The Dark Side of Tinseltown: How Organized Crime Shaped Hollywood

## The Mob's Early Involvement in Hollywood The film industry's connection to organized crime dates back to its early days, when inventor Thomas Edison used his goons to maintain control over motion picture technology. This led to Jewish businessmen from the east coast fleeing westward and establishing the town and studio system that would become synonymous with movies. As the documentary series Hollywood Crime Story explains, organized crime syndicates on the other side of the country, such as The Outfit in Chicago and the mafia in New York, soon followed. ## The Rise of the Supermob The series charts the interdependent relationship between the mob and the movies from the development of cinema to the year 1990. It reveals how the mob became more intertwined with Hollywood than ever, but in more mainstream-accepted ways. The Supermob, a group of Jewish gangsters and businessmen, ran every aspect of Hollywood, from casting to funding to unionizing. They wielded the boardroom as their weapon, using their power to control the industry. ## The Godfather and the Blockbuster Age The success of The Godfather, a film secretly funded by mafia and Vatican banker Michele Sindona, went on to reshape how both filmmakers and criminals operated. The movie's grand, wonderful old-school depiction of the mob lifestyle inspired a new generation of gangsters, who started to emulate the gestures and codes of the characters on screen. The Supermob's influence on the film industry may have unknowingly set the stage for the blockbuster age, as they squeezed the life out of prestige filmmaking and transformed studio economics. ## The Dark Side of Hollywood's Golden Age The documentary series also explores the darker side of Hollywood's golden age, including the rise of pornography and the cocaine trade. Mob-affiliated figures, such as Louis "Butchie" Peraino, parlayed their money from producing porno flicks into purchasing and distributing legitimate films. The series also delves into the story of Robert Evans, who fell from grace after partnering with members of Florida's cocaine cartel to secure funding for the disastrous production of The Cotton Club. ## A Legacy of Corruption Hollywood Crime Story barely scratches the surface of the complex relationship between organized crime and the film industry. The series is a critical examination of the mob genre itself, its evolution from the silent era to the final decade of the 20th century. The documentary's creators, including producer and director Tom Patterson, argue that the relationship between organized crime and Hollywood remains a symbiotic one, with movies influencing how gangsters think and act, and vice versa, ad infinitum.