figure, Is Dead,” New York Times obituary, August 20, 1969. The Times’s obituary credits the “open sesame to low society” remark to Damon Runyon, suggesting that perhaps Runyon used it first.

  “A card of membership …”: Johnston, “The Cauliflower King-I,” The New Yorker, April 8, 1933, 24.

  Moreover, he wasn’t making: Establishing with any precision when Mickey returned to Cleveland is difficult. Ben Hecht writes that Mickey returned in 1932/3, which would make any meeting with Al Capone himself unlikely, given Capone’s 1931 conviction for income tax evasion. However, a document in the Newberry Library’s Hecht Papers that was apparently prepared by Mickey himself says he returned to Cleveland at age seventeen, which would have been the year 1930.

  Unlike New York City: Moe Dalitz had established important relations with the various Italian gangs that held sway over different parts of Cleveland, but he had not yet made Cleveland his primary base of operations.

  Great Depression or no: Cohen, In My Own Words, 15-16.

  Cohen’s job in Chicago: Ben Hecht presents a somewhat different account of this incident, saying that Mickey was given a “louse book” to operate, one that catered to ten-and twenty-cent horse bettors, on the North Side. Quoting Cohen, Hecht writes, “The first thing I know a Chicago tough guy calls on me where I’m running my little louse book and says he has been engaged for twenty dollars to put the muscle on me. I don’t ask who engaged him but I said, ‘I’m going to give you a chance to prove you’re a tough guy.’ And I pulled my gun. In that time I would of felt undressed if I wasn’t carryin’ a gun. The tough guy ran behind a door and I blasted him through the door which is the last I saw of him.”

  “After that meeting,…”: Reid also claims that Mickey didn’t arrive in Chicago until well after Al Capone’s 1931 arrest. However, the volume and detail of Cohen’s recollections from this period make it doubtful that his Chicago recollections were entirely fabricated.

  Chapter Six: Comrade Bill

  “With few exceptions”: Wickersham Commission, Nos. 1-14, 43.

  Hollywood was Los Angeles’s fast: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 88, quoting Bob Shuler’s Magazine.

  “Listen, you stupid fuck,”: Jennings, “Portrait of a Police Chief,” 87.

  Despite such obstinacy: In 1930, the written examination accounted for 95 percent of officers’ scores, with marksmanship and seniority accounting for the remaining 5 percent. Memorandum to the general manager civil service, “Subject: Facts on Chief Parker’s Exam Records,” June 1, 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives. This memo provides a comprehensive overview of Parker’s history in the department.

  “Take him someplace and …”: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 85.

  “I got out,”: Stump, “L.A.’s Chief Parker.”

  By 1929, Los Angeles: One of the more startling features of this era is the widespread acceptance of the Klan, which permeated 1920s Los Angeles. Throughout this period, the Police Commission, which was responsible for regulating a wide variety of public events, routinely approved a regular Saturday night Ku Klux Klan dance on Santa Monica Boulevard. Palmer, “Porter or Bonelli for City’s Next Mayor,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1929, B1.

  To block the Klansman: Sitton, John Randolph Haynes, 218. Parrot retired to Santa Barbara and effectively withdrew from politics. In the mid-1930s, the Los Angeles papers would attempt to resurrect the specter of Parrot; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 311.

  That the LAPD: In 1919, the Boston police department became the first police force to attempt to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. When officers went on strike, a week of chaotic looting and rioting ensued. Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called in the National Guard to secure the city. Coolidge then dismissed the eleven hundred officers who had walked off their jobs, a show of resolution that paved the way to his successful run for the White House. Afterward, Boston hired a new police department and granted its officers almost all of the benefits the strikers had originally demanded.

  The issue that drew: In 1931, the Fire and Police Protective League tried again and was able to persuade the electorate to amend the charter to specify that officers could only be dismissed for “good cause.” It also gave officers accused of misdeeds a chance to appear before a board of inquiry consisting of three captains, randomly chosen. Again, the practical results were disappointing. Captains were not exactly eager to challenge the chief or his superiors. Town Hall, “A Study of the Los Angeles City Charter,” 116-17, 108-109.

  In 1934, Parker got: Leadership of the union was divided evenly between the police department, which named two police representatives, a sergeant representative, a lieutenant representative, and a captain or higher representative to the organization’s board, and the fire department, which named two firemen, an engineer, a captain, and a chief representative to the board. These elections were not exactly democratic exercises. According to former Deputy Chief Harold Sullivan, the lieutenants exercised great control over police activities on the board, which makes Parker’s election all the more mysterious. Author interview with Harold Sullivan, July 7, 2007, Los Angeles, CA.

  In the summer of 1934: See City Council Minutes, August 14, 1934, pp. 234-35.

  The city council seems: City Council Meetings, vol. 248, August 14, 1934, pp. 235-36; City Council Minutes, August 15, 1934, p. 269, for the final text of Amendment No. 12-A. The city council also debated an amendment to abolish the Police Commission that day. It narrowly lost.

  The public was not: Carte and Carte, Police Reform in the United States, 105.

  Some observers did pick: City Council Minutes, vol. 249 (October 5, 1934), 18. The Los Angeles Times misreports the vote count as 83,521 ayes to 83,244 nayes. “Complete Vote Received for Thursday’s Election,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1934, 5.

  For further discussions of Section 202, see also Escobar, “Bloody Christmas,” 176-77.

  Union activism is not: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 22-23. The quote comes from the Harold Story Papers, Special Collections, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.

  Even at the time: Nathan, “‘Rousting’ System Earns Curses of the Rum-Runners, Chief Davis’s Raids Keep Whiskey Ring in Harried State,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1926, B6.

  Nor were regular citizens: LAPD officers were deputized by the counties in question and thus authorized to make arrests. Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 342; Bass and Donovan, “The Los Angeles Police Department” in The Development of Los Angeles City Government: An Institutional History, 1850-2000, 154.

  “It is an axiom with …”: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 53; Henstell, Sunshine and Wealth, 50. Both may w
ell be quoting Gerald Woods, who in turn is almost certainly quoting an unidentified article in the L.A. Record.

  But as implausible as: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 322, 259.

  In 1934, Chief Davis: See “Facts on Chief Parker’s Exam Records,” Assistant General Manager Civil Service, June 1, 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives, Los Angeles, CA.

  Then, suddenly, his career: See Deputy Chief B. R. Caldwell’s letter to HQ, Los Angeles Procurement District, February 23, 1943, for a detailed (if occasionally opaque) discussion of Parker’s career from 1933 through 1943. William H. Parker Police Foundation, Los Angeles, CA. See also Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 28.

  In 1933, voters had: Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 316-17; Sitton, Los Angeles Transformed, 12-13.

  During the 1920s, Kent: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” provides an excellent account of McAfee’s activities throughout the 1930s. See also the October 9, 1953, FBI memo on Jack Dragna (Dragna FBI file 94-250); Weinstock, My L.A., 56; and Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 335.

  The key to it all: Donner, The Age of Surveillance, 59-64.

  Chapter Seven: Bugsy

  “Booze barons;” “Are Gangsters Building Another Chicago Here?” Los Angeles Times, March 29,1931, A1.

  By 1937, Bugsy Siegel: Jennings, We Only Kill Each Other, 29-31. Readers interested in a more sober assessment of Siegel should consult Robert Lacey’s Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life.

  Siegel first visited Los Angeles: In addition to appearing as a dancer in vaudeville shows and on Broadway, Raft was also a regular presence at Jimmy Durante’s Club Durante and at Texas Guinan’s El Fey. This did not mean that Raft himself was in any way fey. In addition to being a sometime prizefighter, he was a close associate of Manhattan beer king Owney Madden. Such tough guy-showbiz connections were quite common in the 1920s. Bootlegger Waxey Gordon was an enthusiastic backer of such Broadway musicals as Strike Me Pink, even going so far as to order his gunmen to turn out in tuxedos for opening night. (Wisely, he also had them check their guns at the coat check.) Muir, Headline Happy, 159.