Word: extortionate
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Latching onto the 1,000 employees of Roto-Broil Corp. (electric broilers), one crooked local was so helpful as to allow the management (1956 gross: $10 million) to keep about $23,000 in check-off dues. In most other instances Dio-controlled "unions" were nothing beyond fronts for extortion thugs...
Typical shark was squat, hoarse-voiced Max Chester (convictions for extortion, bookmaking, robbery), who walked into the offices of a Brooklyn plumbing supply manufacturer, Paul Claude, one day in 1954. Announced Max Chester: "I am going to unionize your shop." Testified fearful Paul Claude last week: "He wanted $2,000...
Then, expressionlessly, he listened as the committee played recordings of two wire-tapped phone conversations made in 1955, after Dio supposedly had left the labor movement. One tap convinced listeners that Dio was still playing a heavy hand in extortion ("I'm telling him to put the pickets back...
If the show lacked the hippodrome theatrics of other-day TV hearings, it was a smoothly professional job, with Labor Reporter Clark Mollenhoff (Des Moines Register) and Du Mont's Matt Warren providing knowledgeable commentary. The show was marred only once: as Senator Kennedy illustrated shakedown techniques by playing...
For this reason, and also because the work is relatively short, director Elliot Silverstein decided to fatten the work up to a total running time of two and a quarter hours. He had Robert Brustein compose and, in the persona of Moliere, deliver a prologue and epilogue; the prologue was...