The Life and Crimes of Billy Wilkerson. This is the definitive biography of the most powerful man in Hollywood during the 1940s and 50s, the man who founded the Hollywood Reporter and the most storied nightspots of the Sunset Strip, introduced Clark Gable and Lana Turner to the studios, invented Las Vegas, brought the Mafia to Hollywood, engineered the shakedown of Hollywood studios by Willie Bioff and his mob-run unions, ordered the murder of Buggsy Siegel, started the Hollywood Blacklist, and helped destroy the studio system. Perhaps nobody in Hollywood history has ever ruined so many careers and done so much damage to the industry as