Aladdin's Rub

Stocks for best of friends

The two most valued words at NBC are "Heeere's Johnny!" No wonder, since Johnny Carson's Tonight show brings the network $90 million a year in advertising revenues. It does come as some surprise, however, that the mere mention of Host Carson's name can also affect the stock market. Last week a few of Carson's friends and relatives were caught in an embarrassing, illegal stock ploy to capitalize on inside information about the entertainer's participation in a Las Vegas casino deal.

Though accused of no wrongdoing, in the middle of the affair was Carson's third wife Joanna. According to a suit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, she sat in for part of a meeting last Oct. 22 between her husband and Andrew Frankel, chairman of National Kinney Corp., a New York parking garage and real estate development firm. The subject was the proposed purchase of the Aladdin Hotel by National Kinney. Under an agreement that was to be announced two days later, Carson and Kinney planned to rename the property Johnny Carson's Aladdin Hotel. He would make all his Las Vegas appearances there in return for 500,000 shares of National Kinney stock, then worth about $2 million.

Two hours after the session, Joanna Carson was at the Beverly Hills Health Club for Women. From there she phoned her brother Peter Ulrich in West Seneca, N.Y., and told him about the casino plan. Ulrich quickly bought 2,000 shares of National Kinney, which he sold over the next three months, after the Aladdin-Carson announcement, at a $4,228 profit. Joanna Carson also told Emily Johns, the health club's membership sales director, who bought 1,000 shares of National Kinney the next morning and sold them several days later for a $1,260 gain.

Other Carson cronies also spread the good news. The wife of Carson's attorney, Henry I. Bushkin, known to Tonight fans as "Bombastic" Bushkin, told her father Max Beck, who bought 5,000 shares and netted a $4,496 profit. Frederic J. Freed, a law associate of Bushkin's, bought 4,000 shares in his father-in-law's name and later sold them for a $4,980 gain.

The Securities and Exchange Commission became curious about National Kinney after learning that the number of its shares traded on the American Stock Exchange had precipitously jumped from an average 7,000 a day to over 100,000 daily for a while. Investigators obtained a list of traders, and the trail led to Joanna Carson and the others. Under terms of a settlement with the SEC, the four insiders must turn over their profits to the original stock owners.

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