William J. McCormack (businessman)
William J. McCormack (a/k/a "Mr. Big")
McCormack began as a "wagon boy" on the West Side docks and rose to become head of Penn Stevedoring, one of the most important produce handlers in the United States.[1] In 1920, McCormack founded the United States Trucking Company with Alfred E. Smith, who later appointed McCormack Chairman of the Licensing Committee of the State Athletic Commission.[2] McCormack also held a considerable interest in several concrete companies, including Transit Mix Concrete before its take-over and eventual destruction at the hands of the Genovese Crime Family.[3] In 1944, McCormack incorporated and became president of Morania Oil and operated New York's biggest chain of independent filling stations. He also owned a contracting company, a barge company, a dredging company, a sand and gravel company and ran an Illinois race track.[4] For almost 30 years, McCormack was one of the silent power brokers of New York's West Side and revelations of his relationship with Joseph P. Ryan, president of the International Longshoreman's Association, and their underworld associates made during the 1953 Waterfront Crime Commission led to a series of exposes written for The New York Sun by reporter Malcolm Johnson which would be the inspiration for Elia Kazan's classic film "On The Waterfront."<ref>James T. Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, 2009.
References
- ^ Mr. Big Becomes Less Mysterious, Life Magazine, February 9, 1953.
- ^ Jeffery T. Sammons Beyond the Ring, The Role of Boxing in American Society , 1990.
- ^ Ronald Smothers, Company in Federal Price-Fixing Case Closes, The New York Times, August 16, 1987.
- ^ Mr. Big Becomes Less Mysterious, Life Magazine, February 9, 1953.