I have told you the story of how my emceeing of the  network big band remotes from Mafia Don Sam Maceo’s Balinese Room were my ticket to Hollywood.  

Jan Garber, the high society band leader, with Maceo’s prodding, contacted his friend,  Don Fedderson, the VP/GM of KLAC in Hollywood, asking him to listen to me on the network shows. Fedderson liked what he heard and summoned me to Hollywood, in my mind, one of the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. 

I had no idea that Jan, a reputed “square,” wielded such influence in hip Hollywood. He came to play the Balinese in early 1949, and things happened for me in a hurry. 

The  KLAC deal was set, and I was to show up for work immediately upon completing Marine training exercises at Camp Pendleton where I  joined several thousand other Marine Reservists in a mass ocean invasion of Oceanside. After that I would take a bus to Hollywood to begin my gig. 

My arrival  in L.A. must have enraged the local jocks who were jostling each other in line, waiting for Al Jarvis to move into KLAC television from radio, leaving his afternoon show up for grabs. It didn’t occur to me that I was “busting the line.” 

Sam Maceo owned all slots and gaming tables from Galveston to the Louisiana border, bossed only by Carlos Marcello, the alpha Don in New Orleans who allegedly  figured in the assassination of JFK.. 

Maceo did not get his power by Divine Right. His older brother, Rosario personally popped all would-be interlopers. Sam was too young to make his bones during Prohibition. Besides, Rose didn’t need any help. Lore has it that he was often charged with murder,  and appear in court where the case was dismissed before trial even began. The judges were said to have apologized to him for the inconvenience. 

I never knew Sam Maceo, the “sinister” Don. In 1947, when I first met him, he was scoring so heavily from gambling that he shared his profits with the City, filling pot holes and paving local streets.  

When Texas City blew up in April 1947, I was on hand to broadcast from there, my first day in radio. I describe it in my Radio Daily News piece titled “Happy Hare, Out of the Ashes”. Maceo, listening. summoned me to do network remotes from the Balinese Room. The bands were legend: Carmen Cavallero,. Guy Lombardo, Johnny Long, Jan Garber, Wayne  King, and Alvino  Rey, big names in their day.

Immediately after the tragedy, Maceo sent for Frank Sinatra, Burns and Allen, Ken Murray, Peggy Lee, Phil Harris and Alice Faye, Bob Hope and other major stars. They came running, at his bidding, to Galveston, to perform a  show benefiting the victims He took none of the proceeds, giving it all to the charity.

In late 1949, when I left for Hollywood, I knew  him to be ostensibly a soft-spoken man. He did not have to raise his voice because others around him would lean in to hear, and obey. I was too self-absorbed to be humbled by his “Donhood.”. Others kissed his ring. I waved at him from the bandstand. He waved back, laughing.

Sam was a handsome man  in his 50’s with a full crop of brown hair  styled in a tall wavy pompadour. He wore Italian silk suits or cashmere sport  coats in subtle colors.

This is the prelude to telling you a convoluted epic, the stuff of a movie scenario. The Cast of Characters were Sam’s older brother, the aforementioned Rosario, the patriarch. He was well into his 70’s, but no one doubted him still capable of wielding a hatchet without a thought.

The cast was straight out of the “Godfather.” There was even a younger brother, not a part of the rich gangster lore of the Maceo brothers. He was Vic Maceo, the “Fredo” of the bunch. He was a Maceo, not to be openly dissed, but cast aside as a bit player...

He tried to be noticed by slapping everyone on the back whom he knew his brother liked . That included me. I was given the big back slap when I went into the Balinese to do my shows. I was never aware that he had any specific duties.

Sam’s main man at the Balinese was partner, Anthony Fertitta, who ran the gambling room, the heart of the operation. He was a large muscular man, with black slicked back hair, dead eyes and white glistening teeth that appeared about to bite your head off even when he smiled, unless you were a high roller. Then, he was all charm. He warmly smiled on  me, mirroring the Don.

In his youth, he had been the Maceos’ enforcer under Papa Rose. It is legend that , during the Prohibition era,  news of the Maceo empire’s success reached Chicago’s boss, Al Capone. He dispatched Frank Nitti, the notorious thug, to Galveston to deliver the message to the Maceo brothers that he was muscling in.

Fertitta met Nitti at the train station, ostensibly to take him to Rose and  Sam for a council. Instead, he spirited Nitti far down the island where he pulled off onto a remote beach and “broke” Nitti, a notoriously evil man, himself. No one knows what Fertitta did or said to Nitti, but he fled back to Chicago and warned his boss to lay off the Maceos.

When I went to the Balinese Room to do my shows, I was assigned a young man, named Pete Miller to serve me dinner, anything I wanted.  Miller, a Pete Sampras look-alike, waited on me with  professional detachment. That is, until I brought in  Joan Schroeder with whom I had become romantically involved..

Joan remains in my mind as one of  the all time greats. She was 5’ 8” with  a flowing perfectly proportioned body, shinning light brown hair. Michelangelo sculpted cheek bones, and electric blue eyes, that seemed  always to be looking longingly into mine.. She finally had to laugh and confess that her bedroom eyes were the result of being very near sighted.

No more professional detachment. for Miller when I began bringing Joan to the Balinese Room for dinner and dancing.. He began greeting me effusively every evening, but his eyes were  riveted on her. He hovered while we spoke to each other and attended to her devotedly when the time came for me to go to the bandstand to do the show.

What followed cannot be described in a Hollywood-type montage. Enter Sam’s wife, the gorgeous Edna Sedgwick, destined for stardom till she met Sam..” Sedgie,” as she was called, was fresh from Hollywood where she had co-starred in several movies. She was a ballet dancer with a tight body, flashing brown eyes, dark brown hair with natural bronze highlights,  and energy  that lit up the Balinese Room when she glided in on those long perfect legs. I had heard that she did not succumb easily to Sam’s entreaties, but consented to marrying him on one major condition. That is a story unto itself to be told for the first time ever next week.

Contrary to belief, Sedgie, not the Texas Legislature “Little Kefauver” anti-racketeering Committee, changed the course of history in Galveston. In addition, Pete Miller, the impersonal waiter, figured in my life. And the ineffectual Vic Maceo surfaced dramatically after Sam’s death in 1957.  The crisis climax next week.

KGBC was a remarkable radio station. where I did Man on the Street programs, Dinner Music shows,  Newscasts, Rhythm and Blues programs, Good ol’ Country Music singers “ live”  on the air with me weekly programs with  blind clarinetist Hubert Sutter who, with his group, sounded to me like the Benny Goodman Sextet, Sunday in-studio  preachers  from whom I had to get the money up front before allowing on the air, Beach Remotes with a live band in front of hundreds of Galvestonians and, of course, the network Big Band broadcasts. 

My  Texas experience was the foundation for everything else that happened to me later in a career that included Hollywood, San Diego, Cleveland, Detroit and New York. To me, KGBC in Galveston, Texas was more big time radio than  many stations in major markets. 

Alamo!!! Alamo!! Shucks! I even  Remember Goliad.

Nothing is more humbling to me than being nominated for induction into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. To be nominated by the immortal Chuck Blore is a sensory overload.