[The ban on alcohol (18th Amendment,
January 16, 1920) was decades in the making. Though never a popular movement,
in the years before passage it had gathered an unexpected momentum. A sudden
confluence of determined and influential enthusiasts – temperance cults,
religious leaders, holier-than-thou politicians – were able to force the
controversial legislation through Congress. . . .overnight a new industry was
born to meet the frantic demand for the now illegal product.
The criminal gangs running this underground economy grew big, rich, and powerful beyond anyone’s imagining. It was one of the great industrial success stories of the age. In some parts of the country the level of power the gangs wielded soon made them a virtual shadow government, corrupting and controlling politicians, police and courts, committing crimes and violent acts without fear of consequence. Previously tame middle-class Americans became lawbreakers, drawn into an underworld culture of speakeasies, gambling, prostitution and jazz. Gangsters became the iconic antiheroes of the era, their alluring adventures chronicled in pulp stories, Broadway plays, and Hollywood movies. Politicians and do-gooders who had brought about the 'noble experiment,' as it was often called, could only look upon its consequences with horror and awe. The irony kept on giving: Prohibition would barely make it through the decade, while its spawn – organized crime on a national level;- would grow and thrive for the rest of the century and beyond.]
Johnny Rosselli met Harry Cohn on a trip to Tijuana hosted by Joseph Schenck, president of United Artist, in 1929.
Harry Cohn was the West Coast production head and co-owner- with his New York-based partners, his brother Jack Cohn, and Joe Brandt- of Columbia Pictures. Like Universal and United Artists, Columbia was one of the “minor-majors” in the Hollywood studio hierarchy, without the stature and resources of M-G-M, Paramount, Fox , and Warner Bros. at the top, but considerably better off than the numerous small, fly-by-night outfits at the bottom. It had started out very small in 1919 as CBC (Cohn-Brandt-Cohn) Films Sales. They made low-grade, un-glamorous movies, and industrial wise guys referred to CBC as Corned-Beef-and Cabbage.” In the sound era, renamed Columbia (with a prideful American Goddess the studio’s logo), based on Sunset and Gower, the studio thrived under Cohn’s strong-willed creative guidance with a steady supply of modest-budget audience pleasers, and the occasional larger-budget production comparable in quality to the better work of any studio in town.*
Harry Cohn, the man Johnny Rosselli would come to consider his closest friend, was one of the most widely and deeply hated men in Hollywood. He was hated not for any of the usual reasons, the cheating, exploiting, and backstabbing of the everyday ruthless tycoon – in fact he was generally considered to be honest and fair in his business dealings –but rather almost entirely because of his belligerent, crass personality [the very opposite of Rosselli]. Cohn on the job exhibited a rare, staggering vulgarity and a mean-spiritedness towards employees that could make grown men weep. Examples of his cruelty and gross insults were countless, such as his telling of one producer that the only reason for his employment was for Cohn ‘to piss on him,’ and publicly inquiring of an actress whether her reputed talent for performing fellatio was accurate. ‘The meanest man I ever met,’ said the writer Budd Schulberg, speaking for many. Those who said he acted like a dictator meant it quite literally. He was for a time an admirer of Italy’s Benito Mussolini, going to Rome to meet him and later having an exact copy of Il Duce’s office recreated on Gower Street. A verbal assault by Cohn could feel to the recipient like of physical violence, like a whipping or a beating with a baseball bat. Adding to the terror was his appearance, the glaring eyes, hatchet like beak, and cruel mouth, the overall look of a dyspeptic, obscenity-spouting vulture.
He was a born filmmaker, and thrived on the nuts and bolts of story construction, casting, editing, the nurturing of talent before and behind the camera, and there were some in the picture business he treated so well and who saw the good side to Harry Cohn, who had evidence of his charm, loyalty, square shooting, but they were greatly outnumbered by the many who knew him as a sadistic son of a bitch.
Cohn’s background as a first-generation American Jew from a poor immigrant family was similar to that of many of the other studio owners who had ‘invented Hollywood.’ The moguls were tough men, from tough schools of hard knocks, former scrap dealers, peddlers, sideshow operators. Cohn had once earned a living as a pool hall and bowling alley hustler, and as half of a low-rung vaudeville act. But whereas most of the Hollywood founding fathers tried to paint over their low-born origins with gradual assumptions of gentility and public displays of high-mindedness, Cohn wore his as a badge of honor, relished his reputation as a foul-mouthed, uneducated bully – a gangster. (the screenwriter Albert Hackett based the villain of It’s a Wonderful Life, ‘Mr. Potter’, on Harry Cohn.)
Those who might seek an explanation for his antisocial behavior in the then-new science of psychiatric analysis would have found a potential jackpot in the turbulent mind of Harry Cohn. The movie mogul lived with a traumatizing secret: He had been born in an outhouse, a fetid backyard toilet where his eight-and –a – half months pregnant mother had gone to defecate and had uncontrollably released him into a pit of excrement. His life was saved only by the arrival of neighbors who’d heard the screams of the hysterical Mrs. Cohn. In time, his Russian-born mother, who Harry worshiped and yet fought with like a rabid dog, would use the incident as her trump card in angry disputes, screaming at him, ‘You we born in a shithouse and I should have felt you there!’
As an adult – so he would confess to a physician on one night of duress later in life – any pleasure the Columbia Picture king might have derived from his rise to the top was greatly diminished by thoughts of his unclean beginning, by recurring feelings of self-loathing and exposure. Cohn spent his life trusting few people, suspicious of most. He obsessed over personal cleanliness, spending hours a day taking showers and washing his hands, and lived - he confided to the doctor – ‘in constant fear that someone will know my secret.’
With his aversion to respectability –so-called decent people made him uneasy – Harry Cohn was naturally drawn to a man like Johnny Rosselli, a mysterious, potentially dangerous character who seemed to reside outside the bounds of conventional society. From the start they got long very well. Johnny placed Harry’s many bets, gave him advice, amused him, and consoled him. The mysterious man soon became the powerful Hollywood figure’s closest, most trusted friend. In Johnny’s company Harry could drop the ogre persona and be funny, relaxed, even sentimental. The became like brothers, and certainly closer than Harry was to his real brother, Jack, who communicated with each other only by telephone in coast-to- coast disputes.
Harry and Johnny went out on the town together on many nights, sometimes with women, sometimes not. They dined together. They went to catch the shows at the top nightclubs. They went to the Tuesday boxing matches at the Olympic Auditorium. They went to the races in Mexico, and – when it opened in ’33 – to the Santa Anita track in Arcadia. Harry would have Johnny to home to play tennis on his private court, and they would go out to Cohn’s place in Palm Springs, play golf and cards with other Hollywood weekenders. In Los Angeles they would often end up at the Clover Club, and ‘open’ illegal casino on Sunset Strip, with its swank supper club in front and gambling den in the back, featuring roulette, dice games, and no-limit chemin-de-fer. Cohn would gamble for many hours, along with movie mogul peers- David O. Selznick, B. P. Schulberg, Joe Schenck – degenerate gamblers all. Johnny would stand behind Harry, patting his shoulder encouragingly, as the Columbia boss played and usually lost a fortune.
Cohn would invite Johnny to come to the studio, for lunch in his private dining room or for cocktails in his office, talk about the ponies, women, and the movies. The guards at the gates were instructed to allow Mr. Rosselli entrance anytime. People on the lot became used to seeing the boss in the company of the tough-looking, elegantly dressed Italian gentleman. On many evenings Cohn would have Johnny join him in his screening room to view the ‘rushes’ – that day’s unedited footage from the movies in production. Cohn solicited Johnny’s reaction to what he saw, especially if it was an underworld picture.
[ Rosselli was the Chicago mobster Jack Dragna’s eyes and ears in L.A., a ‘fixer’. When Columbia Pictures started to go under Johnny arrange a half million dollar loan from the East Coast mobster ‘Longy’ Zwillman which became the mob’s stake in the studio. Rosselli organized the scabs and thugs to break up the wildcat a strike of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees against Columbia Pictures, then helped the Chicago mob take the Union over. In the racketeering trial that eventually ensued, it was not all that clear the heads of the studio’s were ‘victims’, especially Harry Cohn. After Johnny got out of prison, he asked Cohn to help him revive the career he had developed producing movies. Harry apologized but ‘ it wasn’t a good time. . . the cock-suckers from Washington, Sacramental, crime commissions, the UnAmerican Activities Committee and the FBI are on all fours looking under the carpets.’]
The criminal gangs running this underground economy grew big, rich, and powerful beyond anyone’s imagining. It was one of the great industrial success stories of the age. In some parts of the country the level of power the gangs wielded soon made them a virtual shadow government, corrupting and controlling politicians, police and courts, committing crimes and violent acts without fear of consequence. Previously tame middle-class Americans became lawbreakers, drawn into an underworld culture of speakeasies, gambling, prostitution and jazz. Gangsters became the iconic antiheroes of the era, their alluring adventures chronicled in pulp stories, Broadway plays, and Hollywood movies. Politicians and do-gooders who had brought about the 'noble experiment,' as it was often called, could only look upon its consequences with horror and awe. The irony kept on giving: Prohibition would barely make it through the decade, while its spawn – organized crime on a national level;- would grow and thrive for the rest of the century and beyond.]
Johnny Rosselli met Harry Cohn on a trip to Tijuana hosted by Joseph Schenck, president of United Artist, in 1929.
Harry Cohn was the West Coast production head and co-owner- with his New York-based partners, his brother Jack Cohn, and Joe Brandt- of Columbia Pictures. Like Universal and United Artists, Columbia was one of the “minor-majors” in the Hollywood studio hierarchy, without the stature and resources of M-G-M, Paramount, Fox , and Warner Bros. at the top, but considerably better off than the numerous small, fly-by-night outfits at the bottom. It had started out very small in 1919 as CBC (Cohn-Brandt-Cohn) Films Sales. They made low-grade, un-glamorous movies, and industrial wise guys referred to CBC as Corned-Beef-and Cabbage.” In the sound era, renamed Columbia (with a prideful American Goddess the studio’s logo), based on Sunset and Gower, the studio thrived under Cohn’s strong-willed creative guidance with a steady supply of modest-budget audience pleasers, and the occasional larger-budget production comparable in quality to the better work of any studio in town.*
Harry Cohn, the man Johnny Rosselli would come to consider his closest friend, was one of the most widely and deeply hated men in Hollywood. He was hated not for any of the usual reasons, the cheating, exploiting, and backstabbing of the everyday ruthless tycoon – in fact he was generally considered to be honest and fair in his business dealings –but rather almost entirely because of his belligerent, crass personality [the very opposite of Rosselli]. Cohn on the job exhibited a rare, staggering vulgarity and a mean-spiritedness towards employees that could make grown men weep. Examples of his cruelty and gross insults were countless, such as his telling of one producer that the only reason for his employment was for Cohn ‘to piss on him,’ and publicly inquiring of an actress whether her reputed talent for performing fellatio was accurate. ‘The meanest man I ever met,’ said the writer Budd Schulberg, speaking for many. Those who said he acted like a dictator meant it quite literally. He was for a time an admirer of Italy’s Benito Mussolini, going to Rome to meet him and later having an exact copy of Il Duce’s office recreated on Gower Street. A verbal assault by Cohn could feel to the recipient like of physical violence, like a whipping or a beating with a baseball bat. Adding to the terror was his appearance, the glaring eyes, hatchet like beak, and cruel mouth, the overall look of a dyspeptic, obscenity-spouting vulture.
He was a born filmmaker, and thrived on the nuts and bolts of story construction, casting, editing, the nurturing of talent before and behind the camera, and there were some in the picture business he treated so well and who saw the good side to Harry Cohn, who had evidence of his charm, loyalty, square shooting, but they were greatly outnumbered by the many who knew him as a sadistic son of a bitch.
Cohn’s background as a first-generation American Jew from a poor immigrant family was similar to that of many of the other studio owners who had ‘invented Hollywood.’ The moguls were tough men, from tough schools of hard knocks, former scrap dealers, peddlers, sideshow operators. Cohn had once earned a living as a pool hall and bowling alley hustler, and as half of a low-rung vaudeville act. But whereas most of the Hollywood founding fathers tried to paint over their low-born origins with gradual assumptions of gentility and public displays of high-mindedness, Cohn wore his as a badge of honor, relished his reputation as a foul-mouthed, uneducated bully – a gangster. (the screenwriter Albert Hackett based the villain of It’s a Wonderful Life, ‘Mr. Potter’, on Harry Cohn.)
Those who might seek an explanation for his antisocial behavior in the then-new science of psychiatric analysis would have found a potential jackpot in the turbulent mind of Harry Cohn. The movie mogul lived with a traumatizing secret: He had been born in an outhouse, a fetid backyard toilet where his eight-and –a – half months pregnant mother had gone to defecate and had uncontrollably released him into a pit of excrement. His life was saved only by the arrival of neighbors who’d heard the screams of the hysterical Mrs. Cohn. In time, his Russian-born mother, who Harry worshiped and yet fought with like a rabid dog, would use the incident as her trump card in angry disputes, screaming at him, ‘You we born in a shithouse and I should have felt you there!’
As an adult – so he would confess to a physician on one night of duress later in life – any pleasure the Columbia Picture king might have derived from his rise to the top was greatly diminished by thoughts of his unclean beginning, by recurring feelings of self-loathing and exposure. Cohn spent his life trusting few people, suspicious of most. He obsessed over personal cleanliness, spending hours a day taking showers and washing his hands, and lived - he confided to the doctor – ‘in constant fear that someone will know my secret.’
With his aversion to respectability –so-called decent people made him uneasy – Harry Cohn was naturally drawn to a man like Johnny Rosselli, a mysterious, potentially dangerous character who seemed to reside outside the bounds of conventional society. From the start they got long very well. Johnny placed Harry’s many bets, gave him advice, amused him, and consoled him. The mysterious man soon became the powerful Hollywood figure’s closest, most trusted friend. In Johnny’s company Harry could drop the ogre persona and be funny, relaxed, even sentimental. The became like brothers, and certainly closer than Harry was to his real brother, Jack, who communicated with each other only by telephone in coast-to- coast disputes.
Harry and Johnny went out on the town together on many nights, sometimes with women, sometimes not. They dined together. They went to catch the shows at the top nightclubs. They went to the Tuesday boxing matches at the Olympic Auditorium. They went to the races in Mexico, and – when it opened in ’33 – to the Santa Anita track in Arcadia. Harry would have Johnny to home to play tennis on his private court, and they would go out to Cohn’s place in Palm Springs, play golf and cards with other Hollywood weekenders. In Los Angeles they would often end up at the Clover Club, and ‘open’ illegal casino on Sunset Strip, with its swank supper club in front and gambling den in the back, featuring roulette, dice games, and no-limit chemin-de-fer. Cohn would gamble for many hours, along with movie mogul peers- David O. Selznick, B. P. Schulberg, Joe Schenck – degenerate gamblers all. Johnny would stand behind Harry, patting his shoulder encouragingly, as the Columbia boss played and usually lost a fortune.
Cohn would invite Johnny to come to the studio, for lunch in his private dining room or for cocktails in his office, talk about the ponies, women, and the movies. The guards at the gates were instructed to allow Mr. Rosselli entrance anytime. People on the lot became used to seeing the boss in the company of the tough-looking, elegantly dressed Italian gentleman. On many evenings Cohn would have Johnny join him in his screening room to view the ‘rushes’ – that day’s unedited footage from the movies in production. Cohn solicited Johnny’s reaction to what he saw, especially if it was an underworld picture.
[ Rosselli was the Chicago mobster Jack Dragna’s eyes and ears in L.A., a ‘fixer’. When Columbia Pictures started to go under Johnny arrange a half million dollar loan from the East Coast mobster ‘Longy’ Zwillman which became the mob’s stake in the studio. Rosselli organized the scabs and thugs to break up the wildcat a strike of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees against Columbia Pictures, then helped the Chicago mob take the Union over. In the racketeering trial that eventually ensued, it was not all that clear the heads of the studio’s were ‘victims’, especially Harry Cohn. After Johnny got out of prison, he asked Cohn to help him revive the career he had developed producing movies. Harry apologized but ‘ it wasn’t a good time. . . the cock-suckers from Washington, Sacramental, crime commissions, the UnAmerican Activities Committee and the FBI are on all fours looking under the carpets.’]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Columbia_Pictures_films#1920s
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