#charlie bludhorn

[claudia1829things]

Favorite Episodes of "THE OFFER" (2022)

Below is a list of my favorite episodes from "THE OFFER", Paramount+'s biographical miniseries about producer Albert S. Ruddy's memories of the making of the 1972 Oscar winning film, "THE GODFATHER". Created by Michael Tolkan, the miniseries starred Miles Teller and Matthew Goode:

FAVORITE EPISODES OF "THE OFFER" (2022)

1. (1.06) "A Stand Up Guy" - Producer Albert "Al" Ruddy deals with the fallout from the disastrous press conference regarding mobster Joe Columbo's Italian-American Civil Rights League. Paramount Studios' Head of Production, Robert Evans creates a plan to save the studio from a buyout. Ruddy's assistant Bettye McCartt takes action as the first day of filming is compromised by collisions with Gulf and Western, Paramount and the mob.

2. (1.07) "Mr. Producer" - Dissatisfied with the movie's footage, studio executive Barry Lapidus plans a potential coup as Ruddy attempts to save director Francis Ford Coppola and leading man Al Pacino's jobs. Mob leader Carlo Gambino questions Colombo's leadership, while the latter holds another Italian-American Civil Rights League rally.

3. (1.04) "The Right Shade of Yellow" - With Pacino and Marlon Brando considered for the leading roles in "The Godfather", Ruddy is faced with a variety of issues.

4. (1.02) "Warning Shots" - With Coppola and author Mario Puzo penning the script for "The Godfather", Ruddy and McCartt confront an ever-growing list of opposition. Evans and Lapidus lock horns over the creative direction of Paramount Pictures.

5. (1.09) "It's Who We Are" - As production runs into challenges in Sicily, Ruddy leaves early to get Evans back on track. Coppola's vision for the edit is jeopardized by post-production disputes. McCartt thinks about her next move.

[bholenathvalsan]

One Darkest of Horrors, The Movie Industry

The American movie industry is a school of hard knocks, yes, but that isn’t anything new. And in the hard knock department, what happened in the remote past, did pretty much set the tone for an enduring dark underbelly to Hollywood, or Hollyweird as some call this, that happily is coming to light nowadays thanks to the victim’s effort.

Hollycrook

It shocked me in 2017 when I read that the mob was involved in Hollywood since the 1930s. I did read The Mafia Encyclopedia like a book. My intention was to read it from cover to cover, but it was just too much darkness to take it all in, I gave up like three-quarters into it.

Seriously, if you have any humanity left, comes a point when you get just too-disgusted, and sick of learning the exploits of mafiosi for two-three weeks.

One of the depressing news this encyclopedia brought was the Las Vegas and Los Angeles takeovers. Organized crime involvement in the movie industry was the highlight of the book for me, and it was a reinforcement of something that I had heard. But what I heard was about Bollywood (Mumbai’s movie industry), not Hollywood.

Outraging/Offending History of L.A. Mobs

The Chicago mob moved in during the Capone era. Willie Bioff and George Browne ran the IATSE, a theatrical and stage employees alliance. Capone went to prison and his successor, Frank Nitti decided to over-invest in movie studio racketeering (extortion).

The modality of movie industry extortion of the mob could be things like “give me two million dollars because I say so”, or like the reaction they had once when, because the studios failed to pay one hundred and fifty grand to prevent a projectionists strike, they stink-bombed the movie theaters.

The contemporary Los Angeles regional organized crime organization is called the Mickey Mouse Mafia. It’s called that because they have a reputation of being ham-handed as criminals and because they couldn’t prevent the incursions of Chicago and New York Mafiosi into their turf.

Sinatra, kind of unrelated but everybody knows about his ties with the mob.

The Settlement of Bioff and Browne

The majors (MGM, Loew’s, Paramount and 20th Century Fox) had to pay the mob fifty-thousand dollars yearly and smaller companies could pay twenty-five thousand each. They also got concessions for members of their union. Perks that the affiliates appreciated.

But then they introduced a 2% tax and the union members revolted against it. Add to this, an exposure by Westbrook Pegler and that was enough to send Bioff and Browne to the big house. When three years later they walked after being paroled, it produced a national political outrage.

Siegel (NYC) & Korshak (Chicago)

A long and questionable career in leisure/entertainment/vice, and one of the most entertaining to read.

Bug’s Hollywood friends:

George Raft (movie actor and dancer)

George Sanders (Russian-born RKO / 20th Century fox actor)

Charles Coburn (movie and theater actor, anti-commie movie industry politician)

...

Another was Sidney Korshak, a fixer for the Chicago families’s high command. He was called by Hollywood in the 1940s to work for them.

Friends with Korshak:

Lew Wasserman (MCA mogul) Kirk Kerkorian (Caesar’s Palace’s landlord, MGM) Charlie Bludhorn (Gulf and Western founder, Paramount owner)

Bollycrook

Like I said in the beginning, Mumbai’s (India’s financial capital) movie industry, was what grabbed my attention on this subject first.

But that is now. Meaning it’s going on after the organized crime families took over in the 1980s and ’90s.

For those that worry with things like this, Bollywood is 70% taken over by different mafias like the Islamic mafia and the Indian mafia.

I don’t have space left on this post to make a meaningful taxonomy of names like I did for the 1930 Hollycrooks in the previous section, but anyone can dig deeper with the help of their best search engines.

That must be something personal, due to the sensitivity of the data. I don’t want to point any fingers to anybody. We have Captain Vadakayil for that.

Here go a few of meaty articles to read on the subject if it interests you:

The Islamic Mafia of Bollywood Bollywood’s Affair with the Indian Mafia Ten times the Bollywood Actors Crossed Paths with The Underworld

A Rant on Broken Bollycrook

Reasons not to watch Bollycrook’s horrors. I watched around a dozen Indian horror movies. The only one off the top of my head that I can recommend is Bhoot, an Indian horror movie without musical scenes.

Otherwise, you are getting into musical territory. For those that still don’t know it, most Indian movies are musicals. That’s why most Indian movies are lengthy. Because to the 90-120 minutes of the story, three or more musical acts are always added.

It’s because of this fact that the only Indian horror movie I endorse is Bhoot (Ram Gopal Varma, 2003). I, personally, can’t stand the musical scenes injected into almost every movie coming out of Mumbai’s dream factory.

Once I asked an Indian friend what was wrong with Indian cinema, why every movie had to have those silly dancing and singing scenes. His reply was very crude, if pragmatic.

He told me that one of the main targets of Bollywood’s marketing is the tribal customer segment of India’s population. That the dancing and singing scenes are very popular with those audiences. That is hard to believe, since tribals are only 8.6% (100 million people) of the country’s one-thousand million population.

Another version of this I got, that I think I’ve read it on a community forum on the internet was related to funding.

The person explaining the reason said that one of the main financial backers of Bollywood movies are Christian institutions and that these institutions have a habit of forcing the filmmakers to include this kind of scenes in Indian movies.

Outro

This post didn’t attempt at being anything, other than a Tumblog. For those that like a modest serving of studies on criminology, not in the field, with their horror this is certainly a subject to look upon.

Final Note: Check out Machinegun Jack McGurn, the real-life Tommy-gun-toting crook movie gangster prototype.

Sources

The Mafia Encyclopedia Wikipedia Captain Ajit Vadakayil’s Blog

↬ Mahendran Manohan

Photo Attributions

Wikimedia Commons 1,2,3,4,5 Insomnia Cured Here Ram Gopal Varma