Candy at Last (21 page)

Stories from Candyland
was ultimately a huge success story and ended up on
The New York Times
Best-Seller List. It was a much needed boost to my morale. It also gave me a huge sense of accomplishment to add the title of “author” to my resume.

The stars must have been aligned because shortly after the book, producer Ryan Seacrest approached me about appearing on a game show he was producing for E!. The show was called
Bank of Hollywood
and was an adaptation
of the British television show called
Fortune: Million Pound Giveaway.
The premise of
Bank of Hollywood
was for contestants to come on the show and pitch their ideas to a celebrity panel of judges known as the “power panel.” I had to pinch myself again that Ryan Seacrest wanted me as a judge. I was very flattered by what Ryan said about me in an interview with the
Los Angeles Times
: “‘One of the key components to this show’ is sniffing out the phony requests.… ‘She was in charge of a lot of Aaron’s empire off the television shows, so she can really see through people and read agendas.’”

Our panel included me; Sean Patterson, the president of Wilhemina Models; Melody Thornton of
The Pussycat Dolls;
and Vanessa Rousso, a world-class professional poker player who was the top-earning woman on the professional poker tour. The hopeful contestants would plead their cases, and we would take it to a vote. If majority ruled, the contestants were awarded the prize money.

Bank of Hollywood
reminded me quite a bit of the show
Queen for a Day,
which was on the air when I was a teenager. It had actually started as a radio show when I was probably just learning to walk. It was on in the middle of the day, five days a week. It became so popular with women that NBC made it a prime-time show. Jack Bailey, a former vaudeville performer, was the host, and at the beginning of every episode he would bellow, “Do YOU want to be queen for a day?” The audience would go wild with applause. The show was entertaining but sad when it came right down to it. The contestants would tell their heartwrenching stories in an attempt for the big giveaway at the end of the show. In this case, it was the Applauso-meter that determined who would be crowned Queen for the day.

Instead of money,
Queen for a Day
always gave away a refrigerator or a washer and dryer “furnished by” the program’s advertising sponsor. The winner had a crown placed on her head and was also given a faux sable robe along with a bouquet of roses. Jack Bailey ended every show by saying, “Make every woman queen for every single day.” If you think about it,
Queen for a Day
was one of the first reality shows. What we all found out later was that those poor women had the crown, robe, and roses taken away immediately after the show ended. They also had to find someone to buy whatever they had won because they had to pay the taxes on it.

Some of the contestants on
Bank of Hollywood
were very inspiring. There was an urban dance troupe who came on the show. The founder of the troupe was asking for $31,000 for dance scholarships. They gave an impressive performance when they came out, and the founder’s plea was very emotional. Sean Patterson had to ask one of the other members of the troupe to speak on behalf of the group. Through her we learned that the troupe really was more of a family and support group that helped the members set and achieve goals.

There was also a very charming aspiring actor, Tedrick, who wanted funding for acting classes. Sean Patterson really put him through the paces and made him improvise interviewing Melody on a red carpet. Tedrick actually did a terrific job. I thought he had serious potential. It was a 3-to-1 vote in his favor. There were also some less altruistic contestants and others that bordered on the ridiculous. One young woman came on the show to plead her case for a right-hand driving car. We were in Los Angeles, for crying out loud. In her case we voted unanimously not to fund her.

Even with the sillier requests, I still felt a huge responsibility to the contestants. I mean, here they were in front of us and on national television pitching their hearts out. All in all it was a fun opportunity for me, and as the
Bank of Hollywood,
we were able to have a positive impact on the daily lives of some of our contestants.

I never expected I would form such a bond with the other judges. We all had such distinct backgrounds. The show was broadcast about the same time that
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
was just hitting the airwaves. The Kardashian show was proving to be very popular, so the time slot for
Bank of Hollywood
got moved around a few times and ultimately didn’t do well. When we wrapped production, I invited everyone over to The Manor. It was well after midnight, so I called my security personnel ahead of time and told him I was bringing home a bunch of friends. This was new for me, and I could tell he was shocked.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Whoever said “youth is wasted on the young” was 100 percent right. We ended up having a late-night party. It was good to be young again.

22

Business Is Business

Aaron was always full of good ideas, and he also enjoyed investing in talented people. In some cases it was writers on his shows or shows he was trying to sell to the network. He would come up with the idea, say, for example, a man on an island who grants wishes. He would write all of the broad strokes and then hand it over to a writer to draft the teleplay. I honestly couldn’t believe he was willing to pay annuities to a writer for writing a script he was going to have to do a polish on later. He always had the same response.

“I get better writers this way.”

Aaron wasn’t only interested in seeing writers succeed. He really had an eye for talented people. I had a friend, Marcia Lehr, who was am amazing calligrapher and party planner. In the mid-1970s, she started her little side business by addressing envelopes for five cents each. By the time I met her, she was the best calligrapher and party planner in town. She had done quite a few of our parties, and it was obvious she was a true artist with a special gift.

Ever the producer with his eye out for talent, Aaron saw an opportunity to help Marcia shine by being an angel investor in a retail storefront. I knew from working at Jax that running a store was a lot of work. I could only imagine that
opening a store would have been completely overwhelming for one person. Even though I had never managed a store, I had retail experience and good instincts. Combined with Marcia’s brilliance, I knew we’d be a winning team, and so Lehr & Spelling was born.

As usual, Aaron wasn’t entirely on board with my having responsibilities outside the home, but we worked it out. The idea was to have a one-stop gift shop with items ranging from candy to antique silverware. It took us just over a year to get the store up and running. The time we spent doing the buying alone was considerable. I always laugh when I think of all the time we spent just tasting the chocolate we were going to sell. I don’t have a very big sweet tooth anyway, but after months of tasting chocolate, I finally started bringing it home and having the family taste it.

We rented space on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. It was the perfect location because it put us right there in the middle of the famed Beverly Hills shopping district. I focused on buying the fixtures for the store and designing the space. Strangely enough, I went with a very modern look for the store. It was a very clean design with lots of chrome and a black granite candy counter. I don’t know where this inspiration came from because my homes have always been decorated very traditionally.

I also went to stores like Tiffany and Cartier that offered corporate discounts. I got their applications for corporate accounts so I could use them as a template. I took what I liked best from all of those applications and made our own form. We quickly established corporate accounts for ABC, NBC, and Sunday Give Away at Hollywood Park, just to name a few.

Unfortunately, it was also my job to deal with the Health Department. They gave me a lot of trouble as I quickly became acquainted with their regulations. Honestly, some of the rules just made no sense. One that stands out in my mind required us to have a commercial-grade dishwasher in the back because we were selling candy containers. When it came to the gift wrapping, I was the one who was particular. When I interviewed gift wrappers, I had them wrap an empty box so that I could see their technique.

Getting all of the merchandise on the shelves was an unbelievable amount of work. Our inventory included stationary, Lucite frames, chocolate, toys, and all kinds of trinkets for kids. I even put in an engraving machine. Finally we were ready to open our doors.

After a weeklong grand opening that put us on the map,
People
magazine touted, “Candy, too, has proved she’s no slouch at turning a profit.… Despite shaky economic times, the shop, Lehr & Spelling, is already thriving.” It was true. Lehr & Spelling had taken on a life of its own. I was working in the store during the day and running back and forth between the store and The Manor, which was still under construction. Sometimes I was at the store until two or three in the morning because I had decided to personally wrap all the packages that needed wrapping. We didn’t have the space for a customer service area where we could wrap the gifts, so I could only wrap at night when the store was closed.

Retail was hard for Marcia. It was definitely different from the very social job of party planning. I remember it well from my days at Jax. Customers are not your best friends. The success of the store was also hard on Aaron, who wanted me home for him. Between The Manor, the store, and being a mother, there wasn’t a lot of time left for my husband. Aaron told me I needed to learn to delegate, but I knew the real solution was to give up working at the store.

Two years later, Lehr & Spelling closed its doors, but it was still a happy ending. Marcia’s little family stationery business went on to become the go-to designer for celebrity invitations and announcements. For the last twenty five years or so her son, Sol Lehr, and her daughter, Ellen Black, have been creating stationery for the biggest names in Hollywood.

Business is business and I had succeeded in the enterprises I had tried on my own: QVC and Lehr & Spelling. My profits and proceeds from my doll collection were donated to Centro de Niños, and I never took a salary at the gift shop. I didn’t take either one on for the money. I did it because there is something about working and earning money that creates a sense of self-worth and independence that can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

With Aaron gone now, I could hop on a plane and go anywhere. I had plenty of time on my hands, but that wasn’t where my heart was. I wanted to try my hand at another business, but I didn’t have one in mind because I hadn’t done enough to know what my niche was yet. I put out my feelers in Hollywood and hoped they would travel across the country to New York, “jump over the pond,” and find their way to London before returning back here to me in Los Angeles.

I knew people were wondering why I wanted to get paid. My stock answer was that it was a way to validate my self-esteem. What I really wanted to say was that earning a paycheck was very different from making an investment with money left over from an allowance given to me by my husband.

23

Break a Leg

Even though
Bank of Hollywood
was canceled, my appearance on the show made an impression on producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. They were the producing team behind the film musicals
Hairspray
and
Chicago.
Now they were doing a television show called
Drop Dead Diva
for the Lifetime Network. The premise is that a gorgeous and vapid aspiring model named Deb dies in a fatal car accident. Deb finds herself at the gates of heaven and pleads with the gatekeeper to return her to her former fabulous existence. After declaring her a “self-centered zero,” the gatekeeper relegates Deb to the body of a recently deceased plus-size attorney named Jane. The ongoing theme of the show is Deb trying to reconcile beauty with brains.

Drop Dead Diva
is a very cute and life-affirming show with a powerful message for women. The list of guest stars is incredible: Paula Abdul, Delta Burke, Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd, Valerie Harper, and Liza Minnelli are just the ones I’ve managed to catch on the show. I was unbelievably flattered when Craig and Neil offered me a guest role on the show. I thought about it, but the honest truth is that there was absolutely no way I could memorize all the lines and be natural on camera. I did well on
Bank of Hollywood,
especially
for someone who is fundamentally shy. Quite a few performers have stage fright, so it wasn’t just the stage fright that kept me off of
Drop Dead Diva
because I am unequivocally just not an actress.

I knew that Craig and Neil had a company called Storyline Entertainment and had been nominated something like eight times for Emmy Awards and that
Chicago
had won six Oscars including Best Picture. By the way, that was the first time a musical had been awarded Best Picture since 1968, when
Oliver
won.

Still, I stuck with my gut and didn’t sign on for the part on
Drop Dead Diva
. Even though I wasn’t going to be their next guest star, I developed a friendship with Craig and Neil. At the time, they were producing their first Broadway venture and asked me to join them as a producer for the remake of the Broadway musical
Promises, Promises
.

The more I thought about making my first foray into the New York theater scene with visionary producers like Craig and Neil showing me the way, the more it felt like it was meant to be. Another reason I felt like it was the perfect fit for me was because it wasn’t film or television, and I wouldn’t be standing on the shoulders of my late husband. I think one of the reasons Aaron didn’t dabble in the world of Broadway was because it would have meant numerous trips to New York, and it just wouldn’t have worked traveling by train all the time.