WEBVTT 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:02.860 Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, it's good to be back here in Studio 00:00:02.860 --> 00:00:06.500 Gangland Wires. Colder in hell here in Kansas City today, as you can tell by 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:07.900 the flannel shirt I'm wearing. 00:00:08.120 --> 00:00:13.320 And I see my guest, Michael Benson, is wearing some more cold weather clothes, too. 00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:16.700 So anyhow, Michael Benson is our guest today. 00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:21.180 I've had him on before. He has written several mob books with Frank DiMatteo. 00:00:21.320 --> 00:00:26.640 I just actually just really read with, in detail, really read through this story 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:30.340 of Carmine Galante's cigars. It's really, really a good book. 00:00:30.520 --> 00:00:34.040 It was kind of interesting to really sit and go through a book, 00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:38.280 you know, line by line rather than just, you know, going through it real fast 00:00:38.280 --> 00:00:39.620 is really good. Well-written. 00:00:39.800 --> 00:00:43.560 And then we got Mafia Hitman by Frank DiMatteo and Michael Benson. 00:00:43.780 --> 00:00:47.680 That's, that's the story of the guy that really killed Joey Gallo. Not the Irishman. 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:55.000 So you got a couple more, I believe. We love Scorsese, but he prefers stories that aren't quite true. 00:00:56.080 --> 00:01:00.060 And he tells them really well. Yeah. But it's not history. 00:01:00.900 --> 00:01:04.520 Yeah. And Frank had a kind of a front row seat to a lot of these. You're a co-author. 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:09.900 He is the authority. Yes. He is. He truly is. He's a good guy too. 00:01:10.060 --> 00:01:14.140 The first book he wrote about his own father and a lot about that. 00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:17.680 It's got to be. Well, you know, the deal that he wrote a book called Lion in the Basement. 00:01:18.300 --> 00:01:21.480 About Joey Gallo and the lion in the basement on President Street. 00:01:22.060 --> 00:01:27.060 And Gary Goldstein at Kensington Books read it and said, this is a diamond in the rough. 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:29.300 And that's how I got involved with Frank. He came to me and said, 00:01:29.340 --> 00:01:32.360 can you turn this into a book that people in Kansas City will read? 00:01:32.860 --> 00:01:38.100 And I think he actually said Kansas City. He said, Mr. and Mrs. Kansas City will read. 00:01:39.320 --> 00:01:43.040 And I said, sure. And it turned out, Frank, I got along and the rest is history. 00:01:43.260 --> 00:01:45.760 We're writing mafia history like it's never been written before. 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:50.740 Yeah, no, I agree. I totally agree. So we're going to do some more shows on this with you guys. 00:01:50.960 --> 00:01:54.840 So anyhow, moguls, the life and times of Hollywood film pioneers, 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:58.120 Nicholas and Joseph Schnick. Is that how you pronounce that? 00:01:59.320 --> 00:02:04.100 Wow. That's the worst pronunciation I've ever heard. That's what I'm famous for. 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:10.460 You realize that nobody gets it right, but that was special. Oh, no, it's skank. 00:02:11.100 --> 00:02:15.760 Skank, huh? Yes. I don't know how you get that out of S-C-H-E-N-C-K, 00:02:15.880 --> 00:02:17.560 but skank. It's Russian. 00:02:17.940 --> 00:02:22.120 And their descendants pronounce it shank, which is a little easier on the ear. 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:25.660 Yeah. But I think one of the reasons that the Skank brothers weren't better 00:02:25.660 --> 00:02:30.140 known is because Americans reacted just that way to the sound of their name. 00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:33.660 They were referred to as the Skunk Brothers by their enemy. Oh, 00:02:33.700 --> 00:02:38.480 it's easier to make fun of somebody. They hid behind other people's logos. They ran Lowe's Inc. 00:02:39.040 --> 00:02:43.060 Marcus Lowe was long passed away. And they ran 20th Century Fox. 00:02:43.300 --> 00:02:47.620 Fox no longer had anything to do with it. It was the Skank Brothers. Interesting. 00:02:48.200 --> 00:02:53.780 So how'd you get into this? Well, my friend Craig Singer, who was a film director, 00:02:54.560 --> 00:03:00.020 Good Night to Die, 645, The Dark Ride, about a haunted amusement park, 00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:07.140 came to me and said that he had worked with the great nephew of the Skank brothers. 00:03:07.340 --> 00:03:10.640 And they were wondering why nobody had ever written a biography of them, 00:03:10.980 --> 00:03:14.480 considering they were the most powerful brothers in show business history. 00:03:14.920 --> 00:03:17.020 And Craig said, who? Who? 00:03:18.020 --> 00:03:23.060 And eventually we found out that there were some reasons why they had almost 00:03:23.060 --> 00:03:26.300 slipped off of having a legacy, despite, uh, 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:30.340 Nick being the eighth richest man in America at one point, the only Jewish man 00:03:30.340 --> 00:03:33.480 in the top 10, uh, his brother, Joe, not far behind. 00:03:33.660 --> 00:03:38.920 They ran three out of the five major studios in Hollywood, um, 00:03:39.880 --> 00:03:44.800 and tremendously powerful, but Nick in particular didn't like publicity, 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.480 paid a publicist to keep his name out of the newspapers. 00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:50.380 His family was trained not to talk about him. 00:03:51.580 --> 00:03:54.520 They don't talk about grandpa. They don't talk about daddy. 00:03:54.900 --> 00:04:00.880 And so they almost lost their legacy, but Craig and I stepped up. 00:04:01.160 --> 00:04:04.860 We went back in time, searched the archives, found everything else to know about 00:04:04.860 --> 00:04:06.800 these men. They had fascinating lives. 00:04:07.220 --> 00:04:10.280 And we don't have to worry about them being forgotten anymore. 00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:14.600 Nick and Joe Skank, three times as powerful as the Warner Brothers. 00:04:14.600 --> 00:04:18.240 And if they had named the company after themselves, they would be just as famous. 00:04:19.060 --> 00:04:21.940 Interesting. I was wondering why I heard of Louis B. 00:04:22.060 --> 00:04:25.640 Mayer and David O. Selznick and names like that are like household words, 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:27.660 but these guys, I had not heard those names. 00:04:27.780 --> 00:04:29.940 Nick is Louis B. Mayer's boss. 00:04:31.180 --> 00:04:34.720 And sometimes you'll hear in old movies, you'll hear it referred to like the 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:37.060 studio bosses. We have to check with New York. 00:04:37.500 --> 00:04:42.560 Yeah. And that means the money people who were in their Gatsby mansions on Long 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:44.760 Island, they're actually calling the shots. 00:04:45.400 --> 00:04:52.460 Interesting. That is really a deep dive into the early foundations and look at the movie industry. 00:04:52.760 --> 00:04:57.860 And you touch on the mob in the movie industry. Assorted and crime-ridden, yes. Oh, it was. 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:01.700 I mean, there's so many great crime stories in there. It's hard to believe. 00:05:01.880 --> 00:05:05.100 I mean, there's a lot of good just actual history, but there's a lot of great 00:05:05.100 --> 00:05:08.140 crime stories in there, too. You would have to agree with that. 00:05:08.700 --> 00:05:13.780 Joe and Nick faced a lot of big enemies. I mean, as we'll talk about, 00:05:13.880 --> 00:05:17.060 the mafia tried to take a bite out of them. The U.S. 00:05:17.460 --> 00:05:21.220 Government did not like the fact that this was a major industry being run by 00:05:21.220 --> 00:05:23.480 a handful of un-Christian men. 00:05:24.180 --> 00:05:29.240 And in the long run, the thing that got them was television. 00:05:29.800 --> 00:05:35.460 You know, they stayed really, really powerful until TV invaded the living room. 00:05:35.720 --> 00:05:39.400 And they were old men by this time. And I think that younger skanks would have 00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:41.300 seen TV as an opportunity. 00:05:41.540 --> 00:05:44.600 They saw it as competition and they lost. 00:05:44.880 --> 00:05:52.840 But before that, they took on the Chicago outfit and in a weird way, 00:05:53.020 --> 00:05:58.560 created a system where everybody made money, which I think is the forte of really, really rich men. 00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:04.900 What happened was there were these two low lives in Chicago named George Brown and Willie Bia. 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:11.260 And they were extortionists. They ran a protection. And they went up and down 00:06:11.260 --> 00:06:15.400 Fulton Avenue and they said to everybody with a shop or a restaurant or a bar, 00:06:15.420 --> 00:06:18.660 they said, you pay us and nothing bad will happen to your place. 00:06:18.760 --> 00:06:22.920 If you don't pay, you know, who knows? You can get a firebombing or something. 00:06:23.810 --> 00:06:27.750 And they decided that they were going to take on movie theaters. 00:06:28.970 --> 00:06:32.990 And they had some minimal success. They got payments out of Benny Balaban, 00:06:33.210 --> 00:06:35.750 who's a Chicago magnate of theaters. 00:06:36.570 --> 00:06:38.850 So they decided to hit up on the Skank brothers. 00:06:40.070 --> 00:06:44.610 And, uh, well, actually what happened was they, they, they, first they had, 00:06:44.750 --> 00:06:51.230 they got the money from, from Balaban and went to a casino and started spending it very fast. 00:06:51.230 --> 00:06:54.030 And frank nitty watched this and said where 00:06:54.030 --> 00:06:57.390 a couple little lives like that get all that cash so he 00:06:57.390 --> 00:07:01.270 calls them in they think they're gonna get whacked but he says look you're 00:07:01.270 --> 00:07:05.050 thinking small you're small time what you got to do is you got to think big 00:07:05.050 --> 00:07:11.590 and the do not threaten a fire bombing or or even a brick through the window 00:07:11.590 --> 00:07:17.370 in order to pull off a really classy extortion scheme You have to make it always 00:07:17.370 --> 00:07:19.370 appear as if no crime is being committed. 00:07:20.590 --> 00:07:25.450 So what they did was they took over the projectionist union. 00:07:26.450 --> 00:07:30.350 All the projectionists who showed the movies at all the theaters had a union. 00:07:30.850 --> 00:07:37.290 And the mob saw it as politically weak, went in, bullied their way in, and took over. 00:07:38.310 --> 00:07:43.850 And they come to the Skank brothers and say, you have to pay us or else the 00:07:43.850 --> 00:07:46.570 projectionists go on strike. Nick and what are you going to, 00:07:46.570 --> 00:07:48.570 who's going to show your movies then? Smart guy. 00:07:49.550 --> 00:07:53.310 Well, Joe and Nick put their heads together. At this point, Joe's living in 00:07:53.310 --> 00:07:55.190 Hollywood and Nick's on Long Island. 00:07:55.470 --> 00:08:00.650 They talk three times a day on the phone and they come up with a scheme and 00:08:00.650 --> 00:08:02.590 they say, okay, we're going to pay you. 00:08:02.730 --> 00:08:07.530 And we're going to talk all the other moguls in Hollywood into paying you, but, 00:08:08.740 --> 00:08:14.340 You have to promise us that union is never, ever going to ask for a raise. 00:08:16.340 --> 00:08:20.320 So what happened was the Skank brothers made money on the deal in raises they 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:22.460 didn't have to pay to the projectionist union. 00:08:23.280 --> 00:08:31.500 Mafia made their little cut. And it all came out in 1941 when Joe Skank went down for tax evasion. 00:08:32.400 --> 00:08:37.520 He never used the word tax in his life without adding BS immediately after. Yeah. 00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:44.280 That's still true today. Yeah, it's typical of the, probably typical of. 00:08:44.620 --> 00:08:46.060 We probably all said that. 00:08:46.520 --> 00:08:49.920 Yeah, they probably still do. I have a question here. 00:08:50.120 --> 00:08:53.120 You're talking about that we're out in Hollywood with studio heads, 00:08:53.360 --> 00:08:55.260 extorting them for projectionists. 00:08:55.360 --> 00:09:00.420 Now, back then did the studios, and now, like AMC owns a lot of theaters. 00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:04.280 Other little companies own theaters. A local company here owns several theaters 00:09:04.280 --> 00:09:09.480 in Kansas City. The studios owned the theaters where all the major pictures 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:11.780 were shown throughout the whole United States, correct? 00:09:12.380 --> 00:09:16.300 Marcus Lowe, during the vaudeville era, built palace theaters across America 00:09:16.300 --> 00:09:19.160 for his acts that would go from town to town. 00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:22.720 And when movies started, they turned into movie houses. 00:09:23.420 --> 00:09:27.340 And when he passed away, Nick Skank took charge of Lowe's Inc. 00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:31.880 And he was in charge of MGM, which made the movies, and the Lowe's theaters, 00:09:31.940 --> 00:09:37.600 which showed the movies, and took the tickets. He was in charge of the whole, the whole thing. 00:09:38.120 --> 00:09:44.660 And his brother, Joe was the owner of 20th Century Fox. 00:09:44.980 --> 00:09:49.340 He had Daryl F. Zanuck running the studio for him, much like Nick had Louis B. 00:09:49.420 --> 00:09:53.620 Mayer running MGM for him, but they owned everything and they owned stock in 00:09:53.620 --> 00:09:54.920 each other's companies. 00:09:55.280 --> 00:09:59.540 It was a little bit incestuous in that way. So yeah, it was. 00:10:00.970 --> 00:10:04.690 The money stayed with the skanks the whole way. 00:10:04.970 --> 00:10:09.430 The expenditures were paying the talent and paying for the operation and upkeep 00:10:09.430 --> 00:10:13.810 of the theaters, which was relatively cheap considering about 30 million, 00:10:13.990 --> 00:10:17.890 40 million people were going to the movies every week. There was no TV. It's what you did. 00:10:18.710 --> 00:10:21.930 That's how you got your news. And the projectionists got screwed. 00:10:22.890 --> 00:10:24.330 Working guys got screwed. Everybody 00:10:24.330 --> 00:10:28.330 makes money. I'm not counting the projectionists who got screwed. 00:10:28.510 --> 00:10:32.270 Yes. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, I was a projectionist for four years and 00:10:32.270 --> 00:10:38.010 I don't know how it was back in the 1930s, but it wasn't a job I planned on using to raise a family. 00:10:38.590 --> 00:10:43.650 I was 21 at the time. And basically I wanted to buy a six pack of beer on Friday. 00:10:47.950 --> 00:10:50.930 These guys they they're then this you 00:10:50.930 --> 00:10:53.970 know the changing of hollywood they go from the times 00:10:53.970 --> 00:10:58.470 when there was a lot of real sexual innuendo conduct 00:10:58.470 --> 00:11:03.590 on screen and then there's a big crackdown on that right and when you can't 00:11:03.590 --> 00:11:07.890 show that and then you have they had one particular scandal a sex scandal by 00:11:07.890 --> 00:11:11.510 one of their big stars a guy named fatty arbuckle and i think most everybody 00:11:11.510 --> 00:11:14.710 my age has heard of Fatty Arbuckle or a little older, 00:11:15.070 --> 00:11:18.670 heard of Fatty Arbuckle or some big scandal, but I never knew exactly what it 00:11:18.670 --> 00:11:21.050 was. He worked for Skanks, right? 00:11:21.310 --> 00:11:24.690 He was Joe's biggest star during the silent movie era. 00:11:24.850 --> 00:11:29.750 He was a large man, as his name Fatty would imply, 300 pounds or so. 00:11:30.210 --> 00:11:34.750 But like a Jackie Gleason or a John Candy, the joke was never the things he 00:11:34.750 --> 00:11:35.950 couldn't do because he was fat. 00:11:36.090 --> 00:11:38.310 It was the things he could do even though he was fat. 00:11:39.210 --> 00:11:43.610 You know, he was very acrobatic in his physical comedy. And... 00:11:44.700 --> 00:11:51.480 Was a guy who could party and over the Labor Day weekend in 1921, 00:11:51.480 --> 00:11:58.600 very early, goes to a party in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. 00:11:58.840 --> 00:12:02.600 There's a lot of starlets in there. A woman named Virginia Rape, 00:12:02.820 --> 00:12:08.760 R-A-P-P-E, kind of an unfortunate spelling considering how she ended up dying. 00:12:09.140 --> 00:12:11.920 She's a 30-year-old woman. She's been a bit player in Hollywood. 00:12:12.020 --> 00:12:16.980 She's probably best known as the cover girl on the sheet music for beautiful 00:12:16.980 --> 00:12:20.200 lady or the, some, some song that was a big hit at the time. 00:12:21.320 --> 00:12:26.480 She's a nobody. And she is in the hotel room alone with Fatty Arbuckle. 00:12:27.540 --> 00:12:30.340 Other people are partying outside, but the door's locked. 00:12:30.980 --> 00:12:37.080 When Arbuckle emerges after the pounding on the door, he's obviously very, very drunk. 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:43.660 He's wearing Virginia's hat at a weird angle. and she is lying in the, 00:12:43.660 --> 00:12:46.820 in the room with a broken bed, dying. 00:12:47.180 --> 00:12:50.500 And she goes to the hospital. They find out she has a ruptured bladder. 00:12:51.820 --> 00:12:57.720 So the immediate assumption is that, uh, that there's a horrible sexual attack has taken place here. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:02.120 This is inflamed by the Hearst newspapers that when they report, 00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:06.220 uh, anything about the Fatty Arbuckle case, always would put an uncaptioned 00:13:06.220 --> 00:13:10.940 photo of a long necked beer bottle, which apparently was what Fatty was supposed 00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:12.440 to have used to violate the poor woman. 00:13:12.840 --> 00:13:18.280 It gets complicated from that point because the witnesses, Virginia's friends, 00:13:18.820 --> 00:13:22.720 turned out to be extortionists in their own right and had held up rich men in 00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:24.880 the past for sexual improprieties. 00:13:25.580 --> 00:13:28.680 So the tendency was to not fully believe them. 00:13:29.200 --> 00:13:34.680 Joe Skank crosses the country because he's still living in Bayside Queens in 00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:38.940 1921, goes out to California, talks to Fatty Arbuckle. 00:13:39.380 --> 00:13:42.220 Roscoe says, it was an accident, Joe. 00:13:43.170 --> 00:13:49.730 Which implies that it was something happened. There was an incident that involved her being injured. 00:13:50.370 --> 00:13:53.590 Joe pays for all three of Arbuckle's trials. 00:13:53.770 --> 00:13:58.370 He is convicted at the first trial, but that's overturned by the judge because 00:13:58.370 --> 00:14:01.530 of jury impropriety. Second trial is a hung jury. 00:14:01.730 --> 00:14:06.350 Third one, he is acquitted, and the jury makes a public statement about the 00:14:06.350 --> 00:14:09.630 horrible dishonor that's been done to this poor man because there's absolutely 00:14:09.630 --> 00:14:12.510 no evidence connecting him with any crime. A little bit overboard. 00:14:13.510 --> 00:14:17.930 And by this time, of course, Joe Skank's money is fully behind Arbuckle. 00:14:18.710 --> 00:14:23.270 Trouble is, Arbuckle has been acquitted. He now wants to go back to work. 00:14:23.950 --> 00:14:28.110 And Joe has to tell him that, okay, you're innocent in the eyes of the law, 00:14:28.150 --> 00:14:34.710 but you have been rendered forever unfunny by all of this scandal. 00:14:35.030 --> 00:14:39.710 Nobody's ever going to laugh at you, the situations we used to put you in with, 00:14:39.750 --> 00:14:44.090 with, you know, skinny women and dancing around and doing pratfalls, 00:14:44.090 --> 00:14:47.270 you know, because it's all going to remind them of that thing that happened. 00:14:47.390 --> 00:14:49.450 They're going to go see your movies for the wrong reasons. 00:14:50.790 --> 00:14:53.510 And our buckles life falls apart at that point. 00:14:53.610 --> 00:14:56.210 I've heard talk that, you know, he was making a comeback near the time of his 00:14:56.210 --> 00:15:01.250 death, but not really. He was doing roadside nightclub acts with song and dance 00:15:01.250 --> 00:15:05.390 girls, completely deaf to what people were saying about him behind his back. 00:15:07.090 --> 00:15:12.830 So yeah. And, uh, and it cost Joe a lot of money and he ended up, 00:15:12.850 --> 00:15:15.890 uh, taking our Buckles house as payment. 00:15:16.110 --> 00:15:18.390 And he and his wife lived there for a long time. 00:15:18.650 --> 00:15:24.410 Uh, but he put a system in place after that involving a guy we'll talk about 00:15:24.410 --> 00:15:28.430 named Eddie Mannix, uh, called the fixer system. 00:15:28.490 --> 00:15:32.270 And from then on, if anything happened in Hollywood, there was going to, 00:15:32.270 --> 00:15:38.750 uh, reflect badly on the studio system, on any of the stars who all had squeaky clean reputations, 00:15:40.160 --> 00:15:49.620 Eddie Mannix, who was a skank henchman, would go in and work the crime scene to be confusing. 00:15:49.900 --> 00:15:55.340 And then the police would show up, which is why, you know, I don't know if you've 00:15:55.340 --> 00:15:59.020 ever read a book called Hollywood Babylon, but every murder in Hollywood is 00:15:59.020 --> 00:16:02.420 completely bizarre and makes no sense whatsoever. 00:16:03.040 --> 00:16:06.480 You know, they make a little more sense than the John Bonet case, but not really. 00:16:07.180 --> 00:16:10.600 There's always, well, gee, it had to have been murdered, but no, 00:16:10.680 --> 00:16:11.680 it couldn't have been murdered. 00:16:12.440 --> 00:16:17.080 And like Thelma Todd, even George Reeves, the TV Superman. Yeah. 00:16:17.420 --> 00:16:22.320 He committed suicide, but he committed suicide right after ticking off Eddie Mannix. 00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:27.780 Eddie Mannix, he was kind of, he's like a story in himself, it sounds like. 00:16:28.040 --> 00:16:32.140 But he is. Well, I don't know if you've seen the movie Hail Caesar by the Coen brothers. 00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:34.900 Eddie Mannix is the hero of that movie. 00:16:35.640 --> 00:16:39.800 He starts out as a juvenile delinquent who's stealing stuff from Palisades Amusement 00:16:39.800 --> 00:16:42.540 Park, which is owned by the skanks. Nick catches him. 00:16:42.860 --> 00:16:46.580 Instead of calling the cops, he says, you work for me now. 00:16:47.460 --> 00:16:51.200 The old saying, it's better to have them steal for you than from you. 00:16:51.720 --> 00:16:55.680 Yes. And Eddie turns into the amusement park bouncer. 00:16:56.080 --> 00:16:59.580 He's in charge of security. He's also pretty good with the books. 00:16:59.660 --> 00:17:05.400 He can do two sets of books in his head. stuff that people that don't believe in tax BS enjoy. 00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:12.660 And years later, when Nick becomes the head of Lowe's Inc., he sends Eddie Mannix to MGM. 00:17:13.040 --> 00:17:18.260 Eddie Mannix is a rough kind of guy. You know, completely sociopathic. 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:23.940 Sends him to MGM to keep an eye on Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalbert, 00:17:24.080 --> 00:17:25.820 make sure they do whatever Nick says. 00:17:26.420 --> 00:17:30.000 Plus be a spy, read every telegram that goes in and out. 00:17:31.320 --> 00:17:35.240 And if anything untoward happens, get in there and fix it. 00:17:36.460 --> 00:17:40.180 So Eddie Maddox becomes this hugely powerful man in Hollywood. He's a thug. 00:17:42.070 --> 00:17:45.010 His first wife dies in a horrible accident. 00:17:45.050 --> 00:17:47.850 I don't know if it's Mulholland Drive, but it's one of the, she, 00:17:47.870 --> 00:17:50.990 she goes off the side of the road and down the cliff, like you've seen in a 00:17:50.990 --> 00:17:54.470 thousand movies after being sideswiped by another car. 00:17:54.710 --> 00:18:00.830 Ah, this allows, this, this allows Eddie to marry, uh, the million dollar legs, 00:18:00.830 --> 00:18:02.650 uh, girl from the Ziegfeld Follies. 00:18:02.830 --> 00:18:05.430 Her first name is Tony, T-O-N-I. 00:18:05.690 --> 00:18:09.610 And she becomes the, uh, the, the, the second wife after years of being the 00:18:09.610 --> 00:18:15.150 mistress. mistress, and they grow old together. They have an arrangement. 00:18:16.350 --> 00:18:19.730 Eddie has an affair going with the maid, who is a young, beautiful woman. 00:18:20.150 --> 00:18:26.650 And Tony has an affair going with George Reeves, who is TV Superman on the Adventures of Superman. 00:18:27.010 --> 00:18:32.630 George Reeves commits suicide. The common theory is that Eddie was a jealous husband. 00:18:32.930 --> 00:18:35.830 But that wasn't the case. It was not the case. They had an arrangement. 00:18:36.030 --> 00:18:39.610 They used to all go on vacation together. The maid and George was sitting in the back of the plane. 00:18:39.870 --> 00:18:42.910 Playing Tony and Eddie would sit in the front and then they do whatever they 00:18:42.910 --> 00:18:44.070 did on their vacation and come back. 00:18:44.390 --> 00:18:49.070 What happened was George Reeves broke up with Tony Mannix and started in with 00:18:49.070 --> 00:18:55.790 another woman in the house on Benedict drive that Tony had bought George with Eddie's money. 00:18:56.370 --> 00:19:01.050 So she goes to Eddie, he's cheating on me in your house. 00:19:01.670 --> 00:19:03.430 Eddie says, I'll take care of it. 00:19:04.210 --> 00:19:10.270 And we know he did because one thing, Tony Mannix confesses on her deathbed. 00:19:10.450 --> 00:19:13.310 She's afraid of going to hell. Eddie and I did it. We did it. 00:19:14.610 --> 00:19:21.610 Yeah. And Eddie himself, of course, you know, used to wink when ever anybody suggested such things. 00:19:22.270 --> 00:19:24.550 He was, he never denied. 00:19:26.050 --> 00:19:30.290 I'll tell you what, Michael, you have given me a great story as I meet my different 00:19:30.290 --> 00:19:37.330 friends center of my age about the death of Superman because everybody at a certain age, you know, 00:19:37.490 --> 00:19:42.490 will go back and forth about how did Superman commit suicide, you know, and all that. 00:19:42.650 --> 00:19:45.590 Now I've got the real story and she confessed on her deathbed. 00:19:45.730 --> 00:19:47.350 That's a great story. Thank you. 00:19:48.150 --> 00:19:51.930 Yeah. And that comes from Beverly Hills Publicity. 00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:59.500 Ed Lotzey, who apparently was, you know, Tony, Ed Lotzey was there when Tony 00:19:59.500 --> 00:20:04.740 made a deathbed confession that she and Eddie did it. He did it. I'll be darned. 00:20:05.280 --> 00:20:08.560 And Eddie knew how to mess up a crime scene pretty well. Well, 00:20:08.660 --> 00:20:13.440 you know, there was a party going on downstairs and the, what the witnesses 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:18.300 said was so bizarre that you had to believe that it couldn't possibly be the truth. 00:20:18.300 --> 00:20:22.400 Like one woman says according to 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:25.140 the story you know she says in a moment you're going 00:20:25.140 --> 00:20:28.380 to hear a gun and then seconds later gun went 00:20:28.380 --> 00:20:31.800 off upstairs and it was george reeves committing suicide 00:20:31.800 --> 00:20:36.080 and they found him naked with the gun between his legs the bullet went through 00:20:36.080 --> 00:20:44.080 his temple and ended up in the ceiling so i don't know maybe lying down um and 00:20:44.080 --> 00:20:49.340 there are two bullet holes also in the bedroom them that went forever unexplained. 00:20:49.460 --> 00:20:52.460 They just threw a throw rug over them. They were in the floor. 00:20:53.860 --> 00:20:59.720 Huh. Interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah. Um, the other case that, 00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:05.380 uh, the skanks or Joe in particular was, was involved in was the death of Thelma Todd. 00:21:06.100 --> 00:21:09.360 I don't know. She was nicknamed Hot Toddy. She was a comedian, 00:21:10.220 --> 00:21:16.020 kind of a, a Lucille Ball type from the early thirties. She made movies with the Marx brothers. 00:21:17.020 --> 00:21:23.280 Um, she with Zazu Pitts and Thelma Todd made a bunch of shorts together or, 00:21:23.300 --> 00:21:26.020 you know, one being a kind of a tomboy, the other one being a beautiful blonde. 00:21:26.120 --> 00:21:27.060 And this was the beautiful blonde. 00:21:27.400 --> 00:21:30.700 And she was also the mistress of the very married Roland West, 00:21:30.700 --> 00:21:33.980 who was one of Joe Skank's best friends. 00:21:34.940 --> 00:21:40.300 And Roland West invented the haunted house movie with the. 00:21:41.560 --> 00:21:46.000 Bookcase that turns around and leads to a secret passageway and the paintings 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:48.220 that have the eyes cut out for real eyeballs. 00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:50.440 Oh my God. He was the first guy with that. 00:21:51.060 --> 00:21:54.880 And he got it from Joe's mansion in Hollywood, Owlwood. 00:21:55.320 --> 00:22:02.360 And Joe got it from his backyard neighbor, Bugsy Siegel, who put in all of those 00:22:02.360 --> 00:22:04.560 things in case he was raided by the cops. 00:22:04.600 --> 00:22:06.880 He could sneak down into a secret passageway. 00:22:07.120 --> 00:22:12.620 Joe used his secret passageway for starlets rather than for escaping the police. 00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:18.300 And he, he was a mentor of your early Marilyn Monroe and she was still normal. 00:22:18.900 --> 00:22:22.940 Oh, really? So she came up in that system under her when she was young. 00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:27.580 Yeah, and she became a star for 20th Century Fox for Joe. And Joe was her first mentor. 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:34.020 But he had, he liked her the best out of all the starlets he had visiting him 00:22:34.020 --> 00:22:36.340 and moved her into a bungalow in the back, 00:22:36.520 --> 00:22:39.960 but then he was worried about Confidential Magazine, which had paparazzi, 00:22:40.100 --> 00:22:42.880 the very first paparazzi for a scandal sheet magazine. 00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:48.320 So he built a tunnel from his house to the back bungalow so Marilyn could come 00:22:48.320 --> 00:22:53.140 in to his casting room behind the bookcase without being seen from the outside. 00:22:54.940 --> 00:23:01.320 The old casting couch. Thelma Todd ends up being dead in her car, 00:23:01.620 --> 00:23:03.060 died of carbon monoxide. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:08.160 Coroner conveniently didn't seem to notice that she'd been beat up and that her face was all bloody. 00:23:08.640 --> 00:23:12.540 Yeah. And Roland West was one of the primary suspects. 00:23:12.840 --> 00:23:17.760 But crime scene was confused and the coroner said it was suicide. 00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:24.560 And those studios, they must have dominated the police and the politics and 00:23:24.560 --> 00:23:29.000 everybody because they had so much money. They were like the drug cartels can do today. 00:23:29.260 --> 00:23:32.360 That's right. The police served the studios. Yeah. 00:23:33.830 --> 00:23:38.230 I mean, corruption in LA, I mean, it really was the old West. 00:23:38.410 --> 00:23:41.550 They're making these movies about what it was like in the old West because they 00:23:41.550 --> 00:23:47.130 knew, I mean, that the sheriff of LA County, you know, was nicknamed two guns. 00:23:48.010 --> 00:23:51.730 And we're talking about the, you know, during prohibition. So it's. 00:23:51.790 --> 00:23:55.110 Yeah. And even today, everybody wants to be in the movies and they want to have 00:23:55.110 --> 00:23:58.170 some, some connection to the movies. 00:23:58.350 --> 00:24:03.150 Right. And it went, and you know, the, the criticisms that Hollywood was, 00:24:03.270 --> 00:24:05.970 was played with sexual excesses were largely true. 00:24:06.070 --> 00:24:11.170 And it occurred to me while we're working on mobiles that Hollywood was a very 00:24:11.170 --> 00:24:13.730 strange social experiment. 00:24:13.910 --> 00:24:17.790 I think it's the first time in human history where you have a colony of really, 00:24:17.990 --> 00:24:19.210 really good looking people. 00:24:20.490 --> 00:24:25.250 Everybody. And with, you know, lots of labor, very few jobs. 00:24:26.130 --> 00:24:29.710 I think it was Joe Skank once said, getting starlets for a mogul's like, 00:24:29.710 --> 00:24:32.750 you know, drawing deer to a salt lick. Yeah. 00:24:34.750 --> 00:24:37.650 Slightly unpleasant analogy, but a good one. Yeah. 00:24:38.050 --> 00:24:45.010 And I think Marilyn Monroe herself once called Hollywood a, an overcrowded brothel. 00:24:47.850 --> 00:24:53.970 So, so it was largely true. And that, that was why untoward things kept happening. 00:24:53.970 --> 00:24:58.650 And William Desmond Taylor was murdered during a Fatty Arbuckle trial. 00:24:58.850 --> 00:25:02.390 Uh, maybe he was killed by a starlet who was trying to outrage. 00:25:02.530 --> 00:25:06.690 Maybe he was killed by the starlet's mother because he had outraged her. 00:25:07.010 --> 00:25:08.890 Outrage was the word for rape at the time. 00:25:10.790 --> 00:25:12.870 Interesting. Well, I'll tell 00:25:12.870 --> 00:25:16.710 you what, this is a heck of a book and it's got a lot of great stories. 00:25:16.910 --> 00:25:22.790 It's kind of punctured the balloon, the veneer, if you will, of Hollywood. 00:25:23.250 --> 00:25:29.550 And, you know, even today, now you just recently had Kevin Spacey and different stars. 00:25:29.910 --> 00:25:34.570 Harvey Weinstein's case. Harvey Weinstein, he's still in jail. Can you believe that? 00:25:34.690 --> 00:25:38.170 That dude was like the king of Hollywood and he's been in jail for, 00:25:38.310 --> 00:25:39.830 I don't know, seven or eight years now. 00:25:39.830 --> 00:25:44.150 I mean, one of the things I do in the book, I think, is I put shades of gray 00:25:44.150 --> 00:25:50.490 in the Me Too movement because Joe Skank had a casting couch, but he was not a rapist. 00:25:50.930 --> 00:25:54.190 We know from Maureen O'Sullivan, who was a virgin and was afraid of him. 00:25:54.330 --> 00:25:58.410 He patted her hand and said, everybody tries to bother you. You tell me and let her go. 00:25:58.570 --> 00:26:01.670 She didn't get the fur coat. You had to go into the casting room to get the fur coat. 00:26:02.590 --> 00:26:05.870 But he wasn't threatening anybody with, you know, you'll never work in this 00:26:05.870 --> 00:26:08.390 business unless you do what I want you to do right now. 00:26:08.610 --> 00:26:11.890 It never ain't there. They were like sweet little dates he had with these women. 00:26:12.010 --> 00:26:17.110 He would feed them and then light some candles and take them to bed. 00:26:17.410 --> 00:26:20.450 Maybe it would happen. Maybe it didn't have to happen is what you're saying. 00:26:20.510 --> 00:26:21.650 It didn't have to happen. 00:26:21.930 --> 00:26:27.970 And the women it did happen with always liked him afterwards. Like he was a favorite. 00:26:28.510 --> 00:26:30.710 And he really did call him Uncle Joe, like the cliche. 00:26:33.010 --> 00:26:37.290 Well, I've learned that when you get down to actual history, 00:26:37.290 --> 00:26:41.610 it's always shades of gray. It's never black and white. That's right. That's right. 00:26:41.910 --> 00:26:46.390 And this is a lot, there's a lot of shades of gray. Yeah, I have issues with me too. 00:26:46.490 --> 00:26:51.330 My daughter once said that Joe Namath should be on the Me Too movement list. And I said, what? 00:26:52.070 --> 00:26:55.430 Everybody left. Because of the thing with Susie when he was drunk? 00:26:55.570 --> 00:26:57.950 No, there was no victim. Yeah. 00:26:59.690 --> 00:27:03.830 We don't want to go too far down that path. But obviously Harvey Weinstein's 00:27:03.830 --> 00:27:06.670 a real creep and is probably deserving what he gets. 00:27:06.990 --> 00:27:10.830 Yeah. Everything I read, and of course, I say what I read, but he was actually 00:27:10.830 --> 00:27:13.970 adjudicated in a court of law, which goes a long ways for me. 00:27:14.150 --> 00:27:20.970 I mean, there's all the rules at place in a court of law to get to the truth. So it's a deal. 00:27:21.410 --> 00:27:25.770 But this early Hollywood, there's just so much history, the history of our country, 00:27:25.770 --> 00:27:28.770 you know, is encapsulated out there in Hollywood. 00:27:28.970 --> 00:27:35.170 You know, the moguls, the making the money, the creating monopolies and then breaking them up. 00:27:35.170 --> 00:27:42.130 And it just, you know, it's really It really has the roaring 20s it has the 00:27:42.130 --> 00:27:47.610 depression it's got World War II with the morale boosting oh, 00:27:47.690 --> 00:27:49.350 we didn't even mention Nazis I mean, 00:27:49.490 --> 00:27:54.230 the Nazis tried to take over Hollywood and the skanks helped finance a spy system 00:27:54.230 --> 00:27:57.730 that infiltrates the German American Bund and gets them out of that, 00:27:57.850 --> 00:28:02.850 so that's a chapter in the book so if you like Nazi stories, that's. 00:28:04.710 --> 00:28:09.410 We all love Nazi stories. They bit off more than they chew when they took on the skanks. Yeah. 00:28:10.130 --> 00:28:14.130 Well, you know, Mayor Lansky, he, in New York, he organized a bunch of Jewish 00:28:14.130 --> 00:28:20.410 guys to attack these German-American supporters, the German-American people. I wrote that book, Gary. 00:28:20.770 --> 00:28:25.050 Oh, you did? Oh. Gangsters versus Nazis by Michael Benson. Oh, you did. Okay. 00:28:25.310 --> 00:28:29.590 I don't know if I actually read it. Well, I always wanted to do that. We need to do that one. 00:28:29.890 --> 00:28:33.750 Yeah. Oh, absolutely. If Mayor Lansky and the Skank brothers ever got together, 00:28:33.770 --> 00:28:35.930 they would, they would get along so well. 00:28:36.310 --> 00:28:40.490 And, you know, because they just wouldn't say, well, you're filmmakers and I'm a gangster. 00:28:40.630 --> 00:28:46.210 They would all be, we're Jewish men who came to this country and we did good. Interesting. 00:28:48.810 --> 00:28:53.210 Well, Michael Benson and Craig Singer wrote this book, guys. 00:28:53.430 --> 00:28:59.250 Moguls, the life and times of Hollywood film pioneers, Nicholas and Joseph Skank. 00:28:59.730 --> 00:29:02.810 Skank. Got that right? Very good, Gary. 00:29:03.770 --> 00:29:05.730 Appreciate it. I'm a quick learner, man. 00:29:08.410 --> 00:29:11.730 Especially when it's easy to pronounce. You just figure out the right way to pronounce it. 00:29:11.870 --> 00:29:13.690 It doesn't look like skank. Well, yeah, thank you so much, Gary, 00:29:13.770 --> 00:29:15.510 for giving me an opportunity to talk about them. 00:29:15.630 --> 00:29:21.010 We really do enjoy letting the world know who the skanks are because they deserve it. 00:29:21.450 --> 00:29:26.510 I think so. Like I said, it reflects social movements in the United States. 00:29:26.510 --> 00:29:28.970 It really helps us make more sense of our own history. 00:29:29.250 --> 00:29:32.170 I think it's all reflected via bar movies. 00:29:33.070 --> 00:29:37.890 It's the best U S history I ever had a part in. I believe it. 00:29:38.390 --> 00:29:43.750 All right. Michael Benson. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right. Have a good one. You too. 00:29:44.130 --> 00:29:46.870 Okay. I'm going to do another little stick. So thanks a lot for coming on. 00:29:47.010 --> 00:29:49.250 I'll get in touch with you about some of these other books. 00:29:49.270 --> 00:29:52.710 I just have gotten into you guys and, and I had appreciate it. 00:29:52.830 --> 00:29:54.870 All right. Have a good one. Bye. 00:29:58.260 --> 00:30:00.420 Well, hey, guys, that was a heck 00:30:00.420 --> 00:30:03.680 of an interview, and he's a really interesting guy and a great writer. 00:30:03.840 --> 00:30:07.480 I'll tell you what, this guy is really a good writer, and he does those other 00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:11.400 books, True Crime, about the mob in New York with Frank DiMatteo, 00:30:11.400 --> 00:30:14.880 whose dad was a mob guy with the Gallo brothers. 00:30:15.340 --> 00:30:20.040 So we're going to do some more of that. I did one recently, and this story had 00:30:20.040 --> 00:30:23.900 a little bit of mob stuff in it, had a lot of really interesting Hollywood history 00:30:23.900 --> 00:30:26.540 that I've heard about but didn't know that much about. 00:30:26.540 --> 00:30:29.200 We learned a real story guys we were 00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:31.980 in the real story about the death of 00:30:31.980 --> 00:30:34.880 superman george reeves which i thought was fascinating because 00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:38.420 i've been discussing that with friends ever since we were kids i 00:30:38.420 --> 00:30:43.640 guess whenever he died i was probably in early teens so don't forget i like 00:30:43.640 --> 00:30:46.700 to ride motorcycles so watch out for motorcycles when you're out there on the 00:30:46.700 --> 00:30:51.400 street and if you have a problem with ptsd be sure and go to the va website 00:30:51.400 --> 00:30:55.400 and get that hotline number and if you got a problem with drugs or alcohol. 00:30:55.800 --> 00:30:59.100 Angelo Ruggiano is down in Florida. He's a drug and alcohol counselor, 00:30:59.100 --> 00:31:02.020 and he has a hotline, I believe, on his website. 00:31:02.880 --> 00:31:06.000 And if you have a problem with gambling, there's 1-800-BETS-OFF. 00:31:06.940 --> 00:31:10.360 And I have stuff for sale, and I've always got stuff for sale. 00:31:10.380 --> 00:31:15.500 I just finished my second book from the podcast stories. The first one is out there now. 00:31:15.660 --> 00:31:18.920 Actually, the second one's out there now by the time this gets released. 00:31:19.080 --> 00:31:24.720 The first one is the Windy City Mafia, the Chicago Outfit, the second one, 00:31:24.860 --> 00:31:28.200 Stories from the Five Families, the New York Big Apple Mafia, 00:31:28.300 --> 00:31:29.660 the Stories from the Five Families. 00:31:30.360 --> 00:31:36.820 And so they're both out there on Amazon. They're both out there as Kindles and paperbacks. 00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:39.860 And I even made a hardback out of the Chicago book. 00:31:40.980 --> 00:31:43.900 And I'm now trying to work on my life story. 00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:48.820 It's really difficult to do. So many of the things that might be interesting, 00:31:48.820 --> 00:31:51.680 I don't really want to tell anybody. I don't want my kids to read it. 00:31:51.720 --> 00:31:53.120 And so I don't know. We'll see. 00:31:53.600 --> 00:31:58.100 And I got movies and stuff. So just go to Amazon and run my name or go to my 00:31:58.100 --> 00:31:59.400 website, Gangland Wire. 00:31:59.760 --> 00:32:03.860 If you're on YouTube, be sure and like and subscribe, but also be sure and share 00:32:03.860 --> 00:32:06.820 it on your YouTube channels. Thanks a lot, guys.