The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties

by Jules Tygiel

In Los Angeles in the 1920s, C.C. Julian and the Julian Petroleum Corporation were household words, and the Julian Pete swindle ranked with Teapot Dome as one of the great scandals of the era. It symbolized not merely what FDR would call "a decade of debauchery of group selfishness," but the
failed hopes and dreams of the great boom of the 1920s. Indeed, no single story captures the essence of that decade in America--its boosterism and rampant speculation, its entrepreneurial mania for mergers, its overlap of business and politics, and its infatuation with wealth, whiskey, and Hollywood
glamor--quite so well as the Julian Petroleum swindle.
The Great Los Angeles Swindle begins with a murder (the sudden courtroom shooting of banker Motley Flint, the debonaire movie financier and city booster), ends with a spectacular suicide in Shanghai (where C.C. Julian downs a vial of poison after a lavish champagne dinner), and, in between,
takes as many unexpected twists and turns as any mystery novel. Jules Tygiel offers a gripping account of this wonderfully complex scandal, which features such legendary figures as Louis B. Mayer, Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin (who decks Julian in a fistfight in Hollywood's posh Cafe
Petroushka), Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, H.M. Haldeman (grandfather of Watergate's H.R. Haldeman), and pioneer radio evangelist "Fighting Bob" Shuler. Conmen, bankers, underworld kingpins, political bosses, a corrupt district attorney, bribed jurors, and other colorful characters
round out the cast.
At the book's center stands the flamboyant C.C. Julian, a likable if unscrupulous promoter, whose life was flavored with controversy. Tygiel follows Julian to Los Angeles, where during the spectacular oil boom of the 1920s, his innovative newspaper advertising and early successes (Julian No. 1
still pumped oil decades after the promoter himself had died) won him a devoted following. Force to cut back production by major oil companies, he created Julian Petroleum, which he promised would soon rival Standard Oil. Dispensing "Defiance Gasoline" from its pumps, Julian Petroleum fought off the
efforts of state regulatory agencies and federal investigators to shut it down, before Julian had to surrender ownership to oilman S.C. Lewis. Lewis and his crafty associate, Jacob Berman, over-issued millions of shares of counterfeit stock while pyramiding stock pools and loan schemes into a
$150,000,000 fraud. The infamous Million Dollar Pool (which included Flint, Mayer, Haldeman, and other prominent Los Angeles businessmen) delivered lucrative profits to its elite members, while tens of thousands of small investors lost their nest eggs when Julian Petroleum collapsed in 1927. The
aftermath of the scandal included the longest trial in the history of the county (which produced 99 volumes of trial transcripts, cost in excess of $250,000, and convicted no one), unseated a district attorney and a governor, enthroned a former Ku Klux Klansman as mayor of Los Angeles, and filled
the courts with related cases and scandalous revelations well into the Depression decade.
The Great Los Angeles Swindle is a saga of the roaring twenties, with its glorification of business, its get-rich-quick mentality, and its paucity of government regulation, which bred speculation, corruption, and corporate chaos throughout the nation in a manner not dissimilar to the financial
chicanery of our own era. Above all, it is a compelling story and swiftly moving narrative that readers will not soon forget.

Genres: History

432 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 1994

About the author

A graduate of Brooklyn College, Jules Tygiel earned his master's and doctorate degrees at UCLA and taught at the University of Virginia and the University of Tennessee before receiving a position at San Francisco State University. A self-professed fan of baseball, he was the founder of the Pacific Ghost League, a fantasy baseball league.

Reviews

[David Groves]

If you're looking for a window into 1920s politics and behavior, this book opens your eyes. It's the account of a talented and charismatic con man, C.C. Julian, and the many ways in which he swindled tens of thousands of investors in his oil-drilling venture. There is copious period journalism on the subject, but Tygiel brings it all together in one thick volume.

Tygiel's prose is pretty solid and straightforward, although the technical investment aspects of the story will probably leave some scratching their heads. I guess I now understand what a stock overissue is, but there are many aspects of the swindle that are difficult to grasp. Not that Tygiel muddies the water; they're just complicated subjects.

The important thing, however, are the characters, which are well drawn. The narrative takes you from everyday middle-class "investors," or as much as their pocketbooks will allow them to be, to usurious bankers riding around in fancy period cars, to well-meaning state officials trying to look out for the public interest, to alcoholic districts attorneys hell bent on squeezing every penny of bribe money they can out of con man who find themselves in danger of going to prison. Julian's original swindle was famous in the 1920s and '30s, but it sweeps a whole cast of unsavory and hypocritical characters into the room, and it leaves you feeling that the Crash of '29 wasn't a misfortune that happened to befall America, but instead, an inevitable result of unbridled, unrestrained, boundary-violating capitalism. If only today's politicians would learn the lessons of the past.

[Beth Cato · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tygiel goes into immense detail to describe an incredible drama of the 1920s that extended into the 1930s, about Southern California oil speculation, stocks, swindles, adultery, murder, attempted murder, suicides, and one guy even lost an eye. The stuff is interesting but also exhausting. I found myself skimming the financial details (and there are many), but was more engaged with the prolonged legal drama and the deaths and back-stabbing that came along with that. It's really a fascinating insight into the corruption intrinsic to LA from its earliest years, but this book isn't a keeper for me.

[Kellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this was a very informative book, it was also quite dry and difficult to soldier through. I'd say it really deserves a 2.5 star rating.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crime and influence peddling was rampant in Los Angeles in the 20s and 30s as this book makes clear. The rich and well connected get preferred treatment, the poor get swindled, the crooks get off, the brother of Senator Flint is gunned down in a courtroom, and the D.A., bribed by the crooks, is the only person in the whole scandal that went to jail. You can't make this stuff up.

[Iniville · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible story that still feels relevant.