Supermob by Gus Russo

Author:Gus Russo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-07-02T16:00:00+00:00

Nonetheless, according to Andy Anderson, Korshak continued to pay homage to his original Chicago underworld patrons. "On Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, he'd have to go to Chicago to see the boys," Anderson said. "I always understood it was something he had to do, to go meet with the boys, as a way of expressing his loyalty. If he had said, 'No, I have something else to do'—well, that would not have been what they expected of him.' "7

But practically speaking, Korshak was now two giant steps closer to becoming free of his Chicago overseers. Now the Outfit treated Korshak as an equal, a rare trusted adviser as comfortable on the inside of underworld confabs as on the outside. Although some contended that a degree of subservience still existed, most insiders believed that Sidney, using his hard-earned cachet, was happy to foster the perception of his mob-based power. It seemed to many that Korshak fully grasped the concept that perception is often as good as reality, especially in Beverly Hills. The misinterpretation of Korshak as a full-time mob employee was shared by a large segment of the corporate world, which valued Korshak's uncanny ability to solve intractable problems, whether the mob's or anyone else's.

Korshak's stature continued to rise in the film capital, and he now counted many of the acting elite among his best friends. In 1965, Korshak, as an honorary chairman of the Beverly Hills B'nai B'rith, feted his pal actor Kirk Douglas (ne Issur Danielovitch Demsky) as that organization's Man of the Year. Other notable chairmen with Korshak were his friends Al Hart, Pat Brown, Conrad Hilton, Tony Martin, Stanley Mosk, Pierre Salinger, Sargent Shriver, Billy Wilder, Eugene Wyman, and Frank Sinatra.

Douglas has recounted how he often attended barbecues at Korshak's mansion, where he encountered the likes of actor-cum-mob-wannabe George Raft. Douglas, a resident of Palm Springs, was curious about Sidney's mob friends and asked to meet them, but Korshak refused. "Frankly, I felt that he was extremely considerate of me, protective, and felt that it would be better for me not to," Douglas later wrote. "He knew that whatever he did was watched. And if he took me someplace for a meeting—many of them were living in Palm Springs at the time—it would just give the government a record of the visit.8 Douglas also described how he had sailed around Sicily in 1967 with Bee Korshak and Dinah Shore aboard Ralph Stolkin's luxury yacht. Douglas was in Italy filming the mafia movie The Brotherhood. After the movie opened, Korshak told Douglas that the real underworld bosses were impressed with the picture. "They felt it captured the spirit of their organiza­tion," Douglas wrote in his autobiography, The Ragman's Son. "They particularly liked my portrayal of a Mafia don. They wanted to meet me."

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