Indecent Exposure (15 page)
- The changes over the two decades were undeniable and obvious. But they were hardly revolutionary. The flickering images of 1970 and later were manufactured and sold by a Hollywood that was much like the Hollywood of old. It remained a highly oligarchical institution run by a handful of entrepreneurial businessmen attracted by the glamour and zest, the money and sex, the gamble and gambol of show business.
- TWELVE
- Well into its second generation, the friendship between the Allen family and the Hirschfield family deepened still further. Herbert Allen, Jr., graduated from Williams College in 1962 and promptly entered the family's investment business. Herbert junior emerged early as the only realistic candidate within the family to inherit the mantle of Allen & Company. Of Charlie's and Herbert senior's five offspring—three boys and two girls—be was the only male who had a strong interest in
and aptitude for the business. - At Williams. Herb was known as a playboy with a sharp and aggressive wit. Having little incentive to study hard, he set as his goal graduating first alphabetically and last academically, and he came very close. His highest college honor was the championship of his fraternity in "wall ball." a handball derivative played with a tennis ball against the wall of the Chi Psi house. Although Herb did not flaunt his wealth at college, he did not conceal it either. Few Williams students had the resources to fly off for holidays as frequently and as far as he did.
- Herb was not a stereotypical college playboy, however. He derived negligible pleasure from all-night drinking and carousing. On the contrary, he normally drank sparingly and retired and arose early. There was an almost austere quality about his personal daily habits and regimen. Herb was a young man with more important things on his mind than college, which served for him as little more than an amusing way to spend four years before he assumed the important station that life held for him.
- Immediately upon graduating. Herb married Laura Parrish, a nineteen-year-old Smith College student from Oklahoma City. Laura's father was a prominent physician whose patients included Alan
Hirschfield
's mother. Alan had dated one of Laura's sisters for a time. Herb and Laura's wedding was held at a Methodist church in the wealthy Nichols Hills section of Oklahoma City, and was followed by a lavish reception at the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club. The entire Allen clan flew down from New York, and the Hirschfields hosted a round of social events in the days leading up to the wedding. - When Berte Schindelheim, a student at Bennington College, had a blind date in 1959 with Alan Hirschfield, a student at the Harvard Business School, she imagined that Alan was probably one of the few students at the business school willing to take a chance that someone w
ith a name like Berte Schindelhe
im would tum out to be not only a girl but also an attractive a
nd intelligent girl. Alan and Be
rte were both very pleased with each other. When they were dating during his last year at Harvard, she would spend weekends in Boston, and he would drive her all the way to Bennington on Sundays and then return—a 350-mile
round-trip
. A wedding was planned for June of 1960. right after Berte's graduation, but Alan backed out at the last minute. He was not ready for marriage just yet. - A highlight of his next two years was a brief affair with an exotic young editor at Random House, Maxine Groffsky. Bennett Cerf, whose investment-banking business Alan was handling, introduced them. To Alan Hirschfield. Maxine Groffsky represented the glamour of the New York art and literary worlds. Maxine had had an affair in the middle fifties with Philip Roth, the novelist, and unwittingly had become the model for the character Brenda Patimkin in
Goodbye Columbus.
In the late fifties she had an affair with Larry Rivers, the painter, who also left her an artistic legacy: several portraits he had painted of her. Alan Hirschfield was Maxine's first investment banker. He left her no tangible legacy on the scale of Roth's novel and Rivers's portraits, but he did subsequently acq
uire a Rivers portrait of Maxine
. Though their romance ebbed, they would remain friends, and the portrait would hang in Alan's home permanently. - In the spring of 1962. Maxine
Groffsky went off to Paris to edit the
Paris Review.
Late in t
he year, Alan finally married Be
rte Schindelheim, who had been working in the interim as an editor at Fawcett Publications and had been quite active socially herself. Through the sixties, Alan and
Berte
, and Herb and Laura Allen, rented houses for the winter in Palm Springs. Alan was becoming increasingly active in the affairs of Seven Arts and Warner Bros., and there was a lot of socializing with Jack Warner, Ray Stark, and Frank Sinatra. The Hirschfields were frequent guests of Sinatra at his home in Palm Springs as well as in Las
Vegas when he was performing. Berte
took to calling Sinatra's Palm Springs friends his "local rat pack" to distinguish it from his international "rat pack" (Dean Marti
n, Sammy Davis, Shirley MacLaine
, Joey Bishop, et al.). One member of the local group was Danny Schwartz, a wealthy businessman who had invested in several ventures (including Warner Bros.) with Sinatra and Rudin. At three o'clock one morning at Caesar's Palace, Schwartz asked Alan Hirschfield to stand in for him in a baccarat game. Schwartz was $200,000 in the red at the time, but he was tired and wanted some fresh air. When he returned at sunup, an initially apprehensive
Hirschfield
had brought him even. - They were heady times. On April 2
, 1969, Berte
Hirschfield
's thirtieth birthday, a party was held for two dozen people in the private dining room of a Palm Springs restaurant. At the appointed moment, Frank Sinatra rose and sang "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Thoroughly Modern Millie," and "But Beautiful," with special lyrics written for the occasion by Sammy Cahn. - (Tune
:
The Lady Is a Tramp)
There's no one like her, but no one at all. She's got a smile that's a smile to recall. The kind of charm that is like wall to wall.
I
mean the lady is a champ. - Back home in Scarsdale they smile
and they glow. To think that Berte
wound up with such dough. They thought the guy that she chose was a "schmo" Which proves the lady is a champ. - But she chose wisely, as we all know. The records show, he is—a whiz— Especially when they lower the lamp. Which proves the lady is a champ.
- The early seventies were relatively quiet for the Hirschfields. They had moved from a Park Avenue apartment to a three-story
home on five acres in Scarsdale
. Gradually they spent less time in Palm Springs in the winter and more time skiing. After Alan's
difficult year at Warner Bros -
Seven Arts, he took a job managing the Allen family's personal assets—a vast array of securities, real estate, and other holdings. He also performed other tasks for the
Allens
—some of which were quite novel. For example, the Ogden Corporation, in which the
Allens
owned a controlling interest, once made a deal to buy the "21" Club for Ogden stock worth ten million dollars at the time. Ogden, a decidedly unglamorous conglomerate, included among its diverse holdings a "limited menu" restaurant chain called Doggie Diner. Charlie Allen was not pleased by the prospect of Ogden's owning "21," which had been a vital part of his life for decades, a cherished haven of almost daily sustenance—psychological and otherwise. However, Charlie did not know how to stop the deal. It was not his style to interfere directly in the affairs of companies he controlled. Moreover, his relationship with the head of Ogden had been strained even before the "21" deal arose. Charlie Allen, therefore, sought the counsel of Alan
Hirschfield
. - Hirschfield thought about the matter and decided that "21" probably was worth more than Ogden was proposing to pay. The many valuable Remington paintings on the restaurant's walls, not to mention its other extraordinary accoutrements, likely made the place worth considerably more than ten million dollars. Hirschfield's analysis made sense to Charlie Allen. The message was conveyed ever so subtly to the management of "21," which valued Charlie's patronage as much as he valued the restaurant. There was discomfort all around. The deal was all but final. Everyone waited, however, and finally, after eighteen months, the deal scotched itself when the market value of the Ogden stock in question fell below the stipulated level. Ogden claimed the purchase was only "suspended," but it was never revived. Charlie Allen was relieved, and although Alan
Hirschfield
's advice in a sense had been rendered unnecessary by falling stock prices, Charlie knew he could always count on Alan for sage counsel. Furthermore, Charlie never stopped cautioning the owners of "21" against selling the restaurant for too low a pri
ce. Twelve years later, in 1982,
they still had not sold, despite many opportunities. - * * *
- Herbert Allen, Jr., meanwhile, divorced Laura Parrish, settled at the Carlyle, and began an active bachelor life as a man about Manhattan and Southampton. He dated the
most
beautiful actresses
and models in New York and, indeed, it seemed to some of his friends that he was a bit compulsive about the physical standards he set for his women. He would mull over fine points of physique with cronies and would shun a woman for such minor failings as exposing what he considered to be too much of her gums when she smiled. A skillful flirt. Herbert employed tools of flirtation not available to every man. He once encountered Amanda Burden (William Paley's stepdaughter) at a party and heard her complaining about a speeding ticket. She had been stopped while driving from Manhattan to eastern Long Island; it was her second offense, and she feared losing her driver's license. Herbert offered to try to help if Amanda could tell him the judge or court with jurisdiction over the case. Amanda produced the summons, and Herbert took it into the next room and made a phone call. (Though he wasn't explicit with Amanda, he knew a man at Allen & Company who claimed to be able to fix traffic tickets.) Reappearing a few moments later, Herbert said everything had been taken care of. Amanda could forget about going to court. She was extremely impressed and thought the gesture very sweet. Some time later Herbert asked her to have dinner with him, and a brief romance ensued. (Unfortunately for Amanda, however, Herbert's fixer proved to be ineffectual. She eventually received a follow-up summons and had to appear in court and pay a fine anyway.) - Some people, including Alan Hirschfield, felt that Herbert was given too much responsibility at Allen & Company too soon, having been made president at age twenty-seven as his uncle and father began to take less active roles. Although Herbert enjoyed some success, the skeptics were proved at least partially correct in the late sixties and early seventies when the firm, under Herbert junior's leadership, became involved in a number of business deals that soured and drew investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and allegations of fraud against Allen & Company and others. Some of the problems arose from Herbert's association with a group of men who were to be numbered among the most celebrated stock-market promoters of the period. Most of them were based in Beverly Hills, dabbled in the movie business, and loved the Hollywood high life. There was Burt Klein
er of Kleiner. Bell &
Company, the most flamboyant brokerage Ann in the nation for a few years until the SEC and the New York and American Stock Exchanges, in a unique coordinated assault one day in 1970, banished the Kleiner firm from the securities business. There was Gene Klein, the former used-car salesman who controlled the National General Corporation (movie theaters, insurance, publishing, and fried chicken). There was Del Coleman of Parvin-Dohrmann (Vegas casinos) and Commonwealth United (movies, vending machines, juke boxes, real estate, and insurance). There was Allen Manus, a Canadian promoter whose activities were under almost constant scrutiny by law-enforcement authorities. All of these men or their companies sooner or later were enjoined by courts from violating U.S. securities laws. - In one celebrated case, the SEC in 1973 accused the General Host Corporation, a large food concern; its chairman, Harris Ashton; Allen & Company Incorporated; Kleiner. Bell & Company; Allen Manus; the National General Corporation and its chairman, Gene Klein, of participating in an elaborate scheme to gain control of Armour & Company, the big Chicago meat packer, by fraudulent means. As happens in most such cases, the defendants consented to court injunctions against securities law violations without admitting or denying the SEC's charges. Fraud and manipulation charges against Allen & Company Incorporated were dropped, although the firm was enjoined from violating other laws.
- Apart from finding the Burt Kleiners of the world amusing, Herbert Allen's association with them clearly was a manifestation of the same family streak of fierce image-be-damned independence which led his Uncle Charlie to go into business with ex-convict Wallace Groves in the Bahamas. Allen & Company's philosophy essentially was: No one tells us how or with whom to do business. As Herbert reportedly would have occasion to say later to
The New York Times.
"We trade every day with hustlers, deal makers, shysters, con men. . . . That's the way businesses get started. That's the way this country was built."*
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