In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City intelligence detective Gary Jenkins sits down with writer and mob historian Stone Wallace—a man whose path has crossed acting, broadcasting, boxing, and a lifelong fascination with organized crime. The focus of today’s conversation is Stone Wallace’s latest book, Hollywood and the Chicago Boys, which uncovers how the Chicago Outfit quietly moved in on Hollywood in the 1930s. With Prohibition fading, figures like Frank Nitti and Tony Accardo shifted their sights to new rackets in film unions, projection booths, and studio lots.

Stone Wallace’s obsession with the mob began at age seven with a library book on the 1920s. It lit a fire that would eventually lead Wallace to explore the violent glamour of the underworld in both fiction and nonfiction.

Stone Wallace shares how he created the fictional studio boss Sam Bast, modeled after several real-life moguls, and how mob-connected actors like George Raft blurred the lines between movie star and made man. From behind-the-scenes extortion to real-life gangland enforcers like Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, this episode connects the dots between celluloid dreams and street-level muscle.

Stone Wallace’s Amazon author page.

🔍 Highlights:

Why Frank Nitti saw Hollywood as the Outfit’s next goldmine

The real mob ties of actor George Raft

The creation of Sam Bast, a fictional composite of Hollywood studio heads

Extortion in the projectionist booths and labor unions

Mobster myths vs. brutal realities—how fiction reflects fact

📚 Featured Book:

Hollywood and the Chicago Boys by Stone Wallace — a hardboiled blend of true crime and noir fiction

🎬 Notable Names Discussed:

Frank Nitti, Tony Accardo, George Raft, Jack McGurn, Sam Giancana

💬 Quote of the Episode:

“Hollywood wasn’t just glitz and cameras. It was a new racket—and the Outfit wanted in.”

0:02 Introduction to the Underworld

1:25 Early Fascination with the Mob

2:29 Hollywood and the Chicago Boys

5:34 The Allure of George Raft

7:22 Researching the Mob’s Hollywood Infiltration

12:05 The Role of Unions in the Mob

14:51 Tony Accardo: The Complex Character

17:05 The Impact of the Mob on Society

23:04 Writing Westerns and a Modern Sheriff

25:43 Upcoming Films and Future Projects

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Transcript

[0:00 ] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio. Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, worked a mob in Kansas City for, I don’t know, 14, 15 years. And now in retirement, I am still investigating the mob. So, you know, I interviewed different authors who’ve written mob books, and I’ve got one on the line right now, Stone Wallace. Stone Wallace, he’s been an actor, a broadcast announcer, a boxer, a celebrity interviewer himself. I’ve interviewed a couple of celebrities No big ones But a creative writing guy Media instructor Written advertising.

[0:38 ] For different companies And he really started out writing westerns If I remember right Oh yeah He wrote stories If you ever read Louis L’Amour Which I did when I was young He wrote those kinds of stories But later he got into the mob So Stonewallis, welcome Thank you very much, Gary. It’s a pleasure to be here speaking with you on your broadcast. Well, it’s great to have you on. Tell the guys a little bit about your life, anything you would want them to know about you. Well, I suppose the most important thing would be that I’ve always had an interest in the underworld, and it started at a very young age. I was about seven years old or so when I was visiting my aunt,

[1:21 ] and she had a library book there about the 1920s. And I was sitting there, I kind of flipped through the pages and I came to the section about the underworld, especially the Chicago underworld.

[1:33 ] And I don’t know what it was, but something pretty much clicked at that point. And I just found it incredibly fascinating. And it just kind of stayed with me. And to this day, it has never actually left me. I’ve been fascinated by the mob, especially the Chicago underworld. And I’ve done a lot of research into it. In fact, when I was in grade three, our teacher asked us to write a little short essay about, you know, an important historical figure. And I chose Al Capone, which raised a few eyebrows at that time. But that’s how I went. And it just pretty much grew from there. And I became a fan of the old TV series, The Untouchables, and was fortunate later on in life to interview Robert Stack. And it just grew from there. It’s never gone away. I’ve always been just totally fascinated by historical mobsters. Well, interesting. And your book that we’re going to talk about that has just

[2:27 ] come out is Hollywood and the Chicago Boys. I know a little bit about that story. These guys, they went out and they extorted the heck out of those film studios out there. They made a lot of money through the unions and then… After the unions, of course, the union extortion can then lead into extorting the employers. That’s what they did. And they, you know, they knew how to do that in Chicago. But first, you wrote a book about George Raft, the man who would be Bogart. Now, George Raft is, I mean, he had his own real mafia background.

[3:03 ] So tell us a little bit about George Raft. Well, I became interested in George Raft back in 1972 when I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle in Chicago.

[3:12 ] And they were playing a couple of George Raft movies. We never got them here in Winnipeg. They didn’t really play those kind of films here too much. But they played each Don I Die, and I forget the other picture, but each Don I Die in particular really just captivated me. I know who James Cagney was and I always admired him. But there was something about George Raft in this film, the strength and the presence that he had, that I just became instantly fascinated with him and began researching his life and his career and finding out he was a very interesting fellow. He did have underworld connections. In fact, that helped bring him to Hollywood back in the 1930s through working with Oney Madden, the bootlegger. But James Cagney, I think, summed it up best about George Raft. He said, George Raft was of the underworld, but he wasn’t in the underworld. I believe he was in the fringes because he did help Oney Madden deliver liquor during Prohibition, but he was never actually, you know, a tough guy gangster type, although that’s what he became famous for in movies, and plus his friendships with people like Oney Madden, and particularly Bugsy Siegel. Yeah, that would have happened out there in Hollywood, for sure, because Siegel had a lot of connections out there before his life was ended in Hollywood, and I read something about where Madden is the one that really suggested that he try his luck in the movies and bankrolled him a little bit until he got a break, which is important.

[4:35 ] So that’s the heck of a story on George Rappings. The real gangster who became a movie star. These guys all want to become movie stars. We’ve got one in Kansas City, kind of like to become a movie star, but he did it. Well, Bugsy Siegel, Bugsy Siegel as well, apparently had aspirations to get into film work, according to George Raft.

[4:55 ] He bought motion picture equipment and apparently had George make some footage of him doing various roles. I’d love to see those films. I don’t know if they even exist anymore, But he had aspirations to be a film star, I guess, based on