07/03/2022
The Scopitone and the mobsters behind it
The Scopitone was a coin-operated video jukebox that appeared at the start of the 1960s and was all but gone by the end of the decade. The Scopitone was made by CAMECA—a Parisian subsidiary of the French electronics giant CSF Corporation—in 1960 as a superior version of an older video jukebox called the Panoram made by the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago. (Today, CAMECA is a maker of scientific instruments.)
Depicted: A surviving Scopitone machine. Photo Credit: Joe Mabel.
The typical Scopitone film was a three music video on 16mm color film and a magnetic soundtrack, featuring barely-clothed B-list recording artists and film stars gyrating in front of equally scantily-clad backup dancers.
Depicted: Joi Lansing’s Scopitone music video for her song “The Web Of Love.”
In 1961, the William Morris Agency talent agent George Wood began putting together a deal to bring the Scopitone to America. Wood formed a company called Scopitone Inc, which would have the American rights to the Scopitone machine, backed by a consortium of Mob-friendly investors including Genovese crime family capo Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo and underboss Gerry Catena.
The entire time, the NYPD and the District Attorney’s office had bugged Wood’s office and wiretapped his bachelor pad’s telephone in an effort to collect evidence and turn him against the mobsters. But in November 1963, Wood was badly beaten up during a night at the Camelot Lounge and died after checking himself into Mount Sinai the next day. The District Attorney’s office lost their potential witness, but another William Morris agent closed the Scopitone deal.
In 1964, Scopitone Inc was unable to import enough Scopitones from France, so they started looking for an American company that could manufacture more. They cut a deal with the publicly-traded plastic sign manufacturer Tel-A-Sign Corporation to build thousands of Scopitones, with Tel-A-Sign ending up with an eighty percent stake in Scopitone Inc.
The Genovese crime family’s involvement in the deal attracted the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The US Government launched a secret grand jury to investigate Tel-A-Sign. An April 1966 Wall Street Journal article leaked the news of the grand jury investigation, which sent Tel-A-Sign into a tailspin. The CEO resigned a few weeks after the Journal article. Scopitone Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1967 and then shut down completely in 1969. The machines were sold off and found other purposes—many of them used to give peep shows. The Justice Department ended up charging nobody with a crime in direct relation to the investigation—other than Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo for making false statements to the SEC.
