“Moguls,” Michael Benson and Craig Singer’s dual biography of two Hollywood titans, reminds us that these film pioneers have remained in the shadows for far too long.
Studio chiefs like Louis B. Mayer (MGM), Harry Cohn (Columbia), Adolph Zukor (Paramount) and David Sarnoff (RKO) were household names. The Schenck brothers – Nicholas and Joseph – had controlling interests in three major studios, MGM, 20th Century Fox and United Artists, yet why does no one know who they are?
“We actually had that question,” Benson said during a joint phone interview. “The answer is: It was by design. These guys did not seek or desire the spotlight. They were the power behind the power.”
While “Moguls” (Citadel Press, releases Sept. 24) is a joint biography, the siblings were not a team. “Nick was averse to publicity. I’m not sure Joe was,” Benson said.
“When Nick was on trial for tax evasion, he was front page news. It was just before Pearl Harbor and once Pearl Harbor happens” – the Dec. 7, 1941, attack that brought the US into WWII – “it was forgotten.” The brothers, on separate coasts, “spoke three times a day. They are like gangsters but they are not,” Singer said. “The business they were in was legal but they handled it like gambling houses. Hollywood was filled with friends of Joe, while they feared Nick, the only Jewish man on the Top 10 list of the richest men in the US.”
Both brothers helped defeat the pro-Hitler German Bund in the prewar years in Hollywood. “Both invested in undercover infiltration to the German Bund to prevent a takeover in LA.”
Added Benson, “Joe never once cared about what people thought. They created an industry where it hadn’t previously existed. Nick did not want a legacy and instructed his family to say ‘No comment’ to all questions — and they still do.”
Never a studio boss but central to their power was Eddie Mannix. “Any time they needed a fixer, they called Eddie — and they did a lot of fixing,” Benson said. “Coverups, payola, any stuff that went on that was not above board.
“Mannix, when Nick met him, he was a scrappy kid and he graduated into full time fixer out West and the eyes for New York.
“Josh Brolin stars in the Coen brothers’ ‘Hail, Caesar!’ as Eddie Mannix and it’s the only reference (ever) to Nick Schenck.”
Mannix also figures in “Hollywoodland,” the 2006 movie about George Reeves who committed suicide — though many believed he was murdered. TV’s 1950s Superman was being supported by Toni Mannix, Eddie Mannix’s wife.
When Reeves dumped her, “Toni Mannix went to Eddie and said, ‘He’s not treating me right. What are you going to do about it?’ Next thing was George Reeves (is) dead.”
