As wild and exciting as my nights were at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner, my daytime activities upstairs in the Executive Hotel offices were about to become a different kind of “wild.” The Executive Hotel was controlled by attorney Harold Peller, who did a great job selling me on joining him as a working investor. However, as time went on, I realized he was not nearly as charming as I had originally thought. He was nuts and devious. Thinking back, I recall how he used to say, with intense eyes: “I’m not Jewish, I’m a Hebrew warrior.” I was still young and learning my way in both business and the world and I was somewhat stunned to realize that truly crazy people weren’t all wearing straitjackets and locked away in institutions—many of them operated in the normal world as businessmen. As I put pressure on Peller to pay me the percentage of gross I’d negotiated for opening A Quiet Little Table in the Corner, which had become a financial success, certain problems came to light. When we originally invested, Peller had separately persuaded each of the hotel’s investors (including me and well-established stockbrokers Joe Cserhat and Fred Mates) to give him a proxy to vote each of our shares, giving Peller control of the corporation and its funds even though he owned only 20 percent of the stock. We ultimately realized that Peller was a thief and a scoundrel, and we needed to prove it. I convinced my other partners to take action.
We hired Jonathan Lubell, a mild-mannered Harvard-educated criminal-defense attorney who in 1970 had fought for the prisoners involved in the much-televised riots at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. A genius and a renegade, Jonathan was one of those lawyers who always had a different take on things. After hearing our story, he let me in on a little secret called the Doctrine of Self-Help, a vestige from English common law that has been around for centuries. It reads as follows: “When one’s property has been seized unlawfully by another party, and it is impossible to seek recourse under the law because the courts are unavailable or closed, people have the right, under certain conditions, to retrieve the property.” Knowledge of this would serve me well on a number of occasions throughout my career.
Our plan was to break into Peller’s office at the hotel and take his files, providing us with the evidence needed to prove our case. We would first transfer the hotel funds into a new account under the same corporate name as the old one, giving us, the 80 percent majority shareholders, the control we were entitled to. We hired an off-duty NYPD cop I knew from The Forest Hills Inn to provide security if needed. Unbeknownst to Peller, Frank Pallone, the hotel’s trusted comptroller, and a signatory on the bank account, had switched his allegiance to us and agreed to help. So at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon in 1968, Frank sent his assistant Sal to meet me at the Franklin National Bank in Manhattan. Sal looked and acted like a tough guy, but when my cab pulled up at Fortieth Street and Park Avenue, he was vomiting in the gutter, he was so scared.
Our goal was to move $40,000 of the hotel’s working capital to a new corporate bank account controlled by us. Frank was sitting in Peller’s office at the hotel waiting for the call from the bank to authorize the transaction. Around 3:30 p.m. the call came in and Frank, pretending to be Peller, gave his consent to the transaction. And just like that the working capital was deposited into the new corporate account. With all of Peller’s records at our fingertips, our attorneys and CPAs spent the weekend preparing our case proving that Peller had misappropriated funds, spending over $25,000 for carpeting and appliances for his home in Brooklyn, as well as jewelry for his wife.
As expected, early Saturday morning, a desk clerk notified Peller that we were in his office. Then he called the local police precinct, telling them there had been a break-in. A squad car was sent over, but our cop told them it was a civil matter and they left. First thing Monday morning, we took our case before a judge, proving significant theft, and we got a court order signed that kept Peller off the premises for a year. He never set foot in the hotel again. The judge had nullified the voting trust, shocked to see the blatantly unethical and illegal behavior of an attorney. Within the year, we bought him out.
A Quiet Little Table in the Corner continued to thrive until 1984, when the Executive Hotel was sold.
Chapter Six:
Reefer Madness
The Stonewall riots of 1969 in Greenwich Village changed the dating game even more by advancing the cause for lesbians and gays. A radical feminist wrote the SCUM Manifesto and then shot Andy Warhol, declaring a war on men and our male-dominated society. Meanwhile, straight women everywhere were celebrating the pill and a newfound joy in sex, emphasizing that it was just as important for a woman to have an orgasm as it was for a man. I agreed wholeheartedly. Unwanted pregnancies were a thing of the past thanks to the pill and Roe v. Wade, which made abortions legal. Timothy Leary’s now famous quote of the decade, “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out,” encouraged us to find our inner nature by getting high on LSD and dropping out of the rat race. Most of us opted not to drop out and instead remained within to enjoy the benefits of a new attitude—free love. People were free to love whomever, whenever, and wherever they pleased without attachment or commitment or risk of unwanted pregnancy.
We were all still recovering and trying to come to terms with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the war in Vietnam. Clips of American soldiers returning home in body bags could be seen nightly on the 6:00 p.m. news. It was the only war America ever lost, and, worse yet, many pundits proclaimed that it had all been in vain and that it was a war that should never have been fought. “Have a drink,” “drop a tab,” and “smoke a joint” were the popular solutions of the day.
I will never forget how pop culture stood up and took notice of the pornographic flick Deep Throat. The plot revolved around a young woman, played by Linda Lovelace who, after much frustration, discovers that her clitoris is in the back of her throat, and the only way she can be sexually satisfied is to give a man oral sex. This was a fantasy come true for every man whose “dream girl” is as hot to give a blow job as he is to get one. The film provided endless fodder for late night television hosts like Johnny Carson—his guest celebrities, Jack Nicholson, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote touted the charm and talents of Linda Lovelace. The film grossed $600 million and elevated porn from sleaze to the Avant Garde. The demographics for pornography and sex toys were forever changed, paving the way for the billion-dollar porn industry as we know it today.
Life was good. I was doing well as I neared my thirtieth birthday and took over the bankrupt, publicly traded company Davos Inc. I settled the bankruptcy by issuing stock, and within two years I used the public company’s shares to make acquisitions of food-processing companies, which resulted in gross annual sales of $100 million. I also acquired the ski resort Mt. Snow, with miles and miles of slopes and dozens of ski lifts, three hotels, five restaurants, an airstrip, and a golf course—much of it not quite finished. I was on a roll.
I was using LSD again, but this time around therapy had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was all about fun. I spent my weekends dropping mescaline and acid with one of my best friends, Robert Giller, a medical doctor and acupuncturist. I’d begin the day with a glass of orange juice and a big fat joint of some high-quality marijuana. Those were the days when you could light up a cigarette or a joint practically anywhere—restaurants, movie theaters, and clubs, just walking down the street—it made no difference. Technically, marijuana wasn’t legal, but tobacco was, and by the early 1970s, nobody in New York City seemed to care what it was you were smoking.
At the time, a good friend of mine was my former fraternity brother Bob Millman, a psychiatrist specializing in drug addiction at Cornell Medical School. He was hired part-time to supervise young interns at a makeshift drug overdose Emergency Center—located in Bill Graham’s famous theater, The Fillmore East in New York’s East Village, where kids on a bad trip were monitored and helped. Along with Bob, I was lucky enough to hang out backstage in a cra
zy drugged-filled scene with The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Moody Blues, Grateful Dead, and then-unknown Elton John opening Leon Russell’s show. That’s where I heard Elton’s beautiful “Your Song” for the first time. The Fillmore East looked deceptively small from the outside but inside there were 2,500 seats. It felt intimate and had a mind-blowing energy, courtesy of all the people inside the building being high on pot or tripping their brains out on acid and enjoying some of the greatest rock and roll music ever played.
That same year, I bought and renovated a farmhouse on eighty acres next to a large reservoir near Mt. Snow. Bob Giller moved in with me when he returned from studying acupuncture in China. During the warmer months, we’d usually arrive on Friday night with our weekend dates, often dropping acid when we were half an hour away, so that just as we pulled into the long dirt driveway we’d be tripping our brains out. Then we’d wander through the woods barefoot in the dark, hallucinating that we were Indians like the characters in Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan Trilogy, which we were all reading at the time. I felt myself to be living in the image of a Native American and some nights took to the lake in my wooden canoe, cutting silently through the water, surrounded by tall trees under a full moon and starry sky. It was otherworldly.
A year earlier, I had purchased a Mercedes sports car that I bought after the success of A Quiet Little Table in the Corner. One night, I was speeding up Interstate 91 on my way to Mt. Snow, completely stoned and rockin’ out to The Stones’ new album Sticky Fingers, when suddenly, I saw a flashing light in my rearview mirror. I quickly turned the music off, put out the joint in the ashtray, and opened the window in an effort to air out the car. I pulled over to the side and hopped out of the car thinking that if I could get to the cop before he got to me and smelled the pot, I’d be a whole lot better off.
Suddenly, he was standing right in front of me and said, “Don’t you know you were doing ninety? Get back in the car!” I did so and then he stuck his head in the car and said, “I smell marijuana.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said nervously.
“Gimme that ash tray,” he said. I removed the tray and handed it to him. He fished around and found the roach I’d just put out. He held it up to my face and said, “That’s marijuana!” He shot me an “are you kidding me” look and said, “Follow me,” then got back in his car. I did as I was told and trailed him along Interstate 91 to a police station in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Once we got inside, I was instructed to sit and wait. He called to someone in another room, and in walks this narc—he wasn’t introduced as a narc, but I knew he was. He was a redhead with long, curly, unkempt hair that blended with the beard that covered his whole face. Dressed in torn jeans, he didn’t look like a cop; he looked like he was homeless. But that’s how narcs disguise themselves.
He said to me, “Mr. Fleischman, I understand you’ve been smoking marijuana while driving at ninety miles per hour on I-ninety-one.”
I calmly replied, “No sir, I wasn’t smoking marijuana, just speeding.”
Thus began a back and forth—them telling me I was lying, me insisting I wasn’t. Finally, the narc said, “We have the roach as evidence. However, if you tell the truth, we’re going to let you go.”
I debated this as quickly as possible. I remember thinking, Oh my God, I’m gonna admit this? Then what? I had to decide if he was really going to let me go. Then I thought, If the cops wanted to bust me, they’d have searched the car, where they would’ve found my drug stash—which included Dexedrine, black beauties, magic mushrooms, mescaline, acid, and a shitload of marijuana. I decided they weren’t going to prosecute on a roach. I gulped hard and I said, “Yes, okay, I did it. I smoked marijuana in the car.” I continued, “Sir, please, don’t arrest me. It will ruin my life.”
I held my breath, waiting for him to respond. The narc watched me closely. The trooper said nothing. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, he said, “Well, now you’re being honest. I’m going to let you go this time. Don’t let there be a next time.”
I’d never been so relieved in my life. I pumped his hand like he’d saved me from eternal damnation, which he did, and I walked out the door, shaken to my core. Had I been busted, I never would’ve been able to borrow another dollar in my life. Bankers don’t look favorably upon people who do drugs and get arrested and my liquor licenses would have been in jeopardy. As it was, banks were already taking a chance loaning so much money to me—an arrest like that would have abruptly ended my career.
In the early 1970s, my most serious girlfriend was Suzy Chaffee, a downhill racer who had been captain of the Women’s US Olympic Ski Team in the ’68 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. She literally took the country by storm as “Suzy Chapstick” the fresh-faced, gorgeous blonde skier in all the Chapstick commercials. I met her in Vermont, but since we both had apartments in Manhattan, that’s where we started dating. One evening after dinner we went to my apartment and I turned her onto marijuana. That was the first time we made love. After that, I started skiing all over the west with her.
As a result of my relationship with Suzy, I underwent a real metamorphosis. I went from being a mediocre skier, never having achieved much in competitive sports, to an amateur Giant Slalom racer, skiing and hanging out with Olympians in Pro-Am races. This accomplishment fueled my inner strength, bolstering my self-esteem, giving me greater confidence and driving me to take on bigger and bigger challenges. In February 1972, Signature Magazine ran a complimentary story about me. I was pictured on the cover with Suzy seated next to me on a chair lift at Mt. Snow against a perfect blue sky heading up the mountain. It was a flattering article and cover photo that went straight to my head. I thought I could do no wrong.
Then came the 1973 energy crisis, making it a nightmare to get gas. If the last digit of your license plate was odd, you could buy gas only on odd-numbered days, and others had to buy on even-numbered days. To make matters worse, gas stations were now closed on Sundays, the day people had always filled up their tanks before returning home from a ski weekend. Between the gas shortage and two rainy winters in a row, business took a nosedive and I was forced to close down Davos, selling Mt. Snow to the Killington Ski Corporation. I sold my plane, as well as my beloved Chinese junk, and went from being on top of the world to having to start all over again. I was only thirty-three years old. It was time to move on, this time without the pot and acid for breakfast.
I signed the deal in Japan to borrow millions of dollars for Mt. Snow
Since one of my main lenders for Davos had been a Japanese bank, I had spent quite a bit of time in that country. One of many ideas resulting from my adventures was the Robata restaurant in New York City, a remake of a popular spot I frequented in Tokyo. I opened it in 1974 at Sixty-First Street and Madison Avenue, where the once famed Colony restaurant hosted the who’s who of Café Society. Robata was way ahead of its time and became an immediate hit in Manhattan. People loved the Japanese country décor showcasing two chefs kneeling behind the open fire with an abundant and colorful display of fresh vegetables, fish, and meat to choose from. It was also one of the first restaurants in Manhattan to feature small plates. The reviews were terrific (including a rave review in The New York Times), and we became one of the most popular Japanese restaurants in the city until years later when the building was demolished to make way for a high-rise.
In 1974, I started spending more time at New Line Cinema, a company in which I had been one of the founding shareholders. I moved into New Line’s offices on Broadway and Fourteenth, which I worked out of for the next five years. It was during this period that I met Laurie Lister. I was in my mid-thirties, and she was a recent Mount Holyoke graduate working as Penthouse magazine’s interview editor. Although Laurie was only twenty-three, she was taken seriously in the publishing world and was on her way up. One day, I got a phone call from Laurie in her role of Penthouse’s Interview Editor. I found out later that s
he had read a piece about me in a book called Young Millionaires, taken from the Signature Magazine article with me and Suzy Chaffee on the cover. She had decided she wanted to meet me. Laurie had a beautiful voice, slightly breathy but with an elegant accent. She sounded young and sexy and I was always looking to promote my projects in the media.
Robata was inspired by the open-fire cooking method and presentation that I enjoyed so much during my time spent in Japan. Robata was the first of its kind in Manhattan.
We set up a dinner meeting at Robata. Laurie was stunning. She was slim and beautifully dressed in a high fashion outfit you might see in Vogue. She had long, straight, light brown hair with bangs and big green eyes. But, more than for the way she looked, I was attracted to Laurie for how bright, funny, and incredibly well-read she was. That night, we had the kind of conversations that I usually had with my guy friends. Laurie was political and, like me, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, but we still had spirited debates about some of the twists and turns of current happenings. After dinner, we strolled toward Park Avenue, and as we were waiting on the corner for a taxi, I leaned down and kissed her under the street lamp, her hair blowing in the wind. It was magical.
When we first started dating, she had another boyfriend—a successful, well-known publisher—someone who appeared to be above me in the social strata of the day. Although I still was co-owner of a small hotel and a couple of restaurants and was involved in a small film distribution company, I had just lost my status as the CEO of a $100-million company, which had motivated her to call me for the “interview” in the first place. I was afraid I didn’t have enough to offer Laurie who, like others of the early women’s rights movement, considered herself free to play the field. Laurie designated one night a week to go out with me, which I would look forward to all week. Laurie and I would laugh and talk through dinner, and I was on top of the world. Beyond just good times and conversation, Laurie had the ability to look into my soul with those big green eyes. She appeared to sympathize with my insecurities and understand my dreams. She was a good listener and I told her everything about myself. And then, after dinner, we would go to my apartment, and make love for hours. Ultimately, Laurie broke up with the publishing guy and we became more or less a couple, although we both continued to see other people.
Inside Studio 54 Page 6