"The Lid Off Los Angeles" was a 1939 six-part series of newsmagazine articles that ran in Liberty, an American general interest magazine. The series, written by Dwight F. McKinney and Fred Allhoff, asserted that the Los Angeles Police Department, in cooperation with officials in municipal government, had partnered with organized crime figures in the city for mutual financial benefit but to the detriment of the body politic. The article alleged police protection of gambling, alcohol smuggling, and bordello prostitution in exchange for payoffs by crime bosses, as well bribery, intimidation, spying, dirty tricks, ratfucking, and ultimately violence on the part of the corrupt LAPD to protect gambling-prostitute-bootlegging revenue for crime bosses over a 20-year period, ending under the administrations of Chief of Police James E. Davis and Los Angeles mayor Frank L. Shaw. Frank L. Shaw, who had been removed from Los Angeles City Hall and replaced with Fletcher Bowron by the 1938 Los Angeles mayoral recall election, sued the authors for libel, sued again for a different article in another magazine, and was later countersued by civic reformer Clifford Clinton for making false allegations. A jury in the first lawsuit was unable to reach a verdict. After lengthy court proceedings over several years, all parties settled out of court in 1943. The articles are considered very influential in the history of Los Angeles, and the title has been continuously reused in reference to crime and problems generally in Los Angeles. The title of the series comes from a statement made by Clinton in the wake of the car bomb that almost killed private investigator Harry J. Raymond; he announced he had information about the involvement of elected officials that would "blow the lid off of Los Angeles".
Shaw filed a lawsuit in 1940 claiming he'd been libeled by the authors, and the publisher,[1] and seeking upward of $650,000 in damages. In March 1941 Shaw added a suit against the "sequel" article Shaw files against "My Husband's Death Struggle Against L.A.'s Vice Czars" article in True Story.[2]
The trial began in January 1942, Superior Court judge Charles Haas presiding.[3] [4] Among other things, Shaw's attorneys attempted to prove that civic reformer Clifford Clinton had had a major hand in writing the articles.[5] Testimony about whether or not Shaw specifically or the Los Angeles city government generally was corrupt came from figures like Ann Forrester, a convicted brothel operator who was deposed from Tehachapi prison, and testified about the system by which she paid off Los Angeles police officers while in the company of Guy McAfee.[6] Other testimony concerned whether or not Clinton was in cahoots with gambling-syndicate attorney Charles Cradick and bookmaker Jimmy Utley.[7] After a total of 12 weeks of testimony, the case went to the 11-person jury in March 1942, the 12th juror having been lost to illness and personal issue.[8] After four days of deliberation the foreman told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked 5-6 (leaning in favor of the magazine) and had been since the beginning with no hope of resolution.[9] The judge then dismissed the hung jury.
Clinton later countersued Shaw for making false allegations that he had been taking payoffs too; all parties settled out of court in April 1943.[10]
| Sequence | Article Title | Date | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1a | Part OneA Dictatorship of Crime | Beginning an astounding story of corruption and vice in a great cityand a stirring battle against them | ||
| 1b | Part TwoThe Passing of "Good-Time Charlie" | More astounding revelations in an astounding study of corruption and vice in a great American cityand of a gallant battle against them | ||
| 1c | Part ThreeThe Spy Squad That Floored Uncle Sam | Corruption, vice, a hidden dictatorship! Dramatically, a startling saga unfolds | ||
| 1d | Part FourChief Davis Pulls a Boner | A new startling chapter in an amazing chronicle of crime and corruption in a great American city | ||
| 1e | Part FiveThe Fight...and the Stakes | Dramatic, sinister, heart-warming! A saga of crime and courageous men | ||
| 1f | Part SixConclusion | The story of a gallant fight ends with a question—Will the job be finished? | ||
| 2 | Buron Fitts Defends Los Angeles | Liberty gives both sides! Without comment, here's a reply to "The Lid Off Los Angeles"—by the county's famous District Attorney | ||
| 3 | "My husband's death struggle with the vice czars of Los Angeles" | Nelda M. Clinton as told to Pauline Swanson in True Story magazine | January–February 1941 |
See main article: Fred Allhoff. Fred Allhoff (1904–1988) was a magazine writer best known for his Liberty pieces. In addition to "The Lid Off Los Angeles" one of his articles was adapted into an Edward G. Robinson film, and his serial Lightning in the Night is considered an important piece of speculative fiction in the hypothetical Axis victory in World War II subgenre.
| Dwight F. McKinney | |
| Birth Name: | Dwight Faber McKinney |
| Birth Date: | 2 April 1889 |
| Birth Place: | Ottawa, Kansas, United States |
| Death Place: | Newport Beach, California, United States |
Dwight F. McKinney was born in Ottawa, Kansas in 1889,[11] as the youngest son of a Presbyterian minister and his wife.[12] The family lived in Indiana for a time before they moved to California around 1898 for the father.
At the time of the 1910 U.S. census, McKinney worked as a salesman for a newspaper.[13] McKinney may have begun traveling internationally on a sustained basis around 1915.[14] In 1917, he was self-employed as a publisher in Los Angeles. McKinney served in the U.S. military from May 1918 until February 1919, as "Sgt 2 Cas Co".[15]
In 1930 he spoke to a community group in Santa Barbara about his recent visit to the Soviet Union and his observations of Communist system there.[20] During the rest of the 1930s McKinney was a resident of Fresno, California, and worked at the Bankruptcy Referee office.[21] As of 1942, his occupation was "writer - on his own".[22] In 1957 he was scheduled to speak the California Cultural Club in Los Angeles about his "travels to trouble spots in the world".[23] Circa 1970, McKinney lived in San Francisco. McKinney died in 1979, at age 90, in Orange County, California.[24]
The Los Angeles Times previewed the series on the front page of section two, commending the magazine for amply setting the stage with the historical background for the then-recent events like the Kynette trial, and commented, "Unlike Look and Collier's, which were satisfied with a once-over-lightly treatment of the sadder aspects of our citizenry, Liberty is digging in for a long winter of flamboyant and grating adjectives to describe our sin...the tempo of their piece is set early in the article, to-wit: 'To those who look shudderingly upon the terroristic activities of the secret police of Germany and Russia and ask whether such things can happen here, the answer is yes'."[25] The articles were described by a business school professor in 1940 as "a fairly reliable account of corruption and the civic crusade which resulted in the recall of the mayor".[26] A 2023 dissertation on the labor market in Los Angeles from the time of the stock market crash to the beginning of World War II called "The Lid Off Los Angeles" a "fascinating albeit sensational telling" of the events leading to Shaw's recall.[27]
The articles made an "enormous impact,"[28] and the title has been continuously reused in reference to crime and problems generally in Los Angeles.[29] [30] [31]