Research Catalog

Title

The great Los Angeles swindle : oil, stocks, and scandal during the Roaring Twenties / Jules Tygiel.

Author

Tygiel, Jules.

Publication

New York : Oxford University Press, 1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xviii, 398 p., [16] p. of plates : ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

• In Los Angeles in the 1920s, C.C. Julian and the Julian Petroleum Corporation were household words, and the Julian Pete swindle ranked with Teapot Dome as one of the great scandals of the era. It symbolized not merely what FDR would call "a decade of debauchery of group selfishness," but the failed hopes and dreams of the great boom of the 1920s.
• Indeed, no single story captures the essence of that decade in America - its boosterism and rampant speculation, its entrepreneurial mania for mergers, its overlap of business and politics, and its infatuation with wealth, whiskey, and Hollywood glamor - quite so well as the Julian Petroleum swindle.
• The Great Los Angeles Swindle begins with a murder (the sudden courtroom shooting of banker Motley Flint, the debonair movie financier and city booster), ends with a spectacular suicide in Shanghai, and, in between, takes as many unexpected twists and turns as any mystery novel. Jules Tygiel offers a gripping account of this wonderfully complex scandal, which features such legendary figures as Louis B. Mayer, Cecil B.
• DeMille, Charlie Chaplin (who decks Julian in a fistfight in Hollywood's posh Cafe Petroushka), Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, H.M. Haldeman (grandfather of Watergate's H.R. Haldeman), and pioneer radio evangelist "Fighting Bob" Shuler. Bankers, conmen, underworld kingpins, political bosses, corrupt public officials, bribed jurors, and other colorful characters round out the cast.
• At the book's center stands the flamboyant C.C. Julian, a likable if suspect promoter, whose life was flavored with controversy. Tygiel follows Julian to Los Angeles, where during the spectacular oil boom of the 1920s, his innovative newspaper advertising and early successes won him a devoted following. Forced by major oil companies to cut back production, he created Julian Petroleum, which he promised would soon rival Standard Oil.
• Dispensing "Defiance Gasoline" from its pumps, Julian Petroleum fought off the efforts of state regulatory agencies and federal investigators to shut it down before Julian surrendered ownership to oilman S.C. Lewis. Lewis and his crafty associate Jacob Berman issued millions of shares of counterfeit stock while pyramiding stock pools and loan schemes into a $150,000,000 fraud. The infamous Million Dollar Pool (which included Flint, Mayer, Haldeman, and other prominent Los Angeles businessmen) delivered lucrative profits to its elite members, while tens of thousands of small investors lost their nest eggs when Julian Petroleum collapsed in 1927.
• The aftermath of the scandal included the longest trial in the history of the county, unseated a district attorney and a governor, enthroned a former Ku Klux Klansman as mayor of Los Angeles, and filled the courts with related cases and scandalous revelations well into the Depression decade.
• The Great Los Angeles Swindle is a saga of the roaring twenties, with its glorification of business, its get-rich-quick mentality, and its paucity of government regulation, which bred speculation, corruption, and corporate chaos throughout the nation in a manner not dissimilar to the financial chicanery of our own era. Above all, it is a compelling story and swiftly moving narrative that readers will not soon forget.

Subjects

• Petroleum industry and trade > Corrupt practices > California > Los Angeles
• Julian Petroleum Corporation

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 381-388) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The seminal lunacy -- C.C. Julian breaks into Santa Fe Springs -- Widows and orphans, this is no investment for you -- The dividend payer of the age -- The truth -- When a feller needs some friends -- Wouldst thou make money? -- Death Valley's hidden treasure -- A thoroughgoing businessman -- The million dollar pool -- It appears that there is an overissue -- The greatest swindle ever perpetrated in America -- The institutions themselves must not be tried -- You cannot convict a million dollars -- Well, what of it? -- When justice fails -- New vistas of rottenness -- What price fugitive?

ISBN

019505489X

LCCN

^^^93019552^

OCLC

• 28066590
• SCSB-10187741

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library