The Wrong Kind of Money Page 3
Jules Liebling’s daughter, the oft-married Ruth Liebling Hower, 35, was left an additional 24% of the company in an identical trust. In 1956, when Ruth Liebling was just 18, she eloped with Brazilian copper heir Antonio Fernandez-Just, a man 39 years her senior. That marriage lasted barely three months and was terminated by divorce. There followed a three-year career in Hollywood, during which Miss Liebling, using the name Ruth Radcliffe, appeared in several mostly forgettable motion pictures. But her film career ended in 1960, when she walked off the set of a picture she was making on location in Italy to marry Count Giulio di Pascanelli of Rome. Columbia Pictures sued her, but the lawsuit was settled, and the scenes of the movie in which she appeared, The Archbishop’s Wife, were reshot without her.
Soon afterward, her second marriage was annulled when it was discovered that Count di Pascanelli had a living wife in St. Moritz. But a year later she was able to marry the count again, since he had by then shed himself of his previous marital entanglement. However, that marriage lasted only seven weeks before the couple divorced, with the count demanding alimony. This matter resolved itself with the count’s suicide.
In 1965, Ruth Liebling married William Hower, who had been her personal physical fitness trainer. The Howers have since separated, and Ruth Liebling has reassumed the title Countess di Pascanelli, a title that she claims is papal, though the Vatican will not confirm this.
These marriages, and her abortive film career, are said to have caused her late father extreme distress, and are presumed to have cost him considerable sums of money.
Meanwhile, Jules Liebling’s “good” son, Noah Liebling, 27, was left no Ingraham stock at all in his father’s will. Noah Liebling has worked in his father’s companies in various capacities since his cum laude graduation from Nevada State six years ago. In the industry, it was widely assumed that the younger Mr. Liebling was being groomed to head Ingrahams. But this is not to be, at least not for a while. For the time being, Noah Liebling is essentially just one of his mother’s employees.
Jules Liebling’s will does, however, offer Noah a window of hope for the future, if he plays his cards right. The will stipulates that 25% of Hannah Liebling’s shares in the company—that is, 13% of the shares outstanding—are hers to do with as she wishes. Mrs. Liebling could, presumably, make a public offering of these shares. The remainder of her shares are earmarked as “discretionary holdings.” At such time as she feels is “fitting,” the will stipulates, the remaining 75% of her voting shares are to be turned over to Noah, giving him a majority voting position in the company. That time will come, the will states, “when my dear wife feels that my son is fully ready to assume the reins of my company.” That time could come next week, next year, or many years from now. Until that time Noah Liebling remains effectively tied to his mother’s apron strings and could remain so until her death, at which point his mother’s discretionary shares go to him without restrictions.
If Jules Liebling’s will seems grossly unfair to Noah by some industry insiders, Noah himself—a highly popular figure in the industry—does not see it that way at all. Speaking to Business Week’s reporter without a trace of bitterness, Noah Liebling said, “My father was a very kind and loving man, and a very fair man. His will is a very human, and very humane, instrument, it seems to me. My older brother, Cyril, has his own business, and has never had any interest in running the company. My sister is an extremely talented and artistic woman who, by her own admission, let her heart rule her head several years ago when she turned her back on a promising Hollywood career to marry. As a result, as she puts it, she ‘can’t even get arrested’ in the film or television community. Until she finds herself artistically, she will need the funds from my father’s trust to live in the style to which she is accustomed.
“Placing my mother at the helm of the family enterprises makes perfect sense to me. Though she never had an office in the Ingraham Building, or had a title in the corporation, no corporate decision, large or small, was ever made by my father without first consulting my mother. As anyone who has ever worked for us knows, my mother and my father were true partners in the family business in every sense of the word. This is why theirs was such a loving and lasting marriage.
“As for myself, I am much too young and inexpertenced to assume the stewardship of a company the size and complexity of Ingraham. At the moment I could not possibly run this company without my mother’s help and guidance. And so both my mother and I are very happy with the present arrangement, as are my brother and sister. Though we will always miss our father, we are all happy that he left things as he did.”
Cynics point out that it is lucky that the Liebling family is happy with the will. A stern final clause declares, “Anyone who makes the slightest move to challenge this Last Will and Testament shall be immediately stripped of any of its benefits.” Asked to comment on this clause, Noah Liebling dismissed it as “routine.” Asked about the tied-to-mother’s-apronstrings factor, Noah Liebling replied, with a wink, “I can assure you that my mother has never worn an apron.”
Mrs. Hannah Liebling, 62, was in Europe, traveling on company business, and could not be reached for comment.
All that, of course, was written twenty years ago, and many things have changed since then. For one thing, all the people mentioned in that story are now twenty years older. But, as you will see as our story unfolds, there are many things that have not changed. You may well ask: Was it the intention of Noah’s father’s will to keep his son from assuming the presidency of the company for this long a time? Or was it the old man’s wish that his widow act as a sort of regent until Noah was a little older—four or five years, perhaps, or until Noah was in his mid-thirties? But Noah Liebling has now passed his mid-forties, and his mother is still very much, and very firmly, in charge of things, and has offered no visible sign that she is ready to let go. Was that what the old man really wanted, or expected, to have happen? By now quite a few people have asked that question.
But in the meantime, we have backed away from our story. We have left three of the principals—Hannah Liebling, her son Cyril, and her son Noah’s daughter Anne—stuck in a traffic jam on Park Avenue, while we digressed backward to Hannah’s late husband. It should be possible to tell this story in as straightforward and linear a fashion as possible, and avoid these flashbacks. But this may be hard to do. J. B. Liebling, twenty years dead, continues to influence his family as powerfully today as he did when he was alive. At certain intersections, as in a logjam of traffic, it will be difficult to bypass the old man.
Where are these three going? Where are they coming from? They are coming from Hannah Liebling’s apartment at 1000 Park, where Anne has had tea with her grandmother. Anne is a freshman at Bennington, home on winter break. Ever since Anne reached her teens, these afternoon teas with her grandmother have become a ritual. Indeed, for Anne they are a command performance. They are always very formal, always preceded by a handwritten invitation on Hannah Liebling’s embossed Cartier note paper:
One Thousand Park Avenue
Dearest Anne,
Your mother tells me you will be coming down from school on——.
Please join me here for tea on the afternoon of——at four o’clock.
I look forward to seeing you.
Devotedly,
Nana Hannah
Hannah Liebling pours from the big silver teapot. (“Lemon or sugar? One lump or two?”) Then she hands the little teacup to Bridget, her parlor maid, who delivers it to Anne, who always sits in what is known as “the visitor’s chair” opposite her grandmother in the glassed-in terrace that is called the morning room, since it faces east. Hannah then pours for herself, and Bridget passes the tray of thin finger sandwiches, cucumber, and watercress, followed by tea cakes and cookies. Hannah is determined that Anne shall at least be exposed to the kind of manners and social niceties which she herself was brought up to observe. She suspects that Anne’s mother, Carol Liebling, is a little lax about such matters.
But Carol Liebling takes her mother-in-law’s teas every bit as seriously. “Glove inspection,” Carol says cheerfully as her daughter prepares to depart. “Are they white-white-white? Clean-clean-clean? Good. Now keep them in your purse until you’ve rung her doorbell. Then slip them on. Have you got a clean white hankie, in case you need to blow your nose?”
“Moth-err!”
“And don’t tease your grandmother,” Carol says. “Remember, she holds the purse strings.”
But Anne, blond and bubbly, knows she’s pretty, and she knows her grandmother thinks she’s pretty—a fair-haired Elizabeth Taylor, that same oval face when she was about Anne’s age and played in National Velvet. (National Velvet is Nana Hannah’s favorite movie.) And so she doesn’t really mind dressing up and looking her prettiest for her grandmother, sitting with her ankles crossed in the visitor’s chair, balancing her teacup in its saucer. And of course she can’t resist teasing her grandmother a little bit. Not too much, just a bit. She has discovered that her grandmother actually enjoys the teasing—if it doesn’t go too far, that is.
“Tonight there’s a real sexpot coming for dinner,” she said to her grandmother this afternoon. “I hear he’s a real hunk.”
“Really, Anne, such language!” her grandmother said. “If I talked like that when I was a girl, I’d have my mouth washed out with Fels Naphtha soap.”
Have we mentioned that tonight is New Year’s Eve? This accounts in large part for the amount of traffic on Park Avenue. Everyone is on his way to a party somewhere else in town, or to a nightclub or restaurant, or to the theater. But New Year’s Eve is another ritual in the Liebling family. It is the night that Carol and Noah Liebling have their annual family dinner and it, too, is a command performance, and that is where the Lincoln is headed now. Carol and Noah live at River House, on East Fifty-second Street.
At six o’clock, Cyril Liebling joined his mother and his niece in the morning room at 1000 Park. He did not have far to go, since he lives on the floor above. After Jules Liebling died, Hannah decided to divide the duplex apartment horizontally. “I don’t need all this acreage,” she said to Cyril, “now that I’m all alone. I’m going to have the staircase taken out and the upstairs sealed off. You can live up there. You’ll have your own elevator entrance, complete privacy, and I’ll pay the maintenance on both apartments.”
It was not an arrangement designed to please Cyril, exactly. While the idea of a large, luxuriously furnished, and rent-free apartment at a splendid address was not without its appeal, Cyril did not much fancy the idea of living in such close proximity to his mother. With the income generated by his father’s trust, he could easily have afforded an elegant place of his own.
“I suppose this is your way of keeping me under your thumb,” he said.
“I’d like to keep my eye on you, Cyril. To make sure you stay out of trouble. You know what I’m talking about.”
“But, Mother, that was a long time ago, and it was just a childish prank.”
“A childish prank at age twenty-two? A little early to be entering your second childhood, don’t you think?”
“Joey Fernandez was the child. It was all his idea, not mine.”
“I do not wish to hear that name again! Anyway,” she added in a gentler tone, “as I get older, living alone, I like the idea of a family member living close to me. You know—in case something should happen to me.”
And so he had agreed to go along with her, though not for the reasons she outlined. It was because, secretly, for years he had been in love with that particular apartment. He had always hoped that when she died, she would leave that apartment to him. When it was his, he would reinstall that gracefully curving staircase between the two floors. He would redecorate the rooms to his somewhat more extravagant taste. He would turn the downstairs library into a screening room for his private collection of films. He would give large and lavish entertainments for glittering gatherings of his beautiful friends. “Darling Cyril,” they would say to him, “no one lives as magnificently as you.” And the magnificence of his final apartment would attract even more beautiful friends, and on and on. After dinner they would all file into his screening room for a film or two. The apartments at 1000 Park were all wonderfully soundproof. None of his neighbors would ever suspect the intensity of the excitement that would be generated in his apartment. It was not such an outrageous dream. It made sense that his mother should leave the apartment to him, particularly if, when she died, he was already living in half of it. He’d already dropped little hints to her in this regard. “I’d love to see this place made whole again,” etc. Meanwhile, half a loaf was better than none. With half the apartment he had his toe firmly in the door. And for the occasional dalliance there were always hotels.
But, of course, who would have expected that the old lady would live to be eighty-two? A number of years ago, she’d had a serious bout with cancer, and the family had gathered at Mount Sinai hospital around what was supposed to be her deathbed. Cyril had planned his funeral wardrobe. He had the perfect dark blue Sills suit. He would have the temple filled with white dahlias, her favorite flower. As the coffin rolled slowly toward the ark, he would utter an audible, uncontrollable sob, and grasp the back of the pew in front of him, as though about to collapse. For a month afterward, he would wear a black grosgrain ribbon on his lapel, and a mournful slouch.
But then she bounced back, healthier than ever. And year by year, Cyril has seen his beautiful dream recede before his eyes, as he has remained his mother’s house guest. Is it any wonder he occasionally loses patience with her?
And whom will we meet when the Town Car finally arrives at River House? Well, Anne’s parents, of course, Noah and Carol Liebling, the host and hostess. Cyril and Noah’s sister, Ruth, will also be there, who still likes to be introduced as the Countess di Pascanelli, though she insists she uses her “good” name only because it is useful in making hotel and restaurant reservations. There have been a couple of other husbands for Ruth since that Business Week story was published in 1974, but none of them amounted to anything. They were totally and thoroughly undistinguished, and have no bearing whatsoever on this story. Tonight Ruth has asked if she may bring a new beau of hers along. It is interesting that, at fifty-five, Ruth still uses the term beau. Whether or not this beau will turn out to be husband material, who knows? We shall have to wait and see. Ruth has still not succeeded in finding herself artistically, though she continues to try. Recently she announced that she is writing a novel.
Noah Liebling now wears the title of executive vice president of H. & W. Ingraham Sons, Inc., the second in command. He commands a salary of over $500,000 a year. But his mother still holds the title of president and CEO, and Hannah has not yet found it “fitting” to turn over to Noah the controlling shares of stock as stipulated in his father’s will. This, apparently, does not reflect any dissatisfaction on Hannah’s part with Noah’s work for the company. She has given him steady raises and promotions over the years, but has held back giving him full control. Some people believe that this is because Hannah does not yet quite trust Carol, Noah’s spirited and independent-thinking wife. Hannah tends to think of Carol as too free-spirited, too independent, too much of an influence on Noah. Could it be that Hannah sees Carol as a rival, and thus a threat? Hannah is not a woman who likes to share control. And so Hannah thinks of Carol as a loose cannon, capable of capsizing the family battleship—or perhaps the family flotilla of battleships would be the better term.
Noah Liebling remains his mother’s favorite son, just as he was his father’s. To most people Noah seems like the ideal son—tall, athletic, affable, with the dark good looks of a Gentleman’s Quarterly model. Once upon a time Cyril was the favorite son. But as a result of a series of differences and misunderstandings years ago, he no longer is.
In the winter of 1945, the telephone rang at 1000 Park Avenue. Jules and Hannah Liebling were at dinner, and Philip, their butler, conveyed the message to Jules Liebl
ing at the dinner table. “Mr. George Litchfield of St. Anselm’s School is on the phone, sir,” Philip said. St. Anselm’s was the boys’ school in northwestern Connecticut where Cyril Liebling was a first-year student, and George Litchfield was its headmaster.
“Tell him I’ll call him back.”
“I told him you were at dinner, sir. But he insists it’s urgent.”
A look passed between Jules and Hannah. “Very well,” Jules said. Looking pained, he placed his napkin on the dinner table, pushed his chair back, and went to take the call in the next room.
“I’m sorry to say that it has become necessary for us to expel Cyril, Mr. Liebling,” Mr. Litchfield said.
A pause. Then Jules said, “For what reason, may I ask?”
“For—for unnatural sexual activity, Mr. Liebling,” Mr. Litchfield said.
“What sort of activity?”
“They were—I believe it is called fellatio. He and another boy. They were discovered in the lavatory, by Mr. Smith, the dormitory master of Ward’s Hall.”
“Who was doing what to whom?”
“I—it’s my understanding from Mr. Smith—they were doing it to each other.”
“I see.” Now Jules attempted what was intended to be an understanding chuckle between two men of the world. “Well, surely, Mr. Litchfield,” he said. “Surely, in an all-male environment, at a school such as yours—two adolescent boys. I mean, certainly this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened at a school like yours. Two young boys, experimenting—”
“Well, perhaps not, Mr. Liebling,” the headmaster conceded, “but that sort of activity cannot be tolerated at St. Anselm’s.”
“And the other boy involved in the—incident? I presume he is being expelled also.”
“No, in fact he is not,” the headmaster said.