Politics Is A Dirty Business

Politics in Los Angeles has long been a dirty and corrupt business. This was never truer than during the 1930s.

I found this wonderful cartoon in an issue of the Evening Herald & Express. Any citizen of Los Angeles who was paying attention would have known exactly who all the players were. I didn’t understand several of the references and so I thought it might be fun to try to decipher them.

Here is the cartoon, and below that is my key to understanding just what in the hell the cartoonist was talking about.

1932 corruption cartoon_resize

On the second floor of the Payoff Villa Apartments one of the gamblers says: “Guy, send Eddie in.” The gambler was referring to Guy McAfee. McAfee, like thousands of others, had moved from the midwest to Los Angeles years before seeking his fortune. He didn’t find it as a firefighter, which he worked at for a while. But things began to look up for him when he joined the LAPD. His career trajectory ultimately landed him in the position of head of the vice squad. Oh, delicious irony! While serving as the head of the vice squad, McAfee owned brothels and gambling dens.

Guy McAfee and his wife, June in 1939.

Guy McAfee and his wife, June in 1939.

In the late 1930s, when it appeared that LA might become less tolerant of vice (the possible crackdown was a momentary hiccup in the ongoing criminal enterprise that the city had become), McAfee moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Bugsy Siegel gets the credit, or blame depending on your view, for establishing the desert gaming mecca, but it was men like Guy McAfee and his associate Milton B. “Farmer” Page who really kicked things off in the sleepy little cow town. McAfee was the co-founder of the Pioneer Club and was the President of the Golden Nugget until his death in 1960.

The “Eddie” referred to in the cartoon bubble was Eddie Nealis, a local bookmaker. Eddie’s name along with his fellow vice kings: Guy McAfee, Farmer Page, Tudor Scherer, Jack Dragna and Johnny Roselli, came up in the Los Angele County 1937 Grand Jury investigation into vice. Most of those named fled the city for Vegas in 1938.

Cathay_Circle_Theater (1)

Carthay Circle Theater c. 1937

On the roof of the Payoff Villa Apartments, you will find a cop named Mac D. Jones. He appears to be shoving a woman in a toga over the edge. Lysistrata is mentioned. Lysistrata was Greek play written by Aristophanes. This reference threw me for a loop. I couldn’t figure out what a cop had to do with the play. But I found out. The play, written in 411 BC, is a comedy in which a woman, Lysistrata, embarks on a mission to end the Peloponnesian War. And how does she plan to do it? Get all of the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers so that they’ll snap to their senses and negotiate peace. It still seems like a solid plan.

Apparently, Officer Mac Jones wasn’t a lover of Greek plays, he raided the show twice while it was on stage at Carthay Circle Theater (the beautiful 1926 building was demolished in 1969–a bad year for many reasons).  The cast filed a suit against Jones in the amount of $226,000 for damages. The judge who heard the case, Superior Court Judge Willis, was evidently no lover of Greek theater either He said that there were two scenes that “as written and acted are sufficient in the mind of the average person to condemn the play as indecent and obscene as hereintofore defined, and there can be found nowhere in the play any redeeming or ameliorating quality of uplift, or lesson, or message of good.” Judge Willis threw out the demand for damages. I happen to love the play for many reasons, one of which is its powerful anti-war stance.

A poster on the exterior wall of the Payoff Villa Apartments exclaims: “Radio fans hear Martin Luther Thomas preach on ‘No Vice, No Crime.'” I was intrigued. Who was Martin Luther Thomas? It turns out that Thomas was one of several local radio preachers who, when he wasn’t railing against the “Underworld”, was the chief investigator for City Prosecutor Johnson.

And the fellow crawling on his hands and knees in the street? He was Wells J. Mosher, confidential secretary to Mayor Porter.

In July 1931 Thomas and Mosher were linked by a so-called “snooping system” they allegedly ran to gather dirt on other city employees–particularly members of the city council. Director Knox of the Bureau of Budget and Efficiency was told to file a report with the Efficiency and Personnel Committee of the City Council. The report was specifically ordered to address whether or not Thomas and Mosher should lose their jobs. One of the councilmen declared that the two men were costing the city money that could be put to better use.

Mayor John Clinton Porter was a teetotaler and a xenophobe. Porter’s promise to clean-up the city’s political system won him the election in 1929, but it didn’t win him any friends on the wrong side of the law. Once sworn in the mayor began receiving death threats. He was the only mayor in LA’s history to be the victim of an attempted assassination.

On February 19, 1932, a federal warehouse worker, Jacob Denzer, who kept watch over confiscated booze, sat in the mayor’s lobby awaiting an audience. The self-proclaimed “messenger of the Lord” had had a vision for a “divine plan of salvation.” When 50 Fullerton Junior High School students, on a tour of City Hall, started to crowd into the lobby Denzer became agitated. He stood up, waved his gun and shouted at the startled students to “Get out of here, all of you.” A city janitor saw the ruckus. He managed to grab the revolver from Denzer’s hand.

Frank L. Shaw

Frank L. Shaw

Porter came through a recall effort and presided over the 1932 Olympic Games. Ever the teetotaler, no alcohol was served at the opening ceremony.

Porter enjoyed being mayor and ran in 1933, only to be defeated by arguably the most corrupt mayor in Los Angeles’ history, Frank L. Shaw (who, by the way, was recalled in 1938).

Spencer-Crawford Murder — Epilogue

davidclark

Clark’s bid for municipal judge was interrupted by his arrest for double homicide.

On the stand at his first trial, David Clark said that he’d shot Herbert Spencer and Charles Crawford in self-defense because the men had tried to get him to help them frame his friend Police Chief Steckel. He referred to the two dead men as skunks.

On August 23, 1931 the jury deadlocked and a second trial began on September 22nd.The second trial ended in an acquittal, perhaps in part because there were eight women on “Debonair Dave’s” jury – and he had always appealed to the ladies.  In fact, one of the jurors, Mrs. Florence H.R. Gorham, was very impressed with Clark’s wife Nancy and approached her following the verdict. Gorham told her: “I loved you from the first time I saw you”.

dave_jury

A few of the female jurors from Clark’s trial look adoringly at “Debonair Dave”.

Following the acquittal, Clark left the legal firm he’d been working for and set up his own practice. His primary client was Guy McAffee, a former LAPD vice cop turned racketeer.  Clark was paid well for his association with members of the Combination.  He went on this way for a few years and then, suddenly, in January 1937 he was reported missing – he’d completely vanished. After two months he was located in Nice, France.  He was described by the U.S. Consul as “…insane and without the courage to commit suicide”.  McAfee paid $800 for Clark’s ticket home.

Dave’s wife Nancy divorced him in 1939, and his life spiraled downward for several years. His law practice foundered and for a while he lived in obscurity running a small store near Costa Mesa.

Only a few friends had remained loyal to Clark.  George Blair (a friend from his USC days) and his wife Rose, nicknamed “Toots”, took him in through the summer and fall of 1953.

On Armistice Day, November 11, there was a family party. George was passed out drunk on the sofa.  He was awakened by “a kind of an explosion, like a backfire.”  When he sat up and looked around the room he saw Dave sitting in a chair. George asked “Where’s Toots?”  Dave looked at him and said “I killed her”.

Toots was toast.

Toots was found in the kitchen, dead of a shotgun blast. She and Clark had been arguing about him “mooching” off the family.

Dave ultimately pled guilty to murder in the second degree and was sentenced to from five years to life. He only served three weeks.   In Chino Prison he suffered a brain hemorrhage and died on February 20, 1954.

NOTE:  For an in-depth look at David Clark and the Spencer-Crawford murder case you should read: A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming of Age by Richard Rayner.

For more on the odious Combination, you may also want to check out John Buntin’s book: L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City. TNT has picked up the book for a new series.

Aggie and the Double Murder

On May 20, 1931 Los Angeles’ citizens were shaken by the murders of Charles H. Crawford and Herbert F. Spencer.

Crawford was a former saloonkeeper and a powerful player in the city’s shadow government, the sinister “Combination” which was made up of members of the underworld and members of Los Angeles’ political elite.  Nicknamed “The Gray Wolf” and “Good Time Charlie”, Crawford was ostensibly an insurance man, but actually made his money in gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging. To further his image as a legitimate businessman he had even bankrolled the CRITIC OF CRITICS, the political crusading weekly operated by the other victim in the case, Herbert Spencer.

Spencer had taken a bullet to the heart and was stone dead when cops rolled to the scene, but Crawford was still alive with a bullet in his abdomen that had ruptured his liver and one of his kidneys. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital where he received blood transfusions. He regained consciousness for a few moments and the law asked him for the name of his assassin(s). In true underworld style, Crawford said his secret would accompany him to his grave. And it did.

Herbert Spencer was a former police reporter who had become associated with a political crusading weekly, the CRITIC OF CRITICS. Before he was gunned down Spencer and his wife, nicknamed Frankie, had left their home at 2446 Kenilworth Avenue in the Los Feliz hills early enough so that Herb could drop Frankie off at a Hollywood hairdresser, and still have enough time to make it to a meeting with Crawford on Sunset Boulevard.

A home in the hills? A Hollywood hairdresser? How could a journalist make enough in 1931 to afford such a lifestyle? Simple, he milked the rackets for what he could get. He probably never expected to meet an end similar to that of Chicago Tribune newsman, turned crook, Jake Lingle. Lingle had been murdered gangland style on June 9, 1930, shot down in the streets of Chicago. Apparently Spencer believed that mob style hits only happened in Chicago and New York.

Guy McAfee and his wife, June in 1939.

Guy McAfee and his wife, June in 1939. [LAPL Photo]

Whispers in the corridors of City Hall pegged Crawford as the target of a hit ordered by his former employee Guy McAfee. McAfee and Crawford had been feuding for months before the slayings. McAfee appeared to be winning a power struggled for vice in the city and had been referred to in one newspaper as the Capone of L.A.  People assumed that Crawford was the target, and Spencer was collateral damage – too bad for everyone that McAfee had an iron-clad alibi.

McAfee was a former police captain who had been in charge of LAPD’s vice squad – which was undoubtedly how he met his wife, a former madam in one of the local brothels.  (McAfee is thought to have been the model for Raymond Chandler’s suave mobster Eddie Mars in THE BIG SLEEP).

Following the murders there was panic among members of the Combination; one man even turned up at the city jail and, fearing for his life, asked to be locked up for his own safety. Other Combination members fled the city in terror, some of them stayed away for years.

When the perpetrator surrendered one day after the slayings, the city was stunned to discover that the shooter was David H. Clark a former deputy district attorney who was then running for a municipal judgeship!   Clark, known around town as “Debonair Dave”, had been a star in the D.A.’s office and he seemed likely to achieve even more as a judge.

David Clark and his wife, Nancy.

David Clark and his wife, Nancy.  [LAPL Photo]

Aggie read all of the stories about Clark and noticed a significant gap in the coverage; no one had interviewed Clark’s parents!  Aggie received permission from the city desk to pursue her angle on the story.  After calling every Clark in the Los Angeles phone book  Aggie finally located the parents in Highland Park. For her efforts she was rewarded with an exclusive interview and photographs. The interview earned Aggie an important by-line and ran under the headline, “Mrs. Clark Says Son is Innocent”.

Aggie’s crime reporting career had begun with one of the most important stories of the day.

NEXT TIME…MORE ON THE CRAWFORD & SPENCER MURDERS