Among the masses of articles and books on the Jewish origins of Jay Gatsby, by far the most popular evidence that gets cited on a regular basis relates to Gatsby’s small, flat-nosed friend and mentor Meyer Wolfsheim — ‘the man who fixed the World Series in 1919’. [1] His depiction in the novel is also (and probably not unfairly) used to offer proof of the author’s casual anti-Semitism.
Biographers and critics are generally in agreement that Wolfsheim was based on Broadway mobster, Arnold Rothstein, another Russian immigrant whose family had been force to escape the vicious spate of pogroms being carried out by the Tsarist regime in Bessabaria in Southern Russia during the late 1840s and 1850s. By the mid-1920s Rothstein was being hailed the ‘Moses of Jewish Gangsters’ — his work with the American Communist Party’s, Maurice L. Malkin helping preserve Communist control of the American clothing unions. Competing for control was Morris Sigman, another Bessarabian who at that time was serving as President of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Believing that the activities of the American Communists were being driven by purely Soviet interests and belligerent ‘anti-capitalist’ mischief, the Socialist, Morris Sigman was making a bold, concerted effort to weed out as many Communist members as he could from the ranks of the union executive. Yes, he may be chiefly remembered as a big stakes gambler and bootlegger, but Arnold Rothstein was being used on a frequent basis in city and union affairs where he would provide ‘muscle’ and restore the political equilibrium of New York’s fractious unions.
Given the ease with which Fitzgerald was able to stitch together several threads of contemporary news items, the mysterious calls that Gatsby receives from Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia could be a thinly disguised allusion to emerging union tensions breaking out in those two key trade union districts at the time the novel was being written (the three cities are also where the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union had their headquarters). [2] Cast your eyes over the news columns of the period and you’ll find that Rothstein and his men were at the centre of a lively and consuming Labour racketeering scandal in each of these three cities and had been for quite some time. That said, he and his cronies were just as formidable in the bootlegging trade as they were blacklegging, and the handful of references in the novel might very well allude to either, and, or both. Gatsby’s love rival Tom Buchannan certainly seems to think it’s the latter. [3] What we do know is that when Scott was first sketching out plans for the story in autumn 1922, Philadelphia’s Prohibition chief, Senator William C. McConnell and the city’s Head of Secret Service, Matthew F. Griffin were being aggressively investigated by Special ‘Owl Eyes’ agent Frank J. Wilson, over corrupt relations with the city’s bootleggers.
At this point it may be worth reminding ourselves that it was the elusive Max von Gerlach — or Max Stork as he was known in his youth — who provided the most likely source for Gatsby’s more lurid dimensions. Some ten months after being arrested for shooting dead his baby brother, it appears that the 15 year-old Max may have been involved in some worker skirmishes taking place in Brooklyn. According to the New York Times of November 3rd 1900, six speakers of the Socialist Labour Party had been whipping up crowds between Seventh Street and Avenue C on the East Side of Manhattan. As the crowd grew ever more threatening its believed the officers had drawn their batons and started clubbing back at the fractious troublemakers. A riot soon broke out and before long six men had been arrested, among them a young Max Stork. The men were only in the cells a short time before they went back to their party headquarters at 98 Avenue C, where another crowd of supporters had begun to gather waving red flags and jeering the Tammany-controlled patrolmen. [4] If it’s is the same Max Stork (and there doesn’t appear to have been another man by that name in the district), then the incident would have occurred just ten months after accidentally shooting dead his baby brother in Yonkers. Had the 16 year old Max somehow been roped in as ‘thug for hire’? As provocateur, even?
Another of the men arrested alongside Max that day was Irving Herman Weisberger. A lifelong Socialist, Weisberger was some ten years older Max and living at East 72 Street Upper East Side at the time the riot took place. If this is not the same Max Stork then it’s remarkable that Max, his brother Alfred and his mother Elizabeth should end up living just 35-feet away from East 72 Street in the US Census of 1910. [5] World Series gangster Arnold Rothstein and his father Abraham would be just a mile or so north of the pair at East 93rd Street. Like Stork, Rothstein’s grandfather had been born in Germany.
Not a great deal is known about Max’s exploits and adventures in the period between the death of his brother in 1900 and his exit from the army in 1919. We know that at some point after the accident with the gun Max moves to New York and gets the job of chauffeuring the dubious Broadway and gambling impresario, John H. Springer, manager of the Grand Opera House and that the pair were involved in a collision featuring Springer’s brand new $12,000 French touring car on West 23rd Street. The car, which had been carrying Springer and his entire family at the time, had burst into flames as it was smashed between the two cabs. Luckily for Stork, he and the Springers had made it out of the car and were out on the street at the time. According to the press, the car had literally been torn to pieces. Gasoline had then leaked from a broken tank and the whole thing had exploded. The family were treated for concussion and superficial injuries but no lasting damage was done. [6] It was Springer’s second near fatal collision in a year, the previous one happening almost one year before to the day. A policeman had arrested Springer the month before over a minor traffic offence. Springer is alleged to have responded to the charge by yelling at the policeman that he would “have his head chopped off for this”. Appearing in court, Stork accused the cab men who caused the second smash of acting “little better than anarchists and murderers”. [7] In January 1913 Springer, who’d been embroiled in various court disputes over the years concerning to his more racy German theatre productions, headed to Berlin to produce a series of performances there. As Max is also believed to have been in Germany around this time, it may be the two trips were related. Shortly after losing money in a theatre house there, Springer filed for bankruptcy, citing an unprofitable series of “lemon plays” from his booking company, Klaw and Erlanger for the theatre’s fortunes. In addition to his gambling and theatre interests, Springer was also the owner of the Empire State Garage near East Seventy Fifth Street. In 1909 one of his touring cars ferrying eight passengers to a house party in New Jersey had ended up in a ditch. Nobody was badly hurt but its driver was charged with speeding. [8] Max’s home on Second Avenue would have been little more than a ten-minute walk from the incident.
Max Marries into the Mob
It may have been through his work with Springer or Colonel Cushman Rice that Max came into contact with Marie R. Lovell, the footloose Socialite daughter of racing millionaire, William Lovell, a Liverpool-born bookmaker with a “shady reputation” who had immigrated first to Australia and then to the United States with a considerable fortune in mining. [9] In the summer of 1877, a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Lovell and his gambling partner, James B. Kelly. The order for Lovell’s arrest had been made by Judge Hoffman in New Jersey as the district began to get tough on a virulent pool-selling racket which was otherwise operating with impunity in New York. Law reports from Hudson County describe how Lovell had been charged with publicly organising lotteries known as Auction pools, French Pools and Combination Pools which he later deposited at the Jerome Racecourses in New York. Lovell was fined $800 and ordered to pay the full legal costs. [10] Just three years later another arrest warrant would be issued, this time for Lovell’s son who was reported to have absconded with over $5,000 in diamonds from his stepmother. It seems that three previous terms in prison on Blackwell’s Island had done little to curb his vices. [11] A regular face on the race rigging circuit being run by Peter De Lacy and Tammany Hall leader ‘Boss Croker’, William Lovell would also serve for a time as Vice President of the Jockey Club in Coney Island, Brooklyn [12]. This would almost certainly have him into the orbit of Tammany grandees like August Belmont Snr and August Belmont Jnr — two men of considerable means, both financially and politically, who would, in years to come, feature prominently in the lives of Joseph G. Robin and the gangster, Arnold Rothstein, the novel’s ‘Meyer Wolfshiem’. [13] All with the exception of Robin would become prominent figures in the running of the running of the club at Coney, alongside the husband of Alva Belmont, William Kassam Vanderbilt.
By 1908, Max Gerlach, still going by his regular name, Max Stork, married Lovell’s daughter Marie in Manhattan. Despite being heiress to a $150,000 fortune, the union can’t have been a smooth one as on the 1911 census Stork can be seen back living with his mother Elizabeth and stepfather Thomas J. Reilly in Upper Manhattan. His wife was meanwhile boarding at the home of George H. Oakley and his wife on Amity Street in Patchogue, Long Island. On December 18th 1912 the 29 year old Marie Lovell Stork died at the home of her neighbour, Belle Carman. Her will records that the left a modest sum of money to her estranged husband Max, who was by this time doing quite well for himself on the car racing circuit. [14] According to the 1920 census, Carman’s nephew, Harry Thompson had been working as a government employee off the Long Island ‘Rum Coast’ as part of the New York City Coast Guard. [15] A Wills and Probate notice in the New York Times dated January 10 1913 reads: “STORK, MARIE LOVELL (died Dec. 18, 1912) left not more than $500 personalty: $1,000 to husband Max A. Stork, contingent that estate equals $20,000 exclusive of all bequests.” Some items of jewellery were left to her siblings and another $1000 to the Swedish American caricaturist and wartime propagandist, Oscar E. Cesare who would find fame in 1922 as one of the only American artists to gain entry to the Kremlin where he was invited to produce sketches of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. [16]
Interestingly, Cesare’s trip to Russia had been arranged as part of the American Famine Relief expedition organized by Herbert Hoover and overseen by Gerlach’s ‘old friend’, Cushman Rice. He and Mrs William Henry Chamberlain had been seconded for three months to the American Committee for the Relief of Russian Children, then under the management of Captain Paxton Hibben and the Near East Relief organization. [17]
Max’s Gatsby-esque affectations must have been in force quite early in his life. A local item in The Suffolk County ‘s Patchogue news column proudly announces the arrival of ‘Baroness von Storck’ at the Ocean Avenue home of her brother Amos Lovell. It seems clear that for a time at least, Max Gerlach had adopted the entirely fabricated nobiliary particle ‘von’ for his Stork-Storck moniker. [18] But he wasn’t the only one doing it in the family. Just twelve months earlier the newspapers had been reporting that Max’s brother-in-law, Amos Lovell, appearing in court over a bootlegging offence, had instructed his lawyer, District Attorney, Ralph C. Greene to make it known that his grandfather was Lord Lovell of England. Amos explained how his mother had died recently leaving a $400,000 estate but that it was so tied-up that he couldn’t get access to a cent of it. He was indicted on two counts and held under $1000 cash bail. Eventually he got off with a $100 fine. [19] There hadn’t been a formally recognised Lord Lovell for about four centuries. The last one had been a staunch supporter of King Richard III and Sir William Catesby. The family had forfeited its title after the defeat of Richard by Henry Tudor after the War of the Roses. After the Battle of Stoke Field, Lord Lovell had disappeared and his remains were never found. The name had since become the stuff of ballads and legends. As manager of the Oceanic Inn in Red Bank, New Jersey, Max’s brother-in-law Amos had previously been implicated in a murder inquiry connected with the sale of illegal liquor. [20]
As interesting as his domestic life is, it is a street address mentioned by Professor Kruse in his research into Max’s life that is perhaps the most intriguing. The address is one that is listed in the 1910 edition of Trow’s General Directory where it lists Max A. Stork as a merchant with a business at 99 Second Avenue in Manhattan’s Ukrainian Village. [21] Several years later the same address would be used to host meetings for the Manhattan Eighth Assembly of the Jewish Socialist Federation of America. There’s no evidence to suggest that Gerlach was Jewish. A look at his family in Germany makes this terrifically unlikely. Even so, according to the Jewish Communal Register, its branch Secretary, Minnie Sussman would hold meetings from the premises (possibly ‘The Second Avenue Theatre’ or an earlier Yiddish theatre) every Wednesday evening. [22] The organisation’s HQ was at 175 East Broadway under Secretary Max E. Lulow and treasurer Jacob B. Salutsky, better known as J. B. S. Hardman, a Russian born Socialist activist who had found himself Editor of the New World Weekly at 175 East Broadway. Critical of American Communist movement, Salutsky would make a number of attempts to bring his group, the Committee for a Third International under the banner of the Communist International of Russia. The Bolshevik supporters, the Jewish Socialist Verbund would also host meetings at this theatre. They would also stage the plays of Ukrainian playwright, David Pinski. At the time that young Max was roaring his engine around the streets of New York, Manhattan’s Second Avenue was the entertainment area of the Yiddish quarter. With its thriving, eclectic hub of theatres, restaurants, cafes and clubs, it was came to be known more colloquially as the ‘Yiddish Broadway’ and featured prominently in the routes taken by anarchist Emma Goldman and her partner Alexander Berkman. The Café Monopole at 144 Second Avenue (Veselka today) was even a favourite haunt of Leon Trotsky during his pre-Revolution trip to New York. [23]
Incidentally, the names of Jacob Salutsky, Jacob Schiff and David Pinski and several other Yiddish theatre legends, would all appear on a list of members of the American Jewish Congress of September 1917. Whatever business Max von Gerlach had in the area, this was a thriving and radical area. Both the Socialist Party of America and the Allied Hebrew Citzen’s League had HQs at 99 and 122 Second Avenue since the early 1900s when they were practically the second home of Tammany Hall speakers like Edward E. McCall, who would rally the support of German voters for the Democrat vote.
The Man Who Fixed the 1919 World Series
Much of the speculation regarding Max’s activities in Professor Kruse’s archaeology focuses primarily on the various shuttling trips that Gerlach makes as Max Stork between Cuba and Berlin. Whilst it seems likely that these trips were in some way facilitated by his long-time associate Cushman A. Rice, who had made Cuba his second home, it’s intriguing to note that in March 1918 the American press were reporting on the smashing of a German spy ring which had been managing its operations between Mexico, Cuba and Germany. It was alleged that German agent provocateurs were intending to foment rebellion among revolutionaries in Cuba and Mexico. Two Germans had already been arrested in Havana, one of them known to be a close friend of President Gomez, one of the leaders of the alleged revolt. Another of the men arrested was believed to be a member of an exclusive Chicago Club and maintained a “luxurious apartment” in the city. The man was said to have ingratiated himself with a large brokerage house with offices in Chicago and New York. A number of American detectives were known to be in Cuba mingling with revolutionaries in an attempt to get to the bottom of an organisation that was being referred to as The Iron Cross. [24] A short time later a Walter T Scheele, the American President of the New Jersey Agricultural and Chemical Company was arrested on suspicion of pro-German work and conspiring to set fire to munitions ships operating between Havana and Europe. [25] In March 1918 there another development. A special cable had been received by the New York Times informing them that Otto Riners, the former American Consul in Cuba had committed suicide. The dispatch explained that the former consul been accused of being a German Spy. [26]
Whether Colonel Cushman Rice, generally regarded as a bit of a ‘our man in Havana’ figure, or his young protégé Max Gerlach had played a part in providing intelligence that had led directly, or indirectly, to the smashing of the ring (or even complicity in the ring) isn’t known, but the timing of the various trips the pair made around this same period is certainly curious. By his own admission, Cushman had been a confidant of Filipino Revolutionary, Emilio Aguinaldo and been busy putting his ear to the ground on plans for and plans against independence. Cushman’s experience of matters in Cuba ran significantly deeper, but there is no definitive account of his movements during this period that I have been able to uncover as yet.
The scope for espionage and intrigue is, you can imagine, quite immense, but what the exact nature of Max’s relationship was to Colonel Rice is something that can only ever be guessed at. It certainly wasn’t unknown for resourceful young rum runners like Gerlach to hired on a casual basis by the American Secret Service. As long as it was able to provide ballast to domestic and foreign objectives, the power and reach of organised crime had always been greeted with no small amount of tolerance, and perhaps even with a pinch of respect. What we do know is that each of the three referees that featured on Max’s 1919 passport application — Cushman A. Rice, George Young Bauchle and Aaron J. Levy — had either strong or casual links to notorious World Series gangster, Arnold Rothstein, making the much speculated link between Gatsby, Max Gerlach, the World Series and Rothstein are all the more mysterious.
If you’ve seen the film or read the book you may recall a scene in which Gatsby and Nick Carraway make their way into New York. Gatsby has an old friend that he would like to introduce to Nick. Arriving at noon in a basement restaurant on West 42nd Street the three men meet for lunch. The Times Square district of New York is where Rothstein conducted business. In the book its where Rothstein’s fictional equivalent, Meyer Wolfshiem is dining with Gatsby and Nick in an ante-room of the bar. Meyer looks up at the ceiling and remarks on a pair of sea nymphs painted on it. The venue they meet is likely to be based on the Considine, a saloon whose dimly-lit backroom was popular with New York’s sporting figures and muckraking journalists. It had an ornate mural and tall, coffered ceiling. The story that Wolfshiem regales them with as they dine is a true one. In 1912, the notorious Times Square gambler and club owner Herman Rosenthal took a stand against corrupt New York Police Officer, Lieutenant Charles Becker, generally assumed to be managing the more seedy affairs of the Tammany Hall. Rosenthal had refused to be brought into his schemes and was gunned down in front of astonished customers in the café at the neighbouring Hotel Metropole. Four of the men were electrocuted, remembers Nick. “Five, with Becker”, adds Wolfshiem. And electrocuted they were. [27] As they are talking Nick notices a pair of ivory cufflinks that Wolfshiem is wearing. “Finest specimens of human molars,’ he informs Nick. When Wolfshiem leaves he asks if the gentleman was a dentist. “Meyer Wolfshiem? No he’s a gambler. He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.” Nick is palpably shocked and asks why he isn’t in jail? “ They can’t get him, Old Sport. He’s a smart man.” The penny has finally dropped. All the rumours about Gatsby are true.
To date, any plausible connection between Scott and the Broadway mobster has usually been put down to legend and the work of an overactive imagination. But there’s a little bit more to it than that. As Scott sat down to work on his last unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon in 1937, he dashed off a letter to fellow writer Corey Ford at MGM. Scott’s letter talks about the challenges the two men faced as screenwriters in Hollywood. Two things were occupying his mind about the movies: the hold that the Mob retained over Hollywood, and the increasing dominance of Communists in studio unions. Few of their friends their had succeeded. Dos Passos had “nibbled”, and Erskine Caldwell appeared to have ‘got in’. It was a pretty “unsatisfactory business” all round and understood how simple it would be to be a Communist under these conditions: “being able to explain away the worlds inadequacies” in a single swipe. Unlike at Gatsby’s, Hollywood was a party that didn’t admit anybody who hadn’t been invited. It was a closed-shop. Scott then went on to explain that he was working on his next “selective” novel, confessing that he had deliberately excluded the more salacious real life elements of life in Great Neck to give the novel its haunted, ethereal feel. All of the “ordinary material” he consumed at Long Island, “the big crooks, adultery themes” had all been toned down to suit the novel’s poetic intentions. The next one would be similar in tone, but a little more “comprehensive” like This Side of Paradise. The next statement was altogether more intriguing. One of the experiences of Long Island that he didn’t leave out of the novel had been “my own meeting with Arnold Rothstein”. Scott explained that it had been one of those “small, focal points” that had “impressed” him whilst at Great Neck. The scene in the novel in which Nick meets Jay Gatsby had actually been based on Scott’s real-life encounter with the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. Scott hadn’t minded sharing this fact because Ford had liked the novel so much. He was aware he was being candid. [28] But how did this meeting come about? Who, among Scott’s friends and colleagues, was the one who introduced the pair?
If you were to look over the cast-list of Scott’s friends there are two possibilities that really stand out: the sports journalist Ring Lardner, a close-friend and neighbour of Scott’s in Great Neck, whose name featured prominently in coverage of the scandal, and gentleman bootlegger, Max Gerlach. The former would have been well acquainted with the back-room of the Considine bar on West 42nd Street, whilst Gerlach would have been the better match where liquor was concerned. Was it possible, on the otherhand, that a situation had arisen that would pool the talents of all these men: Cushman Rice, Arnold Rothstein, Max Gerlach and Ring Lardner? Chicago journalist Lardner had enjoyed especially close relations with the White Sox, and had provided several important leads, insights, suspicions into the 1919 World Series scandal, syndicated across America’s press, making it not quite as implausible as it sounds. In the weeks and months that followed Ring would also be called as witness. There had been a conspiracy to defraud the public. Lardner refused to hide his sense of betrayal over the whole affair. To him, baseball had offered one of the purest and most simple of dreams and the team that he loved had let him down. Lardner would later write that there had been something prophetic about the scandal. The events of 1919 had ushered in a decade of unprecedented crime, corruption and immorality: “Say it ain’t so Joe … say it ain’t so. It had been like the last desperate plea for itself.” [29] It’s easy to see why Scott included references to it in the novel and why it had become something of a “small focal point” for his observations on the death of the American dream.
A completely fresh find in the newspaper archives may shed some additional light on the matter. The story dates back to 1915 when Max von Gerlach’s army and passport pal, Colonel Cushman Rice was still in Cuba and the infamous 1919 World Series was still some four years away. The story starts as most stories do, with another story. In April 1915 a Pennsylvania newspaper was reporting that a whopping $27, 000 was being offered for the ‘twin brother’ of a lucky penny that was believed to have secured a World Series triumph for Boston Braves chief, George Stallings. The man who was making the astonishing offer was Yankees owner, Captain Tillinghast Huston. The man who claimed he had the penny but was firmly rejecting the offer was Gerlach’s friend, Cushman A. Rice who was described by the story’s reporter as the “foremost American in Cuba”. Frustratingly for Huston, as long as Colonel Rice was the owner of the penny, the irascible old adventurer said he had no intention of handing it over. As far as Rice was concerned, whilst the penny was in his possession he had full control over the outcome of the championship.
The next claim that Huston made was more astonishing still. These weren’t just any pennies. They were magic pennies. According to the story that Huston told the newspaper, the pennieshad been taken from the neck of a “Cuban negro” killed during Cuba’s escalating race wars. He claimed the small, shiny pair of pennies had been in a little bag along with a number of “hoodoo” items, including charms. He had given one of the pennies to Stalling to bring him luck at the World Series. The next thing he said was no less intriguing; the man who Huston was hoping to buy the penny for was Wild Bill Donovan. [30] Huston told the reporter that he and Donovan were “old pals” and he would have done “almost anything” to get his hands on that penny. [31]
Just four years later Wild Bill Donovan would find himself at the centre of the Black Sox scandal, arising as result of the 1919 World Series that gangster, Arnold Rothstein (Meyer Wolfshiem in the book) was accused of rigging. As President of the National Sporting Club in Havana, Cushman carried some weight in several gaming areas, so the associations were hardly surprising. At the end of the World Series, Donovan, now manager of the Chicago White Sox and ten of his White Sox players were accused of throwing the game in a complex, wide-ranging deal organised by Arnold Rothstein and George Young Bauchle’s gambling syndicate. According to witnesses, Donovan had learned of the teams’ decision to throw the game some time beforehand. [32] Although cleared by a grand jury, his new boss William F. Baker, owner of the Philadelphia Phillies owner would later sack him. Donovan was replaced, of all people, by ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’ (Irving Key Wilhelm).
The decision to throw the game had arisen during a disagreement with club owner, Charles Comiskey. When his players threatened to strike, the Tammany Hall strongman refused to pay their wages. The fact that Rothstein never faced trial makes one wonder if the whole scheme had been devised to deal with the threat posed by striking players and to close down the various economic and ideological threats to America being presented by militant unionism on the ballpark. When the time had come to pay the players, Rothstein reneged on the deal. In an attempt to get their money the players went public. As a result, the authorities had little option but to prosecute them, and Rothstein just walked away. [33] The plight of the striking players had been dealt the heftiest of blows as public support for the strikes collapsed.
A few years later tragedy would strike again when the disgraced former White Sox manager, Wild Bill Donovan was killed in a horrific train accident in Forsyth, New York. Donovan had been travelling in the observation car (the rear carriage) of the train when another train had ploughed into the back of it. His own train had been forced to stop when a car had stalled on the railroad crossing. The driver and the passengers had been forced to escape and could only watch as the carnage unfolded. All of those travelling in the observation car were killed on impact. [34]
That Arnold Rothstein and Colonel Cushman A. Rice occupied the same social and gambling spheres is supported by a story told by journalist Arthur ‘Bugs’ Baer in the 1940s in which Rothstein and Rice both feature. The story told by Baer takes place on the evening of Election Night in 1916, an election that would prove to be dominated by fears over a Mexican Revolution and America’s entry into World War One. Woodrow Wilson had defeated Hughes and Cushman Rice and Arnold Rothstein had made their way to the Waldorf Hotel bar on 34th Street. It was here at the Waldorf that ‘Bugs’ Baer claimed ‘Cap’ Rice had taken over “thirty-five thousand smackers” off the bookies that night after betting on Woodrow Wilson to pull off his bid for the White House. Rice’s lucky streak had extended so far as running Rothstein out of chips. Baer confessed that he never did get to know how Cap Rice made had his fortune, “he was a fellow who bobbed up at all big fights, World Series, conventions and Kentucky races. You would meet him in London, Mexico, New Orleans or any spot where you could stick a pin. I always thought he was government agent but I never knew for certain.” [35]
“I always thought he was a government agent.” It’s certainly an interesting statement, especially in light of Rice’s easy familiarity with Rothstein and the power the Broadway mobster would be asked to exert over America’s striking workers, but if there is the faintest credibility of Max being involved in Socialist politics (most likely as an agent provocateur), then the story involving Rothstein and the Russian-American Trading Corporation, means it could all get murkier still.
Un-American Activities
This story takes us back to the investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities heard at Congress House in the late 1930s, but first we need to rewind a little bit further and go back the claim made by Maurice L. Malkin of the American Communist Party. Malkin had claimed that he had been instrumental in hiring Arnold Rothstein to bolster the efforts of the furriers union —who were at this time broadly under control of the American Communist Party — during the 1926 general strike. The impact and drama that strike leaders like Malkin needed out on the streets required the cooperation and acquiesces of the New York City Police. This meant buying off the office of Police Commissioner McLaughlin in addition to several other precincts including Fifth Street, Charles Street, West 30th Street, Clinton Street and 47th Street. The heads of the New York Industrial Squad, Jesse Joseph and Barney Rudevitzky were also bought off too, receiving $45,000 and $50, 000 respectively. Out of the $3,500, 00 raised for the strike over $110,000 of Rothstein’s money had gone into paying off police. Much of the remainder was skimmed off by various individuals by falsifying receipts. [36]The men acting as bag men for the $150, 000 loan were Malkin’s attorneys, Abraham Goodman and the Russian-born Judge, Leonard A. Snitkin. Rothstein would provide the initial cash-input and the repayment of the loan would be guaranteed by AMTORG, the Russian-American Trading Corporation, which had opened its first American offices at 136 Liberty Street and 165 Broadway in June 1924. [37] Managing the corporation’s affairs in Britain was ARCOS chief and Joseph G. Robin’s namesake, Philip J. Rabinovitch who had relocated to London from New York sometime in 1919. Rabinovitch was supported in his US efforts by a series of AMTORG presidents, Isiah J. Hoorgin (aka. Isaj Churgin), Paul J. Ziev, Alexis Y. Prigarin and Saul Bron.[38]
Another key figure at AMTORG was Taganrog’s Dr Mark Solomonovitch Sheftel, a former member of Russia’s Socialist Revolutionary Party who would subsequently be accused of being chief of the Soviet Secret Police (Cheka) in New York by Inspector John Lyons of NYC’s Political Department and AFL leader Matthew Woll. Dr. Sheftel’s visa to the US from Berlin was secured and his bona fides guaranteed by the deep-rooted and well-respected, Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. [39] Like Robin, practically all of the directors at AMTORG were Ukrainians and all four of them lasted little more than one or two years as leaders. Hoorgin was killed in a boating accident in the Catskills district of New York in August 1925 and Prigarin resigned for personal reasons less than twelve months after being appointed.[40]
During his cross examination by Congress in 1939, American Communist leader Malkin is clear about one thing: Rothstein had been driven by money, not by politics. Rothstein was no cadre; he was a cash-cow, with no apparent interest in the nobler aims of Communism at all. It was just a question of how much profit he could make on the interest once the loan had been made. [41] Rothstein had assumed a similar dispassionate role in the 1912 garment strikes when he provided muscle and funds to the garment strike force and unions of 1911 and 1912. In Baku they had Stalin. In New York they had Rothstein.
Malkin’s attorney, Leonard A. Snitkin was an entirely different proposition. The Russian-born former Justice Chief had been embroiled in one radical escapade after another, from draft evasion schemes, to eviction evasion schemes. He was also an associate of Robin’s friend, Theodore Dreiser. In 1927 Snitkin represented the wife of Dreiser’s friend, Ervin Nyíregyházi when she filed for a divorce. [42] It was another lurid story of casually careless people doing casually careless things. Erwin, a pianist who had made his sensational debut at the Carnegie Hall in 1917, had been invited by Dreiser to a concert in Manhattan, along with Dreiser’s partner Helen Richardson. Within weeks Helen and Erwin were having an affair. Dreiser was furious with his friend’s behaviour and drafted in Snitkin in an effort to get the best settlement possible for Ervin’s wife, and exact the sweetest revenge. The paths of Dreiser and Snitkin would frequently cross at other points in the decade, collaborating on various civil rights and civil defence issues with all the energy and commitment that expected of the period’s agitators, advocates and ‘crusaders for justice’.
Like his legal associate Aaron J. Levy — the man who provided the draft-board reference for Gatsby’s bootlegger twin, Max von Gerlach — Snitkin had been a key member of the Tammany Hall executive. In 1901 Snitkin and several other Tammany figures had been pulled up and charged with illegal vote rigging practises. Officials alleged that the and the group had been using fake registrations among immigrants on the Lower East Side. This wasn’t the first time that Snitkin and Rothstein had crossed paths either. In 1923, ‘bucket shop’ operators Edward M. Fuller and W. Frank McGee hired Snitkin during a probe into the finances of city broker, Charles A. Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants baseball team.
It’s at this point that films like Oliver Stone’s JFK generally crowbar in some not entirely natural kind of recap into the script, largely on account of the dizzying array of characters and the unreasonable demands placed upon the viewer to follow and make sense of an impossibly complex mesh of motives and scenarios. A similar approach is need now as it was during the period in which Fuller was being investigated that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald upped sticks from White Bear Lake in Minnesota to take up residence at 6 Gateway Drive, quite close to where Edward Fuller had an estate. [43] It’s something that’s been mentioned by several biographers already, some speculating that the parties thrown by Fuller may even have inspired the ones we see in the Gatsby novel. The evidence for this though is thin on the ground. Fuller wasn’t particularly well known for his parties and there was absolutely nothing of Jay Gatsby about him. Nevertheless, there are a number of authors who place him tantalisingly close to the author and his wife in Great Neck. But in terms of an Oliver Stone-style mid-movie recap I’d like to begin to pull the various strings together; and for this I’d like to hold in your mind Arnold Rothstein, Scott’s relationship with Max von Gerlach and the whole thing with Fuller going on in court just as Scott arrives in Great Neck and starts sketching out the outline of the book that would become The Great Gatsby. The period that we are looking at is October 1922. Scott has set up his writing base close to newspaper magnate Herbert Bayard Swope and his friend Ring Lardner. It here that Scott would begin to observe the “big crooks” of Long Island and be introduced to Arnold Rothstein. It is also around this time that Max Gerlach starts dropping in on the family’s Gateway Drive residence “enroute from the coast” where he conducts his illicit business.
At the time that Gerlach was leaving his message saying he would be dropping in from the coast, Scott had just been putting the finishing touches to Absolution. His frustration with the faith of his youth had entered a new and thoroughly unforgiving phase. The note that Max would leave had been scribbled over a newspaper item headlined ‘The Beautiful and Damned’. Beneath the headline was a picture of Scott, Zelda and the two-year old Scotty posing on the lawn of their home. The Warner Bros ‘photo play’ version of the novel had been released in January and was still doing the rounds in theatres. The summer of 1923 had found the 27 year old author in an irascible, intolerant mood. Money was a struggle and America couldn’t modernise quickly enough. In his ledger Scott records that this was the most miserable year he had had since nineteen. In January he had learned of the death of his friend, Prince Val Engalitcheff (an apparent suicide) and by July he was hard at work on the first (and only) production of his play The Vegetable. Things began to improve in the second half of the year. His 18-month year old daughter Scotty had just learned to talk and Zelda’s sister Rosalind had arrived. A letter he had written to the editor of The Literary Digest in April reveals his barely contained gristle with New York censoring laws bursting into outright anger: “The clean-book bill will be one of the most immoral measures ever adopted. It will throw American art back into the junk heap where it rested comfortably between the Civil War and the World War”. Scott couldn’t understand how a book like Simon Called Peter, a popular novel openly critical of Catholicism, could pass the censors and not more worthy works of literature by authors like Theodore Dreiser and James Branch Cabell.[44] There was little or no sense of justice in the world. The heroes of the war had vanished. Faced with an uncertain future in an uncertain world, America had handed a battery of extra powers to its instruments law and order. Men were jailed and books were seized. The world was cracking and the past was slipping away. Anyone found to be letting go of the rope and letting the past drift idly away on the electric current that was then coursing up the Hudson and through New York was classed as outlaw, Fitz included. Editors like Margaret C. Anderson and authors like James Joyce were becoming the new faces of the criminal underground, obliged to flee to Paris simply to preserve their freedom. The running of illegal ideas started shuttling between the bays in cases that were every bit as illicit as those holding rum: there were bootleggers and there were bookleggers. The Cotillo-Jesse Clean Book Bill that Scott refers to in his letter had just been passed by the New York Assembly. Within days it had been passed to a specially prepared Senate hearing. John S. Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice did all the running on it, placing in the hands of the Senate Committee a half-dozen sealed envelopes which he alleged contained evidence of some serious obscenities. [45] The opposition objected on the basis that it was impossible to judge a book based on a selection of paragraphs out of context. Among them was Horace Liveright, the publisher behind Theodore Dreiser and J.G. Robin.
The sponsors of the Bill, however, were Justice John Ford and Martin Conboy Jnr, President of the New York Catholic Club and a powerful Irish-American ally of Scott’s mentor, Shane Leslie (now serving as Chamberlain to the Pope) and Shane’s father-in-law, William Bourke-Cockran. [46] Conboy Jnr had come out with all guns blazing against the publication of Joyce’s Ulysses. His reasons were twofold: the first was that he loathed the casual obscenity of so-called ‘artists’ and the second was that the book’s Cyclops scene featured a brutal caricature of Arthur Griffiths, a close personal and political associate of Conboy’s friend (and legal client), the Irish Republican leader, Éamon de Valera. Adding additional weight was the Italian-born Senator, Salvatore Cotillo, the East Harlem Democrat, decorated for his work for Wilson by Italy during the war. He returned to Italy as envoy in 1923, hoping to strike a deal with Pope Pius and Mussolini to help stem the flow of immigrants to America. The request had met with some resistance from Mussolini, who believed that if America were to pass the new and much tighter immigration bill, less money would be sent back to Italy by relatives working in the United States, meaning fresh woes for an already struggling economy. Cotillo had returned to America in spring with a series of vague concessions. In Italy he had told the press that once he returned to the States he would do everything in his power to make America more tolerant of Fascism and to promote Mussolini as a noble and commanding leader “of the highest order”. Cotillo wished to press home the idea that the Duce of Italy was not only legitimate but also credible. Contrary to what Americans had been thinking, Fascism was not mere “brigandage” but a “lawful and strong government, full of patriotic ardour.” [47] However, back in America the Senator was quick to downplay the sentiment, insisting that Fascism in America was not only something to be resisted but something that could never work. Cotillo faced the challenge of striking a very delicate balance. There were multiple parallel concerns to consider, and various stakeholders to please. Rome was now a vital ally in the war against godless Russian Bolshevism.
Whilst in Rome, Cotillo had series of private meetings with the Holy Father who duly assigned Bishop Michele Cerratti to assist with the Senator’s request. [48] The official word on his visit was that he was here to smooth the tensions between the supporters of Mussolini in the Italian communities of New York and the anti-Fascist movement that was swelling among Communists and Socialists in America. Unofficially he was there to score their cooperation as part of a solution to an urgent immigration crisis under the banner of criminal exploitation. Was it possible there was a link between Cotillo’s mission on Immigration and his fairly unexpected support of the Clean Book Bill? The three main sponsors of the Bill, John Ford, Martin Conboy and Senator Cotillo were certainly all Catholics. As the hearing reached its climax, Ford brought out a raft of religious and patriotic groups. The Catholics were among those most strongly represented with the Holy Name Society, the League of Catholic Women, the Knights of Columbus and the Federated Catholic Societies all coming forward to share their views. The Catholic Church had always taken a fairly liberal view of alcohol and prohibition but its generous attitude to booze didn’t always extend to modern literature and contraception — both of them regarded as the totally unnecessary evil of fashionably liberal democracies.
Sex was turning up everywhere, and everywhere it was being more tolerated. 1922 had witnessed the birth of the latex condom. Practically everybody was now able to pick them up cheap at any store. This practical rubber sheath had long been associated with promiscuity and adultery, and condemned with the utmost intensity by the Church in Rome. No matter where you looked in America at this time there was a crisis. The unholy trinity of booze, books and bottoms was wreaking havoc with America’s crumbling moral fabric the undue influence of a climate of quid pro quo, certainly in regard to the triumph of Fascism in Italy and a suitable resolution to the Irish Question, was tearing it apart still further. If Nick really had looked up at the moon in Gatsby’s garden that year, he would have seen that the sky was falling.
The fantasy I have in my head is that when Scott did finally the door to Max Gerlach, probably with a pair of Gin Blossoms clinking in hand, he had just that minute finished reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. On the table next to it would sit The Satyricon by Petronius, freshly re-translated and published by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright, the two main nemeses of the Clean Books League. Just as he heard someone knocking at the door, Scott would have been skipping to the infamous Trimalchio ‘banquet’ scenes of the book— one of latest works of fiction to fall victim to the New York censors. “To think that wine has a longer life than man, Old Sport”, Gerlach would quip as he glided through the porch and into the hall, glancing around to see if his host had company. “While there’s still life in the wine let’s fill our glasses. Slaves are men, my friends. Even if hard luck has kept them down, they should join us in drinking this water of freedom! In his tipsy and indignant state, it would probably have been quite easy for Scott to equate the gaudy and irreverent nouveau-riche slave created by Petronius with smooth-tongue provocateurs like Gerlach and Rothstein — Princes and Kings among the rulebreakers of Long Island. The two men’s gutsy disregard for authority and their wily dry-witted elegance would have had a Wild West brass about it. Like the glamourous raw men that a young James Gatz would encounter around the ports of the Barbary Coast, Scott would have been presented with two pioneer debauchees who had “brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.” [49] Men like Rothstein were living what Nietzsche only preached. He was a Superman that existed beyond the usual conventions and orthodoxies of society. Zarathustra had come down from the mountain with the news that America as we knew it was dead. And for a while at least men like Gerlach and Rothstein might have seemed quite charming. Sympathetic even.
At the beginning of 1923 Scott had been having a tough time focusing his energies into work. Since his arrival in October, Great Neck had just been long party, with Ring Lardner and himself getting ‘stewed’ on a regular basis. The sheer volume of the town’s celebrities had completely bowled the couple over: Frank Craven, Herbert Swope and Samuel Goldwyn. Even General Pershing, another vague associate of Max von Gerlach, had been an entertaining enough distraction after the “dull healthy middle west’. There’s no actual telling how close Scott’s house was to Fuller, or how much he knew of the investigation, but if his 1937 letter to Ford is anything to go by, he was certainly aware of the Great Neck crooks. Of course, getting stewed on a regular basis meant getting liquor on a regular basis and this itself would have brought him into contact with some of Long Island’s more undesirable (or more resourceful) characters, Max Gerlach among them. Living beyond your means on this lavish scale often meant living beyond the law.
It is certainly curious to note that Max von Gerlach’s 42 Broadway address at this time was also within just a few yards of E.M. Fuller & Co at 50 Broadway. In November that year the same 42 Broadway address would feature in another brokerage scandal which had resulted in the suicide of 33 year old broker, Jesse A. Wasserman. It is believed that Wasserman shot himself through the head in the bathtub at his home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Several letters from his wife Carla von Bergen in Baden, Germany were found alongside his almost fully-submerged body in the tub. The previous year Wasserman and his bank had featured as witnesses in the ‘draft-dodging’ Grover Bergoll scandal. Bergdoll had been hard-drinking, womanizing racing car driver and aviator who had somehow managed to dodge being drafted into the army. A worldwide manhunt ensued and Bergoll was eventually traced to Germany. [50]
During the court case that followed Edward M. Fuller’s arrest, it was disclosed that he had received cheques totalling nearly $200,000 from Arnold Rothstein. These cheques were dated between November 10th 1920 and Nov 9th 1920, years before Scott arrived on the scene. The judge investigating the boiler room practices admitted that he was unable to fathom the mystery of Rothstein’s connection with Fuller’s firm, despite Rothstein being one of the known sureties behind Fuller & Company. [51]The various links between Charles A. Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants, the other baseball team caught up in the scandal, and Arnold Rothstein were even stronger, the gangster having brokered the deal that saw him pick up the Giants several months ahead of the 1919 World Series. [52] There were also plausible links between Stoneham and Cushman A. Rice, Stoneham having opened the first racetrack and casino — the Casino Nacional — in Havana with Giants manager, John J. McGraw.[53] By and by, the interests of both the track and the Jockey Club were sucked in the Cuban National Syndicate. There was another thing too. The 99 Second Avenue address that Max Gerlach used to conduct his business affairs in 1910 was little more than twenty-feet away from the law firm of Fuller’s legal counsel, Leonard A. Snitkin in Manhattan’s Eighth Assembly. It had been Snitkin’s legal colleague, Aaron J. Levy who, like Cushman Rice and George Young Bauchle, had supported Gerlach in his application to enlist with the US Army. [54] As Rothstein biographer David Pietrusza points out in his Life and Times account of the World Series criminal genius, Judge Levy’s position as majority leader of the New York State Assembly, and his graduation to the bench at the Supreme Court was to prove critical in protecting Rothstein’s gambling clubs. Levy was Arnold’s go-to man at the courthouse, and regarded by most as the man who fixed-up the charges against Lieutenant Charles Becker in the Herman ‘Rosy’ Rosenthal murder case, clearing Rothstein and his men of any suspected involvement in his death. [55] If Scott did ever come into contact with Fuller as some biographers have suggested, then it had probably come about through some casual relationship the two men had to Gerlach.
It’s probably fair to say that men like Arnold Rothstein took the rule-book and tore it up in a way that Scott had always wanted to. The gangster had no interest in anarchist theory, Communism or Socialism, just the practical monetary gains of being able to manage them. Nevertheless Rothstein’s own unique brand of criminal syndicalism was not significantly different from its cousins in organized labour unions. The narratives of ‘rise and fall’ were shared by each, as were the basic principles of solidarity. The only real difference was the dominant principles of organized crime were based on self-propulsion and autonomy, the crude philosophy of a the scar-faced Übermensch. There were common players in the unions and the mob, even if there weren’t always common objectives. The criminal syndicalist state that many associate with Putin’s Russia almost certainly has its roots here: a dangerous, combustible mix of criminality, government, and big business. Not a ‘commerce without rules’, but a commerce with its own rules operating under an umbrella of state protection, which in this instance had included the support of the Tammany Hall executive and New York Justice behemoths, Aaron J. Levy and Leonard A. Snitkin.
The evolution of the mob requires a greater depth of study than can be offered here, but suffice to say that the historical and cultural links between America’s various mafias and the anarchist and Syndicalist movements of Chicago have already been duly noted. [56] There’s little denying they share large illicit stashes of DNA. By the time that Scott started work on his final novel, The Last Tycoon, it seems he had realised that they all had a devilishly mean grip on realising one’s dreams. The hold that the Mob had over Columbia and Paramount and men like Louis B. Meyer (Pat Brady in the novel) was well known. They didn’t go much for outsiders in Hollywood. That much he did learn. It was all based around respectable fronts. And such was their influence that Scott opted out of addressing the threat directly, Marilyn Monroe once commenting that the author had done little to expose the true, violent criminality of individuals within the industry. It was the actor’s point of view that Scott had taken an “artful view” of Hollywood that was far “too romantic”. Even his bastards seemed “sort of civilised.”
[1] The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penguin Classics, 2000 (first published 1926), p.71
[2] The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penguin Classics, 2000 (first published 1926), p.49, p.54
[3] The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Penguin Classics, 2000 (first published 1926), p.127
[4] ‘Police Arrest Speakers, New York Times, November 3, 1900, p.1; ‘Socialist Labour men released’, New York Times, November 4, 1900, p.16; ‘Socialists Arrested, Police Break up a political meeting in New York’, Oil City Derrick, November 3, 1900, p.1
[5] Max A Stork, b.1887, Germany, 1394 Second Avenue, US Census 1910, Manhattan Ward 19, New York, United States
[6] ‘Touring Car Ground to Pieces’, The Olean Democrat, September 21, 1906, p.1
[7] ‘Smashed New $12,000 auto’, New York Times, September 21, 1907, p.1
[8] ‘Jersey Auto Smash?’, New York Times April 26, 1909, p.4
[9] ‘Turfman William Lovell Dead’, Rockland County Journal, 10 February 1900, p.2
[10] New Jersey Law Reports, Volume 39, Supreme Court, Soney & Sage, 1877, pp. 458-459
[11] ‘Pool Sellers Showing Fight’, New York Herald, June 7, 1877, p.12. Lovell would also sell stakes at the Travers, Belmont and Withers racecourses.
[12] The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime: Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York 1865-1913, Steven A. Riess, Syracuse University Press, 2011, p.86
[13] Rothstein : The Life, Times, And Murder Of The Criminal Genius Who Fixed The 1919 World Series, David Pietrusza, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004, p.104, pp. 106-112. Second generation bookmakers Arnold Rothstein and August Belmont II had been partners in various racing concerns from 1910, including the Havre de Grace Racecourse in Maryland.
[14] In August 1911, Mrs Carmen had $2000 worth of jewellery stolen from her Patchogue property. Marie’s sister-in-law, Mrs Amos Lovell boarded with her. See: The County Review., August 04, 1911, p.1
[15] US Census, 1920, Belle Carman, b. 1868, Suffolk, Brookhaven Township, Patchogue Village
[16] ‘Estates Appraised, Stork, Marie Lovell, died Dec 18, 1912, husband Max. A Stork’, New York Times, January 10, 1913, p.20; ‘Mrs Marie Stork’, The Suffolk County news., December 20, 1912, p.4. Cesare worked for several leading newspapers including the New York Sun and the New York Evening Post.
[17] Report on the Russian Famine, 1922, Hibben, P. United States: American Committee for the Relief of Russian children, p.4
[18] The Suffolk County news, June 25, 1909, p.2
[19] The Suffolk County news., May 15, 1908, p.2
[20] ‘A Murder Case to Come Before a Grand Jury’, Red Bank Register, New Jersey, p.1
[21] Kruse, p.22
[22] ‘The Jewish Communal Register of New York City’, 1917-1918, p.1262
[23] Leon Trotsky on Second Avenue (memoir; 1944). Jewish Radicals: A Documentary Reader, Louis Waldman, New York University Press, 2012, pp. 214-218
[24] ‘Seek Iron Cross in Cuba; American Detectives Hunting for German Plotters There’, New York Times, March 7, 1917, p.2
[25] ‘Detective Tells of German Bomb Plots’, San Antonio Light, March 23, 1917, p.2
[26] ‘Former U.S. Consul in Cuba Accused as Spy, Kills Himself’, New York Times, March 3 1918, p.1
[27] ‘Rose Discloses Murder Plot’, New York Tribune, October 13, 1912, pp-1-2
[28] The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Letter from Scott to Corey Ford, July 1937, Bantam Books, 1971, pp.557-558
[29] Eight Me Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, Eliot Asinof, Henry Holt, 1987, p.198
[30] Wild Bill Donovan the baseball player — not the founder of the CIA.
[31] ‘Lucky Penny Wins Flag For Braves’, New Castle News, April 7,1915, p.5
[32] ‘Unravelling Baseball Scandal expected to shoot lid sky high’, ’Washington Times, September 29, 1920, p.15; ‘Statement on their Testimony in Baseball Probe’, Boston Globe, October 27, 1920, p.20
[33] The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, David Rothstein Pietrusza, Carroll & Graf, 2003.
[34] ‘Nine Killed, Wild Bill Donovan one of Wreck Victims’, The Washington Post, December 10, 1923, p.1
[35] ‘One word led to another’, The San Francisco Examiner, November 10, 1944, p.17
[36] Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States, Hearings, Congress House, Volume 2, 1939, pp.5751-5772.
[37] US-Russia Trade to Grow under New Company’, The Daily Worker, June 27, 1924, p.3. AMTORG was the first trading organisation set up in America after the October Revolution of 1917. As a result of the failure of Britain, France and America coordinated efforts to restore a Liberal-Monarchist regime in Russia, economic realities meant the governments had little option but to suspend the sanctions against Lenin and start trading with Russia.
[38] ‘British Soviet Treaty of Great Importance to Both nations, says Delegate; Phillip J. Rabanovitch, Hattiesburg American, August 21, 1924, p.4
[39] The full story, including Sheftel’s arrest over the assassination of Grad Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in February 1905 and his execution by Stalin after his return to Russia in the 1930s, can be read in Andrée Aelion Brooks’ Russian Dance: A True Story of Intrigue and Passion in Stalinist Moscow, Andrée Aelion Brooks, Hoboken, Wiley, 2004. You will find references to both Marc Cheftel and Mark Sheftel in the book.
[40] ‘Death of Hoorgin and Aid Mourned by N.Y Workers’, The Daily Worker, September 4, 1925, p.2; New York Times, August 30, 1925, p.12
[41] Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States, Hearings, Congress House, Volume 2, 1939, pp.5751-5772.
[42] Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick, Kevin Bazzana, McCelland & Stewart, 2007, p.132
[43] Apparatus for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Matthew J. Bruccoli, University of South Carolina Press, 1974, p.137; ‘E.M. Fuller & Co Fail; Brokers owe over a million’, New York Times, June 28, 1922, p.1
[44] The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bantam Books, 1971, p.482 Scott would mention this book in The Great Gatsby.
[45] The Publishers Weekly April 21, 1923, Vol 103, p.1262
[46] ‘Clean Books Bill is Voted Down by New York’s Senate’, Catholic News Service, 7 May 1923, p.1. Martin Thomas Conboy Jr. was a leading defence counsel for Tammany Hall leader, Charles F. Murphy.
[47] The Mafia at War: Allied Collusion with the Mob, Timothy Newark, Greenhill, 2007, p.56
[48] ‘Catholics Named To Assist Work of Cotillo Committee’, Catholic News Service, 13 August 1923; ‘Vatican Will Aid in Saving Immigrants from Banking Sharks’, Catholic News Service, 3 September 1923
[49] TGG, p.97
[50] ‘J.A Wasserman’, New York Tribune, November 14, 1922, p.1; November 15, 1922, p.1; New York Times, July 20, 1921, p.1
[51] ‘Make Change of Counsel: Fuller and McGee see Long Summer Spent in Jail’, Circleville Daily Union Herald 24 May 1923, p.1;
[52] The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, David Rothstein Pietrusza, Carroll & Graf, 2003
[53] Baseball: The Golden Age, Harold Seymour, Oxford University Press, 1971, p.389
[54] ‘Judge Fallon Turned Down’, New York Times, October 7, 1909, p.3. The law firm was at 46 St Mark’s Place. Levy and Snitkin served together at the Municipal Court in New York’s Second and Fifth Districts. They were also colleagues on several charitable boards.
[55] Rothstein: the Life, Times and Murder of the Criminal Genius who Fixed the 1919 World Series, David Pietrusza, Publishers Group West, 2003, p.xiv, pp.70-91
[56] You may want to take a look at Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists: The Transatlantic Context by Philip V. Cannistraro (The Journal of Modern History Vol. 68, No. 1, March 1996, pp. 31-62), the History of the Mafia by Salvatore Lupo (Colombia University Press, 1983), Fascism, the Mafia, and the Emergence of Sicilian Separatism: 1919-43 by Jack E. Reece (The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 45, No. 2, June 1973, pp. 261-276