Whenever you position entertainers performing in neon-lit clubs and pubs, chances are there will be a wannabe gangster or two hanging about. Selling drugs and sex has always been a conduit for making quick do-re-mi, with potential customers invariably in the bars, dance halls, pubs snd night clubs.
Abraham (Abe) Gilbert Saffron worked all these strategies quickly, as his persona was of a chancer who jump-started his criminal endeavours as an SP bookmaker and a receiver of stolen goods. He had an appetite for more, much much more, earning a reputation for seizing the moment, any moment….irrespective of what he had to do. The time was the late 1940s to the 50s.
His big break came when servicemen on leave from the war in Vietnam were flooding Sydney looking for booze, food, girls, drugs, sex and entertainment, with lots of cash to splash about, like there was no tomorrow. Saffron was ready to take their money. A wily operator, his rise coincided with the arrival of the nightclub era. He wasn’t the first crime figure to tap into the world of entertainment- others would emulate, but he would become one of the most powerful in Australia. His tentacles stretched around every city, his name dominating news headlines and police briefs for decades. Even after his death, his shadow still hovers over the industry.
In SAFFRON INCORPORATED, music industry legend Stuart Coupe shows how big business and the underworld are intrinsically linked– from nightclub fires, corrupt cops,, cocaine, smack, illegal gambling, vice, celebrities, standover men, rock’n’roll, promoters and musicians, all enabled the greasy wheels of crime. From his perfect perch in the industry, Coupe gives the scoop on Saffron with a lot of personal context which he delivers in short, sharp staccato sentences, with a self-referential style reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler…. “just the facts, ma’me- just the facts!” Its like reading pulp fiction about criminal fact. This style helps to make the often sordid subject matter immensely entertaining, which is not to deny that Saffron, his flunkies, his corrupt police and political friends, least of all, his rivals, traded in and off the worst excesses of human behaviour.
Coupe doesn’t make light of Saffron’s possible involvement in the disappearance of Juanita Neilsen and the Luna Park Ghost Train tragedy or his devastating traits of drug abuse, corruption, murder, plus human exploitation. Some events deserve some tongue-in-cheek treatment as between organised crime and the Australian music industry.
For this reviewer, Coupe draws a short bow without bringing forth exposes or new material. He relies on existing written accounts by well known observers and players, weaving a somewhat rehashed narrative, without flesh on the bone.
Coupe’s book is a light read without new revelations to inform or titillate.
