Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob

by Dan E. Moldea, Mark Crispin Miller (Introduction)

A “smoldering indictment” of the corrupt influences that rescued Ronald Reagan's career, made him millions, and shaped his presidency (Library Journal). Founded in 1924, the Music Corporation of America got its start booking acts into speakeasies run by such notorious Chicago mobsters as Al Capone. How then, in only a few decades, did MCA become the driving force behind music publishing, radio, recording artists, Hollywood, and the burgeoning television industry? Enter Ronald Reagan.   By the late 1950s, Reagan was a passé movie actor. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was also MCA’s key client. With Reagan’s help, MCA would become the most powerful entertainment conglomerate in the world. And with MCA’s help, Reagan would secure a fortune (resulting in a federal grand jury hearing), be marketed to the public as a viable politician, and ascend to the presidency of the United States. But according to reporter Dan E. Moldea, there had always been another catalyst behind Ties to organized crime that reached back to the company’s inception—and through Reagan’s Teamster-backed candidacy—had never been severed.   From the author of The Hoffa Wars, this is an epic and serpentine investigation into the insidious links among Hollywood, the Mob, and politics. Based on research of six thousand pages of previously classified documents, including the entirety of Reagan’s grand jury testimony, Moldea “has, through sheer tenacity, amassed an avalanche of ominous and unnerving facts. [Dark Victory is] a book about power, ego and the American way. Moldea has shown us what we don’t want to see” (Los Angeles Times).

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Crime, Music, The United States Of America, True Crime

555 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 18, 2017

About the author

Dan E. Moldea, a specialist on organized-crime investigations since 1974, bestselling author, and independent journalist, has published eight nonfiction books: The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians and the Mob (1978); The Hunting of Cain: A True Story of Money, Greed and Fratricide (1983); Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob (1986); Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football (1989); The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means, and Opportunity (1995); Evidence Dismissed: The Inside Story of the Police Investigation of O.J. Simpson (with Tom Lange and Philip Vannatter, 1997); A Washington Tragedy: How the Death of Vincent Foster Ignited a Political Firestorm (1998); and Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer: Adventures in the Jungles of Crime, Politics, and Journalism (2013). He is currently at work on his ninth true-crime book.

Reviews

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of backroom deals and monopolistic practices by MCA and interfering with federal regulators. Also tangentially about how MCA backed Reagan as his acting career wound down and gave him a launch pad into politics. Reagan espoused free-market pro-corporate talking points that corporations like MCA supported. it is pretty clear corporations and the wealthy love right-wing Republicans and corporate Dems. The own politics. Of Course, Right wingers are business-friendly they always have been and that is why the right swims in corporate and billionaire cash and always has.

[Grump · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up on this boring shit. MCA was a shady mobbed up company. Reagan was a shitty actor who became the super forgetful president of SAG. Reagan gave MCA a blanket waiver to manage talent AND produce TV shows and on and on and on. Holy fuck this was a stinker. I haven't given up on a book in probably 15 years. Congrats Dan Moldea.

[A Cesspool · Rating 4 out of 5]

As if the Reagan Administration couldn't be anymore crooked -- it's surreal that contemporary Historians deem the Carter Administration a setback for America's socio-economical development when the evidence on Carter's successors is overwhelming & absolute.

This made me lol:

James Garner: “I feel like I’m in a business with the biggest bunch of crooks you could ever put together. The Mafia’s not as big as these people. They don’t hold a candle to them. They can do it with a pencil.”

Although the running dispute between Garner and MCA-Universal had been going on years before he filed his suit against them, the shooting war began on January 16, 1980. Garner was driving his car on Coldwater Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, near the intersection of Mulholland Drive, when another car, driven by a freelance photographer, tried to pass him on the right-hand side. Because there was no right lane, the two cars collided. Garner sat in his car, stunned, as the photographer jumped from his vehicle and ran to Garner. Seeing Garner’s window open, the photographer punched the still-dazed actor in the face. Garner struggled to get out of his car and defend himself, but the photographer was too fast and too tough. Garner was badly beaten. According to a close friend and fellow actor of Garner’s, “Right after the fight, Jimmy was helped up by an aide to a top MCA executive, who just happened to be in the traffic at the scene of the fight.”

While he was recuperating from the assault in the hospital, MCA-Universal filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Garner for failing to complete the entire season of Rockford episodes. The litigations between Garner and MCA-Universal are still unresolved, and the corporation has refused comment on Garner’s charges while the cases are pending.

And this little gem only sweetens the cesspool buffoonery: Williams Convicted in James Garner Assault Case. Jet (magazine) July 17, 1980. Vol. 58, No. 18. Pp. 20

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm researching Ronald Reagan and don't want to wade through the hagiographies. So instead I waded through this inept hatchet job, which I'm giving a second star to reward the author for extensive (although largely pointless) research.

Mr. Moldea's thesis is that the mobbed-up one-time show-biz conglomerate MCA convinced Reagan, when he was President of the Screen Actors Guild, to give them a waiver from union rules which prevented talent agencies from becoming production companies. If you told me that, I would believe it. You wouldn't even have to convince me providing 400 pages of numbingly banal evidence, rambling asides, and potshots at Frank Sinatra. In fact, you'd kind of weaken your case by insisting that Lee Harvey Oswald was a mafia hitman and Paul Laxalt (R-Nevada) was going to be the next President of the United States. (The book was written in 1987. Laxalt died in 2018. Mr. Moldea won't be able to claim he was off by a few years.)

Mr. Moldea does advances two interesting theories: that the Reagan administration is/was by design soft on organized crime, and that the War On Drugs is/was a sham. Still, as someone who loathed Reagan's foreign policy and thinks the War On Drugs should never have been declared in the first place, these revelations don't exactly shatter my worldview.

Still, a historical document. Not an interesting one, but a historical document nonetheless.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

DARK VICTORY alludes to the little-known association of Ronald Reagan and organized crime. Have I been living in a vacuum? On many levels, this book makes sense. It is imperiled by its manner of presentation. There are facts that are allusions to circumstances that may or may not be related or coincidental. In other words, it needs an editor to give it sense.

However, after reading a biography of Frank Sinatra where Sidney Korshak played an important role, this man- some say the best lawyer in the business – is given much attention in DARK VICTORY as well.

My next book is a biography of Lew Wasserman, WHEN Hollywood HAD a KING. This may clarify the waters a bit: or perhaps make them muddier.

[PHILIP Pallette]

Reagan was a smiling crook. Naive but the perfect stooge for conservative Republicans to use for their needs.

[Danyal Brink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steely Dan mention in Chapter 34.

[Graeme Whitton · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Dull

[Frank Palardy · Rating 3 out of 5]

He gets some credit for writing this but there are obvious errors and probably intentional falsehoods.