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S e cond Annual Yest e r ye ar Issue

S e cond Annual Yest e r ye ar Issue

Sex!
Violence!
MORAL
OUTRAGE!

scandals
Oh, How the Mighty Keep Falling

last april, New York published the first of what we hoped would be a recurring event: an anniversary issue (the magazine debuted
on April 8, 1968) that celebrated our birthday by exploring a slice of this citys history. In the 2011 edition, we traced the evolution
of the New York apartment. That seemed to work out all right, so now were doing it again. The subject this time around: scandals.
Which are just as associated with New York City, when one stops to think of it, as the railroad flat or the classic six. And yet, ever
since we landed on this topic, theres been a rolling debate in our offices as to what constitutes a scandal. Does an awful, world-
shaking celebrity murder count (like the shooting of John Lennon)? Or an instance of chilling moral depravity (like when Kitty
Genoveses neighbors appeared to yawn through her murder)? Or your run-of-the-mill tabloid tale (say, the Seymour-Brant on-
again-off-again divorce)? No, we decided: A fall from grace was required. The mighty had to stumble, the pious to be caught in sin.
We asked novelist Colin Harrison to parse the definition further, which he does in his introduction on the following page. That
said, it is both a tribute toand a loving indictment ofthis city and its environs that, even after adopting our strict definition, we
still threw up our hands: There have simply been too many New York scandals to include them all. And so we apologize for over-
looking more than a few corrupt politicians, randy cads, literary frauds, Wall Street swindlers, and doomed aristocrats. And we
admit that we let in some lurid tales that stretched our parameters because, well, we simply couldnt resist. Speaking of scandals
with legs, we end the issue with a question, posed to New Yorkers far and wide: Which recent megascandal is most likely to be re-
membered many years hence? As former governor David Paterson notes, it sure wont be those Yankees tickets he got for free.

april 9, 2012 | new york 27


A City
of Ids New York: the ripest microclimate
for infamy known to man.
By c o li n har r i so n

N e w Y o r k C i t y attracts the very people most likely to be


ruined by scandal: men and women who rise in society by virtue of their
smarts, ambition, and labor. By their physical charms, vigorous egos,
and appetite for conquest. Mostly strivers, but sometimes born into
high position, they make money, become powerful or famous or both,
and induce yet more opportunity for themselves. In time the rules ap-
pear to become different for them: Judgments are reserved, corners
sliced, doors opened. The slingshot effect of wealth and power lifts their
life arcs higher than they might otherwise cal doll tossed on the scrap heap of city
go. An individual enjoying these altered so- history. (Or at least for the time being,
cietal physics may even feel an intriguing until his rehabilitation is complete.) complexities, and unfold dramatically.
vertigo. Its human nature to push ones Shocking as the moment was then, how Like sporting eventsunscripted, the end-
luck, to see what might happen long ago it now seems. But that should be ing in doubtthey nonetheless conform to
Let us thus recall the afternoon of Mon- no surprise. After all, the very essence of certain rules; they have beginnings, mid-
day, March 10, 2008. A morsel of intrigue such a major New York scandal is that it dles, and definite ends. They remind us
buzzed through the city. Something big suddenly achieves a supernova of excite- that New York City is, among other things,
was going down. The New York Times was ment that is soon supplanted by the next a machine of fate. The high do sometimes
about to reveal the name of a major politi- one. Each subsequent outrage, each new fall, and the guilty are, in fact, sometimes
cian caught using a high-priced call-girl version of our indigenous circus-opera, punished. Even the shameless can be
P H OTO G R A P H : B R O W N B R OT H E R S

service. Who? Speculation was feverish: demands we pay attention, and we do, be- shamed, if only temporarily, and the
Bill Clinton? A Bush-administration offi- cause we love scandals, assuming their power-besotted can be reminded of the
cial? The miscreant was, of course, Gover- flames of destruction dont touch us or costly, eternal laws of human gravity.
nor Eliot Spitzer, the hard-driven former those whom we care about. They make us
prosecutor once mentioned as a possible feel momentarily safer (his fate was not but what is a scandal? The etymology
future presidential candidate, and sud- mine) and a bit more alive (could his fate is suggestive: The French scandale, from
denly, two days later, after his brief, grim- have been mine?). Scandals are agreeably Old French, means cause of sin; the
faced resignation, merely a broken politi- toothsome, with potentially fascinating Latin scandalum means trap, stumbling

28 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
Harry Kendall
Thaw, murderer of
architect Stanford
White, confronts
the tabloid glare.

pe r
th e p wa
ce n lk o
tu r f
y

block, temptation. Perhaps a basic defini- (the more of it the better, especially if it is for girls in Virginia. Finding another lovers
tion is in order: A scandal involves un- cleverly stolen or deployed to hide crimes lingerie in Tarnowers bedroom, Harris shot
seemly conduct that results in the de- and misdemeanors), sex (preferably in- the well-known cardiologist four times with
struction of a reputation. Someones volving the pairing of a physically loath- a pistol she claimed shed meant to use on
position in society changes for the worse. some, goatish old man with a young wom- herself instead. Her seemingly endless trial
The fall must appear i rreversible. Suffer- an of unquestionable allure and highly lasted fourteen weeks. While out on bail,
ing is necessary. As is humiliation. questionable judgment), and violence (es- she was seen to visit his grave.
Not all shocking events are scandals. pecially anything weird, ritualistic, or
Sordid tragedies, gruesome murders, ba- psychoish). These factors can be combined but has the definition of scandaland
roque malfeasancethere are thousands any which way, so long as there are at least most particularly, of the New York scan-
of juicy New York tales that do not feature two. The biggest scandals deliver three ele- dalmorphed over time? Determined
a character of good standing succumbing ments, and ones that deliver all four are scrutiny suggests not: The parade of mur-
to his id and therefore do not qualify. And exceedingly rare. One such was the 1980 dered lovers, wealthy debauched husbands,
to rise to a classic New York scandal, the murder of Dr. Herman Tarnower, author smiling con artists, and piggish city officials
episode generally requires at least two of of the best-selling book The Complete has marched more or less without interrup-
four crucial elements: power (of an institu- Scarsdale Medical Diet, by his lover Jean tion. What has evolved is how most New
tion, celebrity, or social position), money Harris, headmistress of the Madeira School Yorkers have learned about their scandals.

april 9, 2012 | new york 29


The early-nineteenth-century city was just architect Stanford White by the enraged and the Schadenfreude that comes from
waiting for a paper to traffic in such behav- husband of his onetime lover Evelyn Nesbit, seeing that the very bad thing happened to
ior, and eventually it got plenty. Unlike most came in 1906: The early years of the twen- someone else, not us: While I was watching
American towns of the era, the New York of tieth century delivered what we today rec- television and eating ice cream one night,
the 1800s had not only the expected mix of ognize as the electric burst of scandal, Governor Spitzer was destroying his politi-
European descendants of various Protes- which depended on the automobile for cal career.
tant stripes but a multihued hodgepodge of rapid movement of reporters and newspa- At the same time, as science has en-
seekers, drifters, dreamers, and the dispos- pers, and the timely printing of black-and- croached relentlessly on what we still call
sessed from all over the world. The city al- white photographs. Enter the tabloids personality and behaviorexplaining
ready represented a psychic zone where one memorably, in the case of the Daily News, human action as the inevitable outcome of
could disappear, shake off the strictures of which made its name in 1928 by publishing genes or bad parenting or too much corn
ones upbringing elsewhere, or, indeed, de- a disturbing photo of Ruth Snyder, a saucy syrupscandals reassert the mysterious
stroy oneself privately or in public. bottle-blonde Long Island housewife con- insanity of human beings. As the French
One of the more colorful subpopulations victed of murder, taken the moment she philosopher Blaise Pascal said, The heart
of the 1840s was the so-called sporting was fried by the electric chair at Sing Sing. has reasons that reason will never know.
men, foppish young New Yorkers of enthu- Then, another world war later, television Just what did Bernie Madoff think he was
siastically degenerate habits: sex, gambling, changed everything again. The rise of the doing? How many times a day, an hour, a
theater, whoring. Their comings and goings local news broadcast, with its tease-ins and minute, did he privately instant-message
were chronicled by weekly papers like the live reporting spots, had by the sixties per- himself with some defense against what he
New York Sporting Whip, The Flash, and fected a form of breathless instant TV tab- knew would ultimately result? It could be a
The Weekly Rake, proto-lads mags that loidism. At the same time the arrival of the hundred years before someonean artist
served up steaming platters of scandal, as New Journalism elevated writing about really answers that.
Mark Caldwell describes in his 2005 history scandals (or, depending on your taste, low- We can imagine that in the future, an in-
New York Night. Their pages were laden ered journalistic standards). In this first- creasing number of scandals will be wit-
with lurid intrigue and suggestive tidbits person, metaconscious world of journalism, nessed, recorded, and uploaded simultane-
that seemed placed by would-be blackmail- it didnt hurt that one of its chief practitio- ously, making the sensation explode in real
ers. One such story, which if not quite scan- ners, Norman Mailer, was a bit scandalous time and stunning the principals, whose
dalous by todays standards, suggests a new- himself, especially after he stabbed his wife, reaction to others reaction may also be cap-
found willingness to expose and humiliate Adele, at a party one night. tured visually. We saw a hint of this in An-
the famous. The Whip and Satirist of New- New York hit the skids in the seventies, thony Weiners penile farce as a storm of
York and Brooklyn sent along a reporter on becoming dirtier, poorer, and more danger- texts, tweets, and posts accelerated the story
the night of March 4, 1842, as none other ous. The city also saw the delivery of scandal faster than Weiner could spin it. The speed
than Charles Dickens, then one of the most taken down-market, when Rupert Mur- of these events will no doubt be matched by
famous people in the Western world, was doch bought the New York Post and im- the medias fiendish ability to convert them
toured through Manhattans low life. They ported the screaming sensationalism of his into commodities that draw page-views,
visited a roughhouse tavern owned by British and Australian papers. And there mobile downloads, or whatever else com-
Frank McCabe. As Caldwell reports, Once was plenty to get excited about, such as Sid puters will be doing (to us) in the future, like
inside, Dickens, according to the Whip, Viciouss alleged murder of his girlfriend in projecting high-definition, 3-D versions
shrank back in horror when he came upon the Hotel Chelsea in 1978, and Claus von before us or maybe even directly feeding
five blacks, male and female, all stark naked Blows 1985 acquittal for the attempted them into our brains.
and sweatily entangled in mid-gangbang murder, by insulin injection, of his heiress For this reason, as well as the relentless
Dickens, the Whip said, nearly fell into a wife, Sunny. In 1986, the strangulation of an trampling of what was once considered out-
swoon and fled the place. 18-year-old student in Central Park rose to rageous, the truly shocking scandal will be,
Newspaper titles and circulation explod- the level of scandal thanks to the tabloid tag by definition, rare. Given that sexual images
ed as technology evolved and the old rags The Preppie Murder. It didnt hurt that are already omnipresent, the bar of titilla-
required to manufacture newspapers were the murderer, Robert Chambers, was hand- tion will probably get higher, although one
replaced by cheaper wood pulp (hence both some, blue-eyed, and six-foot-four. Cham- shudders to think what will be necessary to
terms of contempt). With the advent of the bers, it may be remembered, had the bad spur outrage: children, animals, coma vic-
telegraph came the wire service (the Associ- judgment while out on bail to be videotaped tims? The dollar figures will get higher, too,
ated Press was formed in 1848), which twisting the head of a Barbie doll and say- in the way that the Madoff scandal reset the
proved essential to report the Civil War as ing, in a falsetto voice, Oops! I think I killed parameters of epic fraud. Marriage, that tat-
well as useful for updating courtroom de- it, while looking into the camera with leer- tered convention, may come to matter less
velopments in long-running local scandals. ing, satanic delight. as a lever of scandal. (Were that great mor-
As New Yorkers became connected to the alist, Rudy Giuliani, to throw off yet another
world by telephone, train, and faster trans- scandals may not have changed much, wife tomorrow, most New Yorkers would no
atlantic shipping, scandal also became a but their context has shifted enormously. more than shrug.) In any case, we may be
dependable commodity, capable of being Dare we admit that in a time of total infor- confident that the past will dazzlingly in-
monetized within hours in afternoon news- mation bombardment we find juicy new vent itself anew. New Yorkers, relentlessly
paper editions. Joseph Pulitzers New York scandals strangely reassuring, a welcome organizing themselves into hierarchies,
World battled William Randolph Hearsts dramatic relief? They distract us not only seeking advantage and wealth and lubri-
New York Journal for this audience, with from the plainly bad news (war, economic cious gratification, will continue to fall prey
one-cent editions that featured one sensa- troubles, disasters), but also from our irre- to themselves, to rise and fall scandalously.
tionalistic story after the next. solvable, ever more relativistic postmoder- As we have for centuries, as we do today, the
And so perhaps its not surprising that nity with their clear moral structures, their rest of us will gape and gasp, and wait for
the Crime of the Century, the murder of simple (or simplified, anyway) story lines, the next one.

30 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
310 years of disgust and delight
y
Ta wd rl e
A ctac
1702 Spe n g w i t h
rti
sta

English King
Appoints
Drag Queen
Hello, Govnr!

W h e n E d wa r d H y d e , very stupid not to see the A d e g


Lord Cornbury, the newly propriety of it, he scolded e n e r a te
and a p
appointed governor of the legislators. e r v e r t
New York and New Jersey, Cross-dressing report-
arrived in Manhattan on edly became a theme of
May 2, 1702, he was ebul- his regime. He pranced in
liently received by the citi- drag along the ramparts of
zenry. This was likely the Fort Anne. He got his kicks
high point of his six and a by donning a dress, hiding
half years in office. Among behind a tree, and star-
the allegations of corrup- tling passersby, shrieking
tion that would soon dog with laughter. After his
him: accepting bribes from wife died in 1706, one ac-
crooked Jersey officials, count alleges that he was
spending extravagant in that Garb when his dead
sums on candles and fire- Lady was carried out the
wood for two Colonial gar- Fort, and this not privately
risons, building a pleasure but in face of the Sun and
house on Governors Is- sight of the Town.
land, and running up colos- That many of these sto-
sal personal debts. ries were suspicious, if not
But rumors of financial speciousadvanced by
improprieties alone three of Cornburys most
wouldnt have led mytholo- hated political enemies,
gizers to dub Cornbury a none of whom claims to
degenerate and a pervert have witnessed any of it
I L LU S T R AT I O N : B E T T M A N / CO R B I S / A P I M AG E S

and quite possibly the firsthanddid nothing to


worst governor in the his- diminish their efficacy as
tory of the empire. Such political smears. In 1708,
bile had more to do with his Cornbury was sacked as
th e
personal habits, particu- governor, arrested for un- p o s s ib ly
Q u it e r n o r
larly what is said to have paid debts, and impris- ove
been his signature sartorial oned for seventeen wo rs t g r y o f
is to
flourish. He opened up a months. Upon his release, in th e h e .
p ir
session of the New York As- he fled back to England th e e m
sembly dressed as his cous- vowing to clear his name.
inQueen Anne. You are He failed.  eric benson

april 9, 2012 | new york 31


1871

Boss Tweed in
Pinstripes!
ft!
Th e

By some estimates, the Democratic


boss William M. Tweeds ring stole

p h oto g r a p h s : TH E N E W YOR K P U B L I C L I B RARY, a s to r , len ox a n d t il d en f o un dat i o n s ( B E EC H E R ) ; r e m a inin g, t h e g r a n g e r co llec t i o n , nyc


$45 million (nearly $1 billion today).

B ri b
e r y!

The Affair That Shocked a Nation

Thomas Nasts Harpers Weekly


cartoons helped land Tweed in jail.
(Tweed once tried to pay Nast off.)
Preacher Beecher,
Co meu
pp anc
e!
a sex-crazed
creature
questions for had a falling out with a It was a combination of who
Debby Applegate, member of his congregation Beecher was and what he
1875 author of The Most and his longtime friend, represented. He promoted
Famous Man in Theodore Tilton, who sued several ideas, including that
America, a Pulitzer Prize Beecher for criminal love should be the center of
winning biography of Henry conversation. Essentially, he Christianity and that politics
Ward Beecher. accused Beecher of having an belongs in the pulpit. He
affair with his wife, Elizabeth. advocated controversial
How did Henry causes, like the emancipation
Ward Beecher land in court? And this shocked the nation? of slaves, and he created a lot
Beecher was a famous and By some counts, there were of enemies. When you are
When Tweed fled to Spain in 1875, he beloved Protestant preacher. more headlines devoted to controversial in a moral way,
was caughtby officials who He was head of the Plymouth the Beecher scandal than people are much more likely
recognized him from a Nast cartoon. Church in Brooklyn, and he there were to the Civil War. to point out your faults. But

34 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
the problem was he couldnt
Im not arguing that scandal is mor-
use his knowledge of human
nature to keep himself out of yo u SAY CATHARS I S , ally elevating but that it exposes the
trouble. I spent twenty years underlying fault lines that govern
working on Beecher, and I am I SAY all our lives.
j.h.: But lets talk for a moment
still shocked that powerful
men think they wont get
caught. Truly, Henry Ward
SCHADE N F REUDE about the real moral damage that an
obsession with scandal can do. One
Beecher thought he could get of the scandals you touch on in your
away with it. book is the Bill C lintonMonica
Lewinsky business, and I was just
Even before the Tilton reading a review of a memoir by a
allegations surfaced, did U.S. diplomat who was in Rome
Beecher have a reputation? negotiating the American partici-
There were accusations all pation in the International Criminal
over. Everyone knew Beecher Court at the time. He said that his
flirted too much. It was his bosses in Washington were so dis-
clerical weakness. His tracted by the revelations spilling
delivery was so emotional and out that they couldnt be bothered
so genuine that people felt he to give him instructions on how to
was a personal conduit for negotiate jurisdiction over genocide
Gods love: God loves Beecher, and war crimes, so today we are not
and Beecher loves me, so that a party to the court!
must mean God also loves l.k.: Given that there was abso-
me. That creates a powerful lutely no way the affair with Mon-
temptation for a pastor. That ica was not going to be exposed, it
attitude wasnt great for his does raise pretty critical questions
marriage; his wife was Jim Holt Laura Kipnis about his self-destructive tenden-
famously jealous. Many cies, which doesnt seem entirely
women in the Plymouth irrelevant when it comes to the
Church congregation would Are scandals ever morally instruc- because 50 years ago, lets say, you qualities of a national leader.
fall in love with him, and so tive, or do we just pretend they are couldnt publish the details of peo- j.h.: But that kind of behavior is
he also made other marriages to justify our titillation? A discus- ples tawdry dalliances, JFK being self-destructive only because weve
miserable, too. sion between Jim Holt, author of the great example. So because the come to make it so. Im with
So what was the scandal? the forthcoming book Why Does press can now publish all the details Molire here: To sin in private is no
After the accusation was made the World Exist?, and Laura Kipnis, of cigars and thongs, we do get sin at all. When Kennedy was pres-
public, there were plenty of a professor at Northwestern and more small-scale, tawdry scandals. ident, the press more or less agreed.
I told you sos and You know author of How to Become a Scandal: j.h.: Oh, I dont know: The yellow l.k.: I dont disagree, but lets face
that man. But still, for a whole Adventures in Bad Behavior. press wasnt shy about printing it, these are the times we live in, and
generation, the Beecher that White had a sex pad with a for anyone in politics to willfully
scandal was their version jim holt: Laura, I know youre red velvet swing. But now, with ignore the existence of the scandal
of an end of innocence. Every heavily invested in highbrow Page Six and Gawker, even the press is to be fatefully oblivious to
generation seems to have scandalmongeringI mean, you most trifling embarrassments get those historical realities. In fact,
an everything has changed wrote a whole book on how its bandied all over the Internet. Who whats so distressing about so many
moment, a period of supposedly cathartic for us to is the audience for this stuff? You of these scandals is the degree of
tremendous disillusionment. watch famous people publicly self- know the famous quotation that obliviousness even the most ratio-
And here was this Oprah-like destruct. Well, I hate to say it, but scandal is merely the compas- nal people are capable of. Take
figure, who was open about the kind of scandals that obsess sionate allowance that the gay Anthony Weiner. Its fascinating
his own failures, like a lovable you and the media these days are make to the humdrum? Id rather just how much unconsciousness he
old uncle, someone who really pretty trivial. Go back to not be among the humdrum. seemed to be scattering around in
always gave you a hug. Some 1906, when the millionaire Harry l.k.: You protest too much, Jim. I public for the rest of us to witness.
scandals come from the glare Thaw fatally shot the architect happen to know that you remember He wasnt just sending lewd pic-
of distancea person looming Stanford White in the face on the obscure details of scandals going tures of himself to these women; he
so large above me that I will rooftop of Madison Square Gar- back twenty years. Who remembers was sending out engraved invita-
take pleasure to see him or her tions to his own downfall.
brought down. Beecher j.h.: I would maintain that were all
seemed like a better version
of ourselves. He possessed I m with Molire constantly engaged in behavior that
would be our undoing if it was ex-
a magical kind of charisma;
people told him things that here: To sin in private posed to the glare of publicity. By the
way, in objecting to scandalmonger-
they never tell their spouses.
The trial ended in a hung jury. is no sin at all. ing Im by no means objecting to
gossip. Theres nothing wrong with
that. I think it was Oscar Wilde who
Did Beecher recover?
Not much changed for said that scandal is gossip spoiled by
Beecher. He made more denwhich White himself had Sukhreet Gabel but you? [The morality. Its the feigned moral out-
money in the last ten years designedover Whites rather daughter of the judge in the Bess rage in the publics reaction to scan-
of his life than ever before. kinky dalliance with Thaws ac- Mess; see page 60.] And Im really dal that I find a bit nauseating.
Audiences went in droves tress wife (see page 37). Now not interested in catharsis. I think l.k.: Yes, but as we do live in a
to see him speak. His theres a big, juicy scandal. And were fascinated by scandal because scandal-obsessed culture
congregation gained today were supposed to achieve were trying to comprehend the so- j.h.: I dont want to live in that
members, and after trial, the catharsis when a congressman cial and psychological dynamics of culture. You make me feel like
church board of trustees voted gets caught sexting? the world we live in. For example, William Buckley. I want to stand
to award him a $100,000 laura kipnis: One interestingly how can you not be stunned by the athwart the times and yell , Stop!
bonus. God bless America, we counterintuitive argument Ive read failures of self-knowledge and trag- Stop it or youll go blind!
are the most curious people. is that its actually sexual liberaliza- ic self-deception of someone as l.k.: Ill be interested to hear
 matthew giles tion that leads to more scandals, otherwise brilliant as Eliot Spitzer? what exit strategy you figure out.

Illustrations by Zohar Lazar april 9, 2012 | new york 35


e rs
Swing
Star-crossed
1901

Temperance
lunatic
on StArchitect shot right
the loose in the faade!
By Lee Siegel

the genius architect. The Sadistic


1906 Millionaire. The Stunning Girl From No-
where. Has New Yorks exquisite palate for
The men who wanted poor Evelyn Nesbit

scandal ever had it so good since Harry Kendall


Thaw pumped three bullets at point-blank range
into the head of Stanford White in Madison Square
Gardens rooftop theater on June 25, 1906? What
William Randolph Hearsts newspapers giddily
touted as (the very first) Trial of the Century re-
mains the gold standard of New Yorks
anti-booze crusader Husband, killer, Debtor, cruiser,
Carrie Nation had al- entertainment-journalism complex.
coke addict. possible rapist.
ready gained national Thaw claimed that he shot White because the
fame for smashing up latter had seduced and possibly raped Thaws wife,
Kansas saloons with a Evelyn Nesbit, five years earlier, when she was 16.
hatchet when she arrived White had also snubbed Thaw, a cocaine addict with over half a million dollars in debt and faced
in New York one August
who had once savagely whipped Nesbitpossibly prison as a result. His most manic appetite, though,
morning and demanded
to meet with the police before also raping herin an Austrian castle. This was for underage, impoverished chorus girls. He
c o m m i s s i o n e r. T h e was some months before she surrendered to his brought them up to his West 24th Street apart-
crime and murder shops proposal of marriage. ment, where he urged them to soar naked on a red-
in this great citymind, You might say that weve inherited from the velvet swing as prelude to a tumble in the sheets.

p h oto g r a p h s : TH E N E W YOR K T I M E S / R E D U X ( n at i o n ) ; B E TT M A N n / COR B I S ( t h aw, w h i t e, ne s bi t )


the times a-comin, she White scandal our contemporary tendency to never He could well have met his eventual murderer, who
told him. Shed be arrest-
rest until we have stripped the faade off respecta- shared his predilections, trawling for young ac-
ed ten days later for
wrecking a Coney Island bility and wealth. Stanford White just about single- tresses in Broadways hidden enclaves.
cigar store. The next year handedly invented the American faade. His firm If White embodied the elegant hauteur of New
she confronted the designed the Astor, Vanderbilt, and Tiffany man- Yorks social elite, Thaw was a crude arriviste. Born
Vanderbilts at Madison sions; the Century and Metropolitan clubs; Judson and bred in Pittsburgh, he was the son of a railroad
Square Garden for their Memorial Church; the Washington Square arch; and coal magnate and lived the unstable life of a
opulent dress. Marching
and the second Madison Square Gardennow long rich layabout. In some ways, the White scandal was
out with a crowd behind
her, she stopped near the destroyedwhere he was killed. a tale of two cities. Hell with the lid off was the
exit to tell a Champagne Perhaps White was so good at faades because way one nineteenth-century writer had described
importer that he was he himself had so much to hide. By the end of his industrial Pittsburgh; in Gilded Age New York,
eternally damned. relatively short lifehe died at 52he was saddled White had done his best to keep the lid on.

Madame Restell Found Dead in Tub

Abortionist of choice for Manhattan elite.


In the middle of the nineteenth century, an English immigrant named Ann Lohman,

1878 known as Madame Restell, was the citys most celebrated abortionist, operating out of a
four-story townhouse on Fifth Avenue and amassing a $1.5 million fortune. But by the 1870s,
Anthony Comstocks New York Society for the Suppression of Vice was ascendant, the mood
of the city had changed, and Restells old allies could no longer defend her. In 1878, Comstock posed
as a man who had impregnated his lover and entrapped Restell into selling him an abortifacient.
Arrested and awaiting trial, the 66-year-old Restell dipped into a tepid bath and slit her throat.

36 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
april 9, 2012 | new york 37
revealed a set of incisors whittled to sharp
Bronx Zoo swarmed, thousands crowd to watch. points, like a vampire bats.
Benga had traveled to the U.S. with the
anthropologist Samuel Phillips Verner,
but upon arriving in New York, Verner
had gone dead broke. He contacted the
zoos director, William Temple Hornaday,
who agreed to loan Benga an apartment
on the premises. Hornaday was an en-
lightened zookeeper and among the earli-
est to endorse displaying animals in natu-
ralistic settings. He also happened to be a
Darwinian racist who schemed to exhibit
Benga alongside the apes.
For nearly two weeks, Benga roamed
the grounds unnoticed; to the zoos visi-
tors, he was just a small, somewhat
strange black man. But over time, at the
urging of Hornaday, the zookeepers con-
vinced Benga to play with the orangutan
in its cage. Benga obliged. Crowds gath-
ered to watch the two monkeying around.
The keepers gave Benga his bow and ar-
row; he shot targets, squirrels, the occa-
sional rat. Bones were scattered about the
cage to add a whiff of cannibalism. The
keepers goaded Benga to occasionally
charge the bars of his enclosure, baring
his sharp teeth. Children screamed.
Adults were at turns horrified and titil-
lated. Is that a man? a visitor asked. A
circus owner offered to throw a party for
Benga, a French spinster offered to pur-
chase him, and a black manicurist offered
to paint his nails. Hornaday posted a sign
outside of the cage, displaying Bengas
height, weight, and how he was acquired.

Pygmy
Exhibited each afternoon during Sep-
tember, it concluded.
Alerted to the situation by a story in the
New York Times, a group of Baptist cler-

Caged
gymen became incensed. They wrote let-
ters to the city papers and traveled to the
office of Mayor George B. McClellan, who
hid in his office and sent out a note telling

in Monkey
them to address their complaints to the
New York Zoological Society.
Hornaday took down the sign and
banned Benga from entering the monkey
cage, but the furor only escalated. The zoo

House
attracted as many as 40,000 visitors a day
in mid-September, many of whom hound-
ed Benga throughout the grounds. Unable
to articulate his frustration, Benga repeat-
edly lashed out, shooting one visitor in the
calf with an arrow and brandishing a knife
at a zookeeper. In public, Hornaday
ota benga arrived at the Bronx been enslaved and freed, danced at Mardi seemed unconcerned by the controversy.
1906 Zoo one day late in the summer
of 1906 wearing a white linen
Gras, and posed alongside Geronimo in
the St. Louis Worlds Fair. And yet Ameri-
In a letter to the mayor, he wrote, When
the history of the Zoological Park is writ-
suit. He was lugging a wooden bow, a set cans were forever calling him boyin ten, this incident will form its most amus-
of arrows, and a pet chimpanzee. Twenty- part because, as one of the Congolese ing passage. Meanwhile, he privately
three years old and twice widowed, he tribe of Mbuti pygmies, he stood less than wired Verner an SOS. Boy [has] become
had already hunted elephants, survived a five feet tall and weighed only 103 pounds. unmanageable, also dangerous Please
massacre by the Belgian colonial army, He spoke no English. When he smiled, he come for him at once.  robert moor

38 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
Cubes! The Horror!
Chaos at Armory show. By Jerry Saltz

once artists are ex- rather than reveals. When we dont

1913 pected to shock, its that


much harder for them to
know what were seeing, we over-
react. Oscar Wilde wrote that there
do so. And the prototype is no such thing as a moral or an im-
for all New York art scandals to come moral work of art. Hes right. Art is
was not over Chris Ofili or Robert good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us
Mapplethorpe but the 1913 Armory or not. It does or doesnt disturb op-
Show. The infamous exhibit dis- tical monotony, and succeeds or
played more than 1,000 works of art fails in surmounting sterility of style
by more than 300 artists. The roster or visual stereotype; it creates new
included Picasso, Matisse, Manet, beauty or it doesnt. Scandals hap-
and Czanne, all unknown in this pen when people are certain
country. Also on hand was Marcel certain that a bunch of angled
Duchamps Cubo-Futurist Nude De- shapes on a brown ground is vulgar.
scending a Staircase (No. 2). The Certainty sees things in restrictive,
outrage aimed at this one work was protective, aggressive ways, and
epic. People packed the Lexington thus isnt seeing at all. What the
Avenue Armory by the thousands to At the 1913 Armory Show, Marcel Duchamp scandalized dont take into account
forced American art audiences to confront a new
( duc h a m p s nude de s cendin g a s ta i r c a s e ) ; TH E N E W YOR K P U B L I C L I B RARY / ASTOR / L E N OX / T I L D E N F O U N DAT I O N S (co o k ) ; PHOTO F E ST ( va len t in o)

gawk at, ridicule, and revile it. is that more than one thing can be
way of seeing. They didnt appreciate that.
Today the painting hangs quietly (and often is) true at once.
in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, To engage with art, we have to be
and it takes effort to grasp what the unAmerican, a ruse, a challenge to Duchamps painting broached cog- willing to be wrong, venture out-
to-do was about. No longer looking their religious faith. Remember that nitive boundaries. People werent side our psychic comfort zones,
like the explosion in a shingle fac- in 1913, there was no American able to handle that he redefined suspend disbelief, and remember
p h oto g r a p h s : TH E M U S E U M O F M O D E R N ART / S C A L A / ART R E SO U R C E, N Y ( 1 9 1 3 a r m o ry s h o w ) ; T I M E & L I F E P I C T U R E S / G E TT Y I M AG E S

tory it was said to resemble, it is a avant-garde to speak of. Americans what originality was, or that he was that art explores and alters con-
well-constructed, small, brownish, presumed paintings should be of trying to shatter what he considered sciousness simultaneously. When
semi-abstract image of angled historical scenes, Hudson River a dead academic language of paint- someone sees something immoral,
stairways, banisters, balustrades, a landscapes, presidents, cowboys, ing. In retrospect, there was a good he or she is actually seeing some-
landing, and a sort of stop-action and Indians. There were plenty of reason for the scandal: Gallerygoers thing immoral in him- or herself.
stick figure. Its still visionary in its nudes, too, but they werent taboo as were faced with a living, breathing This built-in paradox is one of arts
ideas, but hardly shocking. long as they were realistic depictions image of rebellion. services to us. It creates space for
Viewers didnt just dislike the of spent-looking, lounging women, In art, scandal is a false narrative, doubt, accepting that were human
painting; they saw it as a threat or moony girls with budding breasts. a smoke screen that camouflages animals. Scandal is only human.

1916

loverboy The first


arrested in
brothel person Who
Accused of Pimping
Reached
ch
T Re a
Rudolph NO
Valentino flees Did
to Hollywood.

Arriving in New York by boat from Italy in 1913, Rudolph


Valentino worked as a taxi dancer at Maxims Restaurant-
The North Pole
Cabaret, where rich women could pay for all sorts of pleasures
with exotic men, also known as tango pirates. He eventually
moved on, repairing his reputation on the ballroom circuitbut
then served as a witness in a highly public divorce, provoked a Frederick Cook, a Brooklyn doctor, claimed to have
(probably) retributive arrest for vice, and had his newly re- 1909 beaten Robert Peary to the Pole by a year. He turned out
spectable name sullied. He fled to Hollywood and started over. to have faked the records; his Inuit guides tattled, too.

april 9, 2012 | new york 39


Who killed the minister
and his mistress?
Of 157 witnesses, only
one was a recumbent
female hog farmer.

n
m a!
i g wi eos i n b e d
p te sti f

she is a liar! Liar!


Romance in the pews leads to blood in Jersey. By sadie stein

a young couple strolling down a lovers lane outside reporters and photographers descending on the area. The bodies
1922 New Brunswick, New Jersey, on a September morning
made a gruesome discovery: the bodies of a man and a
were exhumed and reexamined. The young couple whod discov-
ered them were questioned again and again, as was the girls father.
woman lying under a crab-apple tree. He (the father) was later jailed for incest, she for incorrigibility.
According to accountsbecause confusion over jurisdiction left When Halls diary and a packet of their love letters were discovered
the bodies in an unsecured scene for hours, there were manythe in Millss house, her daughter promptly sold them to the New York
mans face was obscured by a Panama hat; the womans throat was American. One school of thought held that the Klan was involved.
P H OTO G R A P H : U N D E R WO O D & U N D E R WO O D / CO R B I S

wrapped in a blood-soaked scarf; her throat had been savagely cut Prime suspects were Halls wealthy widow and her two
and the wound was crawling with maggots. Both victims had been brothersone eccentric (and a sort of a genius), the other a
shot in the head. And the bodies had been arranged after death, her skilled gunman. But indictments did not come quickly; a loose
head resting on his arm, her hand on his knee, both pointed toward silent film adaptation, The Goose Woman, arrived first. When the
the crab-apple tree. Torn love letters were scattered between the bod- three were belatedly brought to trial, in 1926, the courtroom circus
ies, and the mans calling card lay at his feet: He was Edward Wheeler was wild indeed. Damon Runyon was a reporter, to give you an
Hall, a New Brunswick Episcopalian minister whose wife had ties to idea. Western Union had to hire extra telegraphers. Antics includ-
the communitys most prominent families. The woman, 34-year-old ed the unreliable key prosecution witness being rolled into court
Eleanor Reinhardt Mills, was a congregantand his mistress. on a hospital bed: a mule-riding hog farmer whom the press
It took hours for the police to clear the scene, and by the time they dubbed the pig woman and whose mother said from the crowd,
managed to do so, the surrounding area was trampled, the tree had She is a liar! Liar, liar, liar! All in all, 157 witnesses would be
been stripped of bark by souvenir-hunters, and the business card called, and the New York Times would devote countless front-page
had been passed from hand to hand. The press attacked the case, stories to the trial. Everyone got off.

40 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
1924

blue blood marries


colored girl
Emily Post Frowns
Judge orders nipple check.

By William Norwich

IN 1921, WHILE OUT motoring, societys


eonard Kip Rhinelander met Alice Beatrice
L
Jones, a domestic worker who lived near Stam-
ford, Connecticuts Orchard School, an inpa-
tient clinic where young Leonard was seeking
the cure for a variety of nervous conditions
including stammering and extreme shyness.
While Alice had a curative effect on Leonard,
his family hoped it was just an upstairs-down-
stairs dalliance. They hoped wrong. In 1924,
shortly after Mr. Rhinelander turned 21, the

Hizzoners Disgrace!
couple married. Unbeknownst to all, Mrs. L. Kip
Rhinelander became the first black woman in
the New York Social Registerbut not for long.
A reporter discovered that she was the daugh-
ter of a colored man, a former taxi driver who Crusading judge wipes smile off Jimmy Walkers face.
was almost unrecognizably mixed-race.
Newspapers ran with headlines like Blue By JONAT H A N M A HLER
Blood Weds Colored Girl. For a few weeks,
Leonard defended his wife, but his family won,
urging the couple to separate because of the
Ku Klux Klan, reported the New York Times. looking back, it was Samuel Seabury, to investigate City Hall.
His lawyers filed for an annulment, claiming 1932 inevitablethe fall of Gentleman The resulting scandal was spectacular,
that Alice had hidden her race from Leonard. Jimmy. No man could hold life so even for a city with a bar for municipal cor-
In the judges chambers, Alice, crying and carelessly without falling down a manhole ruption set by Boss Tweed. The Police De-
holding on to her mother, was forced to remove
various articles of clothing so the all-male and before he is done, as a columnist at the partment was running a protection racket
all-white jury could see, by the appearance of time put it. so widespread that a sheriff who earned
her nipples, back, and legs, that Leonard must Jimmy Walker was the anti-Bloomberg, $8,500 a year had managed to squirrel
have known prior to the marriage that she was the mayor as unself-conscious hedonist in away $400,000 in a box. One would be
not entirely of white blood. To the jurys credit, a top hat and swallowtail coat. He pre- hard-pressed to find anything in Walkers
the annulment was denied, the marriage up- sided over New York during the great age New Yorkcontracts, leases, judgeships
held. Under a subsequent agreement, Alice
received a sum of $32,500 plus $3,600 annu- of Gatsby and perfectly embodied that that wasnt for sale. All told, the mayor him-
ally for life. (She and Leonard never reunited.) moment of indulgence: the public servant self had accepted some $1 million in bribes.
It was Emily Post, otherwise the champion who favored short workdays and long af- A songwriter before getting into poli-
of kindness and courtesy, who pushed the So- ternoons at Yankee Stadium, who was ticsanything to avoid the bar exam upon
cial Register to drop Alice. Personalities over loath to miss a big prizefight or Broadway finishing law schoolWalkers biggest hit
principles: Her people in Tuxedo Park were premiere, who left his wife and Greenwich had been Will You Love Me in December
related by marriage to the Rhinelanders, you
see. Mrs. Post got more than she bargained Village apartment for a chorus girl and a (As You Do in May)? Metaphorically
for. She sought only Alices ouster, but with suite at the Ritz-Carlton. speaking, it was now December. The love
it came Leonards as well.  As Walker framed it, he wanted to see his for Walker faded; his resolve flagged. Roo-
smile reflected in the faces of his constitu- sevelt, needing to bolster his presidential
P H OTO G R A P H S : F R O M TO P, A P; B E T T M A N n / CO R B I S

ents. And for a while, he did. New Yorkers candidacy, urged him to resign. That daz-
loved their Jimmy, the crowds gathering at zling, theatrical, and essentially absurd
the Hudson River pier to wish him well career has collapsed at last, wrote the New
when he set off on his European junkets. York Herald-Tribune.
But then the market cratered, and panic Eight days later, in September 1932,
set in. New Yorks archbishop spied divine Walker again boarded a transatlantic liner
retribution for the dubious character of the for Europe, vowing to return soon to clear
citys leadership, though moral denuncia- his name and again run for office. In
Annu tions were the least of Walkers concerns. truth, he was fleeing possible prosecution.
lment With the city now deep in debt, Governor
denie
d!
It surely wasnt how he had imagined it
Roosevelt appointed a crusading judge, ending, but hed had his fun.

april 9, 2012 | new york 41


ID ON
T HE AC WAS T HE
F ACE F I T .
HER O
L EAS T

peaches:
whos your
daddy?
By DAN P. LEE
She was 16, he was 52, what could go wrong?
daddys attorney wanted to deed, when the couple took up residence in sponded with a tabloid tell-all and lawsuit,
1926 know whether she blamed Daddy
for the acid attack. There was no
the Hotel Gramatan, several reporters fol-
lowed suit, so that, according to Michael M.
alleging Daddy was a pervert.
Daddy turned his attention to charity.
proof at all, but Peaches said she suspected Greenburgs definitive 2008 account of the Especially for children, and especially for
he had something to do with it all the same. marriage, the sound of typewriters was au- the local chapter of the Phi Lambda Tau
Though she did not act very much like it, dible in the hallways. social sorority for high-school girls, of which
Frances Peaches Browning was only 16 Even before Peaches, Daddy was well he was the main benefactor. The sororitys
years old. On the witness stand, she wore a known in New York as perhaps the most primary function was throwing dances
bandage on her chin to cover the scarring idiosyncratic of the citys eligible bachelors. across Manhattan for girls in scanty flapper
from the vial of acid she claimed was A single father worth what would now be an dress, where Daddy, with his long, sagging
splashed on her as she awoke one morning estimated $300 million, hed become a tab- face and steep W-collared dress shirts,
a year ago, just before her wedding. It had loid fixture after marrying, at age 40, his first smoked cigars and held court. And so it
become yet another point of contention in wife, Adele, a considerably younger blonde went that one night, inside the ballroom of
the legendarily tawdry trial for separation file clerk with whom he lived in a 24-room the Hotel McAlpin on 34th and Broadway,
(divorce was not an option at the time, since penthouse apartment overlooking Central Brownings life intersected with Frances
neither had claimed infidelity), which her Park. Unable to have childrenthroughout Heenans, whom the press would describe
husband, 52-year-old Edward Daddy his life Daddy would vehemently defend as a chubby, strawberry-blonde high-
Browning, one of the most successful real- himself against rumors of infertilitythe school dropout with piano legs but an in-
estate developers in Manhattan, had op- couple adopted two daughtersMarjorie explicably magnetic smile who worked as
posed. Hed intended to be with Peaches and little Dorothy Sunshine, as Daddy a shop clerk and lived with her single moth-
forever, but after lavishing her with 200 er in Washington Heights. He likened her
bunches of flowers and 50 boxes of candy to peaches and cream, securing her lifelong
and 60 dresses and 179 coats, less than six nickname. Thirty-seven days later, to
months into their marriage and twenty thwart a child-protective-services investiga-
pounds heavier shed walked out of their tion, they were married.
Kew Gardens residence, along with her In the end, though Peaches had com-
mother, whom Daddy had agreed to let live ported herself well on the witness stand in
with them and whom Peaches had used, he White Plainsexercising her affectation
would testify, as another tool in the arsenal for answering questions with not yes but
of excuses and obstructions shed put be- pos-i-tive-lyit was her diary, which re-
tween him and his rights as a husband. As vealed her experience making love with
part of her suit for alimony, Peachesa nice several others before Daddy, that did her
girl who petted, as one acquaintance sum- in. In his ruling, the judge lauded Daddys
marized to reportersasserted virtuous- generosityhis introducing Peaches into
ness, and claimed that she had no choice but s good societyand concluded that her
month
to flee given Daddys aberrations, from his or six charges of abnormal and unnatural acts
love! f
affinity for bent spoons and a honking pet and practices were false and vicious.
African bird and alcohol and pornography nicknamed his favoriteand when Adele (Despite a police investigation, the perpe-
to his demand that she parade before him slipped off aboard a steamship to Paris with trator of the acid attack went unidentified;
naked and interact with an occult woman the 28-year-old playboy dentist whose office like Daddy Browning, many would blame
who wore a snake around her neck and es- shed been visiting frequently, she took Mar- Peaches herself.) Though the separation
poused sexual magic. jorie with her. The couple split, and each was granted, the marriage would stand,
As vendors hawked hot dogs and souve- kept a favored daughter. and Peaches was entitled to no alimony.
nirs to the 3,000 gawkers who gathered Vowing never to marry again, in what His credibility restored, Daddy Brown-
outside the White Plains courthouse, more the tabloids quickly helped morph into a ing did not leave the tabloid spotlight. A
than 40 newspapermen assiduously report- Willy Wonkastyle lottery, Daddy set about series of smart business moves before the
ed every detail, with fresh Western Union finding a sister for Sunshine: After person- market crashed kept him in good financial
and telephone lines run to the city to accom- ally reviewing 12,000 applications and in- stead, until a cerebral hemorrhage rendered
modate their transmissions. The grotesque terviewing scores of would-be daughters, him, essentially, a paranoid schizophrenic
fairy tale of Peaches and Daddy Browning he chose Mary Louise Spas of Queens, who, roaming his Scarsdale mansion, where he
had become one of the most sensational despite being 16 and therefore two years died alone at 59. Peaches pursued a success-
p h oto g r a p h s : B E TT M A N n / COR B I S

news stories in postWorld War I America. older than the cutoff, bore a charming gold ful career in vaudeville. She had an affair
With the couples frequent cooperation and tooth and stole his heart. A My Fair Lady with Milton Berle. After Daddy died, she
coordination, the press had witnessed near- transformation ensued, rapturously re- married and divorced three times more.
ly every milestone of their whirlwind ro- ported by the press, which continued troll- She also became an alcoholic. On August
mance, including Fifth Avenue shopping ing Spass past, ultimately uncovering re- 23, 1956, her mother heard a crashing
trips with a six-person security detail, all- vealing swimsuit photos that led to school sound in the bathroom of their New York
night dancing adventures across Manhat- records that led to the disclosure that Mary City apartment and found Peaches uncon-
tan, and a trip to Atlantic City with Peaches was actually 21 and not poor. Daddy moved scious on the floor with a large contusion
in a shocking, thigh-bearing one-piece. In- to have the adoption annulled. Mary re- above her ear. She was 46. 

april 9, 2012 | new york 43


Mary Astor Blushes When Her Filthy Diary Leaks
his first initial is G, and I
1936 fell like a ton of bricks. I met him
Friday. Saturday he called for me at the

p h oto g r a p h s : 1 9 3 6 lo s a n g e l e s t i m e s, r e p r i n t e d w i t h p e r m i s s i o n ( d i a ry pag e ) ; p h oto f e s t (a s to r) ; g wc / a p ( w h i t n e y ) ; to m h o wa r d / n e w yo r k da i ly n e w s / g e t t y i m ag e s ( da i ly n e w s cov e r )


Ambassador and we went to the Casino for lunch
and had a very gay time! Mondaywe ducked
out of the boring party. It was very hot so we got
a cab and drove around the park a few times and
the park was, well, the park, and he held my hand
and said hed like to kiss me but didnt.
Tuesday night we had a dinner at 21 and on
the way to see Run Little Chillun he did kiss
meand I dont think either of us remember
much what the show was about. We played
kneesies during the first two acts, my hand
wasnt in my own lap during the third. Its been
years since Ive felt up a man in public, but
I just got carried away.
Afterwards we had a drink someplace and
then went to a little flat in 73rd Street where we
could be alone, and it was all very thrilling and
beautiful. Once George lays down his glasses, he
is quite a different man. His powers of recupera-
tion are amazing, and we made love all night
long. It all worked perfectly, and we shared our
fourth climax at dawn. I didnt see much of any-
body else the rest of the timewe saw every
show in town, had grand fun together and went
frequently to 73rd Street where he fucked the
living daylights out of me.

Excerpts published in Kenneth Angers Hollywood
Babylon, from the diary of actress Mary Astor,
whose affair with the playwright and critic George S.
Kaufman was exposed during her 1936 custody
battle. She claimed the snippets leaked to the tabloids
were inaccurate. Well never know: A judge in
1952 had it burned.

1927 IN 1927, A QUEENS house- 1938 d s


ar al
wife named Ruth Snyder
ch st e
ruth snyder
i
and her lover murdered
her husband, bashing his
R ey
itn m i s i n
l g!
h
FRIEs!
head in with a window-
sash weight. Caught and
W
$ 3o s i n g
t
convicted, the two were
nt
sent to the electric chair at Se
Shot While Executed Sing Sing, making Snyder
the first American woman
to be electrocuted. The
sensational story only be-
came more so after a pho-
tographer for the upstart
Daily News strapped a spy
camera to his ankle and
snapped a picture in the
death chamber as the juice
was turned on. The News
doubled its newsstand cir-
culation that day, instantly
establishing itself as the 1929: Vice-president of New York Stock Exchange crowned savior of Wall Street.
masses paper of choice. 1938: After three charges of grand larceny, called wolf of Wall Street.

44 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
Plays prostie on the Great White Way, wears silk undies in jail.

Mae west sex capade!


By FRANK RICH
in a 192526 New The play outlasted nearly all West bailed out her company. tywould be raided and shut
1927 York theater season the competition. Variety chris- The court had offered to drop down at its second Broadway
with acclaimed new tened its heroine, a Montreal charges if she would close the performance in 1928. Undaunt-
plays by ONeill (The Great lady of the evening with a fond- show. But she knew that in ed, she eventually revived Sex
God Brown), OCasey (Juno ness for sailors, the Babe Ruth showbiz, crime paid. The grand and toured the Depression-era
and the Paycock), and Coward of stage prosties. jurys claim that her obscene, Midwest without incident, be-
(Hay Fever), critics agreed that Politics turned a hit into a indecent, immoral, and impure fore arriving in Hollywood,
the rock bottom was Sex, the Jazz Age phenomenon. When drama would abet the corrup- where, paired with Cary Grant
first Broadway vehicle written New Yorks rakish mayor, Jim- tion of the morals of youth was and W.C. Fields, she hit super-
by and starring the voluptuous my Walker, took a Havana better than any rave review. Fes- stardom as she was reaching
vaudeville trouper Mae West. holiday in February 1927, the tooned with white roses, she 40. The Bushwick-born, self-
Sex was street sweepings, in acting mayor, Joseph V. (Holy rode a limo to incarceration on invented West (18931980)
the verdict of The New Yorker, Joe) McKee, raided three ris- Welfare Island and boasted of wrote the Ur-text for Madonna
and a crude, inept play, cheap- qu Broadway shows. West wearing silk underwear and Lady Gaga, repeatedly
p h oto g r a p h : b e t t m a n n / co r b i s

ly produced and poorly acted, was the prime target: Sex, then throughout her eight-day stay breaking gender and sexual bar-
according to the Times. The in the tenth month of its run, there. When Liberty magazine riers over a marathon career as
papers review did helpfully had been seen by 325,000 the- paid her $1,000 for an exit in- a writer, performer, free-speech
note that the shows one torrid atergoers. To the delight of the terview, she used it to start a provocateur, and showbiz en-
love scene lived up to its title. tabloid press, its twenty actors Mae West Memorial Library for trepreneur. Her pioneering
An ad warning patrons who were hauled off to a police sta- female prisoners. playbook for turning scandal
cannot stand excitement to tion in Hells Kitchen. The star A later West playThe Plea- into profits remains the gold
see your doctor before visiting spent the night in the Jefferson sure Man, awash in female im- standard in American pop cul-
Mae West didnt hurt either. Market Womens Prison. personators and homosexuali- ture to this day. 

april 9, 2012 | new york 45


Say it aint so,
He S h
19 5

o
s
0

o t s,
ses
Quiz Show!
M i
H e Pu r p o s e !
on

fraud
!

IN 1950, THE City College of New York mens bas-


ketball team won the NCAA and NIT tournaments
at Madison Square Gardena rare feat. A year later,
seven members of the team were arrested in
a point-shaving scheme that ultimately involved
32 current and former players from several teams,
and proved to be one of the greatest (known) scan- thirty-f our million American cynicism in the imperial

p h oto g r a p h : c lo c k w i s e f r o m to p, l e f t, p t / a p p h oto ; g e t t y i m ag e s ; pa r a m o u n t p i c t u r e s / t h e
dals in college sports.  1956 U.S. households had televi-
sions in 1956, and that De-
style when a studio-system hack
crowns a cipher like Charles van
cember an estimated 50 million Doren a national hero. And the coun-

n e w yo r k t i m e s / r e d u x ; o p p o s i t e pag e , n e w yo r k da i ly n e w s a r c h i v e / g e t t y i m ag e s
Americans watched the climactic, try eats it up.
1959 rigged episode of Twenty-One Then came the wronger verdict

d.j. spins for Payola


pitting a Jewish ex-G.I. from Queens cheering on a witch-hunt prosecu-
against a Brahmin second-generation tion meant to straighten out prime
Columbia faculty member in side-by- time. Really, they were prosecuting
What About the Teens? side Eichmann-style isolation cham-
bers, a staging that looks now like the
producers for how they were
programming: The Manhattan dis-
Rock-music pioneer Alan
first great televised show trial of trict attorneys office took up the
Moondog Freed fired after taking American meritocracy. sanctimonious crusade of exposing
industry cash to play records. We returned the wrong verdict the game shows, Kenneth Starr style.
first. Herb Stempel had been the (Twenty-four were on the air at the
shows pick for champion and among time, the peak of Sputnik fever.)
the first to be fed answers from pro- A House of Representatives sub
ducersone of whom went on to committee launched its own investi-
found Penthouse Forum. But the au- gation and compelled Van Doren to
dience got bored with Stempel. They testify and finally confessthe gold-
wanted someone more polished, en boy had lied to the grand jury but
more imperialsomeone who made couldnt bear to do it in the halls of
mastery of trivia look like a form of Congress. When he returned home
genteel grace rather than something from Washington that night, a re-
that rubbed off on your hands from porter met Van Doren at the door
cheap newsprint. The contest picked with news from his two employers:
up a lot of power, generations later, as NBC had fired him, and Columbia
a forced parable of lost innocence had accepted his resignation.
(thank you, Robert Redford), but its  david wallace-wells

46 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
The first U.S.
post-op, in a gorgeous
First sex-
fur coat, arriving
at the Public Health
change op in
office at Idlewild
Airport in 1953. U.S. history.
EDITOR AND
1953 ublisher estimated
P
that more news-
print had been devoted to
sex-change pioneer Chris-
tine Jorgensen in 1953 than
to any other individual.
Jorgensen had been a frail
Bronx boy named George
who after a stint in the army,
hormone therapy, and
a trip to Denmark, became
Christine. In her auto
biography, she describes
the aftermath of surgery:
The door opened and a neatly
dressed young woman entered;
a complete stranger to me.
Im afraid you have the wrong
room, I said. Who are you
looking for? Are you Miss
Jorgensen? Yes. I have
a telegram I think you should
read. I thought there might
have been a death in my fami-
ly. I reached out to take it
from her hand, and read the
message: bronx gi becomes
a woman. dear mom and
dad son wrote, i have now
become your daughter.
I read it again, not really com-
prehending, until I realized
at last that it had not been
addressed to me: It was a mes-
sage sent over an international
press-service wire, and what
I held in my hand was a copy
of the dispatch. Who did this
unforgivable thing? I asked.
She answered me quietly
and sympathetically. I truly
dont know, she said. Youll
have to prepare yourself, Miss

switcheroo!
Jorgensen. Tomorrows news-
papers will carry this story

She was
in banner headlines. Im a
reporter for Information. Will
you give me an interview?
It seems to me now a shocking
commentary on the press
of our time that I pushed the
hydrogen-bomb tests on
Eniwetok right off the front
pages. A tragic war was still
raging in Korea, George VI
had died and Britain had

a he?!
a new queen, sophisticated
guided missiles were going off
in New Mexico, Jonas Salk
was working on a vaccine for
infantile paralysis. Christine
Jorgensen was on page one.
Excerpted from Christine Jorgensen:
A Personal Autobiography. (c) 1967 by
Christine Jorgensen. (c) Renewed
2000 by the Motion Picture & Televi-
sion Fund. Published by Cleis Press.

47
Wanamaker princesss big pink party turns into drunken riot.

Psycho scions
rampage
pretty, blonde, and rich, 18-year- in a frenzy that broke all but six of its 1,600 ex-
1963 old socialite Fernanda Wanamaker quisitely mullioned windows. The owner was
Wetherill was the most famous debu- paid for damages, but no charges were filed im-
tante in America since Brenda F razier made the mediately, inciting a wave of public indignation.
cover of Life magazine in 1938 for being pretty, Under mounting pressure, a grand jury was con-
brunette, and rich. Wetherill was the essence of vened, and thirteen young men (five in the Social
her breed and the envy of mil- Register) and one girl were
lions of young girls. The great- charged with the willful de-
granddaughter of John Wana- struction of property. The trial
maker, the founder of the in Riverhead gave the public a
eponymous department store, perturbing glimpse into the

p h oto g r a p h s : c lo c k w i s e f r o m to p l e f t, n y da i ly n e w s / g e t t y i m ag e s ; T e d R u s s e l l / T i m e L i f e P i c t u r e s / G e t t y I m ag e s ; u n d e r wo o d a r c h i v e s
her clothing, c ountry-clubbing, lives of the spoiled rich. When
and patrician boyfriends with sophomore Eaton Brooks, who
perfect teeth were great fodder was swinging from the chande-
for g ossip columns, as were the lier when it ripped loose, was
minutest details of her all-pink asked by the district attorney
coming-out party held at her how he was invited to the party,
stepfather Donald Leass he answered, There is a social
Southampton estate on Labor secretary. Philadelphia Main-
Day weekend 1963pink liner Samuel Shipley III
invitations, pink dress, pink a ccused authorities of using
floral arrangements, and a innocent peoples lives as
pink three-poled tent un- instruments of publicity. The
der which 800 guests culled from the Social D.A. then called him a snotty kid.
Register would sip pink Champagne. Her The incident was analyzed by the media for
stepfather rented an oceanfront mansion as months as having grave sociological implica-
a dormitory for her young friends with no tions. Do the Rich Have Immunity? asked the
place to sleep. Times. Life ran an eight-page spread with a
There wasnt much sleeping. After 24 hours group photograph of the perpetrators looking
on a liquid diet, left alone to their own devices very much like a Ralph Lauren ad and the
in the huge mansion, about 60 of the pride of headline Young People Dont Give a Damn
society went on a Lord of the Flies rampage. Attitude Hits A New Extreme. The magazine
The beds were splintered, the chandelier also hired a psychoanalyst who proclaimed the
ripped from the ceiling, the crystal and china destruction an act of mass psychosis. 
used for target practice, and the house stoned stevengaines

REMEMBER when grants, De Angelis was a illionthe swindle raised


m
1963 Wall Street traded commodities broker whod at least $180 million from

salad oil
in actual commodi- run into trouble with the investors.
ties, not derivatives and law for supplying improp- De Angelis filled some of
other financial products erly prepared meat to the his tanks with water, leav-

swindle!
that made it oh-so-easy to federal school-lunch pro- ing only a thin film of oil on
bamboozle investors? The gram. In the early sixties, top in case of inspection
good old dayswhen it was he finagled an initial perhaps the most literal
just as easy, it turns out, to contract with the U.S. gov- Wall Street slickster of

One Slick Financier pull the wool over the eyes


of the unsuspecting. Easier,
ernments Food for Peace
program, which sold excess
them all. But soybean pric-
es tumbled when the Soviet
maybe. If you were Bronx foodstuffs to poor coun- market didnt open up as
Oil tanks filled native Anthony Tino De tries. And on the basis of De Angelis had expected,
with water! Angelis, all you needed was his stunningly large, almost and when panicked inves-
a refinery in Bayonne and a totally fake inventory tors came knocking to col-
working knowledge of the De Angelis claimed 1.8 lect on their chits, the au-
nations soybean surplus. billion pounds of soybean thorities followed.
The son of Italian immi- oil, but had only 110 noreen malone

48 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
Howard
Hughes
Spruce Goosed!
A CON FOOLS one mark, a scam a
1971 whole school of them. The ambition
of a hoax is much grander, to sucker
the whole world, which means its an absurdist
fantasy more or less doomed from the start.
Or maybe not, if the huckster is savvy enough
to pick an unwitting shill whos so completely
ascended into myth and innuendo that people
only doubt stories about his life when the dis-
patches seem to arrive from the real world.
By 1970, when a novelist named Clifford
Irving living in Ibiza hatched a plan to cash in
by publishing an entirely fabricated auto
biography of Howard Hughes, the billionaire
tool magnate, aviator, and gonzo movie pro-
ducer was not just our richest recluse but the
most famous, legendary for being legendarily
weird: Michael Jackson by way of Citizen

Norman Mailer Runs


Kane, Charles Manson, and Tony Stark. That
he was scheduling a rendezvous with a secret
biographer on top of a Mexican pyramid

for Mayor, Stabs Wife seemed perfectly plausible. Much likelier,


anyway, than that he was engaging in a snippy
he-said-he-said fight with a small-time writer
over whether a book was actually real.
Manly men like swords. Hughes, hearing of the 1971 McGraw-Hill
book deal, made an angry call to Frank
come on, you little faggot, werent enough for Mailer, who was expect- McCulloch, whod been the last man to inter-
view him. It was the first time hed been
1960 wheres your cojones. It was 4:30
a.m., and a drunken Adele
ing at least a Rockefeller. He challenged
Plimpton and several others to fight as the
heard from in years; McCulloch took the call
but, ultimately, Irvings word. Hughes then
Morales Mailer was berating her drunken night went south, with a hostile, ragtag staged a conference call to denounce the
husband at their own party for once more crowd setting the tone. book. But Irving was much more sensible-
playing the belligerent fool in front of the High-level literary types who witnessed seeming on 60 Minutes a week later. Mike
literary Establishment. His shirt already the stabbing got Adele safely to University Wallace believed him.
Most journalistic hoaxes are amateur-hour
torn and his eyes wild, Norman whipped Hospital for surgery. Mailer had punctured operations, delicious because the stakes are so
out a penknife with a two-and-half-inch her cardiac sac. Yet nearly everyone in the low and the pigpen so small. But Irvings was
blade and stabbed her. know, women included, immediately fo- impeccably planned. Hed forged letters so
That fall of 1960, the barrel-chested writ- cused on Normans fate rather than Adeles. perfectly that experts authenticated them. He
er and provocateur had hatched the idea He was One of Usan intellectual, not a had McGraw-Hill send Hughess checks to a
that he should run for New York City may- criminaland after all, he was three sheets Swiss bank, where Irvings wife collected them,
with a false passport, as H.R. Hughes. Most
or, despite a recent arrest after he hailed a to the wind. Surely this could all be worked important, he had lucked into an unpublished
police cruiser as if it were a taxi. Mailer out privately. After hiding out for a day, biography by a Hughes confidanteand ap-
planned to form a coalition consisting Mailer appeared as scheduled, incredibly, propriated it, much of it nearly verbatim. The
of a newly immobilized mass of the on Mike Wallaces morning TV show and autobiographynow an icon of writing in
d ise nfranchisedcriminals, Bowery spoke strangely of the sword as a symbol bad faiththerefore had the unfortunate
p h oto g r a p h s : b e t t m a n n / co r b i s / a p

bums, hipstersand the citys elite. Having of manhood. problem of being largely true.
Much of it, anyway: It soon emerged that on
infamously celebrated the courage of Much of Mailers coterie thought that the dates of Irvings supposed meetings with
hoodlums in the essay The White Negro, the stabbing would be the end of Nor- Hughes, he had in fact been meeting with
he was unlikely to win the up-the-middle man, as one friend said, but in the end he mistresses. Confessing, Irving had to return
voter anyway. got off lightly, with the law and his peers. the $750,000 advance, but his follow-up tell-
For a November 19 party to kick off the Years later, he marveled in these pages at all reportedly netted a $500,000 offer. When
candidacy, Mailer rounded up the disen- his reception at a party within a week or that book was made into a movie in 2007, he
insisted his name be removed from the
franchisedmany of them homeless peo- two of the crime. Five degrees less warmth creditsit took too many liberties, he said.
pleand enlisted George Plimpton to than I was accustomed to. Not fifteen david wallace-wells
gather the power structure. The results degrees lessfive. evan hughes

april 9, 2012 | new york 49


Why dont you just bring a man in our bed?

n
A nht shewd ler.
h o ug pro
t ed a
g
bag M othe
had r- i n
her
dou - law
bt s.

the woodward affair

SHE SHOT
HUBBY!
Did Capote kill her?

Ann Woodward was the Platonic ideal shotgun. The police arrived to find her crying next
1955 of the High Society arriviste, female ver-
sion, originally from Pittsburg, Kansas,
to her husbands body.
The drama delighted their high-society friends,
with the voluptuousness and vivacity to whose pride and insecurity was that all anyone
drive men wild and the lack of social graces to drive could see in them was dollar signsof course, a
their wives nuts. She was the kind of woman whod woman like Woodward would stop at nothing, even
wear red shoes with a blue dress and didnt worry too murder, to get her hands on her husbands money
much about smoking in public. (in fact, most of it was kept in trust for her sons).
She and her husband, banking heir Billy Wood- A jury took a half-hour to find her innocent of mur-
ward (Woodwards father had originally spotted her, derbut her sentence turned out to be much more
likely exasperating her future mother-in-law, Elsie diabolical than mere prison. She was entangled in
Woodward, the highest of high-society dames), had a heavy web of gossip. One of her troubled sons
a very good time. They both slept with pretty much wouldnt forgive her for killing his father and tried
whomever they wanted tohis conquests included Bil to kill himself (hed later succeed, as would his
women and men. Why dont you just bring a man in ly brother). Shortly thereafter, she heard that Tru-
our bed, she yelled at him, in one of their frequent, man Capotes legendarily unfinished gossip novel
p h oto g r a p h s : b e t t m a n n / co r b i s

drunken tiffs. Thats what you want. But when Answered Prayers was to feature an account of the
they fought, they quickly made uppossibly, it was killing, essentially convicting Ann of murder. Rath-
an upper-class version of true love. er than live through a new round of hounding, she
It happened after a particularly boozy party at took a cyanide pill, lay down on her bed, and never
the Duke and Duchess of Windsors (she and Wallis got up. Her mother-in-law, whod always believed
Simpson, a fellow arriviste, had a deep bond). In that Ann pulled the trigger with malice afore-
their North Shore neighborhood, there had been thought but had kept quiet so as to minimize the
reports of a prowler, so husband and wife went to scandal, is said to have remarked, Well, thats
bed half-drunkin separate bedroomswith weap- that, she shot my son, and Truman murdered her,
ons by their sides. In the middle of the night, she and so now I suppose we dont have to worry about
saw a shadowy figure and fired both barrels of her that anymore.  John Homans

50 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
touch with his own child, and he One of the things that made it into a

B A D B E H AV I O R
changed his life. And he is a much greater scandal was that my editor
nicer person now. But listen, things called me and told me that Barbara
have changed drastically. Divorce Walters had a word with [then-pub-

IN B O L D F A C E itself, the very word used to be a


scandal. And now it doesnt even
you dont pause. Youve got Newt
lisher] Phyllis Grann and said, You
cant do this to Calvin; its making
him miserable. Everybodys gonna
Gingrich married so many times, and be angry at you, Phyllis. And so once
hes running for president. But be- I went to the press and repeated that,
cause the Internet tells all, and so a lot of people were really angry at
quickly, nobody is sure what they me, including you.
believe. So the result of this instant L.S.: Well, I probably was. I proba-
news and the press hyping it up into bly was defensive about Calvins
a scandalwell, the Post is a good sex life.
example. They make big mountains S.G.: No, you were defensive about
out of molehills every day. Theyre Barbara Walters.
going now with this prostitution L.S.: Well, I used to defend Bar-
scandal. And I dont blame them, but bara. I always believed, Steven,
Im not very interested in that. I dont that you had to get access. So I
know who any of the people are. worked hard to get access. So
S.G.: I know, Im not at all interested. sometimes I overstepped my I
L.S.: But the enhanced access of the think loyalty is the biggest last line
instant news, so that gossip colum- in the world. More people do bad
nists of my kind couldnt even exist things and lie and defend people
today, the result is total cynicism on and attack people over their loy-
the part of the public. Theyre quick alty. Loyalty seems to be craved by
to point the finger, theyre quick to be everybody, and I think its a bad
Steven Gaines Liz Smith reassured. Thinking about Lindsay thing to have. It clouds your judg-
Lohan; she has become a scandal be- ment. Makes you so you cant be
cause the press overemphasizes her dispassionate about things. When
every move. Addicts have been for- youre writing about them, you
V e n e r ab l e g os s ip columnist a classic, whether people hate you given. But she was so attractive when need to be dispassionate. Gener-
Liz Smith, 89, has been in the or love you. Look at Jennifer Lopez. she first appearedand so your ad- ally. I got away with a lot because
catbird seat of New York gossip Wasnt she with Sean Combs when miration, your scorn, and your pity all I wasnt a serious writer.
for over 50 years, with c olumns in the gun went off in the nightclub mingle when you think about her. She S.G.: Also, there was a certain kind-
the Daily News, Newsday, the Post, and all of that? She wasnt too pop- becomes a scandal, like, Why cant ness. You werent in this to destroy
and syndication in over 70 news- ular and then she took up with Ben that girl pull herself together? lives, to make people unhappy, or to
papers. She got her start ghost- Affleck and then she Now shes a S.G.: Scandals used to be more cause embarrassment.
writing Cholly Knickerbockerss beloved figure, Im telling you. rarefied. L.S.: I dont know whether I deserve
column in the Hearst newspapers. Paula Abdula big comeback. L.S.: Ann Woodwardthis was a so much credit. I was probably just
The Post dropped her column in S.G.: Marv Albert had trouble com- r eally great story. She shot and cowardly and loyal to certain
2009, though shes still in other ing back from his sex scandal. It killed her husband in their home people.
papers. Steven Gaines is author of involved biting. and claimed she thought he was a S.G.: You were kind to me when
such books as Philistines at the L.S.: Its hardest to come back after burglar. It was said she committed they dragged me off to the hospital
Hedgerow: Passion Property in something specific and, Im sorry to suicide when she read the Truman to dry out.
the Hamptons and co-author of say, in my opinion, small. Eliot Capote version of the story. And her L.S.: I never wanted to see people
Obession: The Lives and Times of Spitzers involvement with a prosti- mother-in-law was protecting her suffering. I had an advanced view-
Calvin Klein. tute was a real scandal because he was two grandchildren and refused to point about sex. Sex is sex. It never
so brilliant and rising. The difference say anything about the fact that a surprised me or shocked me. People
Steven Gaines: You once said between him and Congressman lot of people believed that Ann had are going to go on doing strange
something to me years ago, just in Weiner is that the latter treated his murdered William. That was a things like biting each other. But the
passing: You dont have to sleep in own body like a kind of joke, and it great story. That had class. Internet is just outrageous. Maybe
the bed that you made. That people made him a joke. S.G.: Do you remember when I wrote when I was writing, you could be-
are forever escaping their follies. lieve that I was a real human being
Liz Smith: If youre just guilty of who was trying to present both sides
public opinion, you can work
against that to come back. A lot of S ex is sex. of it, though I certainly have fended
against that plenty. But you dont
people have. Eliot Spitzer is on the
rise. Clinton totally became a It never surprised me believe any of this shit you read on
the Internet. They may be right,
reformed character, or he appears
to have become one. Anybody can
come back from anything, I think,
or shocked me. they may be intrinsically right, but
its all so mean-spirited that its
made gossip not fun.
if they havent killed somebody or S.G.: You dont know what to
committed a criminal act. S.G.: There are some things that the Calvin Klein book? The fury believe.
S.G.: Im surprised how easily Don other people just dont want to for- that that caused? They said I outed L.S.: And they have no guardians.
Imus came back. He was off the air give you for. For instance, Woody Calvin. No editors, publishers, lawyers. We
i l lu s t r at i o n s : zo h a r l a z a r

for a little while after the nappy- Allen and Soon-Yi. L.S.: Well, timing is everything. You used to have to vet everything with
headed comment in 2007, and L.S.: Thats exactly right. And he was could write a book like that today the lawyers. We had to explain our-
then hes back as strong as ever. kind of arrogant when that hap- and Calvin probably wouldnt care. selves, what we were saying. Well,
L.S.: Well, he made a really righ- pened. But now he seems to have S.G.: It wasnt so much about what all I can say is I had the best of it. It
teous apology. Also, Imus kept on changed. And also, he made a suc- I wrote, although I did write about deserted me in the end.
being on the air, and the victory will cess of the thing that was a scandal. his sex life, and I dont think any- S.G.: How do you mean?
come to those who are constantly in He made a success of his marriage, body hadI think he was only de- L.S.: Well, I got fired by the Post.
the limelight. If youre on television and he suffered terrible losses, scribed as bisexual before that. But I had no outlet anymore. And
enough, you become some kind of whether we think so or not. He lost that book was killed at G.P. Putnam. youre only as good as your outlet.

april 9, 2012 | new york 51


Rocks
1980

sunny in a
coma
Off! Killer Claus?
And Dominick Dunne
is off to the races!
Nelsons coitus massively
interruptus!!!

von blow was not his real last


name: Clauss Danish father, a dra
ma critic who greatly admired the
Germans, was convicted as a col
laborator after World War II, so
Claus took his maternal grand
fathers name. Trained as a contracts
p y,
hap lawyer, he impressed J. Paul Getty
d ies p py?
e r a enough to become his personal as
k e fell b o u t h
Roc sistant, and at a party, he met Sunny
at a
wh

p h oto g r a p h s : AP ( m a r s h ac k ) ; c e n t r a l p r e s s / GETT Y I MAGES ( r o c k e f e l l e r) ; c h a r l e s k r u pa / a p ( vo n b u lo w )


but
Crawford, a beautiful heiress un
happy with her royal husbands rov
ing eye. In 1966, after her divorce,
they married; by 1979, they werent
as happy, and he was having an af
nelson thought he was coming, the death, she explained that she was with the fair with a socialite actress. That
1979 but he was going. That was one quip
following the news that Nelson Rocke
family spokesman.
Eager for closure, the family allowed no autopsy
December, Sunny dipped briefly
into a coma; a year later, it happened
fellerNew Yorks four-term governor, former and had the corpse cremated, hastily absolving again. She had suspicious traces of
vice-president of the United States, and the most everyone involved of any negligence or malfea insulin in her system, and after the
prominent scion of Americas most famous sance4 Rockefeller Children Say All at Hand second time, her son, Alexander von
Auersperg, and a P.I. he hired found
wealthy familyhad succumbed to a heart at Did Their Best read the good-natured headline a black bag in Clauss locked closet
tack at the age of 70, while in his midtown town in the Times. But the image of an engorged that included an insulin-tainted
house with his 25-year-old assistant, Megan Rocky launched into eternity by an orgasm wor needle. Claus was charged with at
Marshack. Preferred joke: How did Nelson thy of Americas premier financial titan was al tempted murder, and in 1982, he
Rockefeller die? Low blood pressure: 70 over 25. ready firmly established in the popular mind. was sentenced to 30 years. He then
Before there was Warren Buffett and his sec The sudden death may have robbed the hired Alan Dershowitz to handle the
appeal. Truman Capote came for
retary, there was Rockefeller and his. Autres public of democracys birthright, the spectacle ward to swear that Sunny had been
temps, autres murs. The official story quickly of the high and mighty crushed and fallen. an intravenous-drug user. In 1985,
broke down. He had not been in his office Rockefeller himself was the very Midas of Claus was retried, at vast expense
working on a book about his art collection but scandal, his touch turning gold to outrage: the (writing in Vanity Fair, Dominick
in his townhouse. He had not been with his se Diego Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center, the Dunne observed, The powerful de
curity guard but with his security guard and his prison riots at Attica, and of course his high- fense team assembled by Von Blow
for the second trial so outshone the
chauffeur. Okay, security guard, chauffeur, and profile divorce from Mary Clark, his wife of 22 prosecution that the trial often
a young blonde woman in a black evening years, to marry Margaretta Happy Murphy, seemed like a football game between
gown. He died instantly. Actually, he died one his wife at the time of his death. By the time the New York Jets and Providence
hour after he was stricken. The blonde called scandal arrived breathless and too late in that High). Nine witnesses testified that
911, and thats all she did. Well, first she called midtown lair, Nelson Rockefeller, as a liberal Sunnys condition might not be
her friend, TV personality Ponchitta Pierce, Republican, had been out of sync with his consistent with an insulin overdose.
Claus was acquitted, Dershowitz
and it was Pierce who called 911. Where was various milieus for a long time. Of course, not wrote Reversal of Fortune, and Jer
Marshack? Out of town, replied the family knowing whether you are coming or going is emy Irons won an Oscar for playing
spokesman, though when reporters had the very definition of even a moderate Repub Claus in the film adaptation. Sunny
reached Marshack by phone a few hours after lican these days. leesiegel died in 2008.  carl swanson

52 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
Spurned
thinking, You go, girl, even though that expression had
not yet been invented.

Headmistress
It was clear there would turn out to be another
woman (there was), and that she would be younger,

Packs Heat
prettier, blonde, and probably his receptionist (all
true). But as it turned out, Jean Harris did not
want to be a celebrity murderess like Roxie
Heads to Scarsdale. Hart, or even a poster child for women whose
antidepressant supplies run low. She was a
By Nor a Ephron proud, prickly woman, a classic headmis
tress. The night of the murder, shed worn
i suppose the best moment was at the a headband. She insisted to police that she
1980 very beginning. hadnt meant to kill Tarnower; shed
This is how it is with great murders: At brought the gun to Scarsdale only to kill
the very beginning, you know only the basic outline, herself. She claimed that Tarnower had
the tabloid headline on the first-day story; so you tried to take the gun away from her, and
have the maximum ability to apply your theories, shed accidentally shot him.
your insights, your own particular life lessonsin She could easily have gotten off by
short, your narcissismto what happened. Every pleading temporary insanity; she could
murder is a Rorschach, and the Rorschach is at its have copped to a lesser plea; instead
most powerful before you know too much, before she stuck to her sad, implausible story.
the inconvenient facts get in the way, before the She had a terrible lawyer, in our opin
people involved turn out to be people after all. ion. We all spent hours discussing this.
And so on March 12, 1980, when all of New We dissected her defense, rewrote her version of
York awoke to the news, this was what we things so it would conform to our expectations. Af
knew: that Jean Harris, 57, the headmistress ter she was convicted of second-degree murder and
of the Madeira School, had driven from Virginia sentenced to fifteen years in prison, we wrote let
to Scarsdale, New York, and killed her former boy ters to the governor urging him to commute her
friend, a best-selling diet doctor named Herman Tar sentence. Finally, after twelve years, he did.
nower, 69, by shooting him four times. Two TV movies were made about the murder,
There it was: socialite held in doc slaying. It and several books written, including dueling best
was a tabloid dream. The doctor lived in an exclusive sellers by Shana Alexander and Diana Trilling, but all
Westchester home, the socialite headed a posh girls school. of them suffered from the fact that Jean Harriss one
We were thrilled. When I say we, I mean me, but I also mean big moment had been completely out of character.
every woman who has ever wanted to kill a bad boyfriend. Harris herself wrote three books, including a best-
There was a kind of giddy exhilaration that passed through selling autobiography, and became an advocate for
the city. Im not just projecting. Everyone called everyone up. incarcerated women and their children. She is now
The day was completely blown discussing it. We were all 88 and lives in a retirement home.

There She Is, Miss America!


p h oto g r a p h s : f r o m to p, g. pa u l b u r n e t t / a p; da n n y k i m / n e w yo r k m ag a z i n e

VANESSA WILLIAMS, the first

1984 African-American to win the


title Miss America, also be-
came the first in the pag-
eants 63-year history to resign the
crown after news broke that nude
photos of her in sexually explicit posi-
tions with another woman would be
published in the September issue of
Penthouse. The photos had been tak-
en two years before Williams was


named Miss America, when she
worked briefly as a makeup artist and
receptionist for a little-known Mount
Kisco photographer. Penthouse sold
nearly 6 million copies of the issue and
made a reported $14 million. Williams
responded by telling People Maga-
zine, I am not a lesbian and I am not a
slut, and somehow I am going to make
people believe me. ALEX MORRIS

april 9, 2012 | new york 53


Jackies big Greek wedding.
because the rich are different, its

She Was Ripe for


1968 sometimes useful, when talking about
scandals, to determine whose scandal
were talking about, theirs or ours? A scandal is

Seduction
when the people involved are shamed, shocked,
rattled to their cores. You will always read that
the marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy to Aristotle
Socrates Onassis was a huge scandal, but it
By W ILLI A M NORW ICH wasnt. In her world, it was just complicated.
They first met in the fifties, when the Kennedys
were invited on Onassiss boat, The Christina, to
meet Winston Churchill. In 1963, after the death
of her newborn son Patrick, the First Lady ac-
cepted the shipping tycoons invitation to recuper-
O. ate on The Christina in the Aegeanagainst the
No advice of her husband. Onassis told his biogra-
!
pher that when the First Lady arrived, her first
words were, So this it seems is what it is to be a
king. She was, he said, ripe for seduction.
After the death of the president, they ex-
changed letters, gifts, and books. But Onassis
was considered a liability to Robert Kennedys
political career, and interactions were not en-
couraged. After RFK was killed, in June 1968,
nothing could stop them, and their families un-
derstood, even if not all of them liked it. (Edward
M. Kennedy helped secure the prenup.)
If it wasnt a union with a fairy-tale ending
the couple was separating when Onassis died, in
1975the relationship had its diversions: the
island of Skorpios, the Avenue Foch apartment
in Paris, the plane and boat to always follow the
sun. Perhaps more important, Onassis, one of
the brides cousins explained, gave her the secu-
rity and companionship she desperately needed
after the second Kennedy assassination.
It was the American media that was scandalized

p h oto g r a p h s : f r o m TOP, B I L L RAY / T I M E & L I F E P I C T U R E S / G E TT Y I MAG E S ; B E TTMA N / COR B I S


by the marriage on behalf of the American people.
Jackie How Could You? and Jack Kennedy Dies
Today for a Second Time cried headlines. Maga-
zines like Life feared their best-selling cover subject
was disappearing to a kingdom by the sea. Of course
all they had to do was wait fifteen minutes, until she
was reinvented as that piece of newsstand heaven:
Jackie O., never too thin and never too rich.

1971 IT TOOK A HIPPIE COP to bust down the


NYPDs blue wall. Shaggy dog Frank Serpico

sAINT SERPICO
didnt just blow the whistle on kickbacks and
payoffs in New Yorks grimier decades, he wrote
the damn bookfeeding the Times the front-

vS. page expos that gave us the Knapp Commis-


sion. And made him few blue friends. During a

THE NYPD
routine 1971 bust, Serpico was left unprotected
and shot in the facean attack that his many
hagiographers took to be a bungled assassina-
tion attempt. Serpico wanted to be a sainta

Knapper!
monk, anyway. He retired, moved to Europe,
bought a farm, crisscrossed the U.S. in a camper,
then built himself a one-room cabin in the Hud-
Good ethics, son Valley. This is my life now, he told the
movie-star looks. Times in 2010. The woods, nature, solitude.

54 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
EVICTED!
Jogger shot after stealing his
landlords model girlfriend.
Disguised convict sneaks out of jail.
By anthony haden-guest

buddy jacobsons deadly love triangle was a story the new couple decided to move. On Sunday, August 6, 1978,
1978 I lucked into. A recent arrival in Manhattan, I often ate
in Nicolas restaurant on 84th, where another regular
Cain left Tupper in bed and went to sign a lease on their new
apartmentthat was the last time she saw him alive. It was not
was Jacobson, who owned the building opposite, No. 155. A one- a perfect murder. Tupper was stabbed, bludgeoned, and shot
time top racehorse trainer, but highly unpopular with the seven times. Jacobson and two Italian workmen he was using
nobsI dont even like horses, he would sayJacobson had on another building on 83rd Street then dumped the body in a
been booted off the track for causing labor trouble and started box and drove in his yellow Cadillac to the Bronx, where they
a model agency, My Fair Lady, because of what he did like: were spotted trying to burn it by somebody who even got the
plenty of young women. license plate. Jacobson was arrested while stuck in a jam at the
Jacobson, who was 47 but a liar about his age, lived in 7D with Triboro toll plaza. Which was when the story began to become
23-year-old Melanie Cain, who was a leading model as well as interesting. There were, as it turned out, untrue rumors that My
his partner in the agency and a girlfriend of several years. Jacob- Fair Lady was actually a call-girl front and that Tupper was in-
son was wiry and intense, with shaggy dark hair, and Cain, who volved with cocaine smuggling (though he was on intimate
moved to the city as a teenager from Naperville, Illinois, was terms with a hash-running ring).
well described by Seventeen when she made the cover as the After he was convicted, Jacobson, disguised as a lawyer in a
image of everything wholesome, like Kelloggs Corn Flakes. suit smuggled in by a friend who owed him money, walked out
It was also in Nicolas that I met another tenant in Jacob- of the Brooklyn House of Detention and made his way to Cali-
sons building, Jack Tupper. Tupper ran into Cain one hot forniaManhattan Beach, no less. He was caught six weeks
July afternoon; shed been having troubles with Jacobson in later, turned in by his son David, whod also helped with his
p h oto g r a p h s : f r o m to p, M a r t y le d e r h a n d le r / a p; N e a l b o en z i / t h e ne w yo r k t i m e s / r e d u x

the street. She suggested to Tupper that they go jogging. escape, and died in prison of bone cancer in 1989. David is today
Their affair began. a horse trainer and says his dad was railroaded. Cain got mar-
Jacobson, jealous, offered Tupper $100,000 to leave Cain, so ried and now teaches yoga in Connecticut.

the
medicaid-fraud
rabbi

Disgraced rabbi
1976 Bernard Bergman,
the proprietor of a
chain of nursing homes,
was convicted of defraud-
ing the state government
of $2.5 million in Medicaid
funds. Patients in at least
one of his homes com-
plained that they were
subjected to physical
abuse and unsanitary con-
ditions. Bergman was
fined $2.5 million and sen-
tenced to a year in prison.

april 9, 2012 | new york 55


B u r n t t o a c r is p o ?
Uptown Gallery Turned

S&M Dungeon

p h oto g r a p h s : t h i s pag e, to p a n d c e n t e r , N Y p o s t / s p l a s h n e w s ; b ot to m , b e t t m a n n / co r b i s. o p p o s i t e pag e, p eg gy g e r t n e r / n e w yo r k m ag a z i n e ( b u i l d i n g ) ; m o n i c a a l m e i da / n y da i ly n e w s / g e t t y i m ag e s


Gays: This is the man you were warned about!
By choire sicha

while the gun was discovered in art dealer Andrew


1985 Crispos 57th Street gallery, and while the man who fired
it claimed that Crispo forced the victim to kneel and be
shot, and while the shooters lawyer claimed, according to the
Times, that his client was drugged and under Mr. Crispos con-
trol, and while Crispo had picked up the victim in a bar and
provided the cocaine, not only was Crispo not charged in the
murder, but he didnt even testify at the trial. The judge said he
didnt want the needless drama of Crispo pleading the Fifth.
And so Crispos involvement in the 1985 execution of a
26-year-old F.I.T. studentwho had been shot twice in the back
of the head and whose burned body was found in a Rockland
County smokehouse, clad only in a leather hoodwas never es-
tablished. It did bring Crispo enough notoriety that another
young man came forward, this one a teacher from Montreal,
with a tale of being held captive and tortured at the gallery, with
Crispo as ringleader. This time, Crispo was charged with kidnap-
ping, sodomy, assault, coercion, and unlawful imprisonment.
But in the end, the same man, Crispos henchman Bernard
LeGeros, took the fall for both cases.
Five months after the murder trial, the invulnerable Crispo
was sent to jailfor tax evasion. Released in 1989, he went to jail
again at age 55 in 2000, after being convicted of attempted ex-
tortion and obstruction of justice. For those eleven straight years
of freedom, he continued to be the bogeyman of New York Citys
gay world. He was, overtly or abstractly, what was meant when
k
older gay men cautioned younger gay men about Bad Things
mas That Happened when hooking up on phone sex lines or on the
th
dea
th e street or in hustler bars like Rounds. But none of the stories told
ever resulted in the record of the court system. There was always
too much that would need to be explained.

Mayflower Madam: Ho, Hum


THE REMARKABLE thing about ress is history. Very respectable history.
1984 the Mayflower Madam, the New In truth, Barrows displayed a quiver of
York Posts brilliant sobriquet Colonial virtueshumility, resourceful-
for Sydney Biddle Barrows, is that she ness, honesty (of a kind)in her admin-
managed to exist at the center of one of istration of the high-end escort service
the citys biggest sex scandals with an Cachet, and after the police had closed
almost complete absence of shame. A in, she held her head high. I ran the
young woman in Manhattan, even one wrong sort of business, she told the
with a Mayflower pedigree, has to make Boston Globe, but I did it with integri-
a living. Fired from May Company in the ty. (Of course, her flawless features and
recessionary late seventies, Barrows blonde bob didnt hurt.) Barrowss
took the only job that presented itself matter-of-factness about her life story
answering the phone at an escort ser- made her seem as wholesome as Marlo
viceand the rest of her Pilgrims Prog- Thomas in That Girl, and much wiser.

56 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
Maximum Outrage Over
Minimalist Sculptor
Carl Andre: OJ of the Art World?
By Ca r l Swa nson

around 5:30 on the out the window. Was she threaten-


1985 morning of September 8,
1985a Sundaythe
ing to leave him after finding out
about an affair he was having?
doorman at 11 Waverly Place That night, Andre called the police
heard what sounded like a wom- and told them, hysterically, that
an pleading No, no, no, no from shed committed suicide; when
high above him; a few minutes they arrived, they found him with
later, there was what sounded scratches on his arm and face.
like an explosion on the roof of a Beyond that, it was all a matter
nearby deli. Artist Ana Mendieta of conjecture. How could some-
had fallen from the 34th-floor one with a show about to open at
window of the apartment on the New Museum (it opened just
Mercer she shared with her hus- in time for Andres trial) commit
band, the famous minimalist suicide? How could someone
sculptor Carl Andre, at the who was so afraid of heights get
neighboring high-rise. She was so close as to accidentally fall out
wearing only her blue bikini un- a window? Much of the art Es-
derwear. Andre was charged tablishmentfriends and ac-
with murder, and the entire art quaintances of Andresrallied
world took sides. around him. Some of Andres
Mendieta, it turns out, was friends told the press that the
drunk; she and Andre were often poor guy is being victimized by a
drunk and often fighting. To the feminist cabal. During the week
surprise of many of their friends, of the New Museum opening,
theyd married the previous Janu- unsigned posters soliciting wit-
ary after breaking up the year be- nesses for the prosecution were
fore. Andre was older, 50 to her 36, put up around Soho, reading:
and they were temperamentally at Suicide? Accident? Murder?
odds. He once complained to his Anyone With Information Please
gallerist Itll never worka New Call. Then: the D.A.s number.
England puritan and a Latina. At trial, Andre asked that it be
And while his coolly delivered decided by a judge, not a jury. In
workthink plates of metal or 1988, he was acquitted. Andre
bricks arranged precisely on the was never really free, though: In
floorwas not as fashionable as it the nineties, the Guerrilla Girls
was when he was one of the iras- labeled him the O.J. of the Art
cible scene-makers at Maxs Kan- World, and though he continued
sas City and the Guggenheim to produce work until very re-
gave him a retrospective at 35, cently, and continues to live in
his art-historical significance the same apartment, hes become
was assured. Cuban-born somewhat reclusive, or perhaps
Mendieta, whose work was ostracized. Still, the Dia Art
more personal, was on the Foundation is planning a retro-
cusp of possibly making it. spective next year. Last Decem-
The question that night ber, he told The New Yorker that
Andre in front of was whether their differ- Mendieta, who was barely five
the high-rise from encestheyd been fighting, feet tall, had climbed up on the
which his wife fell
to her death. he saidwere enough to sills to close the windows and
get him to throw her had just lost her balance.

april 9, 2012 | new york 57


Outer-borough Shakespeare

queens beep weeper


Man, Oh, Manes!
By mark jacobson

nineteen eighty-six was a later beaten by two other scandal-touched enties self-help movementhe once ran the
1986 wild year in the County of Queens.
The Mets, powered by a clubhouse
Queens pols, Anthony Weiner and John
Liu), Donny Manes was always a comer. In
Institute for Emotional EducationLinde-
nauer was Maness bagman at Parking Vio-
of reputed coke snorters, won the World 1985, when he was reelected for the fifth lations, largely in charge of collecting bribes
Series. It was also the year of the so-called time as borough president with 85 percent from various private companies engaged in
Parking Violations Bureau case, easily the of the vote, he was widely considered the the always-booming New York City park-
most Grand Guignol of recent New York second-most-powerful politician in New ing-ticket business. Although the money
City political-corruption scandals. In many York, a likely successor to Koch as mayor. involved ($400,000 is the usually quoted
ways the PVB scandal fit the usual pigs-at- The highly public unraveling began soon figure) palls by todays standard, news of
the-municipal-trough trope: The taxpayers after midnight on January 10, 1986, when Lindenauers impending cooperation with
money was stolen, lower-level operatives two cops found a blood-covered, barely co- Giulianis office was apparently enough to
were caught and squeezed by the authori- herent Manes in his car near Shea Stadium. help push Manes over the edge.
ties, formerly powerful individuals were With his left wrist bearing a large Y-shaped On the evening of March 13, 1986, having
disgraced and sent to jail. What set the PVB wound, Manes claimed to have been at- stepped down as borough president only
affair apart were the outsize characters, tacked by two hoodlums who had hidden in weeks before, a severely depressed Manes
with Ed Koch as the arrogant, shrieking the back of his car outside the Queens Bor- was in the kitchen of his house in Jamaica
mayor; a pre-imperial Rudy Giuliani as the ough Hall. This canard was swept away only Estates speaking on the phone with his psy-
dogged, incorruptible U.S. Attorney; and days later, as Breslins columns on the chiatrist, Dr. Elliot N. Wineburg. Wineburg
Jimmy Breslin in the role of the ultimate breaking PVB scandal began to appear. A asked Manes to hang on a moment. It was
Big City columnist. But Donald Manes, the key player in the scheme was Maness long- during this time that Manes opened a kitch-
52-year old Queens borough president, was time friend Geoffrey Lindenauer. A former en drawer, pulled out a fourteen-inch Ekco
the star, the doomed, tragic figure. small-time operator on the edge of the sev- flint knife, and jammed it into his chest,
At 27, the youngest assistant D.A. in the killing himself. Maness body was discov-
Queens office; at 31, the youngest person ered by his 25-year-old daughter, Lauren.
ever elected to the City Council (a record As noted in City for Sale, Jack Newfield and
Wayne Barretts classic account of the Koch-
era scandals, Maness demise came three
Manes recuperating decades after the doomed politician found
from having slit his left
wrist. He stabbed
the body of his own father, who also com-
himself two months later. mitted suicide.
Hundreds, including the mayor and Gov-

p h oto g r a p h s : b e t t m a n / co r b i s ; i n s e t t h e n e w yo r k t i m e s / r e d u x
ernor Mario Cuomo, attended Maness fu-
at neral at Schwartz Brothers-Jeffer Memorial
te Chapel, in Forest Hills. The eulogy was given
mp
t# by then-Assemblyman Alan Hevesi, another
1 close Queens County associate of Manes. I
must tell you there may be some confusion
because of recent events, but it doesnt have
to be. Thats not the reality. Forget that im-
age. The real Donald Manes was an out-
standing public figure, said Hevesi, now in-
carcerated on corruption charges himself.
More than 25 years after the fact, Donald
Manes may be just one more footnote in the
vast saga of New York City public corrup-
tion, but the afterimage of his deeds still re-
run on cable channels all over the globe,
every day. A fictionalized version of the
Manes story was the basis of the pilot epi-
sode of the original Law & Order series.

58 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
guy is traveling all over the world. So ber of agencies, the number of com-

RAK I N G I filed a Freedom of Information


request. They didnt fill it, and they
didnt deny it; they just refused to
missioners, the amount to which
they had left open the door for
hoods and charlatans I mean, the
Th e M UCK respond for the longest time. Even-
tually, I get a letter saying all the re-
guy who was running the Parking
Violations Bureau was a sex-thera-
cords were lost in a move. py quack. Some of the stuff was just
When a new administration insane.
came in, it occurred to me to refile w.b.: The commissioner of the De-
the request. To its credit, Mike partment of Transportation actu-
Bloombergs administration gave ally put the sex therapist, Geoffrey
me the records, and they show that Lindenauer, in charge of the Park-
Russell had been on a spending ing Violations Bureau because he
binge. He had traveled literally was the bagman for Donny Manes.
around the world, staying at every Manes had enormous power.
place from San Diego to Hong They were able to fix the award
Kong on the citys dime. I wrote of contracts to private agencies that
that story, and he ended up getting would collect parking fines. The
indicted. They found he had stolen award of these various contracts
more than $400,000. And they got was on the basis of cash bribes in
into his computer and found child bathrooms passed to Geoffrey Lin-
porn. He ended up serving nearly denauer, and Manes would be
five years in prison. stuffing the money in his basement.
Have you ever been assaulted by Geoffrey would give the money
anyone you were investigating? back to Donny, maybe keep a little
w.b.: The one that got a lot of press himself, and thats what brought
attention at the time was in the mid- Donny down. Then Donny stuck a
eighties. Ramon Velez, who was the knife in his own chest.
most powerful Latino in New York, t.r.: I remember how horrified so
Wayne Barrett Tom Robbins had been a city councilman. He was many people were about his suicide.
the king of anti-poverty programs in I think a lot of it had to do with ev-
the Bronx, made a fortune running erybody thinking how incredibly
anti-poverty programs. So much so tortured he had to have been. That
that he had fourteen condominiums guy was one sad piece of work.
in Puerto Rico. I got all the records, But you know, he was fun. I used
The two former Village Voice re- timately, we wrote a story when she went down to Puerto Rico, went to go to the Board of Estimate
porters discuss their histories dig- ran for Senate in 92. By then it was from one to the other, and he was [meetings], and he once took his
ging up municipal malfeasance. like the 24 mob connections of Ger- waiting for me in the last. shoe off and pounded it on the ta-
aldine Ferraro. It probably cost her I have a photographer with me, ble, which is what Nikita Khrush-
Which scandal did you have the the Senate nomination. Susan Ferguson, and were walking chev did at the U.N. He was unlike
most fun uncovering? Where is the best place you ever up the steps. Its a very dark corri- everybody else. He was colorful,
Wayne Barrett: The mob connec- heard of someone passing a bribe? dor, and when we get to the top, he and he understood theater. People
tions of Geraldine Ferraro. She was Tom Robbins: They always said that is in the stairwell. Ramon weighed liked him.
intimately involved in her hus- the bathroom at the Old Home- about 300-and-some pounds. His w.b.: Manes was one of the most
bands business, and one of the key stead restaurant on 14th Street saw arm was about three or four times pleasant guys in the world. Very
guys was Nicky Sands. He had mob more cash change hands than the the size of my arm, and it was funny, very loose. The gift of a great
ties and had been shot eight Citibank on the corner. It was right wrapped around my throat. He politician is false candor. Donald
timesand he happened to chair a next to the old meat market. didnt have a weapon, but he kept Manes had it. Its an extraordinary
fund-raiser for her when she ran for Who was passing the money? saying, Im going to kill you, talent, where you can sound dis-
Congress the first time. [William] T.R.: Crooked union officials, city Wayne! Im going to kill you! armingly truthful and yet every-
Bastone was my intern in 1984, inspectors, wiseguys. Susan jumped on his back and thing youre doing is a lie.
when she was nominated for Tom, you broke one of the biggest dug her fingernails into his eyes. But Manes had a way about him.
vice-president. scandal stories of the Giuliani era, His grip loosened a bit, and we ran He would sweat. I remember I had
We couldnt find Nicky anywhere. this confrontation with him. I cant
Knowing that were tracking him, remember the questions, but he
Sands puts himself in the hospital
for voluntary surgery. Bill and I They said the bathroom at the couldnt answer them. I had him
against the wall. I can still see the
find out what hospital hes in, and
we go to Beth Israel. They tell me Old Homestead restaurant redness in his face. Manes was a
very emotional guy. His father had
they have no such patient, but Bill
goes behind the desk and he can see saw more cash change hands killed himself. He had a dark, dark
side to him.

than Citibank.
the room number on the computer Who is the most ethically com-
screen. So we go up to the room, promised politician you ever
and Sands is lying in his hospital covered?
bed. He looks up and says: You w.b.: Theres no fucking competi-
must be Barrett. which involved Russell Harding,
i l lu s t r at i o n s : zo h a r l a z a r

down the stairwell and jumped on tion for this: Al DAmato. The
Bill sticks a tape recorder under son of Liberal Party leader Ray the elevator. By the time we got greatest journalism honor Ive ever
the bed, and we talked to him about Harding. Why did you zero in on down to the bottom, he was there received was being called a viper by
two or three hours. We got some him? too, and he had a broom. So Susan him in his memoir. I dont think
great stuff. t.r.: Russell was running this ob- got a lot of pictures of him attack- anybody else can compete.
What happened to the story? scure but very lucrative housing or- ing me with this broom handle. t.r.: Say what you will about the
w.b.: The lawyers [at the Voice] ganization called the Housing De- Which mayoral administration guy, Wayne. He walks between the
said you invaded his privacy, you velopment Corporation. Somebody that youve written about was the raindrops. God bless him.
cant use any of the taped interview. called me and said you should try to most scandalous?  interview by
We never got to write the story. Ul- get his spending records because the t.r.: Kochs third term. The num-  jennifer gonnerman

april 9, 2012 | new york 59


1987

What a Ivan the Terrible


Bess Mess
Sad! Tedious! the nerve of a burglar!
WHEN BESS MYERSON,
THE BIGGEST surprise about Ivan
the first Jewish Miss
America, was accused Whos the Wall Street
genius now, huh?
1987 Boeskys crime is that he managed
to get away with it for so long. It
of getting her sewer-
Milken's pal Boesky wasnt any secret that he was taking
c o n t r a c t o r l o v e r s
walks the gauntlet. massive positions in stocks in companies
a l i m o n y p a y m e n t s
that, in a matter of weeks, became takeover
reducedin exchange
targets of the corporate raiders of the day,
for a job for the judges
earning the financier huge profits. Boesky
daughter, Sukhreet
sold himself as a genius, dreaming in his Fifth
Gabelshe had to quit as
Avenue office high over Cartier, with a kind
Ed Kochs cultural com-
of second sight into the ineluctable logic of
missioner, putting a big
the American economy, superpowered by the
dent in her b eautiful
latest in eighties technology ("a 300-line
longtime companion
telephone console," wrote Time, in amaze-
ship with the mayor (so
ment). In the popular press, the wizard act
invaluable during Kochs
was pretty convincing, but his father-in-law,
77 race). Everyone beat
whod provided the original seed capital for
the rap, but Myersons
his business, may have had more insight into
reputation didnt.
his character. Boesky, he said, had the hide
of a rhinoceros and the nerve of a burglar.
Boesky, of course, was a burglar, using
those phone lines to collect tips from the likes
of Michael Milken. The scam was hidden in
plain sight. The nerviest part of Boeskys
crime was his attempt to convince everyone
that he was doing the world a service as he
was robbing them blind. Greed is all right, by

p h oto g r a p h s : f r o m to p, b e t t m a n / co r b i s / a p; b e t t m a n / co r b i s ; to m g at e s / h u lto n a r c h i v e / g e t t y i m ag e s
the way, Boesky famously told the 1986
graduation of UCBerkeleys business school.
I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy
and still feel good about yourself. People
laughbut many have never stopped
believing. john homans

Queen of Mean Dethroned; Little People Rejoice


even more than billionaire Harry Helmsley. residences to save on sales little people pay taxes.
1989 Gordon Gekko, After marrying the un- tax. After she and Harry Fined $7.1 million, Leo-
Leona Helmsley assuming Harry in 1972, stiffed the contractors reno- na served eighteen months
symbolized the greed is she became a household vating their 28-room Green- in prison and was freed in
good ethos of the eighties. name, starring in glitzy wich home, disgruntled em- 1994 (her husband died in
Her trial in 1989 for tax eva- cleavage-baring ads for ployees alerted the Post 1997). She was later sued
sion was a delicious coda to Helmsley hotels as the per- about the Helmsleys curious by two employees who
the decade, offering up the fectionist queen, guaran- habit of charging pricey claimed she fired them be-
pleasure of watching the teeing the good life for renovations (a marble dance cause they were gay. She
Queen of Mean, outrageous, guests and willing to ter- floor, a $130,000 stereo sys- lived until 2007, leaving
nasty, and entitled, be forced rorize the staff. It wasnt an tem) to corporate accounts. one last spiteful surprise
to swap her 10,000-square- act. Leona humiliated and Enter crusading prosecutor in her will: disinheriting
foot Park Lane penthouse for fired employees at whim. Rudy Giuliani. two grandchildren and
She also had an obsession u b le ! leaving $12 million to her
Le o n a: Tro
a prison cell. Charged with 235 counts
The daughter of a Brook- with avoiding taxes. Caught of tax evasion, Harry, a frail Maltese, Trouble, a biter
lyn hat manufacturer, up in a sting involving Van 80-year-old, was found un- who attacked staff. A judge
tough-talking Leona Mindy Cleef & Arpels, she received fit to stand trial, so Leona slashed the bequest to $2
Rosenthal worked her way immunity for testifying that was left to face her employ- million. Trouble, who re-
up from receptionist to top jewelry-store employees al- ees revenge. The high ceived death threats (re-
real-estate brokerjetti- lowed her to walk out with point: housekeeper Eliza- quiring a $100,000 yearly
soning two husbands en thousands of dollars of bau- beth Baums recounting security retinue), died in
routewhen she caught the bles and shipped empty that Leona told her We 2010.
eye of the married older boxes to her out-of-town dont pay taxes, only the meryl gordon

60 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
1997

This Man
Bites!
One victim escaped
Marv the Perv by yanking
off his toupee

ALL SMILES: Allen, when are we going to meet?


Farrow, and Previn
four years before Got somebody to take the tick-
the affair began. ets? And, oh, by the way, do you
have somebody for the three-

Mamma Mia!
some? Marv Albert was persis-
tent, prepping for a hotel liaison
with an old friend, according to
the accuser at Alberts 1997 trial
for forcible sodomy and assault.
Hey, do you have somebody
lined up? the broadcaster
asked again later. Keep trying
to get somebody. Ah, I see you
Woody Soon-Yi have nobody, Albert said when
she arrived alone. Come in.
The voice of the Knicks and
by david edelstein Rangers favored male-male-
female arrangements with a
it was a New York fairy tale turned seri- Husbands and Wives, on screens at the time, re- well-endowed third, his accuser
later testified, and when on that
1992 ously sordid psychodrama: In 1992,
Woody Allen, the nearsighted little Jew
sounds with bad vibes.) Its easy to believe that he
believed he did nothing wrong. Years earlier, Pau-
occasion she failed to deliver in
D.C., he bit her repeatedly on
p h oto g r a p h s : l e f t, t i m e & L i f e p i c t u r e s / g e t t y i m ag e s ; r i g h t, a r l i n g to n co u n t y p o l i c e / a p

from Brooklyn who redefined film comedy; bed- line Kael noted his peculiar morality in Manhat- the back and neck and forced
ded a series of slim shiksas; preferred to stay in tan, where the protagonist contrasts the self-cen- her to perform oral sex. (He said
Manhattan on the night he won an Oscar for An- tered intelligentsia with a fresh-faced 17-year-old the rough sex was consensual.)
nie Hall to play his clarinet; conferred hipness Dalton girl: What man in his forties but Woody That summer, weeks before
his day in court, Alberts name
on whatever restaurant/club he visited while Allen, Kael wrote, could pass off a predilection appeared in the black book of
maintaining an air of privacy and radiating (his for teenagers as a quest for true values? a murdered dominatrixthe
word) anhedonia; and evolved into a high-toned The aftermath was yet more fascinating. Farrow kinks just kept coming. On his
director and a moralist, anointed by Vincent unsuccessfully prosecuted Allen for sexually abus- trials third day, a surprise wit-
Canby as one of our greatest filmmakers, was ing a girl they had adopted together and penned a ness testified that Albert sexu-
discovered to have slept with and taken lots of scathing account of his perfidy in What Falls ally assaulted her in a hotel
years earlier, wearing only
dirty pictures of the 21-year-old adopted daugh- Awaywritten while seeing Philip Roth, another womens underwear and a gar-
ter of his decade-long partner, Mia Farrow. The illustrious Jew with a notorious sex life. Allen re- ter belt, after calling the con-
funny part? He said there was no scandal. sponded with a movie, Deconstructing Harry, cierge to request help sending
New York disagreed, violently. But it was hard to about a Roth-like novelist whom the world decries a fax. He allegedly bit her too,
apply conventional morality to such a couple. Far- as a shit. Then he made a movie about the corro- and she escaped only when she
row, born into Hollywood royalty, was a serial wife siveness of celebrity culture. Manhattan: ripped off his hairpiece. The
following day, plenty exposed,
of accomplished men (Frank Sinatra, Andr Swonderful no more. Albert pleaded guilty to assault
Previn) and serial adopter of neglected children. Allen married Soon-Yi in 1997, and she seems and battery, avoiding jail time,
She and Allen also had a son together, Satchel, but surprisingly right for him; in Barbara Kopples but losing his jobs with NBC
he lived across the park from Farrow and her brood. documentary Wild Man Blues, shes alternately and MSG networks. (Both
The object of Allens ardor, Soon-Yi, was eating out deferential and ball-bustinga good combo for would rehire him by the de-
of garbage cans in South Korea before Farrow and overmothered Jewish men. Farrow adopted six cades end.) During a post-trial
media redemption tour, a cred-
Previn adopted her, at age 8. Allen would have met more kids. Satchel changed his name to Ronan ulous Barbara Walters had the
her when she was 10. and is now a human-rights crusader who consid- announcers fiance describe
Allen pointed out that he was neither Soon-Yis ers the actions of his father, with whom he has their sex life. Id say its pretty
father nor stepfather and that shed liberated him no contact, a moral transgression. Everyone ordinary, she answered, to
from a moribund relationship. (His coruscating has a point of view! which Albert shot back, Hey!
joe coscarelli

april 9, 2012 | new york 61


in g
Th e Ra p- Be at
Ra p M og ul !

puffy
pow pow! Combs & J.Lo flee, Champagne in hand. Th e S
Fl e e i n c e n e -
g Sta
rl e t!
by jessica pressler

on december 28, 1999 name to P. Diddy in hopes of put-


1999 Sean Puffy Combs and
then-girlfriend Jennifer Lo-
ting the past behind him, but the
saga lived on for years in song
pez had been celebrating a soon-to-be (Whatcha gonna do when shit hit
released album by Shyne, a.k.a. Jamal the fan/Take it like a man or snitch
Barrow, the rap moguls 21-year-old like a bitch? Shyne asks pointedly
protg, at midtowns Club New York. on a track released after the inci-
They were leaving when Combs, dent), and naturally inspired a Law
carrying a bottle of Champagne, ac- & Order episode, which aired in
cidentally jostled one of the clubs pa- 2001. It was a great New York sto-
trons, knocking a drink out of his ry, says Richard Sweren, who wrote Th e Pu t-Aw ay
hand. The man, Matthew Allen, a the script. Of course, we had to Pr ot g !
street tough known as Scar, re- make it a murder. The adaptation,
sponded with a shove. Things esca- 3 Dawg Night, took other liberties
latedone of Allens companions al- as well: Its rap mogul G-Tranes fa-

p h oto g r a p h s : to p, k at h y w i l l e n s / a p; f r a n c i s m . r o b e r t s / g e t t y i m ag e s ; ly n s e y a d da r i o / a p
legedly threw a stack of money in mous girlfriend, a ghetto girl made
Combss faceand shots were fired, good, played by a dewy Kerry
leaving three people injured. Washington, who pulls the trigger
Combs and Lopez were arrested after being disrespected. He forgot
fleeing the scene in a Lincoln Naviga- who I was, Kerry from the Block
tor with a gun in the trunk. J.Lo was tells assistant district attorney Jack
quickly absolved, and although wit- McCoy, of her aggressor. I couldnt
nesses said theyd seen Combs with let that happen. Not after how hard
the weaponand his driver testified I worked to be who I am!
that his boss had bribed him to claim The twist was inspired, but the
ownershiphis legal team, including storys real-life ending is odder: This Th e D r in
k- D r o p
Johnnie Cochran, created enough past December, Allen was shot to In s ti g a to p in g
r!
doubt that Combs was acquitted, too. death at Footlights, a Brooklyn night-
I dont know if you know this, judge, club. And last month, Shyne, who
but this person Jennifer Lopez is a embraced Judaism in prison and re-
very famous actress, one lawyer named himself Moses Michael Levi,
pointed out. To think Mr. Combs is squashed his beef with his former
walking around with her with a load- mentor at Paris Fashion Week, where
ed gun its so ridiculous that it they attended the Kenzo and Given-
stretches the imagination. chy shows together. Shyne is prepping
In the end it was Shyne who a new album for release this year,
served almost nine years for assault, while Combs is still smarting over
gun possession, and reckless en- 2010s Last Train to Paris, the lowest-
dangerment, though he did so an- charting album of his career. As
grily, claiming Combs had sold him L&Os McCoy put it, At that rate, he
out to save his own skin. After his might have to go out and actually
acquittal, Combs changed his nick- shoot somebody.

62 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
I Just Want
To Focus
On My Salad
Insider tradingnot a good thing.
by vanessa grigoriadis

2000 before imclone, December 27, 2001, when the my salad, she said when asked
2002 everything was just per- young assistant to her debonair questions about the trade on The
good night fect for Martha Stewart.
Her story had been one of ever-
Merrill Lynch broker told her on
his orders that she should sell all
Early Show. She was sentenced to
prison for five months, and no one
gracie increasing power, from the admit-
tance to Barnard in the fifties from
her 3,928 shares in ImClone Sys-
tems, a biotech company run by
was surprised that, like so many
other things in life, she excelled at
Nutley, New Jersey, where she Sam Waksal, because the com- being incarceratedshe showed
Were Getting grew up as the eldest daughter in pany was about to implode, she all the other ladies the best way to
Divorced! a Polish family of eight, to almost
single-handedly building the
jumped at the opportunity. She
would never have felt the loss
wax a floor, boiled up the dandeli-
ons that poked through the con-
domestic-bliss industry in the she was coming up on a billion crete slabs of the jail, and was a
we are?! eighties, harnessing the rise in dis- dollars, and by selling those good sport when she lost a deco-
p h oto g r a p h s : f r o m to p, P e t e r m o r g a n / r e u t e r s ; g e r a l d h e r b e r t / a p; e d b e t z / t h e n e w yo r k t i m e s / r e d u x ; NY p o s t / s p l a s h n e w s

posable income and backlash shares she avoided a loss of rating contestbut her image
WHEN Mayor Rudy Giuliani
against the arid feminism of the $45,673but she couldnt resist never recovered, and her c ompany
held a press conference to previous decade; to say nothing of the chance to daub at the blot on struggles today.
announce his marital sepa- her role atop Martha Stewart Liv- her investment record. Isnt it Looking back, it doesnt seem
ration, no one was more ing Omnimedia, a publicly traded nice to have brokers who tell you fair that with one piddling trade
surprised than his wife, company encompassing all things these things? she reportedly she became the very emblem of
Donna Hanover, who hadn't
Martha, from tart-making, to tips said. It was a good thingand corporate greed. But what she re-
been briefed. She refused to
leave Gracie Mansion and on pruning trees, which she liked then it became a very bad thing. ally may have been paying for was
later filed a court order to to do in the middle of the night. Her arrest and conviction made all those years of lording her own
keep his mistress, Judith Then the American icon of inadvertent parody of her perfec- country-cute, glue-gun perfection
Nathan, out. flawlessness made a mistake. On tionism. I just want to focus on over the womanly masses.

ec h!
Screeee
Reverse of Fortune
Lizzie Grubmans PR nightmare.

FUCK YOU, white trash. If publicist Lizzie


2001 Grubman hadnt allegedly uttered those
four words before backing her SUV into a line
of people waiting to get into Southampton nightclub
Conscience Point Inn, the crack legal team that pow-
er lawyer Allen Grubman assembled for his 30-year-
old daughter might have had an easier time making
the case that the crash, in which sixteen people were
injured, was an accident. As it was, the words clung to
her like Let them eat cake, despite her frequent
denials. Literally overnight, Grubman became the
pinup girl for a class war that had already been brew-
ing. Hand-wringing editorials painted her crime as
characteristic of the dangerous entitlement of the
new-monied elite. When Grubman, pale, makeup-
less, and Nicole Richie thin, pleaded guilty to felony
charges and served 38 days of solitary confinement,
it was viewed as the end of this era; a sign that hence-
forth, even the rich would be punished for their sins.
But in the end, Grubman was rewarded for her behav-
ior with her own reality showand as for the Hamp-
tons, the worst was still to come.  jessicapressler

april 9, 2012 | new york 63


Twelve-year-old phenom actually 14!

The Kid (Who Wasnt)


By w ill leitch

a n yon e w ho ever Almonte turned into a national


2001 played orga nized
youth sports remem-
joke. (Jay Leno: You know who
ended up catching the fact that
bers that kid on the other the kid was older than 12?
team who seemed older, big- Michael Jackson.) Almonte
ger, more adult than everyone married a 30-year-old while he
else. His parents had to be ly- was still in high school, being
ing about his age; no way that ru e ! ignored in the Major League
kid could be freaking 9! That t o Be T draft, and pitching in a total of
d
Goo
phenomenon, in 2001, had a To o six minor-league games for the
name: Danny Almonte. Southern Illinois Miners. As of
That August, Almonte, a five- last summer, he was reportedly
foot-eight Dominican left- separated, playing in an adult
hander who had moved to the competitive league in town,
Bronx just a year earlier, be- and helping coach sandlot

p h oto g r a p h s : f r o m to p, c h r i s g a r d n e r / a p; w i l l i a m b. p lo w m a n / g e t t y i m ag e s ; m i c h a e l a p p l e to n / n y da i ly n e w s a r c h i v e / g e t t y i m ag e s
came a national feel-good story teams. Little League Baseball,
when he threw a perfect game Almonte and his teammates about Almontes age, and the meanwhile, reportedly brings
in the Little League World were introduced at Yankee Sta- Dominican government ulti- in $5 million from the broad-
Series. Almonte faced 72 batters dium. President Bush shook his mately confirmed that his birth cast of the LLWS, and ESPN
in the LLWS and struck out 62 hand. Mayor Giuliani gave him certificate had been falsified: drew 4 million viewers to a
of them, with 12-year-old after a key to the city. He was 14, not 12. The Bronx game last year, all with a cast of
12-year-old flailing helplessly at Then it all fell apart. Sports team was disbanded, the characters they dont have to
his 78-mile-per-hour fastballs. Illustrated raised questions LLWS wins discounted, and pay a dime.

Bill OReillys falafel fetish.


roughly three weeks before the 2004 presiden-

Fox Chases Tail 2004 tial election came an October surprise of sorts, not one
that damaged either political party but one that dropped
like a bomb in the medias proxy war. Bill OReilly was sued by
Factor associate producer Andrea Mackris, who in her complaint
alleged years of quid pro quo sexual harassment from her boss,
or to
u r v ib ra t who played a morally upright, independent political pundit on
Us e
yo a m . television but had a proclivity for one-sided phone sex.
w o ff st e
blo In a childrens book released a month earlier, the Fox News
host wrote, Thanks to some of the loonier films and magazines
today, many of you know a lot about unusual sexual practices.
The allegations against him proved enlightening as well, when
the complaint was published by the Smoking Gun: Mackris, 33,
alleged the blunt talking head urged her to just use your vibra-
tor to blow off steam and bragged about his international sex-
ual exploits, including, but not limited to, a little short brown
woman in a Bali massage cabana, two really wild Scandina-
vian stewardesses, and a Thai-sex-show backroom special.
OReilly allegedly touched himself while detailing a shower fan-
tasy featuring Mackris and that little loofah thing but later in
the call, evidently flustered, referred to the prop as a falafel
thing. When he was finished, Mackris said, OReilly praised his
own recent appearance on the Tonight Show. Details all out, the
suit was settled about two weeks later, while the audiotapes
Makris was thought to have were kept secret. OReillys ratings
were reportedly up 30 percent.  joecoscarelli
M a c kr
is: S t e
am e d.
64 n e w y o r k | a p r i l 9 , 2 0 1 2
2008

Wall streets
8
200

H e's
f o r manc
P e r a n ce d
e- golden throne
Enh
To o? This Commode
Costs a Load

when leaked documents re-


vealed that Merrill Lynch CEO
John Thain spent $1.2 million on
an office renovation in 2008,
months before the 94-year-old
brokerage announced the billions
in losses that later led to its col-
lapse, the reaction was as swift as a
guillotine. Click here to see
Thains Top 16 Outrages, crowed
the Daily Beast, which gleefully
itemized the Caligulan amenities
bought with company funds, in-
cluding a George IV Desk, an
$11,000 Roman Shade, and an
$87,000 area rug. But it was the

no, not andy!


objet mysteriously described as
something called a commode on
p h oto g r a p h s : l e f t, b o b l e v e r o n e / s p o r t i n g n e w s / g e t t y i m ag e s ; r i g h t, r o b k i m / g e t t y i m ag e s

legs that many thought emblem-


atic. Had bank CEOs gotten so
self-aggrandizing that they now
required for themselves literal
thrones on which to defecate? In
fact, the answer was no. The scan-
i know that once I have this ly clutch, 8 1/3-inning, 1-0 of HGH, I thought, No way. Pet- dal, according to Margaret Rus-
press conference, and talk to ev- game-five performance against titte, a cheater? Never. But then sell, the editor-in-chief of Architec-
erybody about this and share the Atlanta Braves in the 1996 here he was, two months later, tural Digest, was elsewhere. I was
appalled because so many people
everything with you, I think the World Series lifted the Yankees in his goofy golf shirt, gripping didnt fact-check, says Russell,
truth will set you free, said the out of the fifteen years of blus- the lectern nervously, owning who is friends with Michael Smith,
baseball player from Texas, tery, overspending mediocrity up to his lies, apologizing for who designed Thains suites. A
standing in the tent in Florida, I know, I know, try being a Cubs having used HGHtwice, he commode is not a fancy toilet. Its
about as unlikely a tableau for a fanthat had defined my life, so saidto speed his recovery a very commonly used word for an
New York scandal as you will far, as a fan. Whenever grown from an injury. A funny thing antique chest of drawers. Specifi-
cally, Thains was an eighteenth-
find. It wasnt like revelations of humans talk about their feelings happened in the course of this century English piece. Ironically,
performance-enhancing drugs for professional athletes in this admission, though: Andy Pet- she said, Thain, who was retained
in sports, at this point, came as way, it can veer quickly into stu- titte emerged from the crucible in 2007 to revive the firm after the
a shock. Our blinders were fully pidity and creepiness, but I liked of his public humiliation as disastrous reign of CEO Stan
off. But Andy Pettitte? Getting Pettitte, admired his whole deal. somehow more likable, more ONeal, had been trying to restore
busted for using HGH? He was I felt like, had I been born with real, more honest. I realize dignity to the space. His predeces-
sor had a Battlestar Galactica
our rock. He was the nice guy, some rare athletic talent, too, we how that sounds: Youre not style office, she says. He wanted
the honest and humble guy, the could have hung out, maybe honest if you are cheating to get something that reflected the na-
guy whod been raised right and trained bird dogs together in the ahead. Which is true. He wasnt ture of what they did. Enter the
talked openly of missing his kids off-season or something. So honest. And then he was. He commode. John Thain may have
and wore his faith in a way that when the Mitchell report came surrendered to the truth, and been guilty of something, but it
never came off as righteous or out in December 2007, naming owned up to his flaws, and the wasnt bad taste. He certainly has
very good taste. 
judging. He was also, most cru- Pettittealong with his team- world related, and the world  jessicapressler
cially, the pitcher whose absurd- mate, Roger Clemensas a user moved on.  andy ward

april 9, 2012 | new york 65


etuit y?

ASTOR, MADOFF,
i n p e r p
i n fa my

The last four years brought four first-class New York scandals, each epic, tragic, difficult t

You mean nobody cares about the fine I got for the Yankees tickets? The Spitzer thing was shocking b
long-lasting is easily going to be Madoff. The weekend it broke, I was the keynote speaker for Yeshiva g
said that the Jewish community is maybe the most resilient community in history, given all the different ti
say this after, say, a terrible tragedy in Israel. Every single time I saw other speakers do this, theres been
disaster is so great, that right now we cant even think about resilience. And then I got this collective sig
personal. david paterson, former governor Madoff, because people love to gossip about sex an
writer Madoff. Money matters over sex at all times. gay talese, writer Spitzer. He prov
chief, new york post Easy: Madoff, because of the schemes scale, longevity, megacriminality, a
peculiarity. kurt andersen, writer In the future, everyone will have a dirty digital past, so Wei
befalls the rich. mike albo, writer Weiner. Years from now, New Yorkers will think to themselves
Bernie Madoff. He fucked over so many people that the Ponzi scheme will forever be linked with his
name and his offense is so risible (which, if you mispronounce it, makes the whole event even more prep
(if not ruined). And as hilariously appropriate as Weiners last name is, Madoffs is even better. tod li
wife about sex. Same with Brooke Astor, because its axiomatic: Where theres a will, theres a war. Madof
down in the books because its the only postmodern one. In olden days, he would have been arrested for be
new york social diary Spitzer, Madoff, Weiner, Astor. Hookers > Fraud > Sexting > Family Fight.
few months. Its the gift that keeps on giving. Like herpes. simon doonan, creative ambassador, ba
by a son is too common. And the Weiner scandal will be as forgotten as a discarded Casio cell phone. p
be resolved in the biographies of a few stout and earnest people. There was nothing earnest about Madof
on Madoff. Theres little chance of the others being remembered by anyone other than antiquarians. lu
you cant get more sordid than those two. maureen bray, director, sean kelly gallery Brooke
nymag.com commenter Weiner, because, unlike the others, it could never have happened at any ot
all his drama and its fallout, ended up just a tinpot Clinton, but Madoffin his Jewish George Washing
p.o.d mouth), the way he so plainly resembled a caricature straight out of the Protocols of ZionMadoff
worst enemies view of us. If there is an increased anti-Semitism in this country, if people fall back to the
No question, Madoff. He came to represent a terrible rot that was rampant in our financial sys
the others have no real larger ramifications; they are mere personal and private dramas. jon robi
go after the Mets. nathaniel rich, writer Madoff. He managed to derail the Mets even w
surprised if anyone remembered any of those scandals a month from now much less a century.

66 n e w y o r k | m o n t h 0 0 0 , 2 0 1 2
SPITZER, WEINER
to forget. But which will we still be talking about 100 years from now? We asked around.

because of the contrast. Theres nothing like when somebody gets caught breaking their own rules. But the
graduationand Bernie Madoff was the treasurerand I felt like I was at a state funeral. At one point, I
imes over the centuries that the Jews have bounced back from disaster. Id seen other people do thisyoud
n resounding applause. But this time, everybody looked at me. Nobody clapped. And I said, Maybe this
gh. I sat down next to Speaker Sheldon Silver, and he said, Not that time. Not that time. It was just too
nd family scandals for a few weeks, but they never forget the guy who picks their pockets. laura miller,
ved to be a man of action. Madoff and Weiner were phonies. One big, one little. col allan, editor-in-
and embodiment of an eraalthough the Weiner episode gets honorable mention for its highly 2011-ish
iner and Spitzer will be minor footnotes. Ms. Astors story will endure as yet another example of what
s: a sex scandal, both tragic and comedic, and without sex. ed koch, former mayor No question:
white-collar black magic. david chang, restaurateur Weiner, because the confluence of his
posterous). daniel okrent, writer Madoff. So many powerful people and institutions affected
ippy, editor, esopus Spitzers story will be forgotten first because its basically just a man lying to his
ffs story will have long legs because swindlers tend to be immortalized. But the Weiner scandal may go
eing a public nuisance and that would have been that. david patrick columbia, editor/co-founder,
. scco _ k, nymag.com commenter Hands down, Bernie Madoff. New details emerge every
arneys new york 1. Madoff. 2. Spitzer. The other two notAstor is too great, and will-pilfering
peter kaplan, editorial director, fairchild fashion media Emerson once said that history can
ff, of course, but he will be the figurehead of our era of greed. colum mccann, writer My moneys
uc sante, writer Spitzer and Weiner. New Yorkers have a love affair with sordid politicians, and
e Astorif youre gay. The straights dont really get into the whole Ancient Socialite thing. kafkask,
ther momenthe owns the early teens 4EVA. lorin stein, editor, the paris review Spitzer, for
ton looks (the hair sort of long but not unkempt and just flaring at the ears, also the melancholy nose and
f not only forever changed how the world looks at Wall Street, he also personified Jewish fears about our
e old, poison canards about Jewish bankers, it will be Bernie Madoffs fault. darin strauss, writer
stem. richard pea, program director, film society of lincoln center Madoff, because
in baitz, playwright Madoff. Its one thing to bilk pension funds, but it takes a real sadist to
worse than they could by themselves!susan yung, bam publications director I would be very
. I already get Brooke Astor mixed up with Brooke Burke. aaron sorkin, screenwriter

P h oto g r a p h s : f r o m l e f t, R o n G a l e l l a / W i r e I m ag e / g e t t y i m ag e s ; C h r i s H o n d r o s / G e t t y I m ag e s ;
R o b e r t S a b o / NY Da i ly N e w s A r c h i v e / G e t t y I m ag e s ; Sp e n c e r P l at t / G e t t y I m ag e s

month 000, 2012 | new york 67

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