Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent

by Richard Kirshenbaum

  “And what did she say?” I asked.

  “She said, ‘Darling, don’t even have her come by. Firstly, I have no idea who she is. I haven’t ever heard a song she’s sung. Secondly, I would never ever sell my apartment to her. We don’t associate with show people.’”

  “And what happened?”

  “The star wouldn’t listen and put in her offer and board package, and it was promptly turned down.”

  “Where did she end up moving?”

  “The West Side, of course. New York doesn’t care how famous you are. The women in the building also didn’t want her around their husbands. It’s a story as old as time. Not that the celeb would have wanted a seventy-five-year-old investment banker.”

  “And what about so-and-so?” I referenced the leading man. “Why would my building have turned someone like him down?” (He had an elegant image.)

  “Most of the old geezers don’t want press outside their door. They also don’t want to look bad in front of their wives. That said, they did let [THE MOST FAMOUS AMERICAN MALE MOVIE STAR] buy the penthouse duplex of your building.”

  “Yes, of course.” I remembered seeing the iconic blond star in the elevator, and my mother-in-law almost fainting at the sight of him.

  “How did he get in?”

  “He was known as the handsomest man of his generation. Really, I believe he is the one star who could live on Fifth Avenue.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because he’s the only man every woman wanted to sleep with and every man want to be. Other than that … It’s the West Side, baby,” she said as she instructed Marco to turn onto Central Park South.

  “Houses are also celebrities in LA.” Eileen Graybar (not her real name), an older female TV star, brought me a mug of coffee in the chic house she had just renovated in the Hollywood Hills. A standard in TV and Movie of the Week classics, where she was known for being able to pull off both perky and evil simultaneously, this former ingénue is now known for her chic taste and business savvy. When the roles started to dry up, she turned her creative energy toward buying, renovating, and flipping homes. I looked around at the beautiful Mediterranean architecture and casual LA décor that appeals: all creams, beiges, and chenille.

  She filled me in: “Houses are known by the stars who have lived in them, but in Beverly Hills and Bel Air some of the great estates are also famous. If you told someone you bought the Beach Crest (not its real name) on Loma Vista and you’re not famous, people would assume you’d have to be a tech company billionaire or a Middle Eastern potentate.”

  “Do the stars still live in those grand estates?” I asked.

  “Only a handful. The celebrities have been outpriced by the international billionaires like everyone else. But you still see the maps of the celebrity homes being sold and the tour buses. I’m only talking about the truly remarkable estates. Some have been torn down and subdivided, but there are still a few that exist and trade hands.”

  “Where do most of the big stars live today?”

  “Well, in this town it all depends on whether you’re on the ascent or the descent. Two or three big movies and an Oscar nomination and you might live in Brentwood or Holmby Hills. Then you have a flop or two and you sell your mansion and move to the flats. When you lose your teeth, you live in a condo in Westwood.”

  “That’s a hard reality.” I coughed.

  “Most celebs get bad financial advice and think it’s never going to end. They think they are invincible and the roles will always keep coming.” She went on ruefully and with a knowing expression, “And they end up spending their money on clothes, cars, boats, watches. Try and sell all those things when you need the cash and see how much you get.”

  “How did you get into the real estate business?”

  “I got smarter.” She suddenly looked both perky and then evil as she pulled her knees toward her on the big LA sectional, and her green eyes caught the light.

  “When I started losing ingénue roles to younger girls, I was still getting work as the older sister, so I wasn’t worried. A few years later when I started getting sent up for the mother roles, I started to panic. Then one day I walked into a casting and they said ‘Nice meeting you but we told your agent not to have you come. We told Sid we’re looking for an Eileen Graybar type, not Eileen Graybar!!!!’”

  “That’s surreal.” I sipped my coffee.

  “It’s a true story. I went home, had a good cry, and called a friend of mine.” She mentioned an older former star who pulled off a haul on a few ex-husbands. “She said to me, ‘Eileen, the only thing that’s constant in this town is the sun, the sex, and the real estate.’ The next day I decided to go for my real estate license and I’ve made more money in real estate than I ever did in residuals.”

  “Congratulations. The house is beautiful and I’m so happy you made out so well in the end.”

  “Well, the money is good and I live very well, but …” She paused. “I just need to find my comeback role. You know,” she said wistfully, “once you have had a bit of fame, nothing else seems to matter.” She sighed. “More coffee?”

  “Reality TV has cheapened celebrity.” The Octogenarian, Old-school Agent spoke to me off the record at Michael’s, the media dining room where most things are on the record, including who’s eating there and what table they occupy.

  “When I first got into the business, if you were famous, you were famous because you did something. You were a great method actor. You were a dashing leading man or a musical star. You had to do something to be a star.”

  His comment reminded me of a quote I’d read about the famous 1940s aquatic star Esther Williams. “It’s like Fanny Brice said about Esther Williams,” I offered. “‘Wet she’s a star. Dry, she ain’t.’”

  “Exactly, but once Esther got in the water she really was a star.”

  “I can actually attest to seeing her in her later years doing laps in the pool at the Villa d’Este,” I recalled.

  “And?”

  “And wet she was a star …” I remembered her graceful, ageless strokes.

  The agent went on, “In my day you had to go to LA for TV and film, and stars came to New York to do Broadway. Or if they were famous singers, we would book them into club dates in the best venues in New York. Even Vegas had an elegance to it.”

  “How do you think that has affected Los Angeles versus New York culture?”

  “In the ’60s, ’70s, if someone in New York was known to be a millionaire, which was a big thing in those days, they came from a credible fortune. Or if they were a star in LA, they were a star, not a reality star. Today, everyone gives the appearance of having money or fame. Then you find out it’s all stolen or they made it in an unsavory way or they’re living off credit cards with a rented Bentley.”

  “Can you elaborate?” I asked.

  “Yes. Perhaps the way to describe it would be to say they have reality-show money versus real money,” he remarked in a droll fashion, his graceful filigree cuff links glittering in the perfectly starched and ironed Charvet cuffs. After a moment he said, toying with his chicken paillard, “I do feel sorry for you all.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It was so much more fun when it was real.”

  As the summer was coming to a close, Dana and I stopped by my sister’s chic beach cottage in Amagansett for a lively lunch on her deck, the sounds of the ocean in the distance somewhat operatic in scale. Her dear friends Kurt and his husband, Danny, a transplanted LA couple, joined. (Kurt, an entertainment executive, had moved to New York when Danny became the principal of a prestigious New York private school.)

  “There’s nothing better than smoked salmon for a real ‘New Yawk’ Sunday brunch.” My sister offered the salmon platter. “Yum.”

  I offered Kurt the salmon. “Did you find living in LA all about fame?”

 
“Yes, because people live off the proximity to fame in LA. If you are in real estate, a home is advertised as a ‘star’s compound’ in the hills to help market it; a salon gets business by doing a popular actress’s hair and makeup. In New York, everything has to stand on its own merits. Does the salon actually do good work? Does the apartment or house actually have good bones? LA is tainted by fame!”

  “But did you like living in LA?” I asked, knowing I had a live one in my clutches.

  “I mean, it is fabulous. The best thing about LA is that it has a sense of possibility. It has that ‘I’m going to make it overnight’ thing. Someone can be living out of a rented car, write a screenplay, go to a club, meet an agent, and then they’re accepting an Oscar and it happens for them. New York is much more serious and stratified.”

  “Do you feel differently in LA versus New York?”

  “Yes, one can definitely live a lot better in LA on less money.” He laughed. “And you can be a poseur in LA for a lot less.”

  “How so?” I was intrigued.

  “Well, you can totally front it; you have your rented car, you can be crashing at your friend’s apartment and have a business card made up that says you’re a ‘producer.’ People aren’t that smart in LA. In New York they look around and can do the math on who you are and how much your co-op costs. And everyone knows if you are actually living in a co-op, the board vetted you and that you had to have real money to buy it. It’s a much harder nut to crack in New York. You’re really locked out unless you’re the one percent. In LA, they can’t even do the math.” He shrugged. “Additionally, I think LA currency is about the body, and New York currency is the mind.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “There’s little or no pedigree in LA. In New York, age and experience promise bigger job titles, money; when you or your family have earned it, you have pedigree. Everyone in New York idolized [famous timeless socialite who reached the age of one hundred]. No one in LA is a hundred years old and no one has pedigree, so better to act young and be young. Age has no benefit in LA. Although everyone in LA respects the culture of intelligence in New York.”

  “So youth and beauty in LA are your ticket to fame.”

  Kurt nodded and seemed to enjoy the sunshine and lay back in his director’s chair soaking up rays like a Persian cat.

  “And how has New York been for you versus your years as a producer in LA?” I asked.

  “Well, when we were living in LA, if we went to a party, as an example, people used to take me seriously and I was definitely in the mix. On the other hand, Danny said people used to look right past him when they asked him what he did and found out he was a teacher.”

  “That’s a shame,” I sympathized.

  “And now we live in New York and people say to me, ‘Oh dear, you’re in entertainment,’ and pay me no mind and focus on Danny.”

  “Why’s that?” I leaned in.

  “Because,” he said, sipping his sauvignon blanc, “they find out he’s one of the heads of the [elite NYC private school] and they all want him to help get their kids into school.”

  “That’s New York for you,” I acknowledged.

  One humid evening back in Manhattan, the Silver Fox and his paramour, L’actrice, picked me up in their delightfully air-conditioned SUV and we drove to Midtown for dinner. Dana was out of town, and I welcomed the company. I hadn’t seen L’actrice since Capri, and she filled me in on her latest role in a movie directed by one of the most famous comedic actresses of the ’80s, who will go down in movie history for a comedic scene in a deli. I told her about my book deal and the piece that I was writing on LA versus New York currency.

  As L’actrice looked into her Chanel compact, she paraphrased a quote by the wonderful playwright Neil Simon. “I think it sums up your piece, Richard. He said that whether it’s one hundred degrees or thirty degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it’s always seventy-two. Yet there are six million interesting people in New York and just seventy-two in Los Angeles.”

  20. THE EMPTONS

  Estates Sit Empty as Longtime Hamptonians Flee for European Shores

  IT WAS OPENING WEEKEND in the Hamptons.

  There I was at a Memorial Day party at a stunning manse “on Goldman Pond,” as some now refer to the body of water formerly known as Sagg Pond. Now home to some of the most expensive waterfront Hamptons properties, it has become a coveted location for deep-pocketed financial-industry types in search of deepwater docks.

  I was air-kissing couples dressed optimistically in nautical blue and white despite the persistent rain.

  “Great to see you, Richard,” a friend’s taut wife said with a smile.

  After a brief exchange in a mist of orange-blossom fragrance, everyone was saying their thank-yous to the evening’s host and hostess, along with their good-byes.

  “See you in August.” She smiled.

  “Where are you off to?”

  “Antibes.”

  “And you?” I questioned a lingering neighbor.

  “Sardinia. It’s a family tradition,” she explained. “See you in late July.”

  “See you in August,” I said to a friend.

  “Have fun in Saint-Tropez!” he echoed.

  “Have fun in Capri!”

  “Have fun in Mykonos.” We all hugged.

  “Are you out here for Thanksgiving?” a summer friend asked, walking us out of the party. “That’s the next time we’ll be here. Let’s put something on the calendar for the fall.”

  It was only the first weekend, and the Hamptons’ early-summer exodus had begun.

  While some friends remain passionate about the surfing lessons, the $100-a-pound lobster salad (from you know where), and the purple-streaked Sagaponack sunsets, there is a distinct group of people using their Hamptons estates less and less, with no plans either to sell or rent. “Whole neighborhoods are on timers,” said a busy housesitter I ran into in the local hardware store. “At nine fifteen, it lights up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.”

  As Dana and I were driving home from the party, we passed by a neighbor’s house, a recently assembled McMansion with turreted peaks and outsize turn-of-the-century demilune windows.

  “Have you ever met them?” Dana asked me.

  I recalled popping by with a bottle of French rosé when the couple first moved in. “Yeah,” I said, “when I took over the housewarming gift.”

  “I’ve never met them.” She shrugged, turning onto our property. “It’s a little weird, given they bought the house five years ago and they live only a few houses down.”

  “I like a quiet neighborhood,” I said.

  “Fine, but if you run into them, tell them that they need to reset their light timer,” she said. “They forgot it’s no longer daylight savings time.”

  It all seemed to jell for me in the first-class lounge at Kennedy, where we bumped into three couples en route to different European locales.

  “We bolt the moment we drop the kids off at the camp buses in front of the Met. I give a good cry, and then we make a mad dash for the airport,” a friend’s wife said, snagging a complimentary foil packet of peanuts and a mimosa before offering me a Xanax from the pill case in her zippered Vuitton makeup bag. “The kids aren’t allowed to call for ten days anyway, so it’s a guilt-free getaway,” she remarked as she started to drift off into a blissful repose.

  “Where are you off to?” I asked as she gulped back her little helper.

  “Saint-Tropez. And you?” she managed to ask.

  “Capri.”

  “Well, you might as well have never left the beach club,” she cackled as she rattled off a dozen or so couples leaving their Hamptons abodes to make a pilgrimage to the Amalfi Coast.

  She wasn’t wrong. The following day, I was in the Piazza di Spagna, making my way to the Caffè Greco Antico for an afternoon
espresso, when I ran into a popular Hamptonite and his wife, their designer shopping bags overflowing with VAT envelopes and satin-ribboned boxes wrapped as only the Italians can.

  “My children have no desire to go to the Hamptons anymore. We used to go every weekend when they were younger. Now they want to be with their friends in the city.” He paused. “So we just go to the Med.”

  “Why not sell it, then?” I prompted.

  “No. They would be too upset. They like to know it’s there … the way she likes to know her engagement ring is in the safe but only wears it two times a year.”

  “Honey, come over here,” his wife motioned excitedly, peering into the window of one of Italy’s most exclusive jewelry stores.

  “I like Italy or France in the summer. I can get away from all the boiler and air-conditioner and basement mold problems—not to mention the roof, or not being able to get in touch with my decorator. It’s actually cheaper if I buy her a pair of those earrings than if we were in Bridge and she wanted to start a redecorating project.”

  “Well, have a great Fourth.”

  “You too. Have fun in Capri. Don’t mention my name in any of the shops, or they may charge you extra,” he said, laughing good-naturedly.

  My late father used to say that staying in a five-star hotel without any luggage is the ultimate luxury. That said, staying in a heralded European resort does not even cut the moutarde for some Hamptons elites.

  My wife and I were having an intimate lunch at La Fontelina, one of Capri’s best and most picturesque seaside kitchens, when a group of familiar faces alighted from a cruise-ship-size yacht in the distance.

  “Enjoying yourselves?” I asked as they occupied the table next to ours.

  “What’s not to enjoy on two hundred and twenty-five feet?” A Southampton fixture shrugged with self-satisfaction.

  “Fantastico,” one of the wives exclaimed, her newly acquired laminates glimmering like pearlized reflectors.