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

It didn’t. Forced to listen to what he said, Parker described the statement as “a slip of the tongue.” He once again refused to apologize (characteristically insisting that Roybal owed him an apology for misinterpreting his words). He didn’t have to. The Los Angeles Times editorial board rushed to Parker’s defense, accusing not the chief of police but rather his critics of “the most offensive kind of demagoguery.” Councilman Roybal reluctantly accepted the chief’s explanation, and the controversy soon blew over.

That April, Parker and his wife, Helen, left Los Angeles for a fifty-five-day trip to Europe (paid for with a $45,000 settlement from ABC for Mike Wallace’s interview with Mickey Cohen). The couple’s trip took them to many of the places Parker had served in during the war, including Italy. Parker’s visit to Italy made his carabiniere hosts nervous. Parker was, after all, one of the Mafia’s most committed adversaries. What if an intrepid Mafioso decided to knock him off?

During Parker’s visit to Rome, local authorities got wind of a report that gangsters who congregated at a certain cafe were indeed contemplating just such a hit. They presented this information to Parker and suggested that he cut his visit short. Parker scoffed at this suggestion. He would not be frightened by Mob threats. Instead, the following morning, he went to have breakfast at the cafe in question.

24 Showgirls

“Girls very often like me and seem attracted to me, and I find them also attractive, at times. It’s talkin’ to them that’s the hard part.”

—Mickey Cohen

THE RULES were strict and clear. Stripteases were legal in the city of Los Angeles as long as they were not “lewd and lascivious.” In practice, this meant that certain rules had to be followed. The guidance provided by the city attorney’s office was quite, well, explicit. Performers were required to wear G-strings and pasties. A performer was not permitted to “pass her hands over her body in such a manner that the hands touch the body at any point.” The “bump and grind” was permissible—but only in “an upright position.” Under no circumstances was bumping and grinding to occur “adjacent to a curtain or [an] any other object.”

The biggest no-no of all, though, was touching. That was both legally off-limits and personally unwise. Strippers, then and now, tended to have personal problems and expensive needs. There was a good reason that the most successful professional gangsters, men like Meyer Lansky and Paul Ricca, were known for being faithful to their spouses. Mickey Cohen had been too, for the most part. Sure, he liked to squire starlets around town. Yes, he enjoyed “blue films” and liked a good burlesque show as much as the next man—perhaps more so. Prostitutes? They were hard to avoid in his milieu. According to Jimmy Fratianno, Cohen dropped a C-note for a professional “flutter” from time to time. However, skirt-chasing never interfered with the serious business of being a gangster. But when Bing Crosby’s son introduced Cohen to Juanita Dale Slusher, better known by her stage name, Candy Barr, Mickey had a change of heart.

Candy Barr was striptease royalty, thanks in large part to her 1951 appearance in the stag film Smart Aleck. (Barr, then a sixteen-year-old runaway who survived by turning tricks, played the role of the teenager lured into a traveling salesman’s motel room—with a friend—after a nude dip in the pool.) The one-reel, fifteen-minute film circulated widely, making Barr arguably the world’s first porn star. From there, the teenaged Barr (measurements 37-22-33) dyed her hair blond and moved easily into the world of burlesque and, occasionally, the theater. Her angelic, innocent face and her heavenly but far from innocent body made her a popular performer. She was soon alternating between regular gigs in Las Vegas and Dallas (where she struck up a friendship with nightclub owner Jack Ruby). But in 1957, Dallas police arrested Barr on charges of possessing four-fifths of an ounce of marijuana. The green-eyed twenty-two-year-old performer was tried, convicted, and sentenced to fifteen years in the state prison. To Bing Crosby’s son, a Candy Barr fan, it seemed a terrible injustice. He soon thought of just the person who might be able to help—Mickey Cohen.

      AS A YOUNG MAN, Cohen had been shy—even prudish—when it came to the female gender. That changed in Cleveland, where he shacked up with a redheaded Irish girl named Georgia (“beautiful face and fine disposition”). Although they were never married, they lived together as man and wife until Georgia moved to Michigan and really did get married. Mickey then moved to Los Angeles.