Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became Americas Hidden Power Brokers by Gus Russo

Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became Americas Hidden Power Brokers Reviews

• 
  Johnny

  Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America’s Hidden Power Brokers (Supermob) is a massive tome that offers a perfect blend of “Yep! Knew that!” mixed with “Hmm! Always suspected that!” and “Whoa! Never knew that!” It has that potpourri of familiarity and surprise that I always wanted to engender as first editor and publisher of national magazines. It is a well-written cocktail of elements that intrigue me (for some of which I rebuke myself as though I were watching and re-watching some of that later excised footage of people jumping off the World Trade Center on 9-11, a macabre fascination that really shouldn’t be there): Chicago and the Outfit, Hollywood and its shadow infrastructure, Las Vegas and its veneer of legitimacy, and powerful political personalities. At least, with regard to the few times I have been in a position to “hear things,” Supermob resonates perfectly, either fitting a new jigsaw piece into what I “think” I might know or affirming a pre-conceived bias. So, I can’t tell you how accurate this book is. I can only say that it “fits” my perception of the reality.
  
  Currently, I reside in a northern suburb of Chicago and commute downtown. I work a few blocks from a beautiful amphitheater named after a member of the Pritzker family and see barges prominently labeled as part of a Crown company. Both families are prominent business people and major, major philanthropists and political donors. Gus Russo casts major aspersions on the progenitors of these cultural icons by tying them with “shenanigans” tied to armed forces commissaries and exchanges, construction projects, union double-crosses, and “insider” double-dealing with regard to properties seized under the Office of Alien Properties during World War II. The latter is most disconcerting to me because it involved members of the FDR and Truman administrations who seemed to have operated with a wink and a wave from both respected Presidents. In the past, I had always felt like Truman was tainted unfairly by his early endorsement by the Pendergast Machine. Russo cites evidence that makes me feel less enamored with the man I consider the best POTUS of my lifetime. Alas, I still think he was the best—just not quite as great as I thought him.
  
  Of course, the book also hammers the reputation of one Ronald Wilson Reagan, citing the Department of Justice’s intent to indict both MCA for its antitrust sweetheart arrangement with the Screen Actors Guild which was brokered by Reagan in exchange for the job on GE Theater (p. 269). On multiple occasions, underworld and DOJ sources indicated that, as in his presidency, Reagan used his (some say “impossibly”) bad memory as an excuse for not remembering incriminating details, “Well, maybe the fact that I married in March of 1952 and went on a honeymoon had something to do with my being a little bit hazy.” (p. 269, see also p. 230) Also, “When Reagan lied in denying he had been a producer while serving as SAG president, the interrogators were so convinced of his perjury that they began impounding his tax returns for 1952-55.” (p. 269) In addition, the book documents the suspected underworld figures in Ronnie’s entourage as well as how he cut the Department of Justice’s budget to ensure that the organized crime project could not continue (p. 476) and mob sources were quoted as saying that Ronnie did their bidding unlike Carter (p. 481).
  
  Apparently, Lew Wasserman talked Bobby Kennedy into dropping all of the criminal indictments which were pending, including Reagan’s (p. 270). Why? Could it have been a recommendation from Hy Raskin, an MCA attorney from (you guessed it) Chicago who served as one of the Kennedy family’s “insiders” during the 1960 campaign? Or was it that Wasserman became one of the DNC’s biggest contributors when they were dropped? Wasserman even developed the famous President’s Club in 1963 which, for a $1K donation, gave members a gold engraved membership card, invitations to cabinet briefings, and an annual club dinner along WITH promised access to JFK (p. 271).
  
  And we probably don’t have to designate all the different ways that Nixon was dirty (forming the Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic Party as an insidious way of attacking the alleged “left-wing” activities of anyone who disagreed with the red-baiting former Vice-President—p. 272, having his Attorney General, John Mitchell drop the IRS’s Operation Snowball (which had the goods on a lot of mob operations) immediately after the inauguration—p. 275, his brother Donald’s $205K “loan” from Howard Hughes that Larry O’ Brien (DNC Chairman during the 1972 election) had brokered and that Dick feared would be used against him in the 1972 election—so he burglarized O’Brien’s office at the Watergate to see—p. 131, and more). His involvement with Bebe Rebozo in an offshore bank (Castle Bank) which was investigated for significant money laundering is also telling (p. 441).
  
  Supermob, however, isn’t really so much about any of the things I’ve already mentioned as it is about Sidney Korshak. People with tech backgrounds can think of him as a neural net for organized crime with nodes that connect some of the most unlikely individuals while those without a tech background can think of Korshak as a spider who managed to weave the most vast and deadly web imaginable with tendrils in every corner of contemporary history. As a result, the book has more layers than an onion with the writing allowing us to peel back this amazing era of corruption and covert manipulation. And as one often tears up upon peeling an onion, there is occasional sorrow upon finding a prominent name in the index of this book.
  
  Why didn’t Estes Kefauver’s hearings in the early ‘50s accomplish more? According to Russo, Korshak set him up with hookers in the Drake Hotel of Chicago and took incriminating pictures with infrared cameras (p. 121). Why didn’t Howard Hughes’ sale of RKO Pictures to mob-front owners go through? According to Russo, Hughes leaked it to the press in order to keep over a million dollars in non-refundable earnest money/down payment (p. 130) And, although there was no mention of a decapitated horse, Korshak allegedly “fixed” matters so that one Francis Albert Sinatra could save his career with a dramatic role in From Here to Eternity (p. 148) And, I loved Korshak’s remark during the McClennan hearings when Bobby Kennedy tried to press him on the amount received by Korshak and associates for settling a union dispute, Korshak replied under oath that he was grossly underpaid (p. 169). At another point, he complained that Bobby offered a self-righteous attitude as if he had no idea where Joe Kennedy’s wealth had originated (“…you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey.” P. 171).
  
  It was great to read of Red Skelton’s quote at Harry Cohn’s funeral (I’d heard it before, but out of context and attributed to someone else), “Well, it only proves what they always say—give the public something they want to see and they’ll come out for it.” (p. 156) I learned amazing bits of trivia like Frank Sinatra being obsessed with the color orange (p. 447). As a result of this book, my favorite newspaper in the world lost some of its sparkle (Los Angeles Times) and I saw some new connections with regard to personal experiences that explain a few things I had only assumed before. This is a terrific book and I’m delighted that I read it—even if there are times when the lines of evidence peter off into circular sources similar to conspiracy books. I think most of it rings true, but there are times that I just want to say that knowing someone doesn’t equate to being in league with them.
  
• 
  Frank

  This is a hard book to rate. Certain aspects of it, like the volume of research, and the connections the author makes, deserve 4 or 5 stars. Russo’s dissection of the Ashkenazic Jewish diaspora and their second generation experience in Chicago and subsequent success in shaping American society is an excellent, eye-opening analysis.
  
  As the book progresses, Russo’s challenges in tackling very broad subject matter become apparent. The book struggles between being a biography of Sidney Korshak and an expose of a loose-knit, amorphous, and somewhat exaggerated entity known as the “Supermob,” a group of powerful and influential Jews with connections to La Cosa Nostra.
  
  Russo even lumps Ronald Reagan in as a member of the Supermob. But Russo clearly despises Reagan, and assigning him membership in a criminal organization is just one of many ways the partisan author attacks the former President, actor and union leader. Russo's anti-Reagan agenda causes him to go on lengthy, off-topic diatribes in a book that's already too long. For example, he sets out to show that Reagan deserves no credit for the fall of the Soviet Union in a purely political, paragraph-after-paragraph editorial that has nothing to do with Korshak, the Supermob, the Outfit, or any other pertinent subject of the book. Russo quotes mobster Allen Friedman, a career criminal, serial liar, and world-class sleeze, saying that he took a suitcase full of cash from Jackie Presser to Ed Meese for Ronald Reagan. A few paragraphs later, Russo says, “Practically at the same time that Reagan's team received Presser's cash-filled briefcase...” Russo turned Friedman's dubious quote into a fact without offering any corroborating evidence for the proven liar's claim. It's sneaky, and it undermines the book's credibility.
  
  High on Russo's long list of Reagan's sins is his anticommunism. According to Russo, communists in Hollywood were, “fictitious 'commies" (p.291 Nook edition), which is like saying there's no Mafia in Chicago. In the same paragraph, Russo states that “the lefties were not aligned against the United States, but were merely a reaction to World War II fascism, and Reagan and cohorts surely knew it.” In reality, many of whom Russo refers to as “lefties” were card-carrying members of the Communist Party who swore their membership oath to Stalin when Stalin was allied with fascism under the Hitler-Stalin Pact. For example, leading Hollywood Communist Dalton Trumbo went to great lengths to protect the Hitler Stalin Pact by doing everything in his power, including writing an anti-war novel, to prevent the U.S. From entering the war against fascism. I suspect that a researcher of Russo's stature knows the true extent of Communist infiltration of Hollywood but simply chooses to repeat old myths in service of his political agenda.
  
  Other inaccuracies, though usually more trivial, become annoying as they pile-up. Many gangsters were referred to as a “boss” even when they were mere soldiers. Russo describes Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show, “bashing an old car with a sledgehammer.” In fact, Zappa used drumsticks to ingeniously make a musical instrument out of a bicycle. One has to wonder if Russo got the sledgehammer and old car from the same grab bag as Reagan's suitcase full of cash.  
  
  Russo deserves credit for documenting the so-called Supermob in a connect-the-dots saga of thoroughly researched intrigue, but the book would've been better served had Russo been able to reign in his bias and his word count.
• 
  Erik Graff

  Most of the material I've read about the Mob (aka 'The Outfit') has been in connection to the CIA and its nefarious dealings with the underworld. Consequently, I was a bit in doubt about buying this rather large book up in Evanston. Still, it promised to focus on Chicago and on the Korshaks, one of whom, Marshall, was a prominent politician in Illinois for most of my life. Also, the index revealed a lot of material about Allen Dorfman, the Mob attorney who was murdered in the parking lot of the Rosemont Hyatt, 'the Purple Hotel', just behind the Honeywell offices Dad worked in for decades. Thus I made the purchase.
  
  Arranged around the biography of Sidney Korshak, this book begins with the assassination of Czar Alexander II and the pogroms that led many Russian Jews to flee to the United States, and to Chicago in particular. Tracing the history of their Maxwell Street and then Lawndale communities, author Russo introduces the Korshak and other families who were later to play roles in the black economies of sweetheart contracts, casino skimming, offshore accounts, tax dodges, influence peddling, prostitution and the like.
  
  Previously Russo had published a book, The Outfit, about the Chicago Mob. This book is substantially about how their illegal earnings were invested, hidden and laundered by the likes of attorney Korshak--and their political colleagues, most notably Ronald Reagan. It is an unsettling story, many of my 'favorite' public figures standing revealed as criminals.
  
  The heroes of these dark tales of theft, deceit, extortion and murder are mostly such journalists as Seymour Hersh and others who dared expose the powerful, as well as some law officers in the FBI and other agencies who tried--and mostly failed--to stand up against such criminally compromised bosses as J. Edgar Hoover and Edwin Meese. Celebrities abound in this book's stories of the corruption of Hollywood, most of them riding the dark tide, few standing against it. (I was proud to see one Chicago actor courageously oppose the Mob, namely Steve Allen.)
  
  Supermob is dense, almost too dense, and well documented. However, the prudent reader should, unlike me, read the prior study, The Outfit, first. Perhaps then the tide of information would be a bit less overwhelming.
  
  
• 
  Larry Kucharik

  
  
  Nicely done book about the life,times and connections of Sidney Korshak. Mob influence and connections to Chicago, LosAngeles and the movie business.....if you like Chicago mob books it is a must read!
• 
  Jill Meyer

  I had to read "Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers" because it was used as the basis of a class in a Life Long Learning program. I read a lot of non-fiction and history and I have to say that "Supermob" was probably one of worst books I've ever read. I found several basic facts reported wrong - for instance, Nancy Reagan had NOT been married before she married Ronald Reagan - just sort of tossed out at the reader. The minute I find two errors in a work of non-fiction, I stop reading the book. Unfortunately, since it was a text for a class, I couldn't throw it at the wall, even though I wanted to!
  
  There is a difference in writing boring and dry history and a free-for-all history. Gus Russo is really more of a storyteller/raconteur than a careful journalist/author. He puts together interesting anecdotes, but appears to create his own context to make for a better story.
  
  
• 
  Andrew Tollemache

  Film industry legend Robert Evans referred to Sid Korshak as "The Myth" since he was such a pivotal figure in US industry, labor relations, organized crime, politics and the film industry. Korshak and Lew Wasserman were key players in the rise of people like Ronald Reagan and Frank Sinatra, yet Korshak is unknown to the vast majority of Americans. Asides from a smattering of press in the mid-1970s, long after Korhak had peaked in influence, very little has been written. Gus Russo attempts to fix that in "SuperMob", a book that tries to boil down all the misc threads in Korhsaks life and times to show how Korshak and his associates were at the nexus of building America at mid-20th century.
  "SuperMob" traces SK's rise from better than average mob lawyer to the Chicago Mob's man in Hollywood. Russo shows how pivotal SK was in engineering the flow of Mob money made during Prohibition to California from the mid 30's to 50s. Capone might have been gone but the empire he and folks like Lansky built still existed. Bootlegging made them flush and all that $$ went to California to underwrite a huge chunk the states boom during and after WW2. Also key to SK's power was his role as labor lawyer. In the 20's corporate America had made alliances with organized crime to help keep the labor unions in check, but within a few years men like SK used their role as Union lawyers to blackmail corporate America. If you ran hotels anywhere in the US you better have made the right payments to SK, if the Hiltons and Pritzkers (Hyatt) wanted to build in Vegas or California they had to make sure SK got paid and if Hollywood wanted to make sure none of their many unions and guilds struck they had make sure the cash went thru SK.
  Russo does a great job laying out how thorough corruption lay at the heart of mid century America. Oddly enough one of the weaknesses of the book is how he never drills down on any one racket. Sure, some like how much the Mob made on sweetheart deals buying underpriced Cali assets seized from interned Japanese WW2, but the corruption is layered on one after another without really fleshing out the deets. Dozens of the events described in this book could be a lengthy book in and of itself. In the end that is why i let Russo slide on this, his book merely ties together a slews of events i have read in a ton of other books like Connie Bruck's "When Hollywood had a King", Robert Evans' "The Kid Stays in the Picture" and the book/movie "Casino". Although Sid Korshak is only vaguely mentioned or not even mentioned at all in these books, he was a key player.
• 
  Dave Eisenstark

  Well-documented tale of post-war American history, which, by the way, will make you sick. It's the story of power, influence, money, the mob (not that one, the REAL one) and their dominance over American business, particularly Hollywood and Vegas, and by-the-way, labor unions, manufacturing industries, states, cities, and the nation. Yeah, I hate conspiracy theories, too, but every once in awhile you get slapped with the real deal and it hurts. This is that. The book is tough to get through, and like much history, a little too much "this happened, then this happened" without some big-picture analysis which would make it easier to digest, but a stellar effort nevertheless. Read it and weep. (Yes, Donald Trump is mentioned.)
• 
  Bob

  I read this at the office over several months at the office over as professional reading. It is a well researched expose of a group of Chicago lawyers of Russian Jewish ethnicity who represented mob figures eventually moving west and becoming involved Las Vegas gambling and California Politics. There were some interesting revelations about Ronald Reagan.
• 
  Lori

  I found this so fascinating. Especially since I'm actually related to Sidney. Closely, LOL. They're making a movie about this, too. Should be interesting.
  
  This is a very detailed look at how the mob really controlled almost everything in America. And gave me a very cool look at my family history in the first several chapters as well.
• 
  Nick

  Another impressively researched book by Gus Russo. Supermob details the exploits of the lawyers that bridged the gap between the Outfit and legitimate business.
• 
  Michael S.

  Among other things, this is one of the most enlightening Chicago histories one can ever read.
• 
  Scott Finley

  I felt much more favorably toward's Russo's book "The Outfit". A little too much innuendo in this one for my taste.
• 
  Steve Coscia

  Wanted to read this book for a while. Once I started, I couldn't put it down.
  
  After reading this, I have only two words for us middle-class Americans: we're screwed.
• 
  James

  It's a 5-star story, but this book is 3 stars at best. It desperate needed an editor and there's no evidence that one read this book before it published. It's written in the style of a tabloid newspaper gossip column, or a 1920s movie newsreel. It's got its fair share of factual errors, such as the names of Chicago buildings and neighborhoods. This could have been a fascinating book, but instead I struggled to get to the end.
• 
  Dennis Osborne

  A better rating is 3 1/2. It's a fascinating account that ties in a group of mainly Jewish lawyers with their ties with the mob in Chicago and the resulting influence they had mainly in California and Las Vegas and specifically with the entertainment industry. The main influence peddler was Sidney Korshak who operated in the background and earned the moniker " the fixer".While a fascinating account it jumps around and it's difficult at times to keep all the characters straight.
  Very interesting is the ties with politics and the mob , in particular Ronald Regan.