Dark Victory
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Dark Victory
Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob
Dan Moldea
To Dad
CONTENTS
Series Introdution
Frequently Mentioned Names
Prologue
I. The Rise
II. The Fall
III. The Resurrection
Epilogue
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Series Introduction
I
We the people seem to have the freest book trade in the world. Certainly we have the biggest. Cruise the mighty Amazon, and you will see so many books for sale in the United States today as would require more than four hundred miles of shelving to display them—a bookshelf that would stretch from Boston’s Old North Church to Fort McHenry in South Baltimore.
Surely that huge catalog is proof of our extraordinary freedom of expression: The US government does not ban books, because the First Amendment won’t allow it. While books are widely banned in states like China and Iran, no book may be forbidden by the US government at any level (although the CIA censors books by former officers). Where books are banned in the United States, the censors tend to be private organizations—church groups, school boards, and other local (busy) bodies roused to purify the public schools or libraries nearby.
Despite such local prohibitions, we can surely find any book we want. After all, it’s easy to locate those hot works that once were banned by the government as too “obscene” to sell, or mail, until the courts ruled otherwise on First Amendment grounds—Fanny Hill, Howl, Naked Lunch. We also have no trouble finding books banned here and there as “antifamily,” “Satanic,” “racist,” and/or “filthy,” from Huckleberry Finn to Heather Has Two Mommies to the Harry Potter series, just to name a few.
II
And yet, the fact that those bold books are all in print, and widely read, does not mean that we have the freest book trade in the world. On the contrary: For over half a century, America’s vast literary culture has been disparately policed, and imperceptibly contained, by state and corporate entities well placed and perfectly equipped to wipe out wayward writings. Their ad hoc suppressions through the years have been far more effectual than those quixotic bans imposed on classics like The Catcher in the Rye and Fahrenheit 451. For every one of those bestsellers scandalously purged from some provincial school curriculum, there are many others (we can’t know how many) that have been so thoroughly erased that few of us, if any, can remember them, or have ever heard of them.
How have all those books (to quote George Orwell) “dropped into the memory hole” in these United States? As America does not ban books, other means—less evident, and so less controversial—have been deployed to vaporize them. Some almost never made it into print, as publishers were privately warned off them from on high, either on the grounds of “national security” or with blunt threats of endless corporate litigation. Other books were signed enthusiastically—then “dumped,” as their own publishers mysteriously failed to market them, or even properly distribute them. But it has mainly been the press that stamps out inconvenient books, either by ignoring them, or—most often—laughing them off as “conspiracy theory,” despite their soundness (or because of it).
Once out of print, those books are gone. Even if some few of us have not forgotten them, and one might find used copies here and there, these books have disappeared. Missing from the shelves and never mentioned in the press (and seldom mentioned even in our schools), each book thus neutralized might just as well have been destroyed en masse—or never written in the first place, for all their contribution to the public good.
III
The purpose of this series is to bring such vanished books to life—first life for those that never saw the light of day, or barely did, and second life for those that got some notice, or even made a splash, then slipped too quickly out of print, and out of mind.
These books, by and large, were made to disappear, or were hastily forgotten, not because they were too lewd, heretical, or unpatriotic for some touchy group of citizens. These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect—truths that the people have the right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark.
Thus the works on our Forbidden Bookshelf shed new light—for most of us, it’s still new light—on the most troubling trends and episodes in US history, especially since World War II: America’s broad use of former Nazis and ex-Fascists in the Cold War; the Kennedy assassinations, and the murders of Martin Luther King Jr., Orlando Letelier, George Polk, and Paul Wellstone; Ronald Reagan’s Mafia connections, Richard Nixon’s close relationship with Jimmy Hoffa, and the mob’s grip on the NFL; America’s terroristic Phoenix Program in Vietnam, US support for South America’s most brutal tyrannies, and CIA involvement in the Middle East; the secret histories of DuPont, ITT, and other giant US corporations; and the long war waged by Wall Street and its allies in real estate on New York City’s poor and middle class.
The many vanished books on these forbidden subjects (among others) altogether constitute a shadow history of America—a history that We the People need to know at last, our country having now become a land with billionaires in charge, and millions not allowed to vote, and everybody under full surveillance. Through this series, we intend to pull that necessary history from the shadows at long last—to shed some light on how America got here, and how we might now take it somewhere else.
Mark Crispin Miller
Organized crime will put a man in the White House someday—and he won’t know it until they hand him the bill.
RALPH SALERNO,
New York Police Department
1967
FREQUENTLY MENTIONED NAMES
MCA’s Sphere of Influence
Larry Barnett: MCA vice-president in charge of band-booking.
Laurence Beilenson: attorney for the Screen Actors and Screen Writers guilds who became legal counsel for MCA.
Arthur Park: Ronald Reagan’s personal agent for General Electric Theater.
Ronald Reagan: president of the Screen Actors Guild; governor of California; president of the United States.
Taft Schreiber: MCA’s first agent, head of Revue Productions, and MCA vice-president.
Sidney Sheinberg: Lew Wasserman’s successor as president of MCA.
Jules Stein: founder of MCA, president of MCA, chairman of the board of MCA.
Allen Susman: general counsel for MCA.
Lew Wasserman: Stein’s successor as both president and chairman of the board.
David “Sonny” Werblin: MCA vice-president and president of MCATV.
Union Officials
Roy Brewer: Hollywood representative of IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Union.
George Browne: president of IATSE.
John Dales: executive secretary of the Screen Actors Guild.
James R. Hoffa: president of the Teamsters Union.
Robert Montgomery: president of the Screen Actors Guild.
James Caesar Petrillo: president of the American Federation of Musicians.
Jackie Presser: president of the Teamsters Union.
Herb Sorrell: president of the Conference of Studio Organizations.
Richard Walsh
: Browne’s successor as president of IATSE.
Organized Crime Figures and Associates
Anthony Accardo: head of the Chicago Mafia.
Gus Alex: member of the Chicago Mafia.
Willie Bioff: front man for the Chicago Mafia in Hollywood operations.
Morris (Moe) Dalitz: leader of Cleveland’s Mayfield Road Gang; owner of Las Vegas casinos and the La Costa Country Club.
Allen M. Dorfman: fiduciary manager of the Teamsters pension fund.
James Fratianno: Los Angeles Mafia figure.
Sam Giancana: head of the Chicago Mafia.
Charles Gioe: the Chicago Mafia’s operations man in Iowa.
Murray Humphreys: Chicago underworld figure.
Sidney R. Korshak: Chicago attorney, operating primarily out of Beverly Hills.
Johnny Roselli: overseer of the Chicago Mafia’s operations in Hollywood.
Bugsy Siegel: overseer of the National Crime Syndicate’s operations in Las Vegas.
Korshak’s Sphere of Influence
“Colonel” Jake Arvey: Illinois National Democratic Party committee-man.
Greg Bautzer: Beverly Hills attorney.
Delbert Coleman: owner of the Parvin-Dohrmann Corporation.
Beldon Katleman: owner of the El Rancho Vegas hotel/casino.
Marshall Korshak: Democratic political figure in Chicago; brother of Sidney Korshak.
Eugene Wyman: Beverly Hills attorney.
Reagan’s Sphere of Influence
Walter Annenberg: publishing mogul.
William Casey: CIA director under Reagan.
Ray Donovan: Secretary of Labor under Reagan.
Paul Laxalt: governor of Nevada; senator from Nevada; Reagan’s campaign manager.
Nancy Reagan: Ronald Reagan’s second wife; member of the board of the Screen Actors Guild.
Henry Salvatori: member of Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.
William French Smith: Reagan’s personal attorney; U.S. attorney general.
Holmes Tuttle: member of Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.
Government Officials
Thurman Arnold: head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Edmund (Pat) Brown: governor of California, 1959–1967.
Jerry Brown: Reagan’s successor as governor of California, 1975–1981.
John Fricano: Antitrust Division attorney under Kennedy.
Barry Goldwater: senator from Arizona.
J. Edgar Hoover: FBI director.
Estes Kefauver: senator from Tennessee; chairman of the Kefauver Committee.
John F. Kennedy: president of the United States, 1961–1963.
Robert F. Kennedy: chief counsel of the McClellan Committee; U.S. attorney general under John Kennedy.
Lee Loevinger: head of the Antitrust Division under Kennedy.
Paul J. McCormick: judge in Finley v. MCA.
William C. Mathes: judge in U.S. v. MCA.
George Maury: Antitrust Division attorney under FDR.
John Mitchell: U.S. attorney general under Nixon.
Richard M. Nixon: president of the United States, 1969–1974.
Leonard Posner: Antitrust Division attorney under Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Charles Whittinghill: Antitrust Division attorney under Kennedy.
Corporate and Studio Executives
Barney Balaban: president of Balaban and Katz; president of Paramount Studios.
Charles G. Bluhdorn: chairman of the board of Gulf & Western, which owns Paramount.
Pat Casey: labor negotiator for the Motion Picture Producers Association.
Harry Cohn: founder and president of Columbia Pictures.
Bryan Foy: executive producer of Warner Brothers and Eagle-Lion Studios.
Howard Hughes: billionaire president of Caddo Corporation and RKO.
Kirk Kerkorian: majority stockholder in MGM/United Artists.
Carl Laemmle: founder of Universal Studios.
Louis B. Mayer: vice-president in charge of production of MGM.
Joseph Schenck: president of Twentieth Century–Fox.
Spyros Skouras: Schenck’s successor as president of Twentieth Century–Fox.
Leo Spitz: legal counsel to the Producers Association; president of Universal-International Studios.
Joseph Vogel: president of MGM.
Jack L. Warner: president of Warner Brothers.
Darryl F. Zanuck: Schenck’s partner in Twentieth Century–Fox; Skouras’s successor as president.
Other Characters
Larry Finley: San Diego ballroom owner.
Jeff Kibre: leader of the IATSE progressives.
Robert Maheu: Howard Hughes’s top aide.
Grant Sawyer: governor of Nevada.
Frank Sinatra: entertainer.
Kearney Walton, Jr.: bandleader.
Jane Wyman: actress; Reagan’s first wife.
Paul Ziffren: California Democratic Party Committeeman; law partner of William French Smith; co-chairman of the 1984 U.S. Olympic Committee.
PROLOGUE
President Ronald Reagan’s professional life—his acting career, his personal financial fortune, and his rise in politics—has been interwoven with and propelled by a powerful, Hollywood-based entertainment conglomerate named MCA. For nearly fifty years, Reagan has benefited both personally and financially from his association with this sixty-two-year-old company—formerly known as the Music Corporation of America—as well as from his close association with the firm’s top executives: Jules Stein, Lew Wasserman, and Taft Schreiber.
Everyone involved has greatly profited from this relationship. MCA helped to make its client, actor Ronald Reagan, a multimillionaire; and the favors that were returned by Reagan, the former president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the former governor of California, have helped to transform MCA into a billion-dollar empire and the most powerful force in the entertainment world today.
Reagan and his closest friends have portrayed and defended the president’s business transactions with MCA, which date back to 1940, as being totally above suspicion. But there remain numerous unanswered questions and allegations about the relationship between Reagan and MCA. These doubts raise delicate issues that involve possible personal and political payoffs—as well as links to major Mafia figures, particularly Beverly Hills attorney Sidney Korshak, who has been described by federal investigators as the principal link between the legitimate business world and organized crime.
In 1962, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice tried to resolve some of these questions, but their secret investigation was settled out of court before the evidence could be presented. The results of the probe were never made public, and no one close to MCA was ever indicted. However, through the Freedom of Information Act, many of these documents have been recovered and are excerpted in this book.
These records show that Reagan, the president of SAG and an FBI informant against Hollywood communists, was the subject of a federal grand jury investigation whose focus was Reagan’s possible role in a suspected conspiracy between MCA and the actors’ union. According to Justice Department documents, government prosecutors had concluded that decisions made by SAG while under Reagan’s leadership became “the central fact of MCA’s whole rise to power.”
Over the past two decades, Ronald Reagan has refused to answer any in-depth questions about how he amassed his personal wealth—currently estimated at more than $4 million. In 1976, when he first ran for president, and again in 1980 and 1984, Reagan managed to avoid any intense scrutiny of his finances. His financial ties to MCA have been virtually ignored, relegated to the category of ancient history.
Nor has Reagan ever been asked about his personal, financial, professional, or political relationship with Sidney Korshak—who has repeatedly appeared to be involved with Reagan and several of his top advisers throughout their careers.
MCA first began to receive national attention in 1946, when a federal court in Los Angeles ruled
against the company for antitrust violations. At the time, MCA was simply a talent agency, booking bands in nightclubs and actors in motion pictures. In rendering his decision, the presiding judge declared that MCA held a virtual monopoly over the entertainment business. This antitrust suit, one of many legal actions filed against MCA over the past fifty years, involved a San Diego ballroom operator who had accused MCA of demanding exorbitant prices from him to book bands for his dances—charging him much more than competing ballrooms were paying for their musical acts. The jury found that MCA’s practices had restrained trade in the band-booking business, and it awarded the ballroom owner a $55,500 judgment.
In deciding against MCA, the judge called the talent agency “the Octopus … with tentacles reaching out to all phases and grasping everything in show business.” The image of “the Octopus” remained and became MCA’s nickname in both the Hollywood trade and the press.
Years ago, a motion picture executive commented, “A studio can’t exist for any time without some contact with MCA. I would say it’s impossible to operate without them. Jack Warner [the head of Warner Brothers] tried it. He couldn’t hold out for long.”
Today, MCA is still “the Octopus,” even though it is out of the talent agency business and now the owner of the largest motion picture and television production companies in the United States, Universal Pictures and Universal-Television. Headquartered in the stark, imposing, black-steel and glass tower at Universal City on the edge of California’s San Fernando Valley, the giant, two-billion-dollar conglomerate has offices in major cities all over the world and owns businesses in book and music publishing, a major record company, transportation systems, home video marketing, recreation services, a savings and loan company, real estate, data processing, mail-order purchasing, retail store merchandising, and cable television.
But, far and away, MCA’s major business is show business. “They own it,” comedian Jerry Lewis once quipped.
During the 1950s, MCA’s then-television subsidiary, Revue Productions, became the world’s most successful producer and distributor of television film series. Each week Revue supplied the television networks with some forty hours of programming, including such top-rated shows as Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Jack Benny Show, Ozzie and Harriet, Dragnet, This Is Your Life, and Leave It to Beaver.