RTC: You rarely bore me, Gregory. I’ll let you know if we have a fire in the kitchen or if the Swiss Embassy explodes. Do go on.
GD: A friend of mine up in Menlo Park, fellow by the name of George Schattle, was visiting his mother in Los Angeles and went to a garage sale. He bought, as I recall, four bronze statues in specially constructed wooden crates. Crates indicated the contents were looted by the Germans in Warsaw in ’39 and subsequently got into the collection of Hermann Goering. The sellers told George that their relative was with the U.S. Army at the end of the war. Of course there was no discipline and our boys stole everything they could lay their hands on. Anyway, George knew I was an expert on German subjects and brought the four pieces, in their crates, over for me to look at. I knew nothing about the artist, Auguste Rodin, but I could authenticate the labels and seals. I told him to find an expert to authenticate the statues and busts. I knew nothing about Impressionist artists and could care less. I told him that there was a university professor out at Stanford, which was just down the road from Menlo Park where George lived. I remembered seeing some reference to a huge collection of Rodin pieces being donated to Stanford by some investment banker out of LA. What was the name? Yes. B. Gerald Cantor[58]. Anyway, George looked up the professor, one Albert Edward Elsen, and made a phone call. Yes, Elsen was interested and would look at the pieces. Next day, George rang me up, semi hysterical. It seems Elsen told him that the pieces were stolen by the evil Nazis and that he, Elsen, wanted to take possession of the pieces to be able to return them to Poland. When George refused, and he said that Elsen was a loud-mouthed bully, Elsen then told him the pieces were fake. Now how could they be stolen from some Polish collection during the war and then be fake?
RTC: Maybe this Elsen fellow wanted to con your friend out of them for his own benefit.
GD: I agree. But George told me that Elsen subsequently called up everyone and proclaimed that, on the one hand, George was illegally in possession of wartime Nazi art loot and, on the other, trying to sell fake Rodins.
RTC: Schizophrenic.
GD: That was just the start. George showed Elsen my written commentary on the boxes and seals and Albert Edward began to attack me. I had a post office box at Stanford and the postmaster said that Elsen had come…actually barged…into his office, ordering the postmaster to give Elsen my home address. Of course the postmaster refused and Elsen started screaming that I was dealing with stolen art and that the FBI would be notified.
RTC: Why was he so upset?
GD: Well, I will get to that. I couldn’t understand any of the noise so I dug up old Chronicle stories about this Cantor Rodin gift. Eighty odd statues presented to the University museum by Cantor and, I noted with some interest, all authenticated by Elsen. Valued at three and a half million. So I drove up to Stanford with a notebook and looked the pieces on display over. I wrote down the name of the foundry, one Georges Rudier of Paris. OK. So much for that. I personally felt that Rodin was crap but I wanted to know why the screaming. Made no sense. Then, I went to the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco that had a big collection of original Rodin pieces that Mrs. Alma Spreckles had bought from Rodin himself in 1916. Looked at them. I also wrote down the name of the foundry which was one Alexis Rudier of Paris. Not the same name. Also, the Frisco pieces were of different finish. I told George to take his four pieces to the director of the museum, one Thomas Carr Howe, for his opinion. George did this and Howe gave him a written authentication. When George told Howe about Elsen, Howe told him off the record that Elsen was a congenital asshole and that he, Howe, detested him. And when George mentioned the different foundry marks, Howe said that Alexis Rudier had cast up statues for Rodin and that Georges was his great nephew. He also said that Georges didn’t start casting until 1965. Since Rodin died in 1917, I thought this was strange. Note that all the eighty odd pieces given to Stanford were made after 1965.
RTC: This is beginning to sound like something Sherlock Holmes would have done. Then what?
GD: Well, George tried to sell the pieces and at once, Elsen began calling around to all the local galleries, telling them the pieces were either stolen or fake. Loud bully.
RTC: Elsen is what? French?
GD: Elsen was Jewish.
RTC: Ah, I see. And go on. What happened next?
GD: Well, here we had three million dollars worth of art that probably wasn’t worth it. I have a friend in the Judicial Police in Paris and asked him to check on this Georges Rudier. About a month later, he sent me a thick catalog from the Rodin Museum in Paris. Mrs. Goldscheider there, the director, had custody of all of Rodin’s pieces in a state museum setting and was making copies for people. The catalog showed the pieces, many of which were in the Cantor bequest. More interesting. I wrote to her and asked her about Georges and got back a signed letter stating that he had been doing all their castings, and only from 1965.
RTC: Always better when you get it in writing. Was she pulling a scam?
GD: No, she advertised these as official copies, whatever that might be, but as copies. She wasn’t pulling anything but the others certainly were. Then I made up my mind to wreck their little game. Of course I pulled a little string, which in turn led to a bigger string and then the whole rotten edifice came crashing down.
RTC: That’s how these things can go sometimes. Do continue.
GD: Well, Elsen was hard to attack because he was an important, published art historian and I was nothing. Still where there is a will, there is a way. First off, I got ahold of Jerry Jensen, an anchor for the Channel 7 news people in San Francisco. My cousin knew him. I told him what I discovered and he started digging. My God, Robert, what a hurricane of rage erupted then. Al Frankenstein, who was a senior art critic at the Chronicle as well as a teacher at Stanford, began to raise hell with the management at Channel 7 and to threaten Jensen with legal action for slander. Jerry told me he must have hit a very raw nerve indeed. And then I got Elsen to break cover.
RTC: How?
GD: Well, I went to a mail drop and telephone answering place in Santa Clara and set up an account for a Basilisk Press. A basilisk is a mythic creature, half rooster and half snake that could allegedly kill by looking at you.
RTC: Dramatic but how many people know that?
GD: I did and that’s what mattered. Letterheads and I made up a fake book publication notice. A book called ‘Rodin: The Anatomy of a Fraud’ and I listed a lot of very true information on that piece of paper. I mailed that out to hundreds of newspapers, to many major art dealers and certainly to Elsen and Frankenstein. Sweet Jesus, what a reaction. The people at the answering service said that a few days after the brochure was delivered, Elsen barged into their office, ordering them to tell him where the people who owned the press lived. They told him to get his loud ass out of the building and he threatened them with the Attorney General and the FBI. They called the police and had him physically removed from the building. Then, knowing that one of Elsen’s prize pupils was art critic on the staff of the Palo Alto Times, I rang her up, told her I was an official at the Basilisk Press and said that Mr. Jensen from Channel 7 was going to expose the art fraud at Stanford. Worked wonderfully. Within days, Elsen wrote a vicious and very actionable letter to Jensen, calling George a criminal and fraud. Jensen sent me the letter and I, in turn, took the letter and George to a very good San Jose lawyer. Because Filthy Al wrote the letter on University stationary, the lawyer filed a suit naming Elsen and Stanford as party defendants.
RTC: As I recall, Stanford is a rich school.
GD: Oh, yes they are. Wonderfully deep pockets. And much screaming and so on. Finally, I decided to up the ante and I went for an interview at the Chronicle with old Frankenstein. That was really something. He had a little office right off the city room and you could hear us two blocks away. I had done my homework on Alfred and when he accused me of being a liar, I said he was a crook. I mentioned a bust of Cosimo D’Medici that he has persuaded a rich Jewish benefactor to buy fo
r the De Young. Big money because Alfred said it was by Cellini. It was a small copy of a bronze original I saw at the Bargello in Florence. Cellini never worked in marble but Alceo Dossena, a nineteenth century art forger did. Alfred stopped yelling when I mentioned this unpleasant fact but I got my wind and they told Jerry Jensen later they could have heard me in Oakland with the windows closed. When I left, I noted that the entire city desk people were standing in a circle around the open door of Alfred’s cubicle and one started applauding me. Such an honor. And Alfred, who looked rather peaked when I last saw him, had a sudden heart attack that night and passed away.
RTC: You sent a wreath no doubt?
GD: Piss on him. Another loudmouth. Still, I saw I was up against acknowledged art experts so I did some further digging and made a major discovery. So simple yet so deadly and with ripples still spreading. It’s just this. You can make a mold of a bronze and duplicate it exactly but the result will, are you ready for this one, will always be 5% smaller. Why, you ask? Because, Robert, cooling metal shrinks and that is a fact. Oh, yes, and since known originals of Rodin’s work were all over the place, taking measurements was not a problem. I got the people at the Legion of Honor to send me a full list of the exact measurements of all their original pieces. And Albert learned of this and threatened the staff at the museum. Wonderful man, making friends wherever he went. And then, Albert enlisted the aid of his co-conspirator, Cantor. You see, Cantor went to the Rodin Museum in Paris and ordered the eighty pieces. He paid eighty thousand dollars for them, brought them over to the States, got his co-religionist and crime partner, Elsen, to claim they were original and worth over three million dollars and guess what?
RTC: Not a tax write-off?
GD: You got it. A huge tax write-off. Still more fun on my part. I wrote and had typeset, a story from the so-called Ardeth Times about a local bigwig that had been to California and bought four original Rodin’s that once had been the property of Hermann Goering. I printed this on newsprint, glued it onto a piece of paper and mailed it to Elsen at his office. Jesus H. Christ, what a huge uproar. Albert, insane with rage, went to the local FBI, called the office of the Attorney General and about every other law enforcement agency he could find. The result? The FBI got interested and of course the AG wouldn’t talk to him. An agent talked with me and I gave him copies of my papers. The result? The IRS got involved and flew out a specialist from DC to talk with me. He had never heard of the fatal shrinkage factor and we had a wonderful chat. The upshot was that the IRS said one could not take a tax write-off for more than was paid for the art. By the way, there was no town named Ardeth anywhere in the United States. Big Al the Mouth, as empty of brains as a ladle, suffered from mental constipation and verbal diarrhea
RTC: That must have tied a few tails.
GD: Oh, yes it did. The entire market in Rodins, fake and original, collapsed, Cantor’s gift was not allowed as a write-off and I got about ten letters from various law firms in Los Angeles threatening me with enormous lawsuits for making false statements about the wonderful B. Gerald. And, George’s lawsuit was successful and both Stanford and Elsen had to pay George a lot of money.
RTC: What happened to the statues?
GD: Are you sitting down? George got nine million for them. But that’s not the end of the story.
I wrote the whole thing up, more or less along the lines I have been telling you but in greater detail and sent it to a friend on the staff of the Getty in Los Angeles. He loathed Elsen and asked me if he could forward it. I said he certainly could. The man mailed it out on a February first and Elsen must have gotten it a few days later because on the fifth, he had a massive heart attack in his office and died on the spot.
RTC: I imagine that was the end of the matter. Did you make anything out of this?
GD: Enormous satisfaction.
RTC: You must have done months of work, Gregory. Not a penny?
GD: When I read in the Examiner that old Albert had bought the farm, I was paid in full.
RTC: What entertainment. And you are formidable indeed.
GD: Oh not so. Why Mueller, who knew me better than you do, used to call me ‘Mr. Sunshine.’ Isn’t that touching?
RTC: I suspect he was being cynical, Gregory and you know it. But I would agree with him. Such a kind person. You bagged two, count them, two nasty Jews and, from your account, ruined a very profitable number of scams they were involved in. I take it most of the dealers were Jews?
GD: Oh they were. For a time, it sounded like a chorus of sick hyenas.
RTC: Before or after the time the lion pounced on them?
GD: Depended. I nailed more than Albert, believe me but enough is enough. And then I got started on all the fake Frederic Remington’s’ floating around and did even more damage. I do like my fun, Robert, I do like it.
RTC: Others obviously do not. Did you go after these creeps because they were Jewish or in spite of it? Just curious.
GD: Robert, I had no idea about all of this when I got started and for quite some time, I thought Elsen was French. I didn’t wreak my havoc out of anti-Semitism but because I initially started out to help a friend authenticate some old statues. There was nothing more. The squalling uproar spilled over very quickly into attacks on me by Elsen and his vicious co-religionists so I merely obliged them by responding. I didn’t shout and slander but I dealt with facts and quite thoroughly ruined their very lucrative operations. I would have done the same if the perps were Episcopalians or Baptists. Of course, once I could see who, and what, I was dealing with, it was easy to ruin them. Shallow bombast coupled with criminal greed is a hallmark and I can play on such creeps like a piano. Strike this key and an Elsen howls to the press. Strike that one and a Frankenstein writes a hit piece in the Chronicle. Strike a strong chord and they all explode and die. No, Robert, I got into this only to help a friend and nothing else. I spent several years on this, not months, and learned both the business of bronze casting and the modern art world from one end to the other. The cabal lost hundreds of millions of dollars, much reputation painstakingly gained and finally, bitter defeat and well-deserved, oh very well-deserved, death.
(Concluded at 10:35 CST)
Conversation No. 74
Date: Friday, July 26, 1996
Commenced: 11:30 AM CST
Concluded: 11:45 AM CST
RTC: Did you call earlier, Gregory? The phone rang but it stopped before I picked up.
GD: No, this is the first time, Robert. Could it have been Clinton offering you the Medal of Freedom?
RTC: I doubt it. I don’t have enough money to bribe him.
GD: Yes, those people are not above taking a bribe now and then. But you aren’t Jewish so Frau Clinton wouldn’t be interested. I have a picture of her brother, wearing his beanie, stamping on a wine glass when he married Barbara Boxer’s daughter.
RF: A better-kept secret here, Gregory. But you mustn’t forget the unique suffering the Jews have experienced.
GD: No, for at least two thousand years, the poor Jews have been run out of every country they have moved to. Terrible. It must be a sort of international genetic plague that turns people against them. A list of nations and kingdoms that have kicked them out would fill a telephone book. I did some research on all of this once and the incredible number of expellers astonished me. Have you any ideas on this?
RTC: Not really. But I note that ever since they stole Palestine from the Arabs, whom they butchered in the process, we in Washington have become increasingly aware of how important it is to listen and obey. Personally, I think we should have tested our A bombs there rather than in the Pacific but I wouldn’t dare make such a suggestion, humorous though it might be. I would have a pack of screeching Hebrews defecating on my doorstep and pelting my wife with rotting bagels on her way to the market. And of course my pension would be cut off at once. I told Jim not to mess with his dear Mossad friends long ago but Jim never listened. They wormed their way into his good graces, stroked him mightily and
got him entirely on their side. The Mafia did the same thing. I liked Jim but in essence, he was a whore.
GD: Did they pay him?
RTC: No, just rubbed him until he purred and did what they wanted.
GD: Actually, Robert, I would say he was a slut. A whore does it for money but a slut does it because it feels good.
RTC: A good analogy. Do you know, Gregory, if we suddenly declared neutrality in the Middle East, Israel would collapse overnight and peace would descend there. Of course we would never do that because the moment we did, legions of screaming Jews would descend on the White House, the Senate, the House and every newspaper and television station in the nation. You could hear the screaming in Montana in a blizzard. Old Joe Stalin had the right idea when he planned to uproot all the Jews in Russia and ship them to Siberia back in ’53. Too damned bad he died before he completed his project.
GD: There is a question about his death.
RTC: Yes. We discussed this before if I remember. Beria was afraid Stalin would shoot him. The old man was senile and very dangerous so L.P, got in touch with us and we, in turn made a deal with him. We would help him off Stalin and when he took over, he would liberate East Germany and establish the right of private property in Russia and normalize relations with us. We gave him the silent rat poison and it worked but Beria was too smart by half and Nikita got him. That one we could not deal with but he overreached himself in Cuba and his own people got rid of him. Last I heard, he’s still alive somewhere. Times do change.
GD: Josef sank a barge full of inconvenient political prisoners early on and said ‘No man: No problem.’ I always liked that one.
RTC: Josef was an inspired paranoiac. Smart as hell and just as crazy. One moment as charming a fellow as you would want to know and ten seconds later, giving an order to shoot someone’s wife or grandmother. But not crazy enough to push a war on us. I’d like to read a really objective bio of Josef but it will be a century before that happens.
Conversations With the Crow Page 43