"Sweet Willie"

One day last week Columnist Westbrook Pegler, fresh from his investigations of California Ham & Eggery, visited the office of State's Attorney Thomas J. Courtney in Chicago. What he found in the records there made meat for two columns about meaty William ("Sweet Willie") Bioff, the boss of A. F. of L. labor in Hollywood studios and a potent figure in the U. S. entertainment industry. Sum of Columnist Pegler's findings was that in 1922 Willie Bioff was convicted of pandering, got a six-month jail sentence and $300 fine, lost an appeal, served only eight days of his sentence. Reported also were dirty details about a brothel on Chicago's South Halsted Street, including the specific information (from testimony) that on a single day a prostitute named Bernice Thomas received 13 men, through a hired hand passed $29 of her earnings to Willie Bioff.

Astonished by the smitch of dust from their own files, Prosecutor Courtney's lawyers wired Hollywood police to snatch Convict Bioff from his Hollywoodland palace on Santa Monica Boulevard, head him back toward prison. Cried Willie Bioff, now rich and 46: "I made mistakes as a boy. I had to come up the hard way. . . . Pegler . . . goes back 18 years for dirt to smear me with, is running interference for his plutocratic friends in Hollywood who are attacking me because I am fighting for the little fellows in the picture studios."

What made this retort timely was that Willie Bioff had just tied Hollywood producers into knots. On behalf of 1,900* A. F. of L. studio workers, Tsar Bioff had ordered the companies to up wages 10% ($360,000 a year). Likely to be demanded later if he got this much were more raises for many more workers. If the cinemoguls refused, said Willie Bioff, he would not only strike Hollywood studios but through his close connections with unionized projectionists would close 15,000 movie houses throughout the U. S. Although War II had cut off $44,000,000 of annual revenues from foreign film sales and economy was in order, the producers capitulated to this threat, and Willie Bioff announced a victory. In fact, however, his victory was not as sweeping as he made it appear. He had won an understanding that wages will go up temporarily, will stay up beyond next Feb. 15 only if company earnings justify the rise.

Willie Bioff took Hollywood into camp four years ago, when he arrived as the representative of the A. F. of L. stagehands' potent President George Browne (TIME, Aug. 21). Known and printed was Willie Bioff's record as a Chicago hoodlum, his rise as George Browne's bodyguard and mainstay. Now Willie Bioff hobnobs with a Hollywood plutocrat. His dealings with Producer Joe Schenck were the subject of a court investigation last May, are under scrutiny of the U. S. Department of Justice. Said Mr. Schenck last week, replying to Willie Bioff's talk about a plot: "In the case of William Bioff, the producers . . . are not responsible directly or indirectly . . . for his present personal predicament. . . . They resent the imputation that they would resort to any such methods."

*Not 23,000, as Mr. Bioff grandiosely announced.

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