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

The first was Theodosia Goodman, a tailor’s daughter from Ohio, who, in the hands of her press agents, became Theda Bara, “foreign, voluptuous, and fatal”—a woman “possessed of such combustible Circe charms,” panted Time magazine, “that her contract forbade her to ride public conveyances or go out without a veil.” Others soon followed: Pola Negri, Nita Naldi, Louise Brooks. Women weren’t the only ones steaming up the screen. In 1921, Rudolph Valentino rode off with the hearts of women around the world as the Sheik, the mesmerizing Arab who kidnapped, wooed, lost, saved, and ultimately won an English lady-socialite as his bride (Agnes Ayres).

As the movies heated up, so did the imaginations of the public. No one was more vulnerable than the people most exposed—theater employees. “Love is like the measles,” explained one girl usher to the Los Angeles Times. “You can’t be around it all the time without catching the fever.”

Bill Parker caught the fever.

As chief of police, Parker would become a tribune of social conservatism. As a young man, however, he was ensnared. Soon after arriving in Los Angeles while he was working as an usher, Parker met Francette Pomeroy, a beautiful, high-spirited young woman, age nineteen—almost two years older than himself. The exact circumstances of their courtship are unknown. However, it’s easy to understand how Francette (who went by “Francis”) might have fallen for Bill. He was an unusually handsome young man—slender, of medium height, with a high forehead, prominent nose, and large, intelligent eyes. He was smart and attentive; even then, he had a sense of presence. On August 13, 1923, the two essentially eloped and were married in a civil ceremony.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the failure of his own parents’ marriage, young Bill Parker had very conventional ideas about his relationship with Francis. She did not share these ideas. On the contrary, she saw no reason why marriage should interfere with the life she previously enjoyed, which involved music, dancing, and active socializing, including a continuing association with other young men. This came as a shock to Bill. In time, Parker’s family would come to view Francis as a sex addict.

Perhaps she was. More likely, Francis was an adventuresome, somewhat risqué young woman who reveled in the freedom of life in Los Angeles and who was caught off guard by Bill’s traditional expectations. Whatever her activities, they were unacceptable to her husband. In February 1924, when Francis prepared to leave the house, Parker confronted her with a torrent of abuse and, according to Francis, threatened “bodily harm.” Two months later, on April 15, he allegedly delivered on that threat. Francis had announced that she was going out, and Parker exploded. He followed her down the staircase, arguing furiously. When she refused to come back inside, he struck her in the face, grabbed her by the throat, and dragged her upstairs and back into the apartment.

Something horrifying was happening—to Parker and to his marriage. The handsome, ambitious young man whom Francis Pomeroy had married was vanishing, replaced by a man she would later describe in her divorce petition as “cross, cranky, peevish, irritable, aggravating, and of a generally-nagging and fault-finding attitude.” He, in turn, was soon describing his wife as a “damned fool,” an “idiot,” a “god-damned bitch”—and worse. What Bill was like before his marriage we do not know; however, these adjectives, this intolerance of fools, would be all too familiar to the men who later worked with (and for) him. In less than two years, Los Angeles had frustrated Parker’s hopes and brought out the ugliest features of his personality. Bill Parker was discovering that in Los Angeles, violence, dreams, and desire kept close company.

Bill Parker was not the only young man spurred to violence by life in “the white spot” in those days. One afternoon in the summer of 1922, just a few blocks away from where Parker was working as a movie usher, idling motorists witnessed an outburst of violence that was far more remarkable than Bill Parker’s (alleged) wife-beating—a holdup of the box office of the Columbia Theater.

Any attempt to heist a box office in downtown Los Angeles, in the middle of the day, in the presence of hundreds of witnesses would have been noteworthy. But what made this band of bandits so singularly striking was their frightening, baseball bat-wielding leader. He was only nine years old. His name was Meyer Harris Cohen, but all of Los Angeles would soon come to know him simply as “Mickey.”

3 The Combination

“The purpose of any political organization is to get the money from the gamblers …”

—Wilbur LeGette

MICKEY COHEN wasn’t supposed to exist in Los Angeles.