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It was Frank Capra meets film noir and it happened, of course, in Los Angeles:
The hero was a courageous, square-jawed teetotaler; the heavy, a bootlicking gunman out to frame the good guy. Though it sounded, even then, like something straight out of the movies, their encounter produced the juiciest scandal ever to rock City Hall.
Councilman Carl I. Jacobson was the champion of impossible causes, a good-government crusader who began his political career with a single-handed attempt to drive an organized crime syndicate out of town.
During the 1920s, Jacobson's appointment to the 13th District council seat, which became vacant when his predecessor was caught fiddling contracts on the 2nd Street tunnel project, was a ray of hope in a murky civic epoch. Vice, graft and corruption were the city's normal backdrop, and Jacobson was the beleaguered reformers' darling.
The honeymoon lasted nearly two years.
The Norway-born Jacobson arrived in Los Angeles in 1909 and went to work as an engineer for Southern Pacific before becoming a high-ranking official with the railroad's union.
His bumpy rail crossing into politics began in 1925, when he was appointed to fill the vacant council seat. His predecessor, Joseph Fitzpatrick, who had defeated Jacobson by just 12 votes in the previous election, was caught awarding contracts for the construction of the 2nd Street tunnel to a certain mob-connected contractor.
Elated by his new responsibilities, Jacobson openly vowed to expose corruption and rid the city of prostitutes, bootleggers and gamblers.
As a fierce critic of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Vice Squad--in those days basically a collection agency for the city's vice lords--Jacobson made his share of enemies. Albert Marco was one of them, a...