The biggest of the least-known gangsters was Abner (Longie) Zwillman, boss of Newark, NJ's rackets. Zwillman forged a partnership during Prohibition with Canada's Bronfman family (later Seagrams) to smuggle top Canadian whiskey from Nova Scotia to the Jersey Shore via tanker ships. He became the biggest rum-runner on the East Coast. He had a war with Richie (the Boot) Boiardo, Newark's Mafia chief, that left Da Boot with several wounds. They made up and became allies. In 1929, Zwillman called the famous gangster's convention in Atlantic City that resulted in the cartelization of all booze activities east of Chicago, and led to the formation of the Big Six gangster alliance (Zwillman, Lansky Siegel, Luciano, Costello, Adonis) that controlled Eastern rackets until the Commission was formed. Zwillman had a host of legitimate interests, too: he owned the Barium Steel Corp., was a major shareholder of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (later the Tubes, later PATH), was NJ's biggest distributor of cigarettes and cig vending machines, owned a GM truck dealership, had interests in Hollywood studios (and had Jean Harlow, the "blond bombshell," as his mistress for two years). He also had major political clout and helped steer delegates to FDR in 1932. Though most people remember Frank Costello as the "star" witness before the Keefauver Committee's televised hearings in 1950-51, Keefauver himself, at the end of the hearings, identified Zwillman as "America's top racketeer." Then, and only then, did he begin his period of public scrutiny.