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.