Mickey Cohen

As an elder statesman, Cohen even appeared on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merv_Griffin_Show" title="The Merv Griffin Show">The Merv Griffin Show</a>. Cohen knew everyone in Hollywood, from the entire <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Pack" title="Rat Pack">Rat Pack</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe" title="Marilyn Monroe">Marilyn Monroe</a>. In politics, he befriended <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon" title="Richard Nixon">Richard Nixon</a>. His pal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham" title="Billy Graham">Billy Graham</a> once asked him to appear at an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism" title="Evangelism">evangelistic</a> rally in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Square_Garden" title="Madison Square Garden">Madison Square Garden</a>.

At the time of the abduction of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst" title="Patty Hearst">Patty Hearst</a>, Cohen claimed to know facts about Hearst's abductors and other circumstances of the case. However, journalists at the time dismissed this as way for the "gentleman mobster" to put himself back in the limelight. Mickey called Patty's father "Randy" (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Apperson_Hearst" title="Randolph Apperson Hearst">Randolph Apperson Hearst</a>), and met with him and his wife at Gatsby's, a restaurant he controlled. Mickey had known <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst" title="William Randolph Hearst">William Randolph Hearst</a>, with whom he maintained a long respectful friendship.

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Prior to buying Paramount Charlie Bluhdorn had considered moving into Nevada where Sidney Korshak also held sway. A new era began in Las Vegas with the opening of Caesar’s Palace in 1966. A style one comedian called not “exactly Roman more kind of early Sicilian” it remains the last of the early casinos although it has been entirely rebuilt. Jack Ruby’s lawyer Melvin Belli rolled the first dice.

The site of Caesar’s Palace was responsible for making and breaking a series of fortunes even before the casino was built. On Saturday, January 11, 1959 Myford Irvine begged the trustees of his estate for $5 million. The heir to the massive Irvine Ranch, founded by his Irish grandfather, then committed suicide with a shotgun. Speculation at the time was that his death had something to do with the Caesar’s Palace site. Irvine was a friend of Mickey Cohen who considered him “my man in Orange Country on certain propositions”, according to Cohen's autobiography.

Myford Irvine was also an early supporter of Richard Nixon. It was through Irvine that Cohen organized a fund raising dinner for Nixon when he first ran for Senate in 1950. Cohen donated $5,000 personally and provided space for “Nixon for Congress” headquarters. Cohen also held a dinner that was attended by a range of organized crime members. In order to reach the fundraising goal Cohen ordered the doors locked. Nixon made his speech and Murray Chotiner collected the money. In 1962 journalist Drew Pearson used the Cohen connection against Nixon, which was partially why he lost the race for governor.

Murray Chotiner specialized in representing bookmakers and mob members as well as major politicians. Chotiner was also given credit for devising Nixon’s 1952 “Checkers” speech, in which Nixon blamed a slush fund on the family dog. Chotiner also managed the campaign of Earl Warren for Governor of California. In 1952 Warren was considered the most likely California candidate for president, but he lost the nomination to Dwight Eisenhower who chose Nixon as his running mate. Warren was soon named to the Supreme Court, which Eisenhower later called “the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made.” Eisenhower was careful not to appoint any more politicans to the court.

In 1962 Kirk Kerkorian acquired the Caesar’s Palace property for $960,000. The Teamsters loaned $10 million to build the casino. According to Ed Reid, the real owners included “Fat” Tony Salerno, Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo and Vincent “Blue Eyes” Alo. After Caesar’s Palace opened Kerkorian received $4 million a year in rent for two years before selling the property for $5 million. The success of Kerkorian, the son of Armenian immigrants, upset the wealthiest man in Las Vegas, Howard Hughes.

In 1965 Hughes rolled into Vegas on his own private train and took over the top floor of the Desert Inn. During the late 1940’s Hughes disappeared for months to Las Vegas. Returning to Los Angeles he moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel. Although he cut himself off from the world Hughes maintained contacts in the right places. Through his ownership of TWA he sponsored the weekly radio show of Walter Winchell, the Hearst journalist close to Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover. He also owned RKO studio and supported the black list.

In 1954 Hughes set up the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which was supposed to be a charity but was really a tax shelter. Two years later Hughes loaned the vice president’s brother, Donald Nixon, $205,000 to rescue his failing restaurant business, Nixonburger. Shortly afterwards the IRS approved Hughes’ institute. The Nixonburger loan was disclosed in the closing days of the 1960 campaign and contributed to Nixon’s loss.

By the time he moved to Las Vegas Hughes relied on Robert Maheu to operate his empire, although they only spoke over the phone. Maheu was then involved in the CIA plot to kill Castro with Johnny Rosselli, which he told Hughes about. Hughes knew Johnny Rosselli from his earlier relationship with Jean Harlow. Hughes and Maheu turned to Rosselli when Moe Dalitz he tried to force Hughes out of the Desert Inn. Hughes bought the Desert Inn and several more casinos, and tried to buy even more until the Nixon administration blocked him.

Maheu gave Richard Nixon’s friend Bebe Rebozo two bags of $50,000 cash, which would drag Hughes into the Watergate scandal. Of Cuban descent, Rebozo owned the Key Biscayne Bank in Miami. He allegedly had mob ties to such men as “Big Al” Polizzi, a leader of the Cleveland mob whom had retired to Miami. Rebozo also had ties to Moe Dalitz, although for some reason this wasn’t considered significant. After several decades of stamping every memo on Moe Dalitz “suspect is considered armed and dangerous” the FBI designated Dalitz “retired”.

With the sale of the Desert Inn to Hughes, Dalitz may have looked retired but he was growing even more powerful. Neither Hughes nor his managers knew how to run a casino, so Moe Dalitz was hired as a senior consultant. Not surprisingly, Dalitz continued to orchestrate the skimming from the casinos, which began losing money. Dalitz also brought in the Associated Booking Company to provide talent for Hughes' casinos. Associated Booking replaced MCA as the dominant booking agency in Las Vegas after Sidney Korshak took over the company.

The deals with Hughes must have given Dalitz and the mob an idea of how to make the big money, by bringing the casinos public. All they needed was fronts, which they already had as a way to gain their licenses. Former interior decorator Al Parvin had decorated several of the casinos, before buying the Flamingo. Parvin later sold the Flamingo to Morris Lansburgh and Sam Cohen. Meyer Lansky received a $200,000 finder’s fee, which he reported on his income taxes. In 1966 the Parvin-Dohrmann Company became the first publicly traded company to buy a casino.

In 1968 Parvin-Dohrmann was taken over by a man named Delbert W. Coleman, a Chicago businessman with close ties to Sidney Korshak. According to the New York Times, Korshak’s involvement in a Teamsters contract for J.P. Seeberg, a Chicago jukebox manufacturer headed by Coleman saved the company an estimated $1 million. Coleman sold Seeberg to Commonwealth United, the company illegally traded back and forth by Charles Bluhdorn and Michele Sindona a short while later. The money from the sale of Seeberg was used to buy Parvin-Dohrman. Coleman allowed Korshak and a group of his friends, including actress Jill St. John, to buy shares of Parvin-Dohrmann at $35 a share even as the stock was by then trading at $75 a share.

St. John (nee Oppenheim) was represented by Edward Bennett Williams in the ensuing trial. Interestingly, around this time Henry Kissinger began dating her, and in 1972 she visited the White House on his arm. Kissinger was also a friend of Robert Evans and he attended the premier of The Godfather as Evans’ guest. According to his autobiography, Evans once invited Sidney Korshak and Henry Kissinger to the same party, which angered Korshak.

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antofacsit

Be forewarned: This is a PR release – “fake news” – for the Cohen biography, and some of the following statements may be inflated or oversimplified – they are certainly biased to promote the book. – AC

” … Why did Cohen meet regularly with Menachem Begin and attorney Melvin Belli? How RFK threatened Mickey Cohen when he was naked in a prison shower? JFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan worked for television star Desi Arnaz and at the Santa Anita racetrack, one of Cohen’s gambling strongholds. … Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassin Jack Ruby (Rubinstein) idolized Cohen and dated his girlfriend Candy Barr … “

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/7/emw539835.htm

Richard Nixon relied on mobster Mickey Cohen to help him get elected to the House and the Senate. Nixon took money from Cohen and his mob friends, including bookies around the United States.

New York, NY (PRWEB) July 17, 2007 – A new book by celebrity biographer Brad Lewis finally tells the story of famous gangster Mickey Cohen, the west coast leader for Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky, boxer, bodyguard, blackmailer, pimp, bookie czar, gambler, haberdasher, restaurateur, racketeer, thief, and Robin Hoodlum to the poor and dispossessed.

“Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, The Incredible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen” (ISBN: 1-929631-65-0) examines the mixed morality life of the Los Angeles-based mobster who reigned from the 1930s until his death in 1976.

I found ‘Celebrity Gangster’ intense, dramatic, a real page turner.

Late in 1945, Republican leaders chose Nixon to run for representative from the Twelfth District against popular New Deal Democrat Jerry Voorhis.

Nixon knew he would lose the election without Mickey’s help and imprimatur: Los Angeles was a Mickey stronghold; he controlled the territory that Nixon sought. Ambitious Nixon had no interest in returning to law practice in provincial Whittier. In order to run for the House seat, he surrounded himself with local powerhouses. To ensure Mickey’s backing, he wisely asked for a meeting,” said the author, Brad Lewis.

The 1945 meeting was at little fish joint Goodfellow’s Grotto, arranged by chubby, cigar-chomping mob attorney Murray Chotiner, who liked his silk ties, monogrammed shirts, and jeweled accessories.

In 1950, Cohen held a fundraiser for Nixon in the Banquet room of the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel, attended by hundreds of U.S. bookies, including every big Vegas gambler. Nixon personally thanked the bookies!

Columnist and showman Drew Pearson described the political play-by-play as “one of the most skillful and cut-throat campaigns I have ever seen.”

Nixon ran a dirty anti-Semitic anti-Communist smear campaign against her–he called Douglas (Helen Gahagen) the “pink lady”–using the mob’s money and won the election.

Pearson’s “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column stayed with the Cohen-Nixon story for years, despite Nixon’s purported friendship with Mickey.

When Nixon beat Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election, Cohen was still in prison. Cohen said “…let’s hope he isn’t the same guy I knew as a rough hustler… I never had no idea that this guy Nixon could go anywhere…” That year Pearson published Cohen’s entire statement about his dealings with Nixon.

Some of the facts featured in “Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster” include:

How Mickey Cohen made extortion sex tapes of Marilyn Monroe.

Cohen’s introduction of Monroe to JFK through Sinatra and Peter Lawford.

The Jewish mob’s concerns about JFK’s Israeli politics.

Mickey Cohen, JFK, and Frank Sinatra dated some of the same women.

Why did Cohen meet regularly with Menachem Begin and attorney Melvin Belli?

How RFK threatened Mickey Cohen when he was naked in a prison shower.

JFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan worked for television star Desi Arnaz and at the Santa Anita racetrack, one of Cohen’s gambling strongholds.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassin Jack Ruby (Rubinstein) idolized Cohen and dated his girlfriend Candy Barr.

Cohen’s links to Carlos Marcello, David Ferrie, Jim Braden, and Al Gruber.

How Mickey Cohen ran a gambling operation in the Ambassador Hotel, site of the RFK assassination.

Frank Sinatra’s lifelong relationship to Mickey Cohen. He even asked Mickey to solve his romantic problems with Ava Gardner.

The true story of how Meyer Lansky sent Mickey to watch Bugsy Siegel as the Jewish mafia began their interests in Las Vegas.

Mickey’s role in finding kidnapped Patty Hearst for her father “Randy”.

Playboy Johnny Stompanato’s murder at Lana Turner’s house.

Lyndon Johnson’s broken promise to parole Mickey.

Mickey’s extortion schemes that mimic the charges against today’s Hollywood sleuth-to-the-stars Anthony Pellicano.

<a href="http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/allposts/lansky-lieutenant-mickey-cohen-was-instrumental-in-the-downfall-of-richard-nixon">http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/allposts/lansky-lieutenant-mickey-cohen-was-instrumental-in-the-downfall-of-richard-nixon</a>