{"id":134,"date":"2010-03-05T22:36:04","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T04:06:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T07:00:00","slug":"just-the-facts-chief-william-parkers-war-on-mickey-cohen-and-the-los-angeles-underworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/2010\/03\/05\/just-the-facts-chief-william-parkers-war-on-mickey-cohen-and-the-los-angeles-underworld\/","title":{"rendered":"Just the Facts: Chief William Parker’s War on Mickey Cohen and the Los Angeles Underworld"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April, John Buntin, author of the best-selling social history L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Most Seductive City<\/em> (Random House), returns to Los Angeles to host a repeat engagement<\/a> of the popular Esotouric bus adventure based on the book. As a special preview of his bus tour, LAVA exclusively presents John Buntin in a night of reading, discussion and curated vintage film and TV clips in the historic Los Angeles Athletic Club. Reservations are required for this free event – click “Signups” to reserve your spot.<\/p>\n

ABOUT L.A. NOIR:<\/em> <\/strong>In downtown Los Angeles in 1922, two very different men began their very different careers. William H. Parker III was a 17-year-old from Deadwood, SD, working as a movie usher at Loews\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s State. Mickey Cohen was a 9-year-old hoodlum who was about to commit his first violent crime \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a hold-up of the California Theater. The bitter rivalry between these two very different men would shape the culture of the LAPD and the history of 20th century Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

In 1927, Parker became a police officer. Coldly cerebral (Star Trek<\/em> creator Gene Roddenberry, a one-time L.A.P.D. officer and Parker speechwriter, reportedly based the character Mr. Spock on his old boss), intolerant of fools, and famously incorruptible (in a department that was famously corrupt), Parker gradually rose. In 1950, a scandal involving 114 Hollywood \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pleasure girls\u00e2\u20ac\u009d made Parker Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, a position he would hold for sixteen controversial years. In time, he became, in the words of Los Angeles Times<\/em> publisher Norman Chandler, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the most powerful man in Los Angeles.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Born Meyer Harris Cohen in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in 1913, Mickey arrived in Los Angeles with his mother and sister at the age of three. By the age of six, he was hustling newspapers on the streets of Boyle Heights. One year later he was arrested for bootlegging. Mickey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talent with his fists took the diminutive brawler to New York City to train as a featherweight boxer. His skill with a .38 took him into the rackets, first in Cleveland, then in Al Capone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chicago. In 1937, Mickey returned to Los Angeles to serve as gangster Benjamin \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bugsy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Siegel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right hand man. It was a job that put him on a collision course with Bill Parker.<\/p>\n

For three decades, from the Great Depression to the Watts riots, Parker and Cohen \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the policeman and the gangster \u00e2\u20ac\u201d engaged in a struggle for power, first as lieutenants to older more powerful men, then directly with each other. Their rivalry attracted the attention of a young Senate investigator named Robert Kennedy \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and the antagonism of F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and involved some of the most powerful \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and colorful \u00e2\u20ac\u201d figures of the twentieth century: press magnates Harry Chandler and his nemesis, William Randolph Hearst; studio head Harry Cohn of Columbia; entertainers Jack Webb, Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner, and Sammy Davis Jr.; civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153[I]mportant and wonderfully enjoyable,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says the Los Angeles Times’<\/em> Tim Rutten of L.A. Noir<\/em>. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A tour de force of non-fiction narrative,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d agrees USC historian Kevin Starr. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dragnet, One Adam Twelve, Police Story, LA Confidential<\/em> all rolled into one captivating book\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a great read,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says former LAPD chief Bill Bratton.<\/p>\n

Join us for what is sure to be a lively reading and discussion. Reservations are required for this free event, and the Signup tab is at the top of this page.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In April, John Buntin, author of the best-selling social history L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Most Seductive City (Random House), returns to Los Angeles to host a repeat engagement of the popular Esotouric bus adventure based on the book. As a special preview of his bus tour, LAVA exclusively presents John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,14,15,20,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavatransforms.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}