The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties
by Jules Tygiel
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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 show more 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 debonaire movie financier and city booster), ends with a spectacular suicide in Shanghai (where C.C. Julian downs a vial of poison after a lavish champagne dinner), 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. Conmen, bankers, underworld kingpins, political bosses, a corrupt district attorney, bribed jurors, and other colorful characters round out the cast. At the book's center stands the flamboyant C.C. Julian, a likable if unscrupulous 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 (Julian No. 1 still pumped oil decades after the promoter himself had died) won him a devoted following. Force to cut back production by major oil companies, 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 had to surrender ownership to oilman S.C. Lewis. Lewis and his crafty associate, Jacob Berman, over-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 (which produced 99 volumes of trial transcripts, cost in excess of $250,000, and convicted no one), 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. show lessTags
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Tygiel goes into immense detail to describe an incredible drama of the 1920s that extended into the 1930s, about Southern California oil speculation, stocks, swindles, adultery, murder, attempted murder, suicides, and one guy even lost an eye. The stuff is interesting but also exhausting. I found myself skimming the financial details (and there are many), but was more engaged with the prolonged legal drama and the deaths and back-stabbing that came along with that. It's really a fascinating insight into the corruption intrinsic to LA from its earliest years, but this book isn't a keeper for me.
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7+ Works 527 Members
Jules Tygiel was born in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn on March 9, 1949. He graduated from Brooklyn College with a B.A. in 1969, and went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from U.C.L.A. After teaching at the University of Tennessee and the University of Virginia, Tygiel spent thirty years as a professor of American history at San show more Francisco State University. Known for his baseball scholarship, Tygiel wrote many books on Jackie Robinson and the history of the sport. His best-known work, "Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy," was ranked by Sports Illustrated in 2002 as the fiftieth best sports book of all time. Tygiel contributed to numerous baseball documentaries and appeared on national television and radio shows including Good Morning America, NBC Baseball, PBS, Talk of the Nation, and Fresh Air. He also published articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers such as the Journal of Sport History, Baseball Research Journal, American Heritage, and the Los Angeles Times. Tygiel's books on subjects other than baseball include "The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks and Scandal in the Roaring Twenties" and "Ronald Reagan and the Rise of American Conservatism." Tygiel married Luise Custer in 1982 and had two sons. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Business, Politics and Government, Science & Nature
- DDC/MDS
- 364.1 — Society, Government, and Culture Social problems and social services Crime Criminal offenses
- LCC
- HD9569 .J8 .T93 — Social sciences Industries. Land use. Labor Industries. Land use. Labor Special industries and trades Mineral industries. Metal trade
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