Billy Wilkerson: A forgotten Hollywood tyrant
HOLLYWOOD GODFATHER: THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF BILLY WILKERSON
By W.R. Wilkerson III
Chicago Review Press; $15.99 on Kindle at Amazon.
Billy Wilkerson was the founder of the Hollywood Reporter, a movie trade publication based in Los Angeles. I was embedded at their mid-Wilshire office in the 2000s while employed by Reuters, and respected the hard-working staff but was appalled by the cramped quarters and lack of a proper coffee machine. Both the Reporter and its crosstown rival Variety, where I had previously been embedded in comparative luxury, are different beasts now. No longer gritty inside-baseball journals, they’re mainstream glossies cruising for clicks.
I knew nothing about Wilkerson or the Hollywood Reporter’s history until I chanced upon Hollywood Godfather: The Life and Crimes of Billy Wilkerson by his son. I wrote a review for Amazon, but it was rejected for some reason. That’s OK. I’ll give the free content to myself. So here is an adaptation. I strongly recommend this book for its honest appraisal of a deeply flawed man.
Wilkerson, an ambitious Tennessee farm boy, founded the Hollywood Reporter as a gossip rag in 1930. His intention was to exact revenge on the Jewish studio bosses who had allegedly conspired to prevent him from creating his own studio. As the money piled up, so did his influence.
A visionary of sorts, Wilkerson helped transform both Los Angeles and Las Vegas from desert hick towns. The Sunset Strip was a dirt road connecting Hollywood and Beverly Hills until Wilkerson built such star magnets as Vendome, Cafe Trocadero and Ciro’s. During the waning years of WWII, he bought 33 acres of undeveloped land in Las Vegas with plans to create a luxury gambling destination called the Flamingo.
Unfortunately — and this adverb crops up frequently in Wilkerson’s life story — he was a gambling addict. His family could have been one of the richest in the world. Wilkerson, alas, was hopeless at cards. By mid-1944, his annual losses were $10 million in today’s money. His addiction sent him into the embrace of the mob, specifically friend-turned-archenemy Bugsy Siegel, who took over the Las Vegas project, screwed it up royally, and was rubbed out in Beverly Hills. Wilkerson may have been tied up in Siegel’s murder.
When Wilkerson wasn’t cavorting with gangsters, he vengefully dreamed up the Hollywood blacklist against writers sympathetic to communism, and showed no remorse for destroying their lives and careers. He was chummy with J. Edgar Hoover. He was also a stingy boss, a distant husband (and lousy lover), and a criminally negligent driver. His own mean drunk of a mother despaired of her only child until her dying day. Over at the Hollywood Reporter, his corrupt but lucrative bully pulpit, he sent journalists to break into studio offices. He connived with gangsters to shake down studios to ensure good labor relations. He threatened studios with bad reviews, and handed over informal editorial control to his weird pal Howard Hughes.
On the other hand Wilkerson was a devout Catholic, a soft touch for the nuns who frequently visited his office seeking money. He adored the incontinent poodles who stank up his house. He helped resurrect Frank Sinatra’s career — with gangster help, inevitably. He discovered Lana Turner at an ice cream shop (not Schwab’s drug store as the myth goes), and remained her counselor until his death. Turner possibly admitted to him that it was she, not her 14-year-old daughter, who killed her gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato.
Wilkerson didn’t sleep with Lana Turner or any other aspiring starlets. In fact he was faithful to his wives — all six of them. He drank nothing stronger than a weekly truckload of Coca-Cola, which eventually destroyed his teeth and palate. He didn’t care for blacks or Jews. Or gays — although he employed a lot of them at the Reporter, including his devoted secretary, George Kennedy, and they all worshiped their tyrannical boss. Wilkerson died in 1962, just short of his 72nd birthday. His young widow sold the Hollywood Reporter for about $27 million in 1988. By that time Wilkerson had long faded into history.
NOTE: If you liked this review, try my gossipy rock bio Strange Days: The Adventures of a Grumpy Rock ‘n’ Roll Journalist in Los Angeles, available here
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