When Hollywood Had a King Read online

  Over the course of several interviews in the office he occupied as a senior-status judge in the federal district court building—an office whose walls were lined with the likenesses of Abraham Lincoln that he had collected over the years, and also with photographs of his famous friends, including many show business people, like Frank Sinatra, Joe E. Lewis, Bob Hope, Tony Bennett, Jimmy Durante—Judge Marovitz talked about the past. After he left the state attorney’s office in 1932, he went into private practice. “I made more money in the first few months of that practice than I expected to make in my lifetime. But it was very, very tough in those days. I represented all sides—mobsters, unions, management. I represented Petrillo for years. Petrillo was with the Outfit—but when Capone left [he was convicted of tax evasion and went to prison in late 1931], Petrillo was able to get out a little. They were trying to dominate him too much. And he got his own tough guys, former mob guys, around him.” Under Capone, Judge Marovitz added, there was mainly one group to deal with, which made it easy in a way; but once he was gone, there were many different factions, all trying to move in.

  This state of gang anarchy was what led to Petrillo’s kidnapping in mid-1933, Marovitz continued—an event that was much rumored, but that Petrillo denied had occurred. It was a particularly tumultuous time. With Prohibition just ended, the mob was intent on finding new sources of revenue; labor racketeering was intensifying, and kidnapping became a popular form of extortion. “There was a plot [to kidnap him],” Judge Marovitz said. “It’s hard to talk about it. I was involved in resolving it.”

  How so?

  “I would talk to the mob. Some I had helped. If I had to ask them for something, they would listen.”

  Several months later, the kidnapping provided ammunition for a challenge to Petrillo’s union presidency. In December 1933, just days before an election at Local 10, a suit was filed by two union members charging that Petrillo and his officers had abused their authority in numerous ways—essentially, misappropriating union funds for their own use and aggrandizement, and then refusing to allow members to see the union’s books. Questions were raised about the rumored kidnapping. The plaintiffs alleged that about six months before it was said to have taken place, Petrillo had declared at a union meeting that he believed he was in danger of being kidnapped, that it was likely a ransom demand of $50,000 would be made—“and you boys would in all probability pay for my release, and if there are no objections to that, we will consider that the opinion of the membership.” In the event, $100,000 was supposedly paid for his release. The plaintiffs wanted to know: had there been a kidnapping, or had this been a ruse to obtain $100,000 of union funds? And if the kidnapping had indeed occurred, was this a legitimate use of the money? After its rumored occurrence, the complaint continued, Petrillo had hired five bodyguards, placing them on the union payroll; four were his relatives. They also alleged that Petrillo was buying votes in the coming election, using money from a $40,000 relief fund. Petrillo immediately hired an auditor, obtained a clean report, and took out a full-page ad in the newspaper to publish those findings. He won reelection overwhelmingly, and his challenger, a musician, was unable to find work in Chicago for several years and finally left the city. After the election, the plaintiffs did not pursue the case, and it was dismissed. According to Marovitz, the lawsuit was a bid for power by another gang faction, which wanted to replace Petrillo with their man. The attorney for the plaintiffs in this case was a young man named Sidney Korshak.

  “Sidney and I were rivals in the thirties,” Judge Marovitz said. “I represented the unions, and the muscle guys. So did he. He had silent partners in his law firm—he was with the hoodlums. The mob tried to move in on everybody. They tried to move in on me. I carried a pistol.” Marovitz paused, and leaned down to open his bottom desk drawer. He took out a black pistol—small enough to fit in a woman’s evening bag—and aimed it playfully at his visitor. “You’d be amazed to know the people they were able to reach. When I became chief justice of the criminal court, two lawyers came to see me, and they said, ‘We’ll make you a rich man.’ I said, ‘I am a rich man. I came in with my self-respect, I’m leaving with it.’ After that, they sought a change of venue every time they came before me. Korshak came before me sometimes, but he almost never took a case to trial—he was always making deals.

  “I was approached so many times,” Judge Marovitz continued. “I got a lot of verbal abuse—‘Who do you think you are?’ Well, money was never my god.”

  Petrillo had been well acquainted with violence for many years before his kidnapping. In 1924, his front porch had been bombed (a front-porch bombing was a favored expression of mob interest, usu-ally after their initial advances had been rebuffed; it made a strong impression, and generally did not kill the person they were attempting to enlist). He had moreover not been above using violent means himself—in the Chinese restaurants, for example. And after he was president of the local, he apparently continued to find it a useful tool. In 1929, Maurice Wells, owner of the Adams Theater, was quoted in the Chicago Herald and Examiner, saying, “This is a racket. My company bought this theater about five years ago. The previous owners had once employed an organist but had discontinued music. Some time ago, I installed an automatic organ. Six weeks ago, Petrillo visited me in company with two other men. He said, ‘Shut off that organ and don’t start it again.’ I kept it silent for four days and then I started it again. Then the stench bomb business started. A friend of mine went to see Petrillo. He came back with the word, ‘They mean business. They say that they have just started.’ ”

  Stein’s cohort James Caesar Petrillo in 1928—when he was president of the Chicago local of the American Federation of Musicians. Corbis-Bettmann

  But it was only after the kidnapping that Petrillo behaved like someone who was at odds with the mob and thus feared for his life—which squares with Marovitz’s statement that it was then that Petrillo was trying to “get out a little” from the Outfit. Not only did Petrillo hire bodyguards at that time, but he began riding in a limousine that had bulletproof glass. The storm windows at his office were made bulletproof, too. And in order to reach his office, located on the third floor of the musicians union building, one had to walk past the bodyguards’ station on the second-floor landing, and then—if one were not expected—search for his office door, which was hidden, and opened only from the inside. In this period, too, Petrillo installed a machine gun in the building’s auditorium.

  In September 1933, about three months after Petrillo’s kidnapping, Petrillo learned that Stein was targeted for kidnapping as well. Petrillo’s informant was George Browne, an official of the stagehands union who had been a friend and business ally of Petrillo’s for years—and who, in partnership with Willie Bioff, would shortly be carrying out a huge extortion plot on behalf of the Outfit, targeting the Hollywood movie studios. Petrillo would only divulge that his informant had been Browne many years after both Browne and Bioff were dead. Recalling his conversation with Browne, Petrillo began, “He says to me, ‘What do you know about this guy Jules Stein?’

  “I tell him, ‘He’s a good guy.’

  “Then George gives me the word. He says the snatch will be for $50,000. So I call Jules and tell him to come to my office. That is natural. It’s not something you discuss on the phone. Jules asks me how I know. I wasn’t going to tell Jules. How can I? What happens to George if that gets known? He gets killed. I was in the middle. I had to protect both of them. I never knew for sure which mob it was. People always like to say it was Capone. Why say Capone? No one knows. It could be O’Bannion. It could be Touhy.

  “Well, I give the news to Jules. He is cool. That’s Jules. He just sits and bites his fingernails, the way he does when he’s excited.

  “What people don’t realize is what it was like in those days,” Petrillo added. “It’s almost impossible for an outsider to realize that in those days if a guy sneezed everybody went for his gun. It was a son of a bitch. Guys would come to you to b
uy tickets and say, ‘Al sent me.’ Or, ‘Touhy sent me.’ Then they would send someone around a few days later and he’d tell you, ‘Everybody’s paying. So you pay, too.’ There was lots of that. Nobody was bluffing in those days. If a guy said he would shoot you, you could bet on it. You would be shot.”

  The day after receiving Petrillo’s warning, Stein went to see his insurance broker. Stein had never heard of a kidnap insurance policy before, but he thought it seemed only logical. He told his broker he wanted a $75,000 policy, $25,000 more than the ransom demand was supposed to be; that way, if he were kidnapped, it would only cost him the $650 premium. It was an idiosyncratic approach to the situation, and one that was utterly characteristic of Stein. He tended to view almost everything through a financial prism, always trying to protect his downside, ceaselessly computing his gain or loss; it was the position in life, once removed, with everything reduced to what was quantifiable, where he felt most comfortable. The policy, dated September 29, 1933, stipulated that nothing would be paid if Stein were killed; Stein would later have it framed, displaying it to visitors as evidence of his temerity. “I’d always known that Lloyd’s gives insurance on chancy things—like the weather,” Stein said later. “So I decided they would do this. I didn’t know who else to go to. I was pretty sure the Touhy gang was behind it. And the big gangsters in Chicago in those days had deals with the politicians and the police and the judges. I figured there was no sense going to the cops.”

  It is interesting that Stein was convinced his would-be kidnappers (who never did materialize) were the Touhy gang; in all likelihood, the reason that he did not suspect the Capone gang is that they were his partners. For while it is not clear whether Stein gave them a piece of the Music Corporation when they first demanded it, by the early thirties he did appear to have interests in properties they controlled. The most famous of these was the Chez Paree, which opened its doors in November 1932, when the Depression had barely begun to lift, to the sounds of Ben Pollack’s orchestra playing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Featuring showgirls known as the Chez Paree Adorables, and such performers as Joe E. Lewis and Sophie Tucker, the Chez Paree fast became the hottest nightspot in Chicago—a mecca for Chicago’s trinity of businessmen, politicians, and the mob. “The Chez Paree was the meeting place for the Outfit,” said Irving Kupcinet, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who was friendly with its members, and who was himself a regular at the Chez Paree, as was his close friend Sidney Korshak; Marovitz, too, rarely missed a Saturday night there. Unprepossessing from the outside, the Chez Paree was on the top floor of a three-story building; the first and second floors were a warehouse, and a liquor store and butcher shop were in the basement. It was a large space, big enough to seat about 650 people, with a bandstand on the east side of the room; there was also a gambling room in the back—ignored by the police and politicians for nearly twenty years—that some gambling connoisseurs rated the best in the country. Singer Tony Martin, who began his entertainment career playing the saxophone in the Tom Gerun orchestra, recalled that they were booked by MCA at the Chez Paree in the mid-thirties. During his stint there, Martin became a friend of Korshak’s, who he knew was a lawyer for the Outfit, and they would remain close for the rest of their lives. “Of course the boys owned the nightclubs, the saloons, the hotels—they owned everything!” Martin said. “They were very nice with me. I was a performer, I wasn’t a competitor, I just contributed to their fun. I worked for them in Chicago, in New Orleans. I knew never to ask questions.”

  The nightclub’s major owners were the Fischetti family, Capone’s cousins, who continued to be powerful members of the Capone gang long after Al had left Chicago for the penitentiary. But, as was always the case, the major owners’ names did not appear on any publicly available documents; their front men were Mike Fritzel—who had run other Capone clubs, including the Vanity Café where Lewis had been performing at the time of his assault—and Joey Jacobson, a Capone underling. And Marovitz said that Stein had an interest in the Chez Paree as well. “I know Jules had an interest, because I represented Mike Fritzel,” Judge Marovitz said. “Jules made deals with Fritzel and Jacobson to provide the entertainment, and then he demanded a piece. Jules was very powerful.” And it was his accommodation with Capone and his successors that allowed Stein that power. “Jules had to be with Capone,” Judge Marovitz commented, “or be shot in the head.”

  Asked about the ownership of the Chez Paree, Kupcinet said, “It was owned by Fritzel and Jacobson, and the mob had a piece. Fritzel and Jacobson were businessmen, but with a taint—because they were partners with the Outfit. In nightclubs in those days, they had to buy their liquor from one place, their meat from one place—the Outfit dictated all aspects of it.”

  Was he aware that Stein had a piece of it, too? “Yes, Jules may well have,” he replied. After a pause, he added, “Jules had private investors in Music Corporation in the early days.” He said he did not recall their names.

  According to Marovitz, Stein had acquired interests in several other nightclubs as well in this period—among them, the French Casino and the College Inn. “He had a piece of the clubs and the mob had a piece,” Judge Marovitz said. The only nightclub that Stein ever was publicly identified as having an interest in, however, was the French Casino. In what was his first step into the personal appearance and act business, Stein had brought the Folies Bergère to the Pabst Blue Ribbon Casino at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago, and after that he opened the French Casino and moved the show there. Karl Kramer claimed in his memoir that the French Casino thus became this country’s original theater-restaurant—a place with food, dancing, and a big, lavish theatrical spectacle (in this case, replete with an almost-all-nude chorus line). “The impact upon the café business was instantaneous and shattering,” Kramer wrote. “From the opening number to the final chorus, the Folies Bergère was an unqualified smash hit.”

  Perhaps it was too successful not to draw unwelcome attention. In the midst of a performance on a summer night in 1934, when there were about two thousand people in the nightclub, several unions’ representatives appeared and ordered all the employees out on strike. As Kramer tells it, Stein was told by the representative of the waiters union that for $10,000 under the table they would call off the strike. Stein refused. Visits to the state attorney’s office and the police offered no help for a quick resolution; but then Kramer was told by a lawyer who “represented rather the seamier side of the amusement business” to go to the Chicago World’s Fair the next night, and have dinner at the Italian Village. There, Kramer and his wife enjoyed dinner, along with a bottle of Asti Spumante wine, sent to their table, and then their host appeared. The apparent proprietor of the restaurant was Alex Louis Greenberg, whom Kramer later determined was the treasurer of the Capone syndicate, and “the financial brains behind the entire Capone operation.” (He would be murdered in a gangland killing in 1955.) Kramer told Greenberg the whole story, including the fact that the unions had made no prior demand and had called the strike in the middle of the performance, thereby preventing the collecting of receipts from that night’s attendance—several thousand dollars that would have been helpful in reaching a richer deal with the unions. “Now this money was gone forever,” Kramer, a notorious penny-pincher, recounted his having lamented to Greenberg, who “knocked his knuckles on his head and said, ‘No brains, no brains.’ This Mr. Greenberg had a very unusual personality,” Kramer continued. “He had coal black hair, and very piercing green eyes. It was apparent that he was a personality of great force and vitality, and the type of man you wouldn’t care to tangle with.”

  At Greenberg’s suggestion, Kramer met with him the next day, at the offices of the waiters union—a forbidding place, behind a heavy locked door with a little grilled iron window, through which strangers were interrogated. Kramer found all the unions’ representatives seated around a long table, with Greenberg presiding; and after some desultory conversation, Greenberg asked Kramer whether MCA would pay th
e workers a small token raise, about $5 per week, per man. Of course they would, Kramer responded. After a private consultation with the various union representatives, Greenberg said the French Casino could reopen the following day. Kramer was amazed—could it be true? Didn’t they need some letter or legal agreement? “He looked at me with those piercing green eyes and said, ‘Will you take my word for it that it is okay to open?’ I looked back at him, and I had only one answer to make—yes, I would take his word. He said, ‘Then open.’ ”

  They did, and they had no further problems. Kramer was mystified as to why Greenberg would have chosen to help them as he did. And he never speculated, at least in his memoir, about whether Greenberg might have intervened because of the Outfit’s connections to Stein—or, also, whether Stein might have quietly turned over some interest in the French Casino that he had previously withheld.

  Within just a few years, in the depths of the Depression, Stein had metamorphosed from the owner of a promising but often cash-poor young company to a powerful player in the entertainment world who was flush with cash. Instead of buying a secondhand Rolls, he traveled to England to buy one new and, in order to obtain a dealer’s discount, he bought several and shipped them back to this country to resell. He had lost about $10,000 in the stock market crash in 1929 and, looking for a more scientific approach to buying stocks, he had begun keeping charts on past market trends and the behavior of stocks; he then met an investor, Bob Rhea, who taught him his method for interpreting the market, using a modified Dow theory. In early July 1932, following Rhea’s method, Stein—betting that the Depression bear market had reached its nadir—invested about $100,000. At about that time, too, he bought an estate, styled as a French château, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Deere Park, just north of Chicago—reported in the newspaper as one of the largest residential sales to have taken place in recent months. From there, he would often commute by speedboat to MCA’s elegant new offices on Michigan Avenue, adjacent to the Wrigley Building. (Stein said he became “addicted” to speedboats, buying increasingly faster ones, until in 1935 he had one built with airplane engines that could go over sixty-five miles per hour—at that time the fastest boat ever to travel Lake Michigan. After an accident, Stein—who couldn’t swim, and had to be rescued from the water—sold his beloved boat to Guy Lombardo.) He began what would be his lifelong avocation, buying English antiques; Alastair Stair, an antiques dealer, recalled in an interview with Schumach that when they first met in Stair’s London shop, “The Depression was on and he had cash. That made for some interesting transactions. He would offer you substantially less than you asked. You generally took it because he had cash.” Stein traveled through England in a convertible Rolls-Royce, buying antiques and piling them in the back of his car. “I was amazed at the number of pieces” Stein bought at that time, Stair added, estimating that he must have bought about “fifty or sixty pedestal desks alone.” And in 1936, Stein bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange—fulfilling his youthful ambition. “I thought it would bring me prestige,” he remarked later. In the view of some of his associates, however, Stein had another motive as well: saving money on brokers’ commissions. For even though he now lived in baronial style and possessed large amounts of expendable cash, he never spent it freely but, rather, seemed to weigh each penny. Indeed, Stein once reproached Stair, who had become his business partner, for mailing him two letters in one day—thus wasting one stamp.