PERSONAL FILE

?In a San Francisco office cluttered with autographed photos of show business stars, boxes of spare Homburgs, and a "money tree" decorated with dollars, Real Estate Tycoon Louis Robert Lurie, 73, presides over his many business interests. They span movies ("I made all the early Tarzan pictures") to mining ("My record is perfect--I've lost every cent I ever invested"). He is also a lucky angel, having bankrolled such Broadway hits as Song of Norway and Pajama Game. But he made his fortune--estimated at more than $50 million--in buildings. He has built 226 of them, owns two dozen large buildings from his home town, Chicago, to San Francisco. Last week, moved by San Francisco sentimentalism as much as desire for profit, he bought the famed Hotel Mark Hopkins for $12 million. "I think," says Lurie, "it's the finest hotel in the world." ?A husky Virginian who knows his way around Washington as well as Wall Street, Carter Burgess, 45, last week moved up from the presidency to the chairmanship of widely diversified American Machine & Foundry Co., succeeding Morehead Patterson, who died fortnight ago. His acquaintance with both places should be useful: AMF faces an antitrust accusation of conspiring to restrain competition in the bowling industry, and a slowdown in its military contracting helped to cut AMF's first half-year sales 11%, to $185 million. Burgess, once president of Trans World Airlines, was an Eisenhower era Assistant Secretary of Defense, joined AMF in 1958. Burgess intends to push new consumer products, including an auto exhaust filter which, if certified, would become one of two competing antismog systems mandatory on all cars in California.

?Though discount selling can be a gold mine, the digging is not without perils. Latest to fall in a hole is Maxwell Henry Gluck, 62, chairman of the 295-branch Grayson-Robinson Stores, which last week acknowledged $10.5 million in overdue debts and asked for--a time extension under the Bankruptcy Act. Gluck, a onetime U.S. Ambassador to Ceylon--he was the one who in 1957 could not remember the name of Ceylon's Prime Minister during a Senate confirmation hearing--two years ago merged his Darling Stores into Grayson-Robinson and rapidly opened 43 discount branches. Expansion cost more than it brought in. When Manhattan's Bankers Trust called its $6,400,000 note last week, Gluck had to plead for a breather. Since his firm's assets exceed its debts, Gluck may well ride out the crisis.

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