In Hollywood's golden age, the movie industry was a cash cow with an Achilles' heel. A strike could wreak havoc with shooting schedules and budgets, making studios vulnerable to unscrupulous labor bosses in the 1930s and '40s.
Apparently today's television industry is confronted by a similar problem. In July, a federal indictment charged John T. Coli Sr., a longtime Teamsters union official, with extorting "quarterly payments of $25,000 cash" from an unnamed company. Sources say it is Cinespace Chicago Film Studios, a West Side facility involved in the production of the television shows "Chicago Fire," "Chicago P.D." and "Chicago Med."
In 1943, Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti was similarly charged with extorting millions of dollars from Hollywood studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and 20th Century Fox. Nitti, the brains of the Chicago mob, realized that it needed new revenue sources after the repeal of Prohibition took the profitability out of bootlegging.
His eye had fallen upon the great pyramids of money involved in making and distributing motion pictures. The key to that treasure chest was Hollywood's unions, and Nitti was a labor boss whose philosophy was pragmatic rather than ideological.
An underling once informed a painters union official that Nitti's mobsters had gotten members a 10 percent raise. The total new money would be $50,000, and it would be delivered in cash.
"He told me, 'Now, if you're foolish, you'll give some of the money to your people,'" the union official recalled to congressional investigators. "'If you have any sense, you'll keep it yourself.'"
A 1943 Tribune article painted a vivid picture of Nitti's organizing techniques, quoting testimony to a Cook County grand jury given by George McLane, business agent of the bartenders union.
In 1935, McLane was told that Nitti wanted to see him. So he went to a meeting at the Capri restaurant on the third floor at 123 N. Clark St. The place was crowded with mob bosses and their bodyguards.
Nitti informed McLane that a man he'd never met was now his assistant. Nitti touted the man's credentials — "He has no police record" — and explained his duties — "He'll 'adjust' any trouble on picket lines and see that all the places join the union."
Nitti was born in southern Italy and was brought to Brooklyn as a child. Eventually he came to Chicago, where he was a barber. His shop was a clearinghouse for those buying and selling stolen goods.
That brought him into contact with lowlife types ranging from petty thieves to mobsters. Al Capone took Nitti into his mob, and steadily promoted him. By the 1930s, the Tribune was identifying Nitti as the mob's "finance minister." He minded the store in 1929, when Capone pleaded guilty to a weapons charge in Philadelphia to take refuge behind bars from rival gangsters.
Some mob watchers say Nitti was only a bookkeeper and that others called the shots. Yet someone thought Nitti was important enough to put a hit on him in 1932. He survived, but Chicago being Chicago, Nitti was arrested and his assailants were given a medal.
They were police detectives who said they'd gone to Nitti's headquarters at 221 N. LaSalle St. under orders from the mayor to break up gangsters' meetings.
The Tribune's story reported: "Then, according to the story told by the policemen, Nitti drew a pistol from one of his pockets and fired a bullet striking (Detective Harry) Lang. Crying 'You shot me!' Lang raised his own pistol, which he held in his hand when he entered the room, and fired five times."
The cops also claimed that Nitti tried to swallow a piece of paper. Nitti was rushed to a hospital, and the paper was rushed to Northwestern University's crime laboratory.
"Perhaps, the police reasoned, it contains the names of men slated to die," the Tribune noted. When it didn't, the detectives' story began to unravel. At Nitti's trial, Lang's partner testified that it was the other way around: Lang shot Nitti, then wounded himself as a cover-up.
Nitti was acquitted and Lang was charged with perjury. On the eve of his trial, Lang was elected business agent of the Hebrew butchers union. He was convicted, but the verdict was overturned, and he wasn't retried.
By then, Capone was in prison for income tax evasion. So it fell to Nitti to put the mob on a more solid financial footing. He was hurting too.
"In 1935, Nitti took an inventory and found he was pouring his own money into a sieve," the Tribune reported in a 1948 story about testimony a Bureau of Internal Revenue (the precursor to the Internal Revenue Service) agent gave to a congressional committee investigating issues involving Capone's associates. Nitti had a substantial illicit income, but his wife, said the story, "was spending it almost as fast on dice, cards, roulette and horse racing."
Doubly motivated, Nitti brought skills honed in Chicago to California. After the extortion scheme was uncovered, the Tribune recounted a high-ranking union official's explanation of how it worked:
"Nitti paid the goons they brought in from other towns. They went to boxing gyms in Los Angeles and hired a lot of old pugs," the official told congressional investigators. "Now, these old pugs scared people because their ears are all rolled up."
When their lives and livelihoods are at stake, people pay up.
Nitti dispatched Willie Bioff, one of his underlings, to California. Bioff had created a shakedown operation of Chicago movie theater projectionists that Nitti muscled into.
When the Tinsel Town schemers were subsequently hauled into court, a witness testified that Bioff had demanded a $25,000 payment from film executive Harry Warner because "'the boys in Chicago' expected a Christmas present."
Another testified that Bioff told movie mogul Louis B. Mayer: "There is no room for both of us in this world, and I will be the one who is here."
Bioff, a kid from Halsted Street, went Hollywood. With his cut of the swag, he bought a ranch, lived in a mansion with a kidney-shaped swimming pool and built a distinguished collection of rare books. That caught the eye of Robert Montgomery, president of the Screen Actors Guild, who tipped off the IRS.
A federal grand jury was convened and Nitti and six other hoodlums were indicted. The others were convicted and sent to prison. Nitti was never brought to trial, yet he was being squeezed on the eve of the indictments.
Police in Riverside, Ill., saw a group of mobster bosses arrive at Nitti's spacious home in the southwest suburb. The bosses feared that Bioff had turned government witness. Since he was Nitti's man, Nitti had to deal with the problem.
"They demanded that Nitti shoot Bioff, even if he had to do it in a crowded courtroom," the chief investigator for the state's attorney said, according to the Tribune.
The next day — March 19, 1943 — Nitti's lawyer phoned to tell him of his indictment. Nitti put a gun in his pocket, said he was going for a walk and asked a favor of his wife.
"I want you to go to church this afternoon," Nitti told her, according to a Tribune report. "I want you to go to a novena at Our Lady of Sorrows."
Then he went to a railroad track about a mile away and fatally shot himself.
As feared, Bioff testified against the other mobsters. Then he moved to Phoenix. Under an assumed name, he palled around with Barry Goldwater until his past caught up with him. On Nov. 4, 1955, Bioff turned the key in his pickup truck and a bomb blew it to pieces.
Underneath the debris was a lifeless punk from Halsted Street with an acquired taste for old books with fine bindings.
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