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Noel Charles Bloom

4/20/86 LA Times:

City officials, lacking legal standing to reject an occupancy permit for Creative Video Services, say they will prosecute the company if its videotapes are considered obscene.

The company's move into the city's Newbury Park area, where it spent $2 million to create a state-of-the-art video reproduction facility, prompted some residents to form an anti-pornography group, Citizens Against Pornography. It is led by a retired agent for the FBI, Homer E. Young, who was the agency's national field coordinator for obscenity cases.

With only 35 members, the group has succeeded in focusing the city's attention on Creative Video Services, accusing the company and its head, Noel Charles Bloom of Hidden Hills, of spreading lewd entertainment across the United States.

Group of Businesses

Bloom is chairman of NCB Entertainment Group of Woodland Hills, a collection of media concerns that includes Creative Video Services.

Law enforcement officials contend that Bloom is a major distributor of sexually explicit videotapes and films. He has been arrested numerous times on suspicion of selling obscene materials. But in recent interviews, city, state and federal law enforcement authorities familiar with Bloom's activities could not point to any convictions on pornography-related charges.

Bloom's Beverly Hills attorney, John H. Weston, said Bloom, 43, was innocent of all earlier charges. With the exception of two obscenity convictions against companies Bloom was affiliated with, "Every case has been dismissed," Weston said.

Despite Creative Video's statements that very little, less than 10%, of its video volume is sexually explicit in nature, the company's presence has struck at the core of Thousand Oaks' suburban sensibilities.

The San Fernando Valley, in particular, is often called the nation's center of adult entertainment. A Los Angeles police tally notes that of the top 48 distributors nationwide of pornographic films and videotapes, 38 are in Los Angeles County, 25 of those in the San Fernando Valley.

Weston stressed that Creative Video's business handles relatively few adult videotapes and that the company does not make films, but reproduces master tapes for clients, including some in the NCB group.

He said the company does most of its business in family-oriented entertainment, noting that Bloom has the exclusive rights for distributing such children's video programs as "Care Bears" and "Strawberry Shortcake," as well as the feature movie "Supergirl."

Outgrew Former Plant

Creative Video moved, Weston added, after it outgrew its Woodland Hills plant and found relatively inexpensive facilities in Newbury Park well-suited to housing its reproduction machinery.

Citizens Against Pornography, meanwhile, has begun circulating petitions around the Conejo Valley protesting the "licensing and activities of Noel Charles Bloom," labeling him a "purveyor of hard-core pornography."

The city has long fostered a hostile stance toward sex-related businesses.

The council in 1973 adopted an ordinance that bans topless or bottomless bars by permitting nudity only in theatrical performances. And in 1979, the council approved a law requiring that news racks be covered with opaque screens if their front page pictures are sexually explicit.

Lawyers and investigators in the field say that to be considered obscene under the law, the materials generally need to depict child sex, bestiality, sadomasochism, extreme bondage, rape, defecation or urination.

Bloom until recently owned Caballero Control Corp., a Canoga Park firm considered a giant among adult film manufacturers and distributors.

According to the February, 1986, issue of Adult Video News, a trade publication, Bloom has sold the privately held Caballero to two company officers, President Al Bloom (not related to Noel Bloom), and Vice President Howard Klein.

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Don Smith, a 14-year veteran of the department's administrative vice division, said Bloom was arrested at least five times during the 1970s and '80s on suspicion of distributing obscene matter. The police sergeant could not recall any convictions.

Indicted in Miami

In 1980, as part of the renowned MIPORN investigation, a 2 1/2-year FBI probe of organized crime links to the pornography industry that led to 45 indictments, Bloom was indicted by a Miami grand jury for interstate transportation of obscene material and conspiracy to violate federal obscenity laws.

According to Marcella Cohen, a U. S. Justice Department attorney who prosecuted several MIPORN cases, Bloom allegedly shipped obscene videotapes and 8-millimeter films from the "Swedish Erotica" series from his Los Angeles company, California International Distributors, to FBI detectives posing as customers in Miami.

But charges against him were dropped in 1983 when the key witness was arrested for shoplifting, undermining his credibility.

Most recently, Bloom was charged Feb. 14 with distributing obscene videotapes with titles such as "The Punishment of Annie" and "Little Girls Blue" in connection with a 13-month Los Angeles police "sting" operation.

Goldstein said a Canoga Park company in which Bloom is named as a company officer, California Video Distributors, as well as two other company officers, Steve Palmer and Eric Gutterman, remain charged with distributing obscene videotapes. If the firm is found guilty, Bloom and the other officers could each face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and $1,000 fine, Goldstein said.

LA Times, 8/30/89

Much of the investigation [of the murders of entertainment executive Jose Menendez and his wife] currently turns on individuals and companies that have suspected organized crime or pornography ties and might have had business dealings with Menendez's company, Live Entertainment Inc. of Van Nuys, a video and music distributor.

Menendez's associates have stressed that the slain executive attempted to distance himself from any elements of the pornography business.

One possible lead being pursued is the killing on Aug. 1 of Theodore Snyder, 47, a San Fernando Valley producer of X-rated videos. He was shot nine times on a residential street in Northridge. Law enforcement sources said there are "similarities" in the slayings of Menendez and Snyder, but they would not elaborate.

Court affidavits show that Snyder's company, Video Cassette Recordings Inc., did business with and owed money to a firm allegedly controlled by a man linked by federal prosecutors to an East Coast crime family.

Another area of interest to investigators is Live Entertainment's acquisition this year of Strawberries Records, Tapes & CDs, a Milford, Mass.-based retail chain that was owned by Morris Levy, a New York City record executive. Levy, sentenced last year in New Jersey to 10 years in federal prison for conspiring to extort money from a Philadelphia-area record distributor, has had a long association with Vincent (The Chin) Gigante, reputed boss of the Genovese crime family, according to law enforcement officials and court records. According to FBI documents, the Genovese family had an interest in the Strawberries chain before Levy bought it.

In 1986, Menendez joined Carolco Pictures Inc. of West Hollywood, which owns 49% of Live Entertainment. That same year, Carolco purchased International Video Entertainment Inc. of Canoga Park, then owned by Noel C. Bloom of Hidden Hills. Bloom was identified in a U.S. attorney general's report on pornography and organized crime as a "major Los Angeles-based distributor" and "associated with Michael Zaffarano," whom the attorney general said was a captain in an East Coast Mafia family.

In a dispute arising out of the sale of International Video Entertainment, Bloom sued Carolco in Los Angeles Superior Court and last September a court referee found in his favor. No one has accused Bloom of any wrongdoing in connection with the Menendez investigation. Bloom declined to comment on Tuesday.

LA Times 7/22/90

Menendez landed on his feet when he was quickly hired by Carolco Pictures, which made its reputation with Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" movies. Menendez brought his family with him to California, where his mission was to pump life into a subsidiary, International Video Entertainment Inc., a failing company Carolco had bought from a former pornography distributor named Noel Bloom. IVE had lost $20 million in 1986, but Menendez quickly turned it around by slashing the payroll and moving to isolate Bloom, who eventually left to start his own company. Morally and politically conservative, Menendez "resented Noel terribly" because of his porn background, family friend Mason says.

What's more, in 1987 the two engaged in a courtroom battle stemming from the video rights to a never-produced film. A referee found Menendez's conduct "highly inappropriate" in his attempted "squeeze play" to acquire the rights. Bloom was awarded $500,000, which Carolco appealed, and then settled a few days after Menendez's death. "When he wanted to be, he was charming," Bloom recalls. "When he had to be, he was the toughest guy you could meet." In 1987, IVE earned $8 million after reportedly having been close to bankruptcy only a year earlier. At that time, IVE merged with Lieberman Enterprises Inc., a Minnesota record distributor, and became LIVE. Menendez was riding high again.