L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

“I wasn’t the worse …”: Cohen manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library. Mickey would later claim to have fought seventy-nine pro fights, including five against past, present, or future world champions. Cohen biographer Brad Lewis counts a more modest (but still impressive) record of sixty wins (twenty-five by knockout) and sixteen losses. Lewis, Hollywood’s Celebrity Gangster, 14.

As a condition for his: Unpublished Cohen manuscript, Hecht Papers, Newberry Library.

Mickey was not: Cohen, In My Own Words, 6-8.

Yet despite this youthful: Reid, Mickey Cohen, 39-40.

Lou Stillman’s gym: Schulberg, The Harder They Fall, 90.

The men surrounding Mickey: “Lou Stillman, Legendary Boxing Figure, Is Dead,” New York Times obituary, August 20, 1969. The Times’s obituary credits the “open sesame to low society” remark to Damon Runyon, suggesting that perhaps Runyon used it first.

“A card of membership …”: Johnston, “The Cauliflower King-I,” The New Yorker, April 8, 1933, 24.

Moreover, he wasn’t making: Establishing with any precision when Mickey returned to Cleveland is difficult. Ben Hecht writes that Mickey returned in 1932/3, which would make any meeting with Al Capone himself unlikely, given Capone’s 1931 conviction for income tax evasion. However, a document in the Newberry Library’s Hecht Papers that was apparently prepared by Mickey himself says he returned to Cleveland at age seventeen, which would have been the year 1930.

Unlike New York City: Moe Dalitz had established important relations with the various Italian gangs that held sway over different parts of Cleveland, but he had not yet made Cleveland his primary base of operations.

Great Depression or no: Cohen, In My Own Words, 15-16.

Cohen’s job in Chicago: Ben Hecht presents a somewhat different account of this incident, saying that Mickey was given a “louse book” to operate, one that catered to ten-and twenty-cent horse bettors, on the North Side. Quoting Cohen, Hecht writes, “The first thing I know a Chicago tough guy calls on me where I’m running my little louse book and says he has been engaged for twenty dollars to put the muscle on me. I don’t ask who engaged him but I said, ‘I’m going to give you a chance to prove you’re a tough guy.’ And I pulled my gun. In that time I would of felt undressed if I wasn’t carryin’ a gun. The tough guy ran behind a door and I blasted him through the door which is the last I saw of him.”

“After that meeting,…”: Reid also claims that Mickey didn’t arrive in Chicago until well after Al Capone’s 1931 arrest. However, the volume and detail of Cohen’s recollections from this period make it doubtful that his Chicago recollections were entirely fabricated.

Chapter Six: Comrade Bill

“With few exceptions”: Wickersham Commission, Nos. 1-14, 43.

Hollywood was Los Angeles’s fast: Kooistra, “Angeles for Sale,” 88, quoting Bob Shuler’s Magazine.

“Listen, you stupid fuck,”: Jennings, “Portrait of a Police Chief,” 87.

Despite such obstinacy: In 1930, the written examination accounted for 95 percent of officers’ scores, with marksmanship and seniority accounting for the remaining 5 percent. Memorandum to the general manager civil service, “Subject: Facts on Chief Parker’s Exam Records,” June 1, 1966, William H. Parker Police Foundation archives. This memo provides a comprehensive overview of Parker’s history in the department.

“Take him someplace and …”: Domanick, To Protect and to Serve, 85.

“I got out,”: Stump, “L.A.’s Chief Parker.”

By 1929, Los Angeles: One of the more startling features of this era is the widespread acceptance of the Klan, which permeated 1920s Los Angeles. Throughout this period, the Police Commission, which was responsible for regulating a wide variety of public events, routinely approved a regular Saturday night Ku Klux Klan dance on Santa Monica Boulevard. Palmer, “Porter or Bonelli for City’s Next Mayor,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1929, B1.

To block the Klansman: Sitton, John Randolph Haynes, 218. Parrot retired to Santa Barbara and effectively withdrew from politics. In the mid-1930s, the Los Angeles papers would attempt to resurrect the specter of Parrot; Woods, “The Progressives and the Police,” 311.

That the LAPD: In 1919, the Boston police department became the first police force to attempt to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor. When officers went on strike, a week of chaotic looting and rioting ensued. Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called in the National Guard to secure the city. Coolidge then dismissed the eleven hundred officers who had walked off their jobs, a show of resolution that paved the way to his successful run for the White House. Afterward, Boston hired a new police department and granted its officers almost all of the benefits the strikers had originally demanded.