---
category: "Business & Finance"
tags:
  - Person
  - PROMIS
summary: "Founder of MCA and longtime political supporter of Ronald Reagan who helped make Reagan a millionaire through inflated property deals."
born: 1896-04-26
died: 1981-04-29
location: "South Bend, Indiana"
relations:
  - type: founded
    with: "[[Music Corporation of America]]"
    start: 1924
    fn: 2
  - type: head_of
    with: "[[Music Corporation of America]]"
    role: "chairman of the board from 1946, per Moldea"
    start: 1946
    fn: 2
---
[[Jules Stein]] was the founder of [[Music Corporation of America|MCA]]. He was a long-time political supporter of [[Ronald Reagan]]. Stein, along with [[Lew Wasserman]], negotiated the sale of Reagan's [[California]] properties at hugely inflated prices, which helped make Reagan a millionaire.[^1]

### Music Corporation of America

Julius Caesar Stein started MCA in [[Chicago]] in 1924, after practicing medicine as an ophthalmologist. Moldea wrote that Stein gave up his position with a Chicago doctor to found the agency with a college friend, William R. Goodheart, after serving as an assistant to the eye surgeon Harry Gradle, working from a two-room office downtown and booking dance bands.[^2]

Stein was one of the original defendants in *Finley v. Music Corporation of America*, a 1946 antitrust case that Moldea wrote produced a jury verdict of $55,500 in treble damages for a San Diego ballroom operator; Judge Paul J. McCormick's June 24, 1946 memorandum (66 F. Supp. 569) held the damages insufficiently certain and assessed costs and fees of $9,092.85. Moldea wrote that McCormick had earlier dismissed the charges against Stein.[^2][^3]

Moldea wrote that Stein was succeeded as president in 1946 by Lew Wasserman, and that Stein then became chairman of the board.[^2]

Moldea wrote that Stein and Taft Schreiber were among the guiding forces shaping Reagan's political philosophy, in the period after the government's action against MCA.[^2][^4]

---
### Footnotes

[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
[^2]: Moldea, Dan E. *Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob*. New York: Viking, 1986. https://archive.org/details/dark-victory-ronald-reagan-mca-and-the-mob
[^3]: *Finley v. Music Corporation of America*, 66 F. Supp. 569 (S.D. Cal. June 24, 1946). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1556053/finley-v-music-corporation-of-america/ ; https://static.case.law/f-supp/66/cases/0569-01.json
[^4]: Moldea, Dan E. "MCA Music & the Mafia," *Regardie's*, June 1988. https://www.moldea.com/MCAMusic.html