by John Glatt
* * *
Groucho Marx, soon to become a Fontainebleau regular, described the hotel as the Eighth Wonder of the World, but the architectural critics were not so kind.
“The nation’s grossest national product,” noted one. “A monstrosity,” asserted another, forecasting that it would appeal to people who “don’t know the difference between architecture and Coney Island.”
Ben Novack couldn’t have cared less, proudly proclaiming the Fontainebleau “the world’s most pretentious hotel.”
He now began referring to himself as “Mr. Fontainebleau,” and wore a tiny golden replica of his hotel on a heavy gold chain around his neck.
But it would be hard even for the flamboyant hotelier to compete with his stunning creation.
According to the Fontainebleau press release, the hotel had cost $13 million ($106 million today) to build and employed nine hundred staff. The motif was French, and the main curved building had lovely, warm French white marble floors with black bow ties receding into the distance, elegantly winding stairways, and round columns. An estimated $1.5 million in French Provincial antiques and statues adorned the corridors and suites. Everything was decked out in over-the-top French period décor. The Presidential Suite even had a dummy fireplace, with a marble mantel from the old French embassy in Washington, D.C.
The focal point of the hotel’s massive main interior was the two-story “Staircase to Nowhere,” which Morris Lapidus had copied from the Paris opera house.
Guests would take an elevator to the mezzanine before slowly walking down the curved staircase, parading their jewels and furs to an appreciative audience below.
“When they walked down the staircase, they were stars,” said Alan Lapidus. “They seemed to be saying, ‘We’re rich and we can afford it.’”
This nonstop display of affluence soon become one of the hotel’s most popular attractions.
The future Las Vegas hotel magnate Steve Wynn vacationed at the Fontainebleau as a young boy, learning valuable lessons from Ben Novack that he would put to good use many years later. “The Fontainebleau invented the concept of the hotel as show,” explained Wynn, who would later marry into the Novack family. “Not only was it grand, but it had the charisma of a place that was cool to be at. There was nothing but laughter in the lobby. Everybody was having the time of their lives, everybody was pretty, and everybody was rich.”
* * *
Ben Novack never underestimated the importance of star power, carefully cultivating close friendships with the world’s biggest entertainers. But it was through the influence of Mafia bosses and his Fontainebleau partners Sam Giancana and Joseph Fischetti that Frank Sinatra first started playing at Novack’s beloved hotel.
In return for headlining midnight shows at the Fontainebleau’s exclusive La Ronde Room nightclub, Novack presented the superstar with the key to his own permanent penthouse suite on the sevententh floor. Over the next twenty-five-years, Sinatra became synonymous with the Fontainebleau—and one of Ben Novack’s closest friends.
Following Sinatra’s example, other big stars started playing the Fontainebleau. The Rat Pack made the hotel its winter headquarters, performing many impromptu drunken sets at La Ronde.
“We had not just the Rat Pack,” said the hotel’s first head of publicity, Hal Gardner, “but also Judy Garland, Sophie Tucker, and Marlene Dietrich. Where else would you see Gary Cooper reading the paper or Groucho Marx having eggs Benedict? When Joan Crawford walked across the lobby, people would get up and applaud.”
As a world-class entertainment center, the Fontainebleau transformed Miami Beach into the glamour capital of the world, drawing the rich and famous like a magnet. (Ben Novack enforced a strict evening dress code among guests all over the hotel, with suits and ties for men and cocktail dresses for women.) And the iconic crescent-shaped Fontainebleau became synonymous with Miami Beach on postcards and other memorabilia.
Incredibly, during the quarter of a century Ben Novack ran the hotel, there was never a single Fontainebleau sign inside or outside to identify it.
“If you didn’t know what it was,” explained future Fontainebleau manager Lenore Toby, “you didn’t belong.”
* * *
Soon after the Fontainebleau opened for business, Ben and Bernice Novack took up residence in a fabulous duplex suite on the seventeenth floor, nicknamed the Governor’s Suite. Their majestic four-bedroom apartment looked out on the ocean and boasted a dining room, a billiard room, and a piano bar with a baby grand piano.
“They lived like royalty,” said future Miami Beach mayor Alex Daoud, “and they acted like they were royalty. Ben could be very charming, and he could also be very cruel. He could be ruthless, but he was always very cunning.”
Ben Novack now devoted himself to making the Fontainebleau a success, having little time or energy for anything else. He lived and breathed the Fontainebleau 24/7, and Bernice soon realized that she would always take second place.
“The Fontainebleau was his life,” she later told author Steven Gaines. “It was his baby, his wife, his mistress, all his dreams and ideas together.”
Resigning herself to the role of trophy wife, she spent her days shopping and fulfilling her duties as the Queen of the Fontainebleau. Her husband demanded she always dress in the latest fashions—it was as if she had a full-time modeling assignment for his hotel.
“You’re always in a glass cage,” she later explained. “People stared at me. They’d say, ‘There’s the owner’s wife’ or ‘There’s Mrs. Novack.’ I didn’t care for it. I didn’t like the ‘front’ of the house.”
Still, Bernice was constantly upstaged by her narcissistic husband and his ever more garish suits, bow ties, and jeweled bling (years before the word was coined). Plus, she soon discovered that although she might be living like a queen, wearing the most expensive furs and jewels, it all belonged to the hotel and she actually owned nothing.
On May 28, 1955, Ben and Bernice Novack flew to Paris for an extended European shopping vacation. On June 7 they checked into the luxurious Savoy hotel in London for a ten-day stay, before flying back to the States.
By the time Bernice arrived back at the Fontainebleau, she was pregnant.
* * *
While Ben Novack was in London, his estranged business partner Harry Mufson called a press conference. He announced that he had bought land directly north of the Fontainebleau, to build an even more elegant and luxurious hotel. It would be named the Eden Roc, after the gardens and swimming pool at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, in Antibes.
His architect would be Morris Lapidus, who vowed to create an even more ambitious hotel than the Fontainebleau. Mufson’s brief to Lapidus was to make the Eden Roc the ultimate in elegance and luxury, with “no French stuff like the Fontainebleau.” When Lapidus proposed Italian Renaissance, Mufson replied that he did not care if it was “Brooklyn or baroque,” as long as it had plenty of glamour and “screams” luxury.
“I want the Fontainebleau to fall flat on their ass,” he told his architect.
When Ben Novack returned from Europe, Lapidus went to the Fontainebleau to inform him as a matter of courtesy that he had agreed to design the Eden Roc. Novack went ballistic, forbidding his former architect to design the rival hotel.
“I patiently explained to him that architecture was my profession,” wrote Lapidus in his autobiography, “and my means of earning a livelihood. Ben claimed that I owed it to him to turn down my new commission.”
When Lapidus said he would be designing the Eden Roc anyway, Novack banned him from ever setting foot in the Fontainebleau again.
“I left the hotel feeling like Adam being driven out of the Garden of Eden,” Lapidus wrote.
Some years later, when Lapidus attempted to enter the Fontainebleau for a charity luncheon, Novack had security guards physically throw him out of the hotel he had designed.
* * *
At 9:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 19, 1956, Bernice Novack gave birth to a baby boy
at a Manhattan hospital. When she went into labor, Ben Novack jumped on a plane from Miami Beach. He arrived at the hospital two hours after his son, Ben Hadwin Jr., entered the world.
“Benji was already born when Ben came,” recalled Benji’s aunt Maxine. “He flew in from Florida and [Bernice] says, ‘We have a son.’”
Maxine Fiel, who had been at the hospital with her sister since 2:00 that afternoon, said the new father displayed little reaction on learning that he now had a son and heir.
“Ben didn’t ever show a great deal of emotion,” explained Maxine. “He’d smile or something, but he never [seemed] very happy.”
Novack first saw his baby son in the hospital nursery, and Maxine’s husband, David, took photographs of him holding Benji for the first time.
The next day, Ben Novack flew back to Miami to take care of Fontainebleau business, and a week later Bernice brought their baby son home to the seventeenth-floor penthouse, where he would spend his childhood.
SIX
BENJI
After Bernice’s own difficult childhood, being a mother did not come naturally to her. A live-in wet nurse was hired to feed Benji, to be followed by a succession of nannies to look after him.
Although Ben and Bernice Novack would always be there for birthday parties and other family photo opportunities, Benji (as everyone called him) received little warmth or affection from his parents.
“I don’t think [Bernice] even raised Benji,” said Estelle Fernandez, later to become Bernice’s confidante. “She had nannies that took care of him, and I think that’s why their relationship was not a close one.”
* * *
The year of Benji’s birth, Ben Novack became obsessed with destroying the Eden Roc hotel, now rising fast across Collins Avenue. In the fall of 1956, several months before the Eden Roc’s scheduled opening, he secretly purchased a ninety-nine-year lease on a parking lot dividing the two hotels. He was planning a massive new Fontainebleau extension, with a new wing and hundreds of extra guest rooms. There would be also a huge ballroom, to attract the lucrative convention business beginning to come to Miami Beach.
The Eden Roc officially opened just before Christmas 1956. It was clearly visible from the Fontainebleau, and to make matters worse, it was an immediate hit with the critics, who said it surpassed the Fontainebleau.
That holiday season, the two Morris Lapidus–designed hotels were the talk of Miami Beach—to Ben Novack’s great annoyance. In revenge, he set to work planning his extension, which would include a seventeen-story blank concrete wall that would cut off the sunlight to the Eden Roc swimming pool and put the hotel out of business. The extension would be known as Fontainebleau Towers, and would double the size of his hotel.
The expansion was done under a veil of secrecy. The construction began on the rectangular gray slab of concrete towering over the boundary of the adjacent Eden Roc. Novack had deliberately positioned it to cast a shadow over his rival’s pool between noon and 2:00 P.M., the most popular hours for sunbathing. Novack even gave his former partner Harry Mufson the proverbial finger by ensuring that the only break in the gray concrete wall facing the Eden Roc would be a large window in the upper-left-hand corner—the dining room of his and Bernice’s new duplex.
Later, Ben Novack loved staring through his window as the noon shadow slowly crept over the Eden Roc pool, sending guests scurrying off in search of other places to sunbathe. It was said that he would sometimes open his penthouse window and spit at the rival hotel.
The media nicknamed his extension the “spite wall,” as the bitter feud between the rival hoteliers made national headlines.
Forty-years-later, Ben Novack Jr. would dismiss any suggestion that his father had built the wall out of vindictiveness. “My father didn’t give a shit what was going on next door,” he maintained. “My father didn’t even realize that the state of Florida is at a slight angle northeast and at 12:30 in the afternoon the wall would cast a shadow over the Eden Roc. Meanwhile, the result was the most god-awful ugly wall.”
Mufson eventually sued Novack over the “spite wall”—unsuccessfully—and was forced to build a second swimming pool, giving Eden Roc’s guests full access to sunlight.
* * *
From the very beginning, aside from models and movie stars, the Fontainebleau hotel also attracted a motley collection of thieves and con men, who preyed on the wealthy guests. Burglaries were common, and in the hotel’s first two years an estimated quarter of a million dollars in jewelry and other valuables disappeared from guest rooms.
After Ben Novack’s personal safe was robbed of $15,000 in cash, he hired retired New York City police lieutenant James Gillace to command a unit of twenty plainclothes security officers, who patrolled the hotel corridors around the clock.
Whenever Frank Sinatra or other A-list entertainers played the La Ronde Room, Novack hired additional off-duty Miami Beach police officers to work security in full uniform and ensure everything went smoothly. With free meals and other generous hotel perks supplied, the normally poorly paid police officers vied for a chance to moonlight at “the Blue,” as they affectionately called it.
The FBI was also watching the hotel closely, as the Mafia were rumored to own a large stake in it, and had a strong presence there.
In March 1958, Frank Sinatra played a series of sold-out shows at La Ronde. A subsequent FBI report observed that the singer was staying at the Fontainebleau with movie star Lauren Bacall. It also noted that Sinatra had been seen with Joe Fischetti, a known Mafia boss and Al Capone’s former lieutenant. Fischetti, it was said, had been ordered to look after Sinatra by mobsters “Lucky” Luciano and Frank Costello.
Ben Novack had known many of the Mafia families, going back to his time in New York in the 1930s. It was rumored the Mob had invested heavily in the Fontainebleau for “mineral rights,” hoping to control Miami Beach gambling, if it were ever legalized.
“Basically, the [Fontainebleau] was mobbed up from top to bottom,” said Alan Lapidus. “And that’s when the Rat Pack came in and the whole thing started getting very weird.”
Mafia chieftain Meyer Lansky used the Fontainebleau as his personal business headquarters. He lived in an apartment a few blocks north, but every morning, he’d arrive at the hotel with Bruiser, his beloved Shih Tzu, and spend the day there.
“He was a perfect gentleman to everyone in the hotel,” recalled former desk attendant Robert Madiewski. “He would play cards either in the card room or out by the pool at his cabana, and use the pay phones in the lobby because the FBI had his phones at home wiretapped.”
Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana wintered at the Fontainebleau, and it was there that Sinatra introduced him to the beautiful actress Judith Campbell (later Exner), who became his mistress. A few months earlier, Sinatra had also set her up with then-senator John F. Kennedy, also reputed to have bedded Marilyn Monroe in a Fontainebleau guest room.
Giancana—who made millions of dollars a year from gambling in Cuba—is also reputed to have met CIA agents in his Fontainebleau cabana to discuss assassinating Fidel Castro.
On July 4, 1959, Sam Giancana threw a big wedding bash for his daughter Bonita at the Fontainebleau, which was duly noted by the FBI. Bernice Novack later described the $10,000 wedding ($75,000 in today’s money) for two hundred guests, as one of the social highlights of her time there. She and Ben were photographed with the bride and groom at the lavish reception.
“While the wedding was very elegant and elaborate,” Bernice told Ocean Drive magazine in 2001, “what I remember most was all the security … Sam and the hotel each had their own security, as the FBI and IRS agents and journalists were all swarming the lobby trying to get the names and photos of the guests going into the ballroom.”
Although the Fontainebleau already had the reputation as a Mob hangout, Bernice said her husband never worried about the bad publicity.
“It was a public hotel,” she explained, “and we couldn’t keep anyone out.”
*
* *
For Christmas 1958, Ben Novack expanded his fabulously successful La Ronde Room supper club, where his headliners’ minimum weekly salary was $35,000. Among the top stars already booked to perform for the holiday were Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra.
In January 1959, Novack told The New York Times that La Ronde’s larger capacity meant he could showcase the most expensive stars without putting up the minimum price of drinks.
* * *
Benji Novack grew up among all this glamour, wealth, and paranoia, and knew nothing else. As a baby, he was wheeled around the hotel in his stroller, to which was affixed a large sign reading, “Do Not Touch.”
He was raised by a strict German nurse named Bella, who left a lasting impression on the little boy. When his aunt Maxine visited the Fontainebleau with his cousin Meredith, she was shocked at how the nurse treated him.
“Every time he would eat she’d wipe his mouth,” recalled Maxine. “I said, ‘Bella, will you leave him alone. He’s going to drip. Wipe his mouth afterward.’” And I got so mad, I said, ‘Benji, eat your hamburger. Do not wipe your mouth unless you feel something dripping.’”
The nurse also forced the naturally left-handed boy to become right-handed. His aunt believes this so traumatized him that he developed a terrible stutter, which remained with him for the rest of his life.
“I know why he stuttered,” said Maxine. “He had that German nanny every minute. He had nobody else.”
Meredith Fiel, a couple of years older than her cousin Benji, visited the Fontainebleau with her parents as a young child. She recalls her uncle Ben as being very cold and distant.
“He was this older, big man in charge of this big hotel,” she recalled. “He used to pat me on the head, and that was it. I didn’t have a ‘sit on my lap’ relationship with Ben Novack. We were never close.”
Meredith also remembers her cousin Benji remaining with his nannies, with no interest in meeting other children.
“Benji didn’t play with anybody,” she said. “He didn’t connect with me or really want to. When he had his tantrums, everybody would quake and shake at the thought of Ben Novack coming around.”