Monday, Dec. 07, 1998

Crazy And In Charge

By Alan Farnham

At first glance, the business world of the 20th century would not seem a propitious breeding ground for eccentricity. Businessmen and -women, in the main, pride themselves on probity, predictability. "Sober" and "well-rounded" are considered compliments. Little wonder, then, that a hectare of executives contains fewer kooks than just about any other sampling of humanity. Compared with poets and philosophers, bankers and industrialists have been relatively late adopters of berets, ferrets and home brewing. Yet, even so, the century has hatched its share of "true originals"--some of whom won fame and fortune, others who left only a gaudy afterglow.

The fetishes of Howard Hughes (1905-76) have entered folklore, to the point that Hughes is remembered less for having been an industrialist-aviator-Hollywood-producer than for having been a saver of urine (his own), a recluse terrified of dust, a man who, with the right audience (Mormon bodyguards), couldn't see Ice Station Zebra often enough. Yet for every celebrity eccentric, a dozen more labored in obscurity. Who remembers Brian Hughes? This 1920s box-manufacturing tycoon liked nothing better than to patrol the sidewalk outside Tiffany in New York City, an envelope tucked beneath his arm. When the moment seemed right, and pedestrian traffic sufficient, Hughes would let loose its contents, sending a spray of jewels (all fake) clattering across the sidewalk. The melee that ensued never ceased to please him. On rainy days, he would exit a restaurant and deliberately leave behind an expensive umbrella. When opened by a misappropriater, the umbrella released a shower of leaflets saying THIS UMBRELLA STOLEN FROM BRIAN G. HUGHES.

For sheer reclusiveness, Hughes (Howard, not Brian G.) had a worthy rival in candymaker Forrest Mars Sr. Virtually every detail of Mars' life--including his birthday--is kept a closely guarded corporate secret within Mars Inc., a secretive company. He has reportedly given but one interview in his entire career and that to a candy-industry trade paper in 1966. Yet even Mars' and Hughes' penchant for anonymity pales before that of Basil Zaharoff (1849-1936), a munitions king aptly called the "Mystery Man of Europe." Zaharoff systematically stole or destroyed all records of his youth and early manhood, making snooping into his past impossible. He employed several doubles and never permitted himself to be photographed until late in life, after he had retired. Why such secrecy? Assassins from many nations hunted him. He had made his fortune by simultaneously selling arms to both sides in a conflict. He grew rich--and hated.

Certain industries have yielded gushers of eccentrics. Oil gave the world two famous penny-pinching billionaires: J. Paul Getty (1892-1976), legendary for forcing guests at his estate to use a pay phone, and H.L. Hunt (1889-74), who every day either brought his lunch to work in a paper sack or, when not feeling quite so flush, cadged his secretary's sandwich. Less well known was oil and cattle baron James ("Silver Dollar Jim") West (1903-57). Wearing a diamond-encrusted Texas Ranger's badge and hunched behind the wheel of one of his 30 automobiles, West loved to race alongside Houston police in pursuit of evildoers, throwing handfuls of silver dollars to startled onlookers as he sped by.

Real estate has produced Abe Hirschfeld, 78, who made his fortune building parking garages. With his millions, he has tried--and failed--to win a variety of elective offices, ranging from lieutenant governor of New York to U.S. Senator as a member of, variously, the Republican, Democratic and Independent parties. Recently, he interposed himself into the Clinton sex scandal, when, uninvited, he offered to pay Paula Jones $1 million if she would drop her sexual-harassment suit against the President. A few years ago, a headline in the New York Post asked WHO IS THIS NUT? At the time, Hirschfeld owned the newspaper. Asked if he was crazy, he replied, with great good grace, "I am. Any person that achieves things and accomplishes things is a little crazy."

Which brings us now to publishing. If ever there was a happy hunting ground for eccentrics, publishing is it. The industry produced more rare blooms than any other, ranging from Joseph Pulitzer (1874-1911), publisher of the New York World, to the very much alive Richard Mellon Scaife, 66, publisher of Pittsburgh's Tribune Review. Pulitzer suffered from nervousness so acute that he lived out his later years in double-insulated, soundproof rooms. As for Scaife, he spent some of his Mellon family megabucks (Alcoa, Mellon Bank) to buy a suburban newspaper, give it a Steel City moniker and publish an unending string of kooky conspiracy theories centered on the Clintons.

Robert McCormick (1880-1955), owner of the Chicago Tribune, cultivated presidential enemies the way other men do orchids, winning Franklin Roosevelt's special hatred for publishing, on the eve of World War II, secret War Department plans that put the lie to F.D.R.'s professed neutrality. McCormick traveled the world aboard his own luxuriously outfitted B-17 bomber that included a swivel chair mounted in the plane's picture-window nose. From this vantage point, he offered readers his judgments of the nations of the earth, finding most of them filthy, lazy and wanting in Midwestern virtue. From Libya he once wrote, "No water in river, and country full of Wops." The British he regarded as "pink-coated, horn-blowing, supercilious bankrupts." The Blessed Isles were to him just one big "chalk-cliffed hell." McCormick ably reinforced the trait of editorial looniness so eagerly deployed by William Randolph Hearst, whose career reached its zenith in fomenting the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Closing out our portfolio of publishers: health nut Bernarr Macfadden (1868-1955), who used his first magazine, Physical Culture, as a vehicle for promulgating his views on carrot eating, cold-water bathing and frequent, vigorous sex. (He was for all three.) Largely for his fulminations on the last, his racy tabloid, the New York Evening Graphic, which specialized in covering violence and sex, became known as the "PornoGraphic." His legacy is with us even now: it was Macfadden who invented the "composograph" or composite photo, in which the heads of real people in the news are superimposed on the bodies of models posed in compromising positions. He owned magazines, restaurants, resorts--an empire worth $30 million that critics claimed was built on nothing more than "sex and carrots." At age 45, he met, hired and later married a comely 19-year-old swimming champion with whom he toured Europe in an act whose climax was her jumping from a 7-ft. platform onto his flexed, trampoline-like stomach.

Surely the happiest instances of commercial eccentricity have been those in which an entrepreneur's quirks spur success. In fact, it could be argued that such people are capitalism's finest and most inspiring flowers: their greatest wealth literally is themselves. One such is Kathryn Falk, 58, whose boundless love for romance novels has led her to produce conventions, magazines, newsletters and tours. Falk also sells chocolates and other items to women who share her passion. Her annual Romantic Times Booklovers' Convention draws some 5,000 and features a male beauty pageant and a costume ball. During a 1997 Romantic Times Convention in Baton Rouge, La., as hundreds of lady authors, would-be authors and romance-novel lovers milled about, Lady Barrow (she bought herself an English title) regally strolled the floor, greeting fans eager not just to meet her but also to pat the pet chicken that often perched on her shoulder. Truly, she swoons all the way to the bank.

And finally, an entrepreneur unlike any other: Jim Moran, 89, who, until he retired in 1985, reigned as supreme master of that most singular marketing device--the stunt. Highlights: he sold an icebox to an Eskimo on behalf of the American Ice Manufacturers Association. He personally hatched an ostrich egg by sitting on it for 19 days, 4 hrs. and 32 min., on behalf of the 1947 movie The Egg and I. For producer David Merrick, whose Broadway show The Matchmaker needed a little extra coverage, he dressed an orangutan in a chauffeur's suit and set the creature at the wheel of a specially rigged taxi. With Moran steering from the back, the two set off down Broadway with the legend I'M ON MY WAY TO THE MATCHMAKER! blazoned on the car. There was a traffic accident--and incalculable publicity.

All this, however, was a mere preamble to what would be the zenith of Moran's career: his plan to fly midgets (his word) on kites over Central Park, bearing an advertisement for a Moran client. Moran managed to hire a crew and repaired to Central Park for lift-off, his kite handlers and the undersize pilots sporting snappy uniforms and caps saying MORAN AERIAL ADVERTISING SERVICE. The day was fine, the winds conducive. But as the crew was in the process of getting the first pilot airborne, the authorities intervened. A cop asked Moran if he had a permit. Moran did not. A dispute ensued, and the parties removed to a police station. Upon his release some hours later, Moran immediately called a press conference. "It's a sad day for American capitalism," he said, "when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park." This may not be quite so succinct an aphorism as "A penny saved is a penny earned," but it ought nonetheless to be incised in stone somewhere--a business school, perhaps.

Alan Farnham is a New York City-based financial journalist and author who has a few quirks of his own