T.K.O. at RKO

Because of "a mass of unfavorable publicity," four top men in RKO's new management stepped down last week. They are:

P:President & Director Ralph Stolkin and Director Abraham Koolish, his father-in-law, who have frequently tangled with the Federal Trade Commission and Better Business Bureau because of their punchboard promotions, mail-order life insurance and other past activities (TIME, Oct. 27). P:Director William Gorman, the board representative of Oilman Ray Ryan, another member of the Stolkin-Koolish syndicate which bought control of RKO a month ago. Ryan's name had cropped up in the Kefauver hearings when it developed that he and Racketeer Frank Costello had an interest in the same oil lease. P:Sidney Korshak, a Chicago lawyer who had helped out in the syndicate's negotiations with Howard Hughes and was hired at $15,000 a year as a labor-relations consultant for RKO. At one point in his career, according to the testimony of "Cherry Nose" Gioe, Korshak had helped to arrange parole for the Chicago mobster and Al Capone crony.

Though Stolkin. Koolish and Ryan keep their big stock interests in RKO, Board Chairman Arnold Grant, who insisted on the resignations, said that henceforward they would be considered "no more, no less than ordinary stockholders." Grant hopes to fill the empty posts quickly "with men of outstanding caliber." They will have to be outstanding to pull RKO out of its present troubles. The company, said Grant, is losing money at the rate of $100,000 a week; he expects to get it into the black in two years.

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