As the year 2009 winds down, I look back on my 61 years covering Hollywood and reminisce about some of my favorite performers and my most memorable experiences.
I guess my favorite actors were Cary Grant and “Duke” Wayne, Cary for his charm and “Duke” for rugged individualism. More >

Traditionally, autumn is the time when car dealers show new models. Barbara Stanwyck bought a new Cadillac. It is also the time when Catholic parishes have festivals to raise money for their churches. Barbara told the dealer to park the car in her driveway with the keys in it. It would be safe, she said, because her husband Frank Faye would be home. More >

With Halloween pranks and practical jokes approaching, here are a few with a Hollywood twist. I once inadvertently pulled a practical joke on David Niven, after a long lunch at Club 21, the famous New York restaurant which had once been a speakeasy. I was in New York to check on the filming of the first “Pink Panther” film in which Niven had a co-starring role with Peter Sellers. More >

I gave Henry Gibson some advice and made him into one of the more successful character actors in the business.

Gibson, who died the other day, once confessed to me that he came to Hollywood intent on being a leading man.

“I knew I was too short but I figured movie magic would make me tall on screen,” he told me. “I soon found out otherwise. There was no movie magic that could make me a leading man. I came to you with my dilemma and you gave me the advice I’m still using. You said, ‘Be yourself,’ and that’s what I‘m still doing.”

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You never get rich writing a column like this. But you do get wonderful gifts from the superstars you write about. Duke Wayne willed me the vest he wore in 31 Western movies. I treasure it to this day. He also willed me his cowboy hat. But the Smithsonian Institution had requested it. Luster Bayliss, Duke’s wardrobe man for his starring career, broke the news to me. I told Luster, “Let the Smithsonian have it.”

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I celebrated my 95th birthday during our summer hiatus with a big chocolate cake shared with my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But I was shocked a few weeks later to learn of the deaths of two much younger friends, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, as well as the passing of Lee Solters, last of the colorful Broadway and Hollywood publicists.

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Prepare to be electrified. Frozen is a brilliantly conceived, gut-wrenching horror film about three vital, healthy, appealing and attractive skiers whose perfect snow day turns into a nightmare when they get stranded on the chair lift after dark. More >

MICKEY GUSHES: For Mickey Rourke success and happiness have come really only recently. The fifty-seven year-old former Oscar nominee admits that he feels he’s been touched by an angel. He recently accompanied girlfriend Anastassija Makarenko to Germany to meet her parents and says, “Anastassija is a gift from heaven More >

I just caught up with the film “Public Enemy” in which Johnny Depp did a great job portraying 1930s gangster John Dillinger.

I should know. In 1935, when I was a sophomore at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, I boarded a trolley car at the school and rode to the end of the line. It was diagonally across the street from the First National Bank. Just as I arrived, the bank was surrounded by police cars. I looked over and saw John Dillinger emerge from the bank carrying a suitcase, presumably loaded with the bank’s receipts. He shot a cop. I don’t know whether he killed him or not. But he got into a waiting car and took off.

That was my first encounter with a gangster, but not my last. During 74 years as a working journalist and as a Hollywood columnist, I’ve met scores of hoods, both the real kind and the actors who’ve portrayed them.
I never met Dillinger, but I did encounter his fraternity from Albany, New York to Chicago, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

As for the Hollywood “mobsters”, I got to know Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and others, many just as fierce as the Al Pacinos, Robert deNiros and Brad Pitts of today.

I made my acting debut in a gangster film called “Black Tuesday,” starring Edward G. Robinson. The producer heard that I had covered several executions. And since Robinson was to be executed in this movie, I was hired as a consultant for the execution scene.

Robinson came to the electric chair wise-cracking like “Little Caesar.” I stopped the picture and told the director Hugo Fregonese that guys I saw going to be electrocuted had to be hauled to the chair by eight or ten cops. Fregonese conferred with the producer who told me that they were changing my role to that of actor. I was to play a reporter/witness of the execution. They even paid my way into the Screen Actors Guild. I guess I didn’t have too much influence. Robinson went to the chair like “Little Caesar.”

Of course, Robinson had been a distinguished actor on the New York stage and was a noted art collector.

Cagney, on the other hand, was a man of the streets, who grew up on the mean streets of the Bronx. He was the more convincing gangster.

Bogart had grown up on Park Avenue. His mother was a famous illustrator and his father a physician. But Bogie was such a superb actor that playing gangsters was just another role for him.

In the twelve years before the Associated Press assigned me to Hollywood I was a working reporter covering everything from train wrecks to plane crashes and everyone from politicians to gangsters. Sometimes, the latter were one and the same. I also was assigned to cover their demise, including electrocutions of such infamous gangsters as Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.

In 1943, before being commissioned in the U.S. Navy, I joined the Associated Press in Albany, New York. I was assigned to cover then governor Thomas E. Dewey. He spent most of his time fighting the O’Connell machine, the political dynasty that had controlled the state capital for years.

It was in Albany that I first met Benny Goffstein who was circulation manager for the Hearst newspaper, the Albany Times-Union. In those years, circulation wars between newspapers were legion and often resulted in strong arm tactics. Goffstein also controlled the numbers racket in Albany. All you had to do was shop at a Hearst newstand in order to play the numbers.

It was later in the ’40s that Goffstein moved on to Las Vegas where he became a partner of mobster Gus Greenbaum when Gus took over the Flamingo Hotel after the slaying of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Goffstein had invited me to the opening of the Flamingo when, after the war, I was working for the Associated Press in Chicago. I wasn’t able to make it then, but I caught up with him in 1951. By then, I was covering Hollywood for the AP and he invited me up to Las Vegas for the opening of “Spike” Jones’ Band at the Flamingo.

My assignment in 1946 to the AP bureau in Chicago put me in touch with the Capone gang and many other mobsters, some of whom I would again encounter in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

In Chicago, I dined ever night at Henrici’s, an Italian restaurant that was a mob favorite two blocks from the AP office on Randolph street in the heart of the Loop. Among the mobsters who dined there, some of whom would later be portrayed in films, were the Fishetti brothers, Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik and Louis “Little New York” Campagna. Louis had just been released from prison.

By then, Al Capone was serving time in Alcatraz for tax evasion, but his brother Ralph was another of Henrici’s denizens. Later Al was released from prison and died in Florida.

Al’s mother was a devout Catholic and persuaded the cardinal to permit her son’s burial in a Chicago Catholic cemetery. Al’s body was shipped north on the Illinois-Pacific railroad. I was assigned to go to Centralia, Illinois to board the train and write about Al Capone’s last ride. I headed for the baggage car and was about to go in when Ralph Capone stopped me.

“Where are you going, Jim?” Ralph asked.

“I’m going back to the baggage car to write about Al’s last ride to Chicago,” I replied.

“No, you don’t want to go in there, Jim,” warned Ralph.

Gangsters had such a forceful way at saying things, that I sat down and didn’t go in the baggage care.

Some of the mobsters led double lives, shielding their families from their professions by establishing them under different names in the respectable Chicago suburbs and sending their children to elite private schools.

This hit home when my daughter Carol was invited to a birthday party in upscale Oak Park by a third grade Catholic classmate named Rivera. When I arrived at the Rivera home to pick her up, Mrs. Rivera introduced me to her husband, Louis Rivera. I recognized him as Louis “Little New York” Campagna, but played along with the name change. Later, at Henrici’s, Campagna thanked me for not blowing his cover in Oak Park.

It was also in Chicago that I first met George Raft, a New York dancer who was a protégé of Owney Madden, the gangster-owner of New York’s famed Cotton Club. Raft was in town shooting his first movie “Scarface”, produced and directed by Howard Hughes. Paul Muni portrayed “Scareface” which was actually the story of Al Capone.

Hughes gave Raft a 50-cent coin and told him to flip it throughout the movie. Somehow this gimmick made a star out of Raft. He told me later Hughes, who was worth two and a half billion dollars, asked for the fifty cents back.

Raft played gangsters for decades after “Scarface.” He hung out with mobsters, notably John Rosselli, a representative of the New York mob stationed in Hollywood. However, Raft never became one.

It was also in Chicago that I first encountered a young man fresh out of law school who would later become a prominent attorney in Los Angeles. Korshak was representing Murray “The Camel” Humphries, a mob leader, who police had arrested for vagrancy. At the trial, Korshak asked one question: “Mr. Humphries, you are charged with vagrancy. Will you show us how much cash you have on you?”

Humphries reached into his pocket and drew out $22,000. The judge threw the case out of court.

When the AP transferred me to Los Angeles in 1948, my beat was more movie stars than mobsters. However, often the two intersected.

Mickey Cohen was as much a publicity seeker as any Hollywood starlet.

Mickey once called me at home to come out and look at his suits. Which I did. He had about twenty finely-tailored suits, although he had no visible signs of financial support.

“Mickey,” I asked, “who paid for these?”

“I got a lot of guys who owe me money,” he replied. He didn’t identify them.

Mickey controlled Southern California bookmaking and gambling—on the horses, sports, in undercover casinos. His headquarters was a haberdashery shop he owned on the Sunset Strip.

I liked Mickey, but my experience in Chicago had taught me never to get too close to gangsters.

I did go to the Mocambo with Mickey one night. I ordered a Scotch and water and he had a dish of ice cream. When the bill came it was around two hundred dollars.

I said, “Mickey, they overcharged you.”

He looked at it, paid it and left a one hundred dollar tip.

I wisely turned down another invitation from Mickey to dine with him at the Villanova restaurant on the Sunset Strip.

When I turned him down, Mickey instead invited Florabel Muir, a veteran columnist for the Los Angeles Mirror.

As Mickey’s party emerged from the restaurant, a shot was fired from behind a billboard across the street. It killed one of Mickey’s henchmen, but missed Mickey himself, but shot Florabel in the derriere.
I would meet many more mobsters over the years, in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I’ll save those stories for another column.