by John Glatt
Campion introduced her new boyfriend to her circle of friends, who found him rude and socially inept. He would criticize the way they dressed or wore their hair, suggesting how they could improve themselves. In spite of this, Jill’s best friend Dovie Ann Hart became close with him. “Ben could be critical of me,” Dovie said, “but he was constructively critical. I think he treated me somewhat like a sister. Ben could be very direct with his poignant remarks … and not everyone would have been comfortable.”
One night Jill brought Dovie along to a cocktail party at a mansion in Bal Harbour. Ben Novack Sr. was also there, and immediately invited Dovie to have dinner with him. During the meal, the elderly roué told the attractive young woman that if she became his girlfriend, she would be well taken care of.
“He said he wanted to date her,” said Jill, “and told her he would treat her very well. Dovie refused ever so respectfully. She said he had become a bit crusty by then, so [they stayed] friends.”
After a night out on the town, Ben Jr. and Jill often checked into a room at the Fontainebleau. Over the first few months of their relationship, they spent much time at the hotel, and she observed him working hotel security.
“He was in and out with his beeper,” she said, “because he ran the hotel and was always getting beeped.”
One night while they were staying there, Campion discovered that Ben Jr. was cheating on her with the stewardess he’d been engaged to when they met. “He probably hadn’t even broken up with her,” said Campion. “One weekend, he had her and me in different rooms at the Fontainebleau. He kept running out, saying he was ‘working the hotel.’”
* * *
In January 1977 the Fontainebleau went into state court receivership, owing a staggering $27 million ($101 million in today’s money) in back taxes. On January 31 the hotel took center stage again when millions of TV viewers watched aerialist Karl Wallenda walk a tightrope between it and the Eden Roc hotel, as part of an Evel Knievel stunt special. But despite the hotel’s grand reputation and continued exposure, Ben Novack Sr. was forced to file for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy little more than two months later, on April 6. The Miami News reported the story the following day, saying that it would be business as usual at the Fontainebleau, which Ben Novack Sr. would still run.
“We were at death’s door,” explained Lenore Toby. “The hotel went about its business every day, but there was no pay.”
Although creditors were now circling like vultures, Fontainebleau manager Toby ran it on a shoestring. “I could be an expert in running a hotel without any money,” she said. “We couldn’t afford to do the laundry, so we would change the bottom sheets into top sheets.”
That summer, Ben Novack Sr. desperately tried to raise funds to satisfy his hungry creditors. He also quietly began moving his money and assets to hidden offshore accounts, funneling large sums into his sister Lillian Brezner’s name.
“When he was losing the hotel,” said Jill Campion, “I’d go to dinner with [Ben Sr.] and he’d say, ‘Listen, tell Benji to be nice to his aunt Lillian. Because that’s where my money is.’”
* * *
Ben Novack Jr. was obsessed with the then-top-rated TV cop show Hawaii Five-0. He modeled himself after the show’s star, Jack Lord, complete with his bouffant hairstyle, and used Lord’s character’s catchphrase, “Book ’em, Danno,” at every opportunity.
Every morning, he would struggle in front of the mirror, trying to straighten his curly brown hair with a blow dryer to look like his hero. Jill, who was working as a stylist in a top Miami Beach salon, now cut his unruly hair.
One afternoon in the summer of 1977, she returned to their apartment to find an engagement ring in a box on her dressing table. It was the exact same $2,000 gold ring with a single diamond that he had given his stewardess fiancée and then taken back after they split.
“That’s how he proposed,” Jill said. “That was it. He didn’t say a word. I’m like, ‘Okay.’”
* * *
By the late seventies, the Fontainebleau could no longer afford the A-list stars who once headlined there. Frank Sinatra now played other venues in Miami Beach, and Las Vegas had long taken over as America’s leading entertainment resort.
Soon after they met, Ben Jr. took Jill Campion to see the C-list singer Pia Zadora, whose career was being bankrolled by her rich husband, Meshulam Riklis, who was more than twice her age. It was a vanity gig: the Israeli millionaire had rented La Ronde so Pia could have her own show.
“We just couldn’t afford to compete with Las Vegas,” Lenore Toby explained. “We couldn’t even afford to buy new linens for the hotel.”
FIFTEEN
PARADISE LOST
At the end of September 1977, circuit court judge Dan Satin ordered Ben Novack Sr. to pay $3.2 million to creditors or have the Fontainebleau Hotel sold at auction. The judge ruled that Novack owed the money to the land-developing firm of Roland Security and must forfeit the hotel to satisfy the loan if he could not come up with the money.
At a hearing, Judge Satin explained that he could not allow the Fontainebleau’s iconic importance to Miami Beach to influence his decision. “It just has to be considered,” he said, “as another piece of property. The court will offer it to the highest bidder.”
Ben Novack Sr. immediately announced that he would be appealing the decision at the state level.
The Roland International Corporation and especially real estate tycoon Stephen Muss, who had a big stake in it, were determined to get the Fontainebleau at all costs. Under foreclosure rules, anyone could bid for the hotel, but Roland had a huge advantage, as Novack owed it so much money.
Over the next few months, Novack did everything possible to raise the necessary cash to postpone the bankruptcy court order until his appeal to the state supreme court could be heard.
Attorney Richard Marx watched his friend and client desperately fight to save his beloved hotel. “Eventually the cash ran out,” said Marx, “and [Ben] fought like a tiger to maintain it. He tried everything possible. Went to as many people as he knew to raise funds and kept running into a brick wall.”
One evening, Novack, who was now officially bankrupt, summoned Lenore Toby to his private office on the mezzanine, atop his Stairway to Nowhere. When she got upstairs, she was surprised to find his door closed, as it was usually open. His private secretary told her to go right in, as she was expected.
Lenore slowly opened the door and cautiously entered, discovering her boss sitting at his huge antique conference table, which was covered with stacks of hundred-dollar bills from money that he had secretly squirreled away over the years.
“Sit down,” he ordered, “and start counting piles of nine thousand, nine hundred dollars each.”
The hotel manager started counting, while Novack made various phone calls to raise more money.
“After I did about six piles,” said Toby, “I said, ‘Mr. Novack, I just want to know why you are having me do this?’”
Novack explained that he did not have to legally report sums under $10,000 to the IRS. He told her that he was using only his most trusted employees to help him out. Then he asked her to take a pile of $9,900 to the bank and bring him back a cashier’s check.
“That was the only way he could get cash,” Lenore said. “He had no money and was stealing from himself now. He did that with other people that he trusted around him. Can you believe that. He was amazing. He also had some private deals none of us knew about.”
* * *
During those desperate times, Ben Novack Sr. became close to Robert Platshorn, who was still using the Fontainebleau’s Governor’s Suite to run his multimillion-dollar marijuana smuggling operation. According to Platshorn, Novack now enlisted his help to raise money to save the hotel.
“At one time,” said Platshorn, “we had scraped up a suitcase full of cash from various sources. That was only supposed to be for emergency backup, in case he came short when it came time to pay off the bankruptcy.”
It wa
s supposed to be a secret, so as not to attract undue attention. Unfortunately, the ever-vigilant Ben Novack Jr. asked some Miami Beach Police Department officers to protect the suitcase.
“Benji drafted a whole squad of cops to guard it,” said Platshorn, “and that was the last thing on earth that one wanted. It just killed the whole deal. I mean nobody knows what’s in the suitcase, until you make a big deal of it.”
Finally, Ben Novack Sr. was outmaneuvered by Stephen Muss and his Roland International partners, who bought the Fontainebleau Hotel for $27 million.
Right up to the eleventh hour, Novack believed he had saved the hotel after a Canadian investor came forward with the money needed to bail him out. The day of the hearing, the investor suddenly changed his mind, and the judge ordered the sale to go ahead if Novack couldn’t come up with the money by the beginning of January.
“The Fontainebleau was literally sold on the courtroom steps,” said Toby. “It was so sad.”
* * *
That Christmas, as Ben Novack Sr.’s January deadline loomed, Robert Platshorn hosted a lavish Christmas at his new home a few blocks away from the Fontainebleau.
“Available for consumption at this party,” noted the U.S. tax inspectors in an official report, “were Thai sticks, a very potent type of marijuana cigarette, along with cocaine, which was freely available to the guests.”
On New Year’s Eve, the Black Tuna Gang leader and his partner, Robert Meinster, threw another wild party.
“Large quantities of liquor and expensive food such as stone crab were provided,” noted the U.S. tax inspector. “Cocaine was freely available in open saucers throughout the house.”
* * *
On January 4, 1978, Ben Novack Sr. failed to post a $10 million cash bond, missing yet another deadline. Now, unless his attorneys could come up with a new legal loophole by January 9, the sale to Stephen Muss and his partners would become final.
Ben Novack Sr. had reached the end of the line. He was a beaten man, and he knew it.
“Those final days were all heartbreaking and sad,” said Lenore Toby, “so we said, ‘Well, what can we do?’”
All the top hotel executives then pitched in, buying Novack a platinum pocket watch and having it engraved, “Ben Novack. Mr. Fontainebleau Always.”
“And then nobody wanted to give it to him,” Lenore recalled. “They were so horrified. It was the night before they were throwing him out of that hotel. So I was designated to be the one to bring the watch to him.”
When Toby went up to Novack’s suite, her boss came to the door in a bathrobe, a large Scotch in his hand. He had obviously been drinking heavily.
“He was a mess,” she recalled. “His hair was flying all over the place and he was wheezing. It was the most pathetic sight I have ever seen.”
When she told him she had a gift from the staff, he told her to sit down, saying he had to make an important phone call.
“He was trying make a deal to save the Fontainebleau,” she said, “It was so sad. It was really terrible.”
She winced, hearing him say that if the money could be there by seven the next morning, they would have a meeting to save the Fontainebleau.
“He had to leave the next morning, mind you,” she said, “and still trying to the last minute to make a deal, hoping against hope that he could save his hotel.”
Early the next morning, all the staff of the Fontainebleau assembled in the lobby to say their good-byes to Ben Novack Sr. Without saying a word, he slowly filed past them in the lobby, shaking hands and visibly close to tears.
Then he walked out the Fontainebleau’s front door for the last time and was driven away. He would never return.
* * *
Some months later, The Miami Herald dubbed Stephen Muss, the new owner of the Fontainebleau, “The Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach.”
The land developer told a reporter that he had bought the hotel “out of civic duty,” calling it a barometer of Miami Beach’s success.
“He didn’t know enough about the hotel business,” said Lenore Toby. “And he didn’t trust anyone that was running the hotel, so he decided to bring in a national chain to operate it for him.”
So, after announcing a $40 million renovation, Muss hired the Hilton Hotel Corporation to operate the Fontainebleau. And finally, after nearly a quarter of a century of the hotel’s never having any sign outside, the new owner erected a huge forty-four-foot sign reading, “FONTAINEBLEAU HILTON.”
“When Hilton put their name up, it should have been in the bathroom,” Ben Novack Sr. fumed. “That’s how much work they did there.”
SIXTEEN
STRIKING OUT
Ben Novack Jr. could only watch helplessly as the Fontainebleau slipped through his father’s fingers. Growing up as the Prince of the Fontainebleau, he had always expected to inherit the kingdom one day.
“This was his whole identity,” said Richard Marx. “He was devastated.”
So the young man decided to strike out on his own. He asked the high-level contacts he knew at Amway International for a job, utilizing what he had learned at the Fontainebleau to organize the organization’s conventions. Amway agreed, putting him on a $45,000-a-year salary.
“He was Ben Novack’s son,” said Lenore Toby. “They were thrilled to have him. He had actually made a friendship with the owners of Amway, and they were impressed with him. So they took him under their wing and he became their Johnny-on-the-spot.”
The hugely successful Michigan-based direct-selling company specialized in health, beauty, and home care products. Its morale-boosting conventions for the worldwide sales force were crucial to its success.
“They were paying him to run their conventions,” said Ben Jr.’s fiancée, Jill Campion. “He was just employed by Amway.”
Ben Jr.’s conventions were highly successful, and he was well respected. He now regularly entertained the Amway board of directors, taking them out on the town.
“There were twelve board members,” said Campion, “and we always went out to dinner with them and their wives after the shows.”
* * *
After leaving the Fontainebleau, Ben Novack Sr. moved in with his sister Lillian Brezner in Bal Harbour, Florida, until he could find a place of his own. He fell into a deep depression and seemed rudderless, trying to come to terms with his great loss.
“He was vegetating,” said Robert Platshorn. “My wife and I would have him over to the house for dinner, maybe every week or two, just so he’d have some company.” At their meals, Novack would drink heavily, and the old spark would return. “And he’d regale us with stories of the good old days of the Fontainebleau,” said Platshorn.
* * *
During their protracted engagement, Jill Campion discovered that her fiancée was a compulsive liar and lived in a fantasy world. He was also constantly unfaithful to her. “Benji was definitely a liar,” she said. “He would just lie to everybody to get what he was after.”
He would often call Amway’s head office in Ada, Michigan, pretending to be traveling all over America on convention business when he was actually home in Miami Beach. He’d also go to the airport with an empty suitcase to meet Amway clients for business meetings, claiming to be in transit between flights.
“He thought he was James Bond,” said Jill. “He’d say, ‘Patch me into so-and-so.’ He was always trying to appear more successful than he was.”
* * *
Meanwhile, in Fort Lauderdale, Bernice Novack was getting on with her life. She, too, had been saddened when Ben Sr. lost the Fontainebleau, but what hurt even more was when he had then sued to have his alimony terminated, claiming he could no longer afford it.
“She kept taking him to court for her money,” said Jill Campion.
Ben Jr. appeared to rely on his mother to bankroll his extravagant lifestyle, as his fledgling convention business was still not earning him enough to cover his expensive tastes. “His mother held the purse strings,” said Campion, �
�because he was still on salary from Amway and did not make that much money.”
Bernice was now on the board of the Science of Mind Church as treasurer, and becoming more active. A photograph in the church’s Creative Life magazine showed Bernice, now fifty-six, posing with the seven other board members. The former model was still very glamorous, with her signature bright red hair and fashionable attire.
“She was so gorgeous,” recalled Dr. Barbara Lunde, whose parents ran the church. “She was our treasurer for a long time.”
The former First Lady of the Fontainebleau now devoted herself to organizing the church bazaars, with the same enthusiasm she had once brought to the hotel. “She loved going through the old clothes, furniture, and stuff coming in,” said Dr. Lunde, “and setting it all up and pricing it.”
Bernice and George Rodriguez were now a devoted couple, but Bernice told friends they had no plans to marry, as she didn’t want to lose her alimony.
* * *
Although Ben Novack Jr. was still a dedicated Miami Beach Police Department Reserve officer, he also indulged in cocaine. On one occasion he flew to New York City for the opening of his cousin’s new fashionable roller rink and bar. The following day, Jill Campion flew in to join him, and he collected her from the airport in a limousine.
“It was really late at night,” she remembered, “and the streets were dark.”
Under Novack’s instructions, the limo drove deep into Spanish Harlem, pulling up outside a dilapidated old house.
“We got out of the limousine and knocked on the door,” Jill remembered, “and they opened a little peephole and let us in. There was this huge party. [Then] there were a couple of very young girls all over him.”
Ben Jr. later admitted taking the girls out the previous night, and giving them cocaine. He had come back tonight because he had run out and wanted more.
“I was shocked to see him with cocaine,” said Campion. “I think he did that so he could be the big man, because that’s what people wanted. But I’d never seen him do that before.”
* * *