Remora

"For decades he was the chief justice of the film industry�fair, tough-minded, and innovative. I feel that all of us have lost our benevolent godfather," director Steven Spielberg said.

Not many people know Lew Wasserman's name. But there is a reason that the NYT devoted more space to his obit than they did to Stephen Jay Gould's. There's also a reason Spielberg uses the term godfather, with its perilous overtone. Or so certain writers -- Nick Tosches, Dan Moldea -- think.

Among other of his contributions to the Republic, Wasserman made Ronald Reagan. It was entirely appropriate that the LA Times feature a photo of the two together. Of course, there's a backstory to that. The LATimes delicately touches on the subject -- much to my surprise, I must confess:

"MCA's far-reaching power in entertainment and politics led to its nickname, "The Octopus," and Wasserman's critics argued that he sometimes abused his power. In "Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA and the Mob," author Dan Moldea described Reagan's early 1960s grand jury testimony, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Reagan, according to the book, told grand jurors probing possible antitrust violations that he could not recall details of a 1952 waiver that the Screen Actors Guild granted MCA while Reagan was the guild's president. That waiver allowed MCA to produce TV programs while representing actors, which critics said was a conflict of interest.

When he was asked if he had discussed it with Wasserman, Moldea wrote, Reagan is reported to have told the grand jury that he may have only mentioned it socially. According to Moldea's book, MCA later arranged jobs for Reagan in Las Vegas and paid him $100,000 a year as the host of its "GE Theater." Still, Reagan was cleared of any wrongdoing.

No criminal charges were filed against anyone in the probe, and an antitrust division attorney wrote at the close of the investigation, according to an Associated Press account, "It was thought at the beginning of the grand jury that SAG might have purposely favored MCA for some illegal consideration. However, the evidence does not show any such improper purpose."

Moldea has a less tempered account of the Reagan-Wasserman connection. Here's how it got started


"Ronald Reagan was an invention of the Hollywood conglomerate, MCA, which was founded in 1924 by
Jules Stein, a Chicago ophthalmologist who quickly became friendly with the local underworld. Every
facet of Reagan�s life, from his careers in acting and politics to his financial successes, were directed by
MCA, which, with the help of the Mafia, was the most powerful force in Hollywood from the mid-1940s
until the Bronfman family purchased the company in 1995.


Reagan came to Los Angeles in 1937 to make motion pictures, and, in 1940, MCA bought out his talent
agency. Lew Wasserman became Reagan's personal agent; he negotiated a million-dollar contract with
Warner Brothers on Reagan's behalf. In 1946, Wasserman became the president of MCA, and the
following year, Reagan, with his film career already in decline, became the president of the Screen
Actors Guild. By his own admission, Reagan immediately aligned himself with the corrupt Teamsters
and other mob-connected unions in an effort to combat Hollywood Reds."


Moldea's pitch depends heavily on associations and some very odd and lucrative facts in the record. For one thing, Reagan, during his time as the president of the Screen Actors Guild, did all he could to bend the rules for MCA. In 52, for example, he got SAG to waive a rule barring companies that represented actors from acting as full production companies. For another thing, Reagan himself benefited from MCA contacts, getting jobs in Las Vegas at casinos (jobs that necessarily requires rubbing shoulders with at least some mobbed up men, given the Las Vegas ecology at the time), and getting to be the producer of Death Valley days due to an MCA made deal, even as he remained on the SAG board. Then of course there is the little matter of Sid Korshak, a lawyer who operated in between SAG and MCA.

Korshak might ring a bell for you. Nick Tosches did a profile on the man in Vanity Fair that got a lot of notice. It is still the best thing on the man -- and it is unavailable on the Net. Too bad. Sidney Korshak slips in and out of history like a shadow, which is how he wanted to slip in and out of history. He's been the subject of profiles by Seymour Hersch, he's the subject of FBI innuendo, he's talked about on innumerable mob tapes, but Korshak never served time, and he managed to die peacefully. He did suffer some hits: when the Hilton tried to get a casino in Atlantic City in the seventies, they were refused because Korshak was the lawyer for their Vegas site.

Korshak started out in Chicago, and he was considered a point man for the mafia interest in Hollywood, which ran through the unions and then into the fine art of movie finance, a notorious tangle of figures that leaks under the table money like a sentimental drunk leaks tears (sorry, I couldn't help myself there).


Tom Schatz, the Chairman of the University of Texas Radio, TV and Film Department, mentions, in an interview on the movie business, the interesting role of Korshak:

MONK: Even to this day?

TS: It depends on how you define organized crime, and it changes all the time. Believe me, one way or another, you don't make a movie in this country unless you deal with the Teamsters. You can sometimes fly below the radar in terms of union and crews, which is why so many Hollywood movies are made in Texas. But at some level you're playing ball with people who are connected.

MONK: What does that mean? You have to literally pay a bribe to a union leader so that you get cooperation?

TS: No, what that meant at MCA-Universal, [for example], was that you talked to a guy named Sidney Korshak, who never was indicted, never went to jail and was rather perceived as the guy who dealt with labor problems on an incredibly sophisticated level. He was one of the richest, most important men in Los Angeles. If you're Lew Wasserman, you know who you have to call to make sure something gets done, and it gets done, you know.

MONK: Lew has to pay money to somebody?

TS: Yeah, yeah. Joe Schenck went to jail for a couple years because he was the bag man. He literally was the bag man. He was the guy that carried the money from the producers association to the guys from the union. It's been going on for a long time in various ways.

MONK: It's a factor in their success is what you're saying.

TS: Yeah, success in the movie industry and certainly at MCA-Universal. They could not have done what they did without relationships with the Teamsters, with the people that control Las Vegas, with the people that drove the trucks that move the shit that produce the films, the people that project the films in theaters. They couldn't do it and they knew it."

We love the color, guys. We love the thugs, we love the lurid pictures that spring to mind. This is the kind of history you can tell out of the side of your mouth. But is this really how power works? Are we really run by a conspiracy of handshakes in back rooms? No, only in Don Delillo's nightmares. That Wasserman got favors is certainly true, I think. That he made Reagan, in the sense of propping him up fiscally, is also true. But what was that all about, in the end? Making money making and distributing movies. And getting respect.

Well, if obituary space is any indication, Wasserman got respect. We hope he is happy with it, where ever he is.