by John Glatt
But soon after Novack took the Fontainebleau private, there was such an outcry that he was forced to allow the public back inside again.
“It was a bad move,” said The Miami Herald of the privatizing, “almost carny.”
* * *
That fall, Benji Novack Jr. started classes at the Miami Country Day School. Every morning he would be chauffeured to the private preparatory school in North Miami, and then driven back at night. He was a very bright boy and a good student, but he would make few friends during his seven years there.
EIGHT
THE PRINCE OF THE FONTAINEBLEAU
On January 19, 1963, Ben and Bernice Novack threw a lavish seventh birthday party for their son. As Benji had no friends his own age, a few children staying at the Fontainebleau were rounded up to join in the festivities. During the party, the hotel’s publicity man organized a photograph of Benji on a horse, alongside his smiling parents. Ben Novack Sr. looked unusually casual and relaxed in a slightly unbuttoned shirt, his jacket bursting with his expanding waistline. Bernice looked radiant in a white scarf and a plain white dress, and the birthday boy wore a wide grin as he sat in the saddle, the center of attention.
To celebrate her son’s birthday, Bernice Novack commissioned a portrait of him on the beach by the Fontainebleau. The oil painting would become one of her most treasured possessions, prominently displayed wherever she lived.
That summer, a movie crew took over the Fontainebleau swimming pool to film the waterskiing scene for the new James Bond film, Goldfinger. The hotel’s distinctive exterior was also prominently featured in the tracking aerial shot over Miami Beach during the movie’s opening credits.
Benji Novack eagerly watched the filming from the edge of the set, and was later introduced to Sean Connery.
“He knew all these stars,” said his future wife Jill Campion, “from the time he was a little kid. He just ran around that hotel and was like the golden boy. Couldn’t do anything wrong.”
Beneath all the glamour and luxury, however, Ben Novack Jr. was a very lonely little boy, extremely self-conscious about his debilitating stutter. It was especially hard for him at school, where he was mocked by the other children.
“I know that the stuttering frustrated him,” said now-retired Miami Beach police officer Joe Matthews, who moonlighted as a Fontainebleau security guard and befriended young Benji. “He would body-talk.”
Even at Halloween, Benji was on his own, being sent off trick-or-treating around Miami Beach in his father’s chauffeured limousine.
“That was terrible,” said his aunt Maxine. “He was a little king, but this poor kid didn’t get any love.”
* * *
Although the Novacks may have presented the image of the perfect American family in publicity photographs, they were anything but. Ben Novack Sr. was always on the lookout for beautiful young girls, and there was no shortage of available ones at the Poodle Lounge for his pleasure.
“Girls were there everywhere,” said Dixie Evans, a retired burlesque dancer who worked the hotel switchboard. “For men with the money, there were plenty of girls around.”
During his marriage to Bernice, Novack had numerous brief affairs. Over the years, he and his wife grew apart, eventually leading separate lives.
“Ben cheated on Bernice,” said Estelle Fernandez. “I mean, she was aware of it, but she put up with it. He still showed her respect, let’s put it that way.”
Eventually, Ben Novack moved into his own bedroom in the penthouse, and Bernice asserted her sexual independence by seducing a string of handsome Latin bandleaders who played the hotel. Miami Beach was in the middle of a Latin boom during the 1960s, and the mistress of the Fontainebleau became a fixture at the weekly “Mambo Nights” at the Fontainebleau’s popular Boom Boom Room.
In 1960, Cuban bandleader Paquito Hechavarria had joined the Boom Boom Room’s seven-piece house band, and over the next few years he often accompanied Fontainebleau regulars Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.
Hechavarria recalled in 2001, “Can you believe that you had to wait in line to get into the [Boom Boom] room on a Tuesday. The Beach was full of dance teachers, teaching the Americanos how to dance cha-cha, mambo, tango, and the beginnings of bossa nova.”
Hechavarria told the Miami New Times that he was just one of several Latin band leaders seduced by the beautiful Bernice Novack. “Let me tell you,” he recalled, “she was a beautiful woman. She was hard to say no to.”
Bernice also had a fling with the handsome Cuban bandleader Pupi Campo. When Ben Novack found out, he had the musician savagely beaten up and thrown out of the hotel.
“Pupi Campo,” Fontainebleau manager Lenore Toby said, sighing. “That’s the one that created the big scandal. That’s when they split.”
When Novack accused Bernice of cheating on him, a huge argument ensued. She then threw him out of their suite, saying she was getting an attorney and wanted a divorce. It was soon the talk of the hotel, as staff wondered what would happen next.
“I do remember the scandal,” said Dixie Evans. “Obviously something happened, because why would the rumor go round that Mr. Novack had [Campo] beaten up? Why would he just go out and beat up the head musician? The show was great. Everybody liked him.”
On Friday, August 14, 1964, Miami News columnist Herb Rau ran a cryptic blind item in his widely read “Miami Confidential” column: “Rumors are flying that a prominent Miami Beach hotelier and his wife are on the verge of extremism in the pursuit of individual liberty.”
A month later, on September 7, Rau led off with another blind item: “It’s a serious matter between a Miami Beach hotel owner and his wife,” his column began. “She’s been talking to her attorneys, and she’s bantering around a figure in the millions as a divorce settlement.”
On Tuesday, October 6, Bernice Novack sued Ben in circuit court, charging him with cruelty. She also asked for custody of their eight-year-old son, Ben Jr. The suit stated that besides being “a good wife,” she had always offered her husband “industry and services” to help him run the Fontainebleau hotel. She also asked the judge to award her temporary alimony until the divorce could be heard in court, and that Ben Sr. pay all her court costs.
That morning, the Miami News carried the story with the headline “Novack Sued for Divorce.” The following day, Herb Rau gloated in his column that Ben and Bernice Novack had “made the headlines” bearing out his previous two items.
After filing for divorce, Bernice moved out of the Fontainebleau, leaving Benji with his father. Then father and son moved out of the Governor’s Suite and into a two-bedroom suite in another part of the hotel.
During the Novacks’ acrimonious split, Dixie Evans, who by then was the chief night switchboard operator, fielded many dramatic telephone calls between them.
“We used to listen in and pull our key back,” she recalled. “No, we didn’t really eavesdrop … but as an employee you do kind of follow the trend. And when a phone call comes in, you know who to plug up and ring.”
Maxine Fiel said that soon after they split Ben Novack desperately tried to win her sister back. “When she broke off with him, he would send cases of liquor … the best steaks.”
Eventually, Bernice gave in, and in July 1965, just days before circuit judge E. Schultz was due to make his final ruling, she dropped the divorce suit and moved back into the Fontainebleau.
But the couple appeared less than optimistic that things would work out, stipulating that if the divorce suit were revived within two years, Bernice would receive alimony of $17,500 a year ($120,600 in today’s money), and $7,500 ($51,600) in child support for Ben Jr.
Soon afterward, Bernice embarked on a passionate affair with Latin drummer George Rodriguez, whom she had met at the Boom Boom Room. “He played drums at the Fontainebleau,” said Estelle Fernandez. “She went with him when she was having a hard time with Ben.”
Once again Novack discovered Bernice’s cheating, but this time he took the initia
tive and sued for divorce.
“George was her lover,” said Guy Costaldo, whose partner was Bernice’s hairdresser, Emmanuel Buccola. “And Ben had her followed, because he was terribly in love with her. They had helicopters following her. My lover Manny said, ‘It was a very exciting time—running this way, that, and the other.’”
Bernice later claimed that even while her husband was having her followed, he was seeing another woman. “She was a bitch,” Bernice said many years later, “She used to come to the hotel while the divorce was going on. She really pursued him, and I guess he fell in love with her.”
On Saturday, January 15, 1966—four days before Ben Jr.’s tenth birthday—Ben Novack filed for divorce, accusing Bernice of infidelity and of being a bad mother. In the bitter suit, Novack charged Bernice with taking valuables and “letters of deep sentimental value” from his safety deposit box. He also accused her of being “cold and indifferent,” and cheating on him with another man to cause him “mental anguish.” He demanded the court give him custody of Ben Jr., claiming that Bernice had neglected the boy by failing to provide a religious education.
Three days later, the Miami News reported the story, with the headline, “Ben Novack, Wife Back in Court.”
“Ben Novack, Fontainebleau Hotel operator, and his wife, Bernice, are back in divorce court,” the article stated. “Mrs. Novack sought a divorce from him in 1964, but they kissed and made up.”
In her countersuit, Bernice Novack claimed that Ben had told her that he was bored with their marriage, that he drank excessively and cursed at her.
Years later, Bernice would tell author Steven Gaines that she had been unhappy for many years, and no longer wanted to live at the Fontainebleau. “He would never buy me a house,” she complained. “He was fooling around. He was attractive and rich, and women were after him. After all, he owned the world-famous Fontainebleau.”
Soon after the suit was filed, Bernice Novack moved into a separate penthouse suite at the Fontainebleau, amid Ben’s accusations that she had stolen valuable hotel furniture, art exhibits, liquor, and perfume.
The hotel corporation then sued Bernice in circuit court, demanding she return the hundreds of items that had disappeared from not only the luxury penthouse she’d shared with her husband, but also from the hotel.
NINE
“GAMBLERS AND HOODLUMS”
As his parents battled in the divorce court, Ben Novack Jr. had the run of the Fontainebleau—to the annoyance of many. He got in the way of the staff, who were always too scared to complain about his boisterous behavior.
“He was in everybody’s hair,” recalled Lenore Toby. “He was a little tyrant. He had no discipline whatsoever. He was really Peck’s Bad Boy,” she said, referring to the 1934 film starring Jackie Cooper. Benji had been raised in the corridors and the lobbies of that hotel by the security officers, and had never had a real father and mother.
At that time, Ben Novack Sr. had given his adopted son from his first marriage, Ronald, a lowly job as a reception clerk, and kept his distance, never allowing Ronald to live at the hotel. Benji had little to do with his adopted half-brother, and avoided him, too.
“[Benji] didn’t have siblings,” said his cousin Meredith Fiel. “He had the Fontainebleau. The waiters. The waitresses. His nannies. That was his family.”
* * *
In January 1966, ABC-TV broadcast the first episode of the Batman TV series, causing a sensation. Ten-year-old Ben Novack Jr. became a huge fan, and lived for the weekly shows. The small boy totally related to the caped crusader’s fight for good against evil foes such as the Joker, Catwoman, and the Riddler.
He was now hanging around the Miami Beach police officers who worked security at the Fontainebleau, who took him under their wing. The precocious little boy latched on to the Fontainebleau head of security, Ronnie Mitervini, who became like a father to him. “Benji just hung on to him,” said Toby. “He now wanted to be a detective, and his whole life was security.”
“He was like a mascot to the police,” recalled Officer Pat Franklin, “because his dad owned the Fontainebleau and would feed the cops for free.”
Another Miami Beach police officer, James Scarberry, said that it was common knowledge that you had to take care of Benji if you wanted to keep getting the well-paying details at the Fontainebleau, along with the other perks. “We would be working at the hotel,” said Scarberry, “and he would just tag along with us. Benji always wanted to be a policeman.”
* * *
By the mid-1960s, the Mafia had quietly taken over the Fontainebleau hotel, reportedly paying Ben Novack $2 million a year as their frontman.
“Because it was run by the Mafia,” Alan Lapidus explained, “there have probably been more movies and TV shows shot in the Fontainebleau than any building on earth. Jerry Lewis and all those guys made all their movies there to promote the building. Frank Sinatra had his own suite and there was definitely Mafia [involvement there].”
At 4:20 P.M. on March 1, 1966, the Miami Beach Police Department received a warning that an assassination attempt would be made on Frank Sinatra during his performance at La Ronde that night. The FBI was immediately alerted.
Sinatra “had received a telephone call from an anonymous male caller,” the FBI’s official report read, “who said, ‘a hand grenade will be thrown at Frank Sinatra sometime tonight during the show.’”
That evening there was a heavy FBI and Miami Beach Police Department presence at the Fontainebleau, but nothing untoward happened.
A year later, Sinatra filmed Tony Rome at the hotel during the day while performing at La Ronde at night. He did the same thing in 1968, with Lady in Cement.
Whenever Sinatra and his entourage moved into the Fontainebleau, there was always an undercurrent of violence in the air. Sinatra was a heavy drinker, and unpredictable. He could explode at any time.
Once, at an after-party in the Poodle Lounge, Sinatra and Ben Novack Sr. were drinking champagne when the star reached over to an ice bucket to refill his glass. Discovering that the bottle was empty, he threw a tantrum.
“He was as drunk as a skunk,” recalled Lenore Toby. “So he picked up the bucket with all the ice in it and turned it over Ben Novack’s head, saying, ‘You run a lousy hotel.’”
The Fontainebleau owner merely laughed it off, not wanting to upset the real chairman of the board.
On another occasion, Sinatra took umbrage at something and threw all the furniture in his room off the balcony and into the gardens below.
“Benji was later over there,” said Toby, “collecting the furniture off the ground.”
Sinatra always roamed around the hotel with a team of armed personal bodyguards to do his bidding. One night, the comedian Shecky Greene was opening for the singer, and cracked a joke about him.
“Sinatra got really pissed,” said Pete Matthews, another Miami Beach police officer who worked security at the Fontainebleau. “Frank had some of his friends bounce him around to express his anger at comments that he made onstage. Benji told me he saw Greene, and he’d got the shit beaten out of him.”
Years later, the comedian incorporated the beating into his act, joking that Frank Sinatra had literally saved his life. He’d tell the audience that five guys were beating him up when he heard Sinatra say, “Okay. He’s had enough.”
A couple of years before joining the Miami Beach Police Department, Pete Matthews had been driving along Indian Creek, by the Fontainebleau, when he spotted a young boy dressed in a full scuba diving outfit, complete with an oxygen tank, and wading around in the water next to the Fontainebleau’s Calypso houseboat.
When Matthews asked what he was doing, Benji explained that he was retrieving the hotel’s silverware, which Frank Sinatra had thrown off the side of the boat the night before.
“Frank was partying on the boat,” said Matthews. “Sometimes he would go off on the deep end when he had too much to drink. He didn’t like the utensils, so he’d dumped them over the si
de. Benji had such a terrible speech impediment that I spent ten minutes just trying to get it out of him.”
* * *
By the late 1960s, Las Vegas was threatening to eclipse Miami Beach as America’s leisure capital. For the Nevada desert town had one big advantage over the Florida beach resort: gambling. Despite Ben Novack and his Mafia partners’ dream that Florida would one day legalize casinos, the religious vote up north always proved too powerful.
To add insult to injury, Vegas’s thriving Caesars Palace Casino had stolen many of the Fontainebleau’s designs and innovations, substituting a Roman theme for a French one.
But the confident Fontainebleau owner and president always talked a good game during press interviews. “Sometimes I am ready to give Miami Beach back to the Seminoles,” he told The New York Times in February 1963, “but not today. Our volume now places us with the top five hotels in the world. We are enjoying 85 percent occupancy, and could do better if we had any way of bringing in guests on a stand-by basis.”
Novack also dismissed any suggestion that the Caribbean islands were threatening Miami Beach. “Until last year we lost a great deal of business to Jamaica, Nassau and the Virgin Islands,” he said. “Now these wanderers are coming back. They thought they wanted a complete rest, that peace and quiet were all they needed on a vacation.”
Ironically, several months later, Novack decided to expand his empire and build a Fontainebleau Resort and Casino in the Bahamas, on one of the Cat Cay Islands. Unfortunately, his application for a license was ultimately turned down by a royal commission, on the grounds of “unfavorable police information on his character.”
Talking to the Associated Press, Novack conceded that he knew a number of American underworld figures, but vehemently denied that they controlled either him or the Fontainebleau.
“Novack also said the Bahamian cabinet rejected his casino license application,” read the AP article, “because it did not want a third casino in the colony, not because of police reports on his character.”