by John Glatt
Years later, Bernice would blame Novack’s breakdown on an elaborate practical joke perpetrated by his partner, Harry Mufson. One day he arranged to have all the furniture in Novack’s office moved out, and he changed the door locks. After getting a locksmith to break in and finding an empty office, Novack suffered a panic attack, thinking he was losing his mind. Upon discovering that Mufson was behind the joke, he fled to Arizona.
Ironically, it was Mufson, concerned about his partner’s mental health, who telephoned Bernice in New York, urging her to call Ben and raise his spirits. When she called, Ben turned things to his advantage, persuading her to marry him, saying it was the only thing that could cure him.
So seven years after first meeting him, Bernice agreed to give up her modeling career and move to Miami Beach and become Mrs. Ben Novack.
* * *
In early 1952, Ben and Bernice were married by a judge in a simple civil ceremony at the Essex House, New York City. Jack Stempel gave his daughter away, refusing to let his ex-wife, Rowena, attend.
“My mother was alive,” said Maxine, who came with her new husband, David Fiel. “But my father wouldn’t let us know where she was. Bernice married a man just like our father: controlling, self-centered. Not particularly sensitive.”
FOUR
BRICK BY BRICK
When Bernice moved into her new husband’s luxurious Sans Souci suite, she fell into a deep depression. For the first months of her marriage she remained in her bedroom, wondering if she had done the right thing.
As Ben Novack had insisted she give up modeling, she felt she no longer had an identity, apart from being his wife. She rarely saw Ben anyway, as he was too busy running his hotel, now booked for months in advance. Her only social contacts were with the Sans Souci waiters and maids, who brought room service to the suite. It was a lonely existence she would soon learn to live with.
Most afternoons, Bernice would go to the hotel’s private beach and sunbathe by the pool, finding little in common with the wives of her husband’s business partners.
“The wives and I didn’t get along,” she later explained. “They were very cold to me, and so much older. Here I was, a model. They wanted to sit in a cabana and play cards all day, and I wasn’t interested.”
* * *
As soon as Ben Novack had the Sans Souci up and running, he was ready to move on to something bigger. A golden opportunity soon presented itself when the Harvey S. Firestone oceanfront estate went on the market. Well located on the bend of Collins Avenue at Forty-Fourth Street, the estate marked the boundary between Miami Beach’s hotels and the “Millionaires’ Row” mansions.
Built in 1918, at a cost of $350,000, by James Snowden of Standard Oil, the fifteen-room Italian Renaissance–style palace had long dominated Miami Beach. Harvey Firestone, the chairman of the Firestone Tire Company, bought it in 1924, renaming it Harbel Villa. He used it to entertain notables such as President Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison.
When Firestone died in 1938, his heirs left Miami, and Harbel Villa fell into disrepair.
The Sans Souci lay thirteen blocks south of the abandoned estate. Every day, Ben Novack drove past it, lusting over its possibilities. With its commanding 950 feet of oceanfront, it would be far and away the biggest hotel in Miami Beach, if he could ever buy it and realize his vision.
Unfortunately, the Firestone estate lay right on the line dividing commercial buildings to the south and residential ones to the north. The rich and powerful Miami Beach citizens living nearby did not want any new hotels intruding on their exclusivity. They maintained that the four hundred hotels Miami Beach already had were quite sufficient, and any new ones would ruin the place.
In 1943 the late Harvey Firestone’s heirs had first legally challenged the zoning laws, wanting to sell the land for the best possible price. For the next seven years, there had been a barrage of lawsuits, culminating in a state supreme court decision allowing the estate to be rezoned as commercial.
Novack had been following this case closely, and in late 1951 he and Harry Mufson began quietly negotiating with the owners to buy the Firestone estate. In July 1952 the two partners called a press conference to announce that their Sun N’ Sea Corporation had agreed to purchase the old Firestone estate for $2.3 million ($19 million today). They told reporters they would tear down the Firestone mansion to build a “gigantic” 550-room hotel costing $10 million ($83 million today). It would be, Ben Novack boasted, the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach.
On the eve of closing the deal, Harry Mufson discovered that Novack had double-crossed him by secretly syphoning off $15,000 in Sans Souci hotel money to get his Firestone estate deal under way. To make matters worse, he also discovered that only Ben Novack’s name would go on the Firestone estate deed.
There was a heated confrontation between Novack and his partners at the Sans Souci, before Mufson stormed out and hired a lawyer to take legal action.
With just twenty-four hours to close the deal, Ben Novack started hitting the phones for financial backing.
Years later, Ben Novack Jr. claimed that his father had literally begged acquaintances he barely knew to trust him and wire the money, promising to send them contracts later.
“He put together the most unusual partnership,” Ben Jr. told author Steven Gaines. “Some of the people he got weren’t his choice, but they were willing to cough up the dough.”
One of Ben Novack’s new partners, one who put up big money, was Mafia boss Sam Giancana, who would soon play a major role in the new hotel.
* * *
In the wake of his battle with Harry Mufson, Ben Novack moved into the derelict Firestone mansion, using the dining room as his new office. Bernice took over one of the bedrooms and watched in admiration as her husband began working on the daunting logistics needed to start building the enormous seventeen-story pleasure palace he had in mind.
* * *
A few months later, in New York, Morris Lapidus picked up his morning newspaper to read that Ben Novack had selected him to be the architect of his new super-luxurious hotel, to be called “The Estate.” It was the first he had heard of it.
Lapidus immediately called Novack, who explained that when he had been asked by a reporter who his new architect would be, Lapidus’s was the first name that came into his head. Although Lapidus wanted the project, the hotelier now said he needed “a name” architect. Eventually, Lapidus persuaded Novack to allow him to design not only the hotel, but also the interior furnishings and everything down to the bellhops’ uniforms. And he agreed to do it for just $80,000, a fraction of the going rate.
“My father made the devil’s deal with Novack,” explained Alan Lapidus. “It was an insane fee, but my father knew this was a chance to make his bones.”
On December 17, 1953, Ben Novack met with his new architect and recently hired contractors in the Firestone mansion to discuss a time line for completion. He then shocked everyone by announcing that the opening ceremony would take place a year to the day from then.
“I protested this was impossible,” Lapidus wrote in his autobiography, Too Much Is Never Enough. “The general contractor suggested that instead of preparing my plans in my New York office, I set up an office right here.”
Lapidus agreed, and moved his wife and two sons to Miami Beach. He then started doing preliminary sketches for the new hotel, deciding to break way from straight lines and rectangles. Instead, he used curves and round buildings, as in his distinctive New York department stores. He later claimed the idea had come to him in the subway, on his way to work, as an epiphany.
“A sweeping curved building was what I wanted,” he explained, “and what I hoped I could sell my client.”
When Lapidus presented his client with twenty-six designs, Novack ripped them up and threw them in the trash can, saying he was going to “dream up his own shape.”
A few days later, Novack called Lapidus in great excitement, saying he had “hit upon a marvelous idea,
” one that had struck him like a bolt of lightning while he was sitting on the toilet that very morning.
“Why not have a curved building?” he declared. “No one has ever designed a curved building.”
Keeping “a straight face,” Lapidus agreed, congratulating Novack for having such an inspiration.
Later, who had actually come up with the original idea for the hotel’s iconic crescent shape would become a matter of contention. Half a century later, Bernice Novack would vehemently dispute Lapidus’s claim that it was his idea.
“Ben designed [it] while sitting on the toilet of the Sans Souci hotel,” she told Ocean Drive magazine in 2001. “He liked things that are round, like the feeling of embracing arms. He was in the bathroom for an hour and a half, and he came out with three pages of sketches.”
* * *
In January 1954 the bulldozers moved in and razed the Firestone mansion to the ground. Then an army of 1,200 construction workers began work on Ben Novack’s dream hotel. Once he was satisfied that construction was progressing well, he and Bernice sailed to Europe for an extended vacation.
During the trip—during which they took in England, France, and Spain—they drove past the stunning Fontainebleau Palace outside Paris, the summer residence of French kings dating from the twelfth century. But Ben refused to stop the car to look inside, saying he wasn’t into historical places.
“I don’t go for those foreign chateaux,” he was later quoted as saying.
However, he did think the name “catchy,” deciding on the spot that it would be perfect for his new hotel.
“Ben loved and was inspired by everything about French luxury,” Bernice later explained.
On the way home, the Novacks stopped off in New York, where they visited Bernice’s sister, Maxine Fiel, at her home in the Bronx.
“He liked my furniture very much,” Maxine recalled. “He said, ‘It’s not fussy. It’s French Provincial.’ And he copied it for the bedroom sets at the Fontainebleau.”
* * *
Morris Lapidus soon realized the enormity of his mistake in agreeing to design the Fontainebleau for a pittance. By June 1954 he had spent his entire fee, and he informed Ben Novack that he was quitting unless Novack came up with another $75,000.
Eager that his architect not abandon him and delay construction, Novack promised that if his partners liked the finished building, Lapidus would get the extra money upon its completion.
The architect reluctantly agreed to these terms, fearing his reputation would be ruined if he walked away from his first major project. So without consulting his wife, he spent their savings to keep them afloat, before taking out a series of personal loans when that money ran out.
* * *
Each morning, Ben Novack was the first on site in a hard hat and work clothes, like a general leading his troops into battle. Always hands-on in the hotel business, he now micromanaged everything.
That summer, Morris Lapidus got his teenage son, Alan, a job with the construction company, pouring concrete.
“I was fifteen,” Alan remembered, “and we lied about my age.”
Working there, the young boy witnessed Ben Novack’s aggressive business style while attending some of the rancorous business meetings with his father.
“I remember [Ben] not being very pleasant,” said Alan Lapidus. “Always imperious: ‘I want this thing done and don’t give me any goddamn excuses.’ That’s the kind of guy he was. Any problem could be solved if you swore enough.”
Every afternoon, Bernice Novack came out onto the beach in her skimpy bathing suit to sunbathe. “She would just lie out there,” recalled Lapidus, “and work would really come to a stop.”
* * *
The Fontainebleau was the largest American hotel to be built since the war, and a New York–based building union soon arrived in Miami Beach to unionize the workforce. Fiercely antiunion, Ben Novack was livid when the union threatened to disrupt work and cause months of delays.
One day, at 4:00 A.M., Morris Lapidus got a call from the on-site night watchman, saying a bomb had just exploded. By the time the architect arrived, the police were already there. Lapidus could smell dynamite in the humid air.
Fortunately, the explosive charges had been set against a column supporting a two-story wing, so the damage was not serious, and was easily repaired. It was obvious, though, that the dynamiters knew what they were doing, and had not been trying to create permanent damage.
“Basically, the hotel workers’ union was run out of town,” said Alan Lapidus, “and it wasn’t until much later that it was discovered that Ben Novack was behind the bomb. He had done it to break the union—which he did.”
* * *
One week before the scheduled December 20, 1954, opening of the Fontainebleau, as the builders were making the finishing touches, Ben Novack took his partners on a tour of his new hotel. After a brief meeting in his office, Novack invited Morris Lapidus out to join them.
The tour finished up at noon by the new Olympic-size swimming pool. The partners stood there in awe, staring at the building’s graceful curves, and at the fountains and statues on the immaculately laid-out seven acres of grounds surrounding it.
Then they congratulated Novack and his architect on their great achievement. It was at that point that Lapidus reminded Ben about the extra fee he was now owed, as Novack’s partners obviously liked his work.
Novack threw Lapidus a blank stare, saying he had no idea what he was talking about. The architect was stunned, protesting that they had an agreement and that he had gone into personal debt to finance the work. Novack just shrugged, looked Lapidus dead in the eye, and said that this was the first he’d heard of it.
“Then [my father] snapped,” said Alan Lapidus. “He had a total nervous breakdown and grabbed a two-by-four piece of lumber and started chasing him around the pool, screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you, you son of a bitch!’”
It took four partners to subdue the architect before he blacked out. He came around to find a group of Novack’s concerned Fontainebleau associates pouring pool water over him.
Lapidus then told the partners about Novack’s promise to pay him an extra $75,000 on top of the $80,000 they’d initially agreed to. It then emerged that Novack had told his partners, who’d financed the project, that he was paying his architect $250,000. It seemed he had pocketed the difference.
“They nearly killed Novack when they found out he had been stealing from them,” said Alan Lapidus. “It was very unpleasant.”
A few days later, the partners ordered Novack to pay Morris Lapidus the extra fee. The hotelier reluctantly agreed, but first insisted that Lapidus apologize for attacking him.
Lapidus swallowed his pride and agreed, in order to get his money.
“You should be sorry,” Ben Novack barked at him. “Why didn’t you talk louder? You were whispering, and you know that I don’t hear well.”
FIVE
“THE MOST PRETENTIOUS HOTEL IN THE WORLD”
On Monday, December 20, 1954, the Fontainebleau hotel officially opened with a grand ball for 1,600 specially invited guests. Two days earlier, Ben Novack had personally taken influential newspaper columnists such as Walter Winchell and Earl Wilson on a guided tour.
New York mayor Robert Wagner was among the celebrities who flew in for the grand opening. But the official guest of honor was the mayor of Fontainebleau, France, Homer Pajot, who would perform the opening ceremony, as well as provide a great photo opportunity.
Unsure what was expected of him, Mayor Pujot had brought along a tree from the Forest of Fontainebleau, which was promptly seized by Miami Airport customs agents. Novack’s fast-thinking publicity man then purchased a replacement tree at a local nursery, which he had decked out in a French tricolor bow. Unfortunately, an eagle-eyed reporter spotted the florist’s van arriving with it, and the next morning an embarrassing gossip piece ran in The Miami Herald.
Throughout the opening ceremony, Mayor Pujot, who didn’
t speak a word of English, looked lost and confused. No one had thought of hiring an interpreter for him.
The French mayor winced as Novack mispronounced the hotel name—“FOUN-tan-BLOO”—and for years afterward, Bernice would complain that everyone pronounced it incorrectly, and that the correct French pronunciation should be used.
The tree-planting ceremony was held in the hotel’s French gardens, copied from the ones outside the palace of Versailles. A smiling Ben and Bernice Novack stood inside the gigantic crescent-shaped aquamarine glass façade as Pajot kissed them on both cheeks. Then, to a round of applause, he presented them with a tablet inscribed in French, reading, “May the sun warm your day and the moon and stars bring happy evenings. And may you return again to taste the pleasures and elegant living at this most fabulous of all resorts.”
Everyone then went inside to gasp at Morris Lapidus’s amazing interiors, which Mayor Pujot later described as “a bouillabaisse.”
That night, Ben and Bernice Novack hosted the opening ball in the La Ronde Room. Ben wore a black tuxedo, and at his side was Bernice, looking like a movie star in a white mink stole and glittering diamond earrings.
The guests danced past midnight, as Patti Page sang the “Fontainebleau Waltz” and Liberace played an 1882 German Steinway grand piano under a huge chandelier cheekily nicknamed “Sophie Tucker.”
Even Eastern Airlines jets passing overhead tipped their wings in a salute that night.
The next morning, The Miami Herald carried a tongue-in-cheek report on the opening.
“Everything was French, including the confusion,” the paper wryly observed. “Millionaires in their elegant glamorous attire lost their dignity as they scrambled for their tables. But the guests took it all in their stride. One gushed, ‘You can’t get in, you can’t get a drink, you can’t get anything, but isn’t this the grandest hotel you ever saw.’”