Willie Morris Bioff
The very existence of Hollywood as a film capital lies in the fact that
the moguls created it as a haven from Edison's east coast patent thugs.
Once established, they were determined to keep criminal interlopers out
of their collective hair at all costs. They did this through intense
internal security and by liberally juicing the Los Angeles Police
Department, which when compared to any number of other cities, kept the
city remarkably free of gangs with Italian and Jewish surnames for
several decades. Mob emissaries periodically sent west prior to WWII
were inevitably met by the infamous LAPD 'Hat Squad' and sent packing,
battered and bruised (or worse). The Mafia's attempts at starting
traditional dope and extortion rackets there largely became a case of
coming to a gun fight armed with a knife. Thwarted in their attempts to
make inroads from the inside, the mob laid in wait and finally attacked
it outside the studios' gates. The most successful criminal enterprise
in town operated under the auspices of one George Browne and his
cunning cohort Willie Bioff. Bioff held pre-war Hollywood under his
thumb as the unofficial goon of Browne, President of International
Alliance of Theatrical State Employees (IATSE) from 1934-41. Bioff was
an independent contractor who specialized in putting the squeeze on
studio heads to avoid projection 'mishaps,' spontaneous theater fires
and impromptu strikes. One of Bioff's rackets - and he and Browne had
dozens - was to force (at the threat of an inconvenient firebombing)
Eastman distributor Jules Brulator to pay a commission on all raw film
stock sold to the major studios. He also garnered huge bribes in return
for suppressing the salaries of IATSE members while squeezing the rank
and file for dues increases. Browne and Bioff's racket didn't escape
notice back in Chicago - Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, who himself had
long lusted after the police-protected turf of Tinseltown, sent a
delegation out west to press its case for a cut by pushing buttons on a
couple of union local chiefs, Louis Alterie (janitor's union) and T.E.
Maloy (projectionist's union) - Bioff, scared out of his wits, quickly
cut the Chicago mob in on his action. From this point on, Nitti became
the silent head of the IATSE and was instrumental in installing Browne
as the shill president of the national union. But it was Bioff's
extortion of affable 20th Century Fox CEO/producer Joseph M. Schenck that led to
his temporary ouster, imprisonment and revocation of citizenship
(restored by President Truman) over a $100,000 check and subsequent
perjury charges. Bioff's reign of terror was finally undone through the
courageous efforts of the editor of the Daily Variety, Arthur Ungar and
the President of the Screen Actor's Guild, actor Robert Montgomery, who was
shocked at Bioff's attempted inroads in his union. The pair was joined
by the Hearst newspaper syndicate, which in turn led to the exposure of
Bioff's IATSE shenanigans. Both George Browne and Willie Bioff were
convicted on racketeering and extortion charges - Browne got 8 years
and Willie was hit with a dime in Alcatraz. No sooner did he arrive at
the Rock, Bioff sang like a canary, which soon resulted in the
indictments of 7 Chicago mobsters including the notorious Frank Nitti, who
ended up shooting himself in a Chicago freight yard. After his release,
Bioff took up residence in Phoenix, Arizona. On November 4, 1955 he was
blown to bits at the wheel of his car--- payback from the boys in the
Windy City.
