Word: bioff
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...turning from liquor to labor rackets. Mild, mannerly Mr. Browne (no gangster) was a labor careerist who had just been elected president of A. F. of L.'s union for theatre no-collar-men: the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes. His assistant and bodyguard was one William Bioff, whose record in Chicago included numerous arrests, one conviction for pandering, two efforts to muscle in on Chicago unions, several published references to him as a minor South Side gunman...
Messrs. Browne & Bioff had not long been tops in I. A. T. S. E. before it began to expand. President of a motion picture projectionists' union was a Chicago racketeer named Tommy Maloy. President Maloy was murdered in 1935. Mr. Browne took over the union. One Clyde Osterberg tried to organize a rival union of movie operators. He was murdered. Louis ("Two Gun") Alterie was doing well at organizing theatre janitors when he, too, was murdered. Mr. Browne inherited this union...
George Browne's Willie Bioff appeared in Hollywood, and soon they were mighty figures in cinema. In 1936, Mr. Browne in Manhattan worked out a deal with the Hays office whereby I. A. T. S. E. won a closed-shop bargaining contract for its Hollywood technicians, absorbed and squelched other unions and within 18 months acquired 12,000 members. Last year Willie Bioff admitted (to a grand jury) that after this bargain was struck, he received $100,000 as a loan from a prominent producer.* Willie Bioff, receiving a year's salary and effusive thanks from Mr. Browne...
Putting two and two together and making news, Attorney McWilliams had reported to the committee that in Tsar Browne's Chicago bailiwick, newspapers reporting two 1935 labor murders had referred to Bioff and one Montana as "South Side gunmen wanted for questioning" and as "bodyguards for George E. Browne." When the hearings got under way, however, the committee found this stuff a little too hot to handle, and, after a week of inquiry into I.A.T.S.E.'s Hollywood methods, the investigation was adjourned. If Attorney McWilliams can authenticate his allegations, the inquiry will be resumed...
...boastful William Bioff, who lives at pseudo-swank Malibu Beach, drives a sleek Fierce-Arrow, frequents hotspots on his $110 a week, $12 a day expenses, bragged that I.A.T.S.E. had cost film producers $6,000,000 a year. Said Bioff: "Communist groups . . . are responsible for charges . . . under investigation here." The audience booed. "There they are," he said, "they're all Communists...