It occurred to me the other day that one of the reasons why I like writing about art is that it lasts longer than technology. Most of the tech stuff I wrote about for decades never made it to the market, or fizzed out after a few years. Art hangs on your wall forever. Twin stars by Jayda Knight

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We bought this painting over 20 years ago from an artist in Aventura, Marvin Marham. We found out he recently died. He advertised it in Ocean Drive magazine. It’s insane looking, half amateurish, half daring. That’s why we wanted it.

I posted it a week ago on Facebook to see what others thought of it. I thought everyone would say we had bad taste in art. The response has been just the opposite. We even got offers to buy it. I have posted other art work hoping for sales but never received the kudos like this one. Life is a mystery.

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I like to think of Brook Dorsch, co-owner of the Emerson Dorsch gallery in Little Haiti, (a neighborhood in Miami) as the Lorne Michaels of gallerists. During the last 31 years, he has promoted more unknown artists than most anyone else. Many of the artists have become well known all over the world and they credit Brook for giving them their start.

“Isn’t that what it’s all about?” asks Brook as we talk about the art scene in Miami. It was his efforts that eventually made Miami one of the most important cities for art in the world. Ever since he was a young rocker in New York City working at Symphony Space, a multi-disciplinary performing arts organization on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Brook was visiting galleries in Greenwich Village, Soho, Tribeca, and the lower east side.

“I was interested in becoming an artist, as well as continuing my music. As time marched on, I realized I was a hobby artist at best. However, I did have a good eye for interesting work and I wasn’t afraid of presenting art in dramatic new ways. We have been known to rip down walls in our galleries to accommodate certain exhibits, pile up sand on our floors to provide the proper atmosphere, and hang flying objects from the ceilings to make visitors look at works from a different perspective. We don’t do it to shock our clients, we do it to spark the imagination.”

When Brook first arrived in Miami in 1991, most of the art galleries were in Coral Gables. “They were very traditional and didn’t really promote the artists, or their work, in any creative way. There really wasn’t much enthusiasm. I was grateful for their efforts because it motivated me to bring new life into the Miami art market.”

Brook’s story of how he first got started is a dream come true for many art lovers who always wanted to open a gallery. When he was in his 20s, he moved into a 900 square foot loft, over Parkway Drugs on Coral Way, (very close to the Viscaya Metro Rail Station) and turned it into an art gallery. The loft featured wooden floors that reminded him of his days in Soho so he loved the place immediately. He actually lived amongst the art he was exhibiting. He even closed off the windows and added special lighting to properly present the paintings and sculptures.

Word spread fast that a young guy from New York was featuring the work from artists who were enrolled in the University of Miami’s Visual Arts department. He was also featuring works from unknown artists that never showed in Miami before. The intrigue was also the space. Everyone wanted to be a part of the new cool factor. It was a brilliant move because it generated interest from a growing number of people who were l interested in seeing works from a much more diversified group of artists. Enthusiasts were showing up at his studio all the time. The Dorsch gallery quickly became an underground hangout.

The same thing happened when Brook decided to relocate his gallery to Wynwood in 2001. He just needed more space. This was the big time. The new Dorsch Gallery was now 7,000 square feet showing the works by Robert Chambers, Joshua Levine, Cooper, Andrew Binder and so many others. Big groups of art lovers would congregate in the back of his gallery at night as if it was a nightclub or bar. In those days Wynwood was a commercial warehouse district that few people ever entered. The streets were usually empty which meant there was plenty of parking space for everyone. The police always stopped by at night to check out if any funny stuff was going on. They were actually impressed that in the middle of so many dark empty streets, there was a crowd of people hanging out under a string of lights. This was a sanctuary for so many creative people.

Brook was always interested in getting people together to talk about all kinds of art, music, writing, theater, movies, photography, fashion, broadcast, etc. “That’s the beauty of owning a gallery. You promote dialog.”

One of the topics Brook has expounded on over the years is the importance of exposure. He feels that many tend to hide their work. They finish a piece and never show it to anyone. Brett Sokol, the New York Times art writer who happens to live in Miami, quoted Brooke in an article he wrote years ago for the Miami New Times. Brook said, “It’s much better to have your work on the wall of somebody’s house than sitting in the corner of your studio in a pile. As great an artist as you think you’re gonna be, you’ve got to get it out there, and that means letting it go for a little cheaper. They have these formulas for selling art. How many hours did you work on it? What was your medium, your materials? If you calculate all that stuff out, and then add in the dealer commission, by that time it’s expensive. So look, cut the price, get it out there.”

Brook is very much a realist. That’s why he has not only survived, but prospered over the years. His mother gave him one bit of advice that served him well for most of his career. When the family all moved from New York to Miami, she told him to get a college degree in something he would like other than art. She said it was important to have something to fall back on. Brook, who was always an eager beaver, wanted to make sure his love and interest in art was never at risk. He immediately enrolled in Miami Dade College and then Barry University focusing on computer science. For most of his art career, he has had a day job in technology for the cruise industry. Brooke, who says he is a damn good coder, loves the fact that computers gave him the freedom to express his creative side.

Brook’s wife, Tyler Emerson-Dorsch, joined the gallery as a co-owner in 2008 after earning a Masters from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. In 2013, the Dorsch Gallery was renamed to Emerson Dorsch. “Tyler brought in a strong academic territorial practice to the gallery. Tyler leads the curation of our shows and she is the resident writer for all of our materials. She brings in all of the professionalism we were missing.”

In January 2020, Ibett Yanez del Castillo joined the gallery as Director. Ibett was the Director of the de la Cruz Collection from its inception until 2019. Ibett runs the day to day operations. She gives Brook and Tyler great flexibility to focus on the future.

In June 2015, the gallery relocated to a building Brook and Tyler bought in Little Haiti because they wanted a gallery that offered more versatility. There is now room for art installations and outdoor performances. We are part of a migration of small businesses and art galleries from Wynwood to Little Haiti and Little River. Other galleries close to our new location are Nina Johnson, Pan American, and Anthony Spinello.

The gallery represents South Florida artists as well as emerging and mid-career visiting artists: Jenny Brillhart, Clifton Childree, Robert Chambers (sculptor), Felecia Chizuko Carlisle, Elisabeth Condon, Yanira Collado, Karen Rifas, Onajide Shabaka, Magnus Sigurdarson, Robert Thiele, Mette Tommerup, Frances Trombly, and Paula Wilson. Emerson Dorsch’s solo exhibitions include: Walter Darby Bannard, Corin Hewitt, Victoria Fu, Michael Jones McKean, Brookhart Jonquil, Siebren Versteeg, Arnold Mesches, Tameka Norris, Gustavo Matamoros and Saya Woolfalk.

Emerson Dorsch now offers cultural events as well as visual arts such as concerts and dance performances. Gestured artists include: Iron and Wine, SSingSSing, Arthur Doyle, Cock ESP, Otto von Schirach and Awesome New Republic.

Emerson-Dorsch Gallery recently celebrated its 31st anniversary. http://www.emersondorsch.com

Eugene Levy Never Wanted to See the World

The comic actor balked when he was offered a travel show. But hosting “The Reluctant Traveler” showed him the (mild) joys of leaving his comfort zone.

By Anna Peele

Eugene Levy has never been a traveler.

As a child in Hamilton, Ontario, the farthest his parents might take him and his siblings was Lake Erie’s Crystal Beach, an hour and a half away by car. They would spend two weeks each year staying at the same spider-dominated cottages, eating at the same fish and chips place and visiting the same local amusement park. Levy rode a train for the first time at 8 and never repeated the exotic experience.

As a 76-year-old, Levy maintains the ancestral position that the known is the best place to exist. Why should he leave his life in the Pacific Palisades, where every day promises comfort? Each morning, Levy wakes up and puts on the round Leon eyeglasses he purchased in bulk and has worn in the same discontinued style for more than a decade. He drinks coffee with cream and sugar. If it’s Wednesday or Friday, Levy golfs, always with the same people and half the time not bothering to keep score.

If he’s working on something, Levy descends to his office to write or edit or go over scripts. He and his wife of 45 years, Deb Divine, might go to West Hollywood to see their daughter, Sarah, and her baby son. They’ll often have dinner with Martin Short, Levy’s friend for over five decades, who lives less than five minutes away. “I truly love having nothing on the agenda,” Levy said.

So when David Brindley, an executive producer, and Alison Kirkham, an Apple TV+ programming executive, called Levy in 2021 and asked him to host a travel show, he said no.

They’d never get Levy to a safari, he told them. He had watched animals on wildlife programs and didn’t need to travel halfway around the world to see them again. He doesn’t love water. He doesn’t like the hot; he doesn’t like the cold. This, along with Levy’s vehement aversion to sushi and fear of humidity that could ruin his hair, became basically the episode guide for “The Reluctant Traveler,” which premiered Friday on Apple TV+ and follows Levy from Finland to the Maldives. There is a safari episode, a hot episode, a cold episode, a jungle episode and a lot of uncooked fish.

As can be gleaned from the title, Levy’s lack of anything resembling wanderlust is the defining gimmick. But it’s also genuine, and the host himself still has no idea why anyone would have thought of him for the role of travel guide. “I’m not a curious person,” Levy said in an interview last week. “No sense of adventure.” He can’t pretend to be excited about things he isn’t, and he has historically had no interest in being himself on camera for anything longer than a talk show appearance.

“As a character actor, the further the character is away from me, the more comfortable I was doing it,” Levy said, inverting his magnificent brows into a chevron. “The closer you get to me, the interesting factor starts dropping.”

It’s a sentiment he expressed over and over as we talked at a restaurant in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan. “This is the longest interview I’ve ever had,” he said before he even sat down in the private room, seemingly baffled about how we would fill the time. “I’m rambling,” he said later, while not rambling. It felt less like an expression of anxiety than a writer’s un-self-conscious assessment that this dialogue could be tightened and punched up.

Levy’s career has been a series of ensembles and repertory companies. His first professional role was joining Short in putting together a now famous 1972 production of “Godspell” in Toronto, with a cast that included Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner and Victor Garber. A few years later Levy, Short and Martin joined John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Rick Moranis and Harold Ramis, among others, on “SCTV” (1976-84), the beloved Canadian sketch comedy show that emerged from the Toronto branch of the Second City improv and sketch company.

In the 1990s, Levy became a leader of cinema’s pre-eminent mockumentary troupe, co-writing (with Christopher Guest) and starring in “Waiting for Guffman” (1996), “Best in Show” (2000), “A Mighty Wind” (2003) and “For Your Consideration” (2006). He played “Jim’s dad,” Noah Levenstein, in eight of the nine “American Pie” movies. Through this oeuvre, he became the comedic personification of spectacled, mostly well-meaning men who, in Levy’s assessment, “weren’t necessarily the sharpest pencils in the drawer.”

It was in “Schitt’s Creek,” the great sitcom Levy created with his son, Dan, about a group of coddled people who gain sentience through exposure to real life, that he came closest to portraying himself: an affable, affluent father who wears nice suits and has no tolerance for bad hotels. He was working with both of his children — Sarah played a diner waitress named Twyla — and the closeness of the role to himself created a dual consciousness in his performance that he hadn’t previously experienced. “I can’t believe my kids are on camera here with Catherine O’Hara,” Levy would think while he was acting in a scene with Catherine O’Hara.

By the end of its sixth season, “Schitt’s Creek” had gained nine Emmys, including a lead actor award for Levy. That success and impact led him to “The Reluctant Traveler.” He had ruled out doing another comedy series because he believed nothing would be as good as “Schitt’s.” He would have considered drama, but then Brindley and Kirkham called with their idea for the unscripted series, which was different from anything he had done before. Levy said the concept was originally pitched to him as “Room With a View,” a series highlighting luxury hotels around the world.

Divine was surprised when Levy told her he was going to take the job. “It’s so outside his comfort zone,” she said. She asked him, “Eugene, honestly; you’re going to do that?” He was — partly because Kirkham and Brindley had proved their creative flexibility by altering the brief to focus on Levy’s warm curmudgeonliness. “I love the people I’m working with,” Levy told me.

Levy’s collaborators are drawn to his sweetness and lack of pretense, along with his methodical brilliance. “‘Schitt’s Creek’ is a perfect example of that,” Short said. “Everything is logical, and some things are exaggerated, but still they’re based on what would happen and could happen. Eugene is very specific.”

Divine said, “He’s unlike anybody I’ve ever met in my life.”

“He doesn’t have any damage,” she explained. “He’s like a little Buddha: He just lives in the moment. He doesn’t gossip, he doesn’t care about show business that much. He does his work, goes in, has fun and gets out. But no, there is no damage.”

She added: “Believe me, I’ve looked.”

Divine and Short said that Levy’s parents are the root of his lack of brokenness, as well as his disinclination to vacation. “He grew up in a sheltered but loving, loving family,” Divine said. His mother “came to Canada on a boat” from Scotland at age 12, she added, “so her idea of traveling is steerage.”

Short said: “Eugene’s the sweetest human being in the world. There’s no one kinder. There’s no one more beloved. You’re dealing with the Saint Eugene here.”

A hallmark of Levy’s characters is that they’re funniest when acted upon — think of the doubly left-footed Gerry Fleck, from “Best in Show,” constantly running into people who have slept with his wife, Cookie (O’Hara). In at least one aspect, Levy’s onscreen persona is close to his familial role. “He’s the brunt of the jokes,” Sarah said of her father’s faux-low status. “It is all out of love — he’s so easy to pile up on because he takes it really well, and he’s a very particular person. And he’s the least sensitive out of all of us, which is why we end up doing it.”

Levy smiled when I relayed this, evidently delighted that his daughter had correctly analyzed what he tries to provide comedically. His earliest influence was Jack Benny. “He wasn’t afraid to have funny people around him as the star of the show, because his strength was reacting to them,” Levy said. “They would be funny and getting a laugh, and then he was able to get a bigger laugh from his reactions to them.”

This is what makes “The Reluctant Traveler” work, despite breaking Levy’s career-long avoidance of being the lead or playing himself. “Putting myself front and center was kind of an uncomfortable thing for me,” he said.

Brindley describes Levy as “a sort of anti-lead.” It’s odd to watch someone who is passively receiving — or as is often the case with Levy, actively resisting — experiences a typical travel host would greet with enthusiasm, like exploring the open markets of Venice or wading into the cerulean waters of the Indian Ocean.

When Levy is offered reindeer fillet, he says, “I don’t want to eat reindeer, to be honest.” In a segment about food in Japan, Levy swallows a tiny morsel of raw fish with the enthusiasm of a toddler “trying” a broccoli floret in order to unlock access to dessert. “It’s me,” Levy says to the camera during the same episode, identifying who the problem is.

But Levy’s best moments are, as usual, ensemble-based. In what may be the funniest scene of the series, Levy goes ice fishing with a man and his unsmiling 6-year-old son. For most of the day, Levy fails to catch anything while the boy amasses an enormous pile of perch. “Honestly, the kid was pissing me off,” Levy told me 10 months after filming, falling back into character as a disgruntled, fishless man with snowflakes on his eyebrows. “I didn’t think he really particularly liked me.”

As production went on, Levy began approaching interactions he would typically skip with a new attitude. “You know, this isn’t bad,” he recalled thinking. “I’m kind of liking it.” He said the conversations he had were the most memorable part of making the show, which included staying in two renovated royal palaces and sticking his arm up an elephant’s rectum to attempt to secure a stool sample in South Africa. (Levy failed to retrieve an acceptable specimen.)

Sarah went to several shooting locations for “The Reluctant Traveler” and spent time with Levy, as did Divine. Sarah said that growing up, she rarely traveled with her father except to places where he was working — often from their home in Toronto to Los Angeles in the summers, and to Rome and Monte Carlo one year. (Levy protested that they did go to “the Barbados” once.) If it weren’t for television and film, Levy wouldn’t have encountered so many things outside of the enviably contented existence he has created. And although being elbow-deep in an elephant is probably as far from teeing off in the Pacific Palisades as it’s possible for Levy to get, that willingness to extend himself for the bit — and the check — has led to his success. It helped him create a home he never wants to leave.

Looking back, Levy said he was happy he took the job, in a typically understated way: “Actually, it was kind of an enjoyable, uh, show to do.”

When I asked what other experiences Levy might not have had without his career, he immediately said, “I wouldn’t have married my wife if it hadn’t been for work, because I was at work [at the Second City theater] when she came in applying for a job. I said to the manager, ‘Hire her.’”

Then Levy frowned and looked down, toward the little Order of Canada maple leaf pin on his lapel. “What would I have missed?” he muttered. “What would I have missed out on it if hadn’t been for work?” He raised his head slowly, eyebrows windshield-wipering up in reaction to his realization: “I would have missed out on my life.”

We own every episode. We watch two a night so we can sleep well. We laugh so hard that we forget this crazy world.

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Happy Birthday Pauline Grinberg Shender at the very exclusive private restaurant Haiku in Wynwood. Members only. See the menu on the bottom. Totally unique. We loved every one of Pauline’s friends. Thank you for inviting us.

Dedicated to those who didn’t read this issue of the NY Times. Our PR agency, HWH PR, represented Ms. Welch’s exercise videos. I can barely remember the assignment but I will never forget our first meeting with her, and all of the other marketing agencies that were going to be involved with the project. Everyone wanted to meet her, so each agency had five to six representatives show up. She walked into the conference room, saw 25 folks in attendance, and threw a fit. She knew that each agency should have only sent one person to the meeting and the rest of the us were just hangers on to rub elbows with a Hollywood star. She wouldn’t start the meeting until there was only one person, per agency, in the room. I was one of the folks thrown out. My account executive stayed. It was sort of humiliating, but she was right. I don’t remember much about about the year long assignment, so that must mean it went well. She was gorgeous.

Raquel Welch(1940-2023)

From cave woman to “Woman of the Year,” Ms. Welch defied expectations.

By Jim Windolf

Raquel Welch rose to prominence with the B-movie epic “One Million Years B.C.,” a film in which early human beings are seen battling a menagerie of creatures, including triceratops, brontosaurus and wild boars.

The shoot gave her something of a rude awakening. As Ms. Welch recalled in her 2010 memoir, “Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage,” she approached the director, Don Chaffey, on her first day and said, “Listen, Don, I’ve been studying the script and I’ve been thinking — ”

He cut her off. “You were thinking?” he said. “Don’t.”

“He was the first in a long line of producers and directors who didn’t give a rat’s ass what I thought,” Ms. Welch wrote. “For years, I felt like the Rodney Dangerfield of sex symbols. I got no respect.”

“One Million Years B.C.” may have been ludicrous, but it made her a star, largely because of the film poster, which depicted her as an indomitable figure towering over the fearsome beasts in the background. Ms. Welch understood the power of the image, writing, “In the photograph I look so convincing, so formidable standing there astride the rocky landscape in that partially shredded animal skin.”

She was invariably described as a sex symbol, though she never posed nude for the camera in any film or photo shoot, despite the efforts of Playboy magazine and various producers. She had a key role in “Bandolero!” alongside Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin and went on to play a woman seeking revenge in another western, “Hannie Caulder,” an inspiration for the Quentin Tarantino films “Kill Bill” and “Django Unchained.” After portraying a struggling single mother in the roller derby drama “Kansas City Bomber,” she found a home in the comedic action of a pair of Richard Lester movies, “The Three Musketeers” and its sequel, “The Four Musketeers.”

She moved beyond film sets, developing a nightclub act that played to sold-out crowds in Las Vegas and became the basis for a CBS special, “Really, Raquel.” Through the 1970s, she was a regular on variety shows, singing the same song, “I’m a Woman,” with both Cher on “The Cher Show” and Miss Piggy on “The Muppet Show.”

In 1981, she had a breakthrough when she replaced Lauren Bacall as the star of “Woman of the Year” on Broadway. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Mel Gussow called her a “show stopper,” adding that her performance was “in all respects marked by show-business know-how.” She stayed in the role for two years, her cave woman past a distant memory.

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William Greenberg Jr., Baker Who Sweetened Manhattan, Dies at 97

I bought Eliot a William Greenberg cake for his 30th birthday. It cost $100 at the time but it was a masterpiece. We had a party at our east side co-op and everyone in attendance looked at the cake like it was a piece of art. We ate it anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/dining/william-greenberg-jr-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
William Greenberg Jr., Baker Who Sweetened Manhattan, Dies at 97

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Most Americans who never served in the military have no idea what goes on day-to-day once you are enlisted. While we are forever grateful to the men and women who protect our country around the clock, many folks in the special forces suffer terrible mental illness because they were just not prepared to handle their new responsibilities, no matter how well they have been trained. Others became deeply depressed because of sexual attacks and verbal abuses.

I started representing The Warrior Connection, McKinney, TX, for public relations, a few months ago. I have been flabbergasted by some of the stories I have heard from former soldiers. Many admitted to me they were contemplating or attempted suicide.

I listened to their stories in horror. We feel sorry for ourselves when we have to sit at our desks and work, or don’t like the TV program selections on TV. We have no idea of the torment that military men and women go through. Most of them will not discuss the details when they get home.

I happened to hear the torment because I was required to interview dozens of them and find out how The Warrior Correction cured their woes.  Some of the stories I heard were unbearable to listen to.

I want to share them with you and then explain how The Warrior Connection brought many of them back to a normal existence.

Please let me know if you want to discuss.

loisw@hwhpr.com 

Founded in 2009, The Warrior Connection is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization that strives to end Veteran suicide and repair family relationships through proven holistic residential retreats for Veterans and military spouses.

WE ARE TWC

The Warrior Connection strives to end Veteran suicide, provide support, and repair family relationships through proven holistic residential retreats for Veterans and military spouses.

TWC provides residential retreats and services to veterans and their families. We gather together to heal the invisible injuries that incurred while in uniform.

The Warrior Connection (TWC) understands the inner journey that continues when the war is brought home. We understand the journey of military sexual trauma survivors. We understand this journey because we are veterans. We are military spouses. We are advocates for the veteran community. We are a connection of warriors working together to improve the overall well-being of our brothers and sisters that have served.

We serve Veterans of all eras from all 50 states at no cost, thanks to our donors, sponsors, and volunteers. The TWC mission continues until we get to ZERO Veterans lost from post-traumatic stress (PTS).

Website: www.warriorconnection.org

Address: P.O. Box 6308, McKinney, TX 75071

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

Sumner Redstone in Love: The Cringey Sexcapades of a Horny Billionaire

The elderly media titan flexed his MTV ownership, rang his grandson at 3 a.m. for hookups with new women, and rewarded companions with stock options and TV shows. A wild exclusive excerpt from the new book Unscripted.

By JAMES B. STEWART and RACHEL ABRAMS

In 2008 Malia Andelin, a twenty‑six‑year‑old makeup artist living in Laguna Beach, was, like so many Americans at the time, supplementing her income by buying and flipping real estate using borrowed money. Then the financial crisis struck, credit abruptly evaporated, and that was the end of that. Andelin was looking for another source of income when a friend recommended she try working as a flight attendant on a private jet. Part of her training was a self‑defense course, where she met two pilots who recommended she work with them at the aviation company that staffed the CBS and Viacom planes.

Slim and blond, Andelin had grown up in Utah, the youngest of eight children in a straitlaced Mormon family. She’d never flown professionally, but she was willing to give it a try. On her first outing one of her passengers was Robert Downey Jr.

Andelin liked the work and seemed to have an aptitude for it. Inevitably the day came when Sumner Redstone was on board. In late November, little more than a month after he filed for divorce from Paula, Sumner was flying from New York back to Van Nuys Airport outside Los Angeles with his friend Arnold Kopelson, a producer and CBS board member, and his wife, Anne. While waiting for takeoff, Andelin went into the passenger cabin and asked Sumner if she could help him with his seat belt. 

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

“Sumner, stop,” Anne Kopelson interjected.

Andelin hardly knew how to respond. “I’m Malia,” she said. “I work on the plane.” She reminded him she’d flown with him once before.

“I’d remember a pretty face like yours,” he replied.

That angered her. “Who the fuck are you?” she said, and left the cabin.

That she could give as good as she got seemed to drive Sumner wild. He buzzed for her constantly once they were in the air.

“I hear women like to be spanked,” Sumner told her at one point. “Do you like to be spanked?”

Anne Kopelson tried in vain to silence him. Arnold said nothing.

“Please don’t sue me for sexual harassment,” Sumner told Andelin, and then laughed.

Sumner pelted Andelin with inappropriate comments for the rest of the flight, and she grew increasingly upset. He asked repeatedly for her address and phone number. She refused.

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.

The pilots were aghast but not surprised—Sumner had made a habit of harassing women on the corporate jets and then getting them fired. After the plane landed, one of the pilots pulled Andelin aside.

“I’m probably not going to see you again,” he said. “I know how he is. We all know how he is.”

Despite her refusal, Sumner had no trouble getting Andelin’s phone number, presumably from the aviation company. He called incessantly— so often she turned off her phone. He left messages proposing they have dinner to discuss the menu on the corporate plane. She ignored him. Meanwhile, she wasn’t getting any assignments despite her persistent requests for more work. Sumner seemed to be dangling the prospect of getting her job back if she’d join him for dinner.

“Some say I created Mission: Impossible, and some say that this mission is impossible,” Sumner told her in one voice message. “But I made this mission possible. And I know that you’re risk averse and you wouldn’t talk to me on the plane, but I know that if you called me back and you were a risk‑taker, this call could perhaps change your life.”

The message infuriated Andelin. How dare he leave her suggestive voice mails after she’d refused to give him her number and he’d blacklisted her from working on the plane? She called him and left a message. “Who do you think you are? This is not okay. I just want to know when I can have my job back.”

Sumner’s driver finally showed up at her house. Would she have dinner with Sumner? Just once?

Nothing Andelin had done or said had deterred Sumner. She worried: given his enormous wealth and power, to what lengths might he go? Perhaps it would be easier to accept his invitation, at least once. Maybe she’d get her job back.

She eventually agreed to have dinner with Sumner. Something told her she’d come to regret it.

From the Zagat guide Sumner picked a restaurant in Newport Beach, not far from where Andelin lived. When the day arrived, Sumner picked Andelin up and had his driver take them there. She rarely drank alcohol, but that evening she sipped a glass of wine to calm her nerves.

After they left the restaurant, Andelin got in the back seat and Sumner slid in next to her. But instead of taking his seat in front, the driver lingered outside, leaving them alone in the car. Suddenly Sumner lunged at her and tried to get his hand under her blouse. Andelin pushed him away and managed to open the door and get out. She was in shock. She later didn’t remember how she got home.

The next day Sumner called and sent Andelin an email, which she ignored. Then his driver showed up and told her Sumner wanted to apologize in person. Various thoughts crossed her mind. Her first reaction was that she never wanted to see him again. But as she wrote in her journal at the time, Sumner had so much money and power he’d crush her eventually. She didn’t really feel she had a choice.

She reluctantly agreed to see him again.

Carlos Martinez, Sumner’s house manager for over ten years, greeted her when she arrived at Sumner’s mansion. He tried to reassure her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said. “I’m here. You’re not alone. You’re going to be okay. He just wants to give you the world.” But while Sumner was showing her his fish tank, she felt sick and thought she might faint.

Somehow she got through the evening. The next time Sumner invited her, she accepted. After one of her subsequent visits, Martinez gave her a check for $20,000, the amount, he said, she would have been paid had she worked on the jet that month. 

She didn’t get any more work as a flight attendant. After about a month, Sumner told her there was no need for her to work on the plane. Instead, she could accompany him to dinners and join him on the red carpet at the many Hollywood premieres, galas, and benefits he attended.

Soon Andelin was a fixture at Sumner’s mansion, usually having dinner with him every week. As he did with others, Sumner often disparaged his children, Brent and Shari, when confiding in Andelin. Occasionally she had to sit through father‑daughter visits, which she found awkward and tense. After a dinner with Sumner and Shari, Andelin shared a car with Shari, who cried during the trip.

One day Andelin was at the mansion when Shari brought Sumner some homemade biscotti. As Shari was leaving, she pulled Andelin aside. “You’re so sweet,” Shari told her. “I don’t know what your relationship is with my dad, but one thing you need to know: always speak your mind to him. Never back down, and always say how you feel.”

Andelin felt Shari was one of the few people around Sumner who was nice to her.

At its annual global conference in April 2009, the Milken Institute paired celebrity CNN host and interviewer Larry King with eighty‑five‑year‑old (about to turn eighty‑six) Sumner. King titled his “conversation” with Sumner for “If You Could Live Forever ….  ”

The room at the Beverly Hilton was packed. Clad in a navy suit and an open‑necked blue shirt, Sumner began by asserting, “I have the vital statistics of a twenty‑year‑old,” a claim somewhat belied by the substantial paunch visible at his waist. “Even twenty‑year‑old men get older. Not me. My doctor says I’m the only man who’s reversed it. I eat and drink every antioxidant known to man. I exercise fifty minutes every day.”

However amusing the audience may have found Sumner’s claim to immortality, it reflected something more than just vanity. He had confided in Andelin that the prospect of death terrified him because he’d face judgment and punishment for his many sins—a reckoning that thus far he’d escaped in life. 

“How old are you?” King asked.

“Sixty‑five,” Sumner replied. The audience laughed.

“Realistically,” King pressed him, “how old are you?” 

“Sixty‑five,” he insisted.

Sumner said he felt better than he had at age twenty. 

“You have not slowed down sexually?” King asked. “No, I haven’t.”

If anything, that appeared to be an understatement. Even as he courted Andelin with money, gifts, and attention, he was dating Rohini Singh, who at age nineteen had been the subject of an embarrassingly detailed 2001 Los Angeles Magazine cover story: “Hooking Up: Sex, Status and the Tribal Rituals of Young Hollywood.” At Sumner’s insistence, CBS’s Showtime hired Singh that summer despite a hiring freeze at the cable network. Sumner showered her with Viacom stock, as well as a reported $18 million in payments.

The same year Sumner also started seeing Terry Holbrook, a brunette former Ford model and Houston Oilers cheerleader. Sumner bought her a $2.5 million house and paid for her stable of show horses. Manuela Herzer, who’d become one of Redstone’s live-in companions, maintained that Sumner paid Holbrook $4,500 a month in cash and those and other payments eventually amounted to $7 million. He also made Holbrook a beneficiary of his trust.

Over the years Sumner amended his trust more than forty times to add and remove numerous beneficiaries, many of them women he dated. Dauman, who as a co-trustee of Sumner’s trust was aware of many of the gifts, acknowledged that “several” women received over $20 million each, “a lot” of women received over $10 million, and “many, many” women received over $1 million.

In the spring of 2010 The Daily Beast’s Peter Lauria reported Sumner was dining at Dan Tana’s with Les Moonves, his wife Julie Chen Moonves,  and a “tall, tan, fembot‑like blonde, young enough to be his granddaughter.” The “fembot” was Heather Naylor, Sumner’s latest fixation and the lead singer of a largely unknown girl group called the Electric Barbarellas. Sumner was pushing a reluctant Viacom‑owned MTV to develop a reality series featuring the group’s quest for stardom, and he also wanted CBS to promote them.

Moonves dreaded these requests, but Sumner was his boss. Clad in satin hot pants and singing wildly off pitch, the Barbarellas made their CBS network debut on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on March 27, 2011. The operative word was late: their appearance came close to the end of the show at 1:30 a.m., when Moonves could only hope few people would be watching.

Lauria reported that Sumner spent half a million dollars flying the Barbarellas to New York for MTV auditions and had pushed the reality series into development over MTV executives’ strident objections. They told Lauria the show was “unwatchable and the music just as bad.” Even Dauman tried to kill the project, but “I won’t be defied,” Sumner insisted. 

The mildly embarrassing episode might have remained largely confined to Hollywood insiders, had Sumner not picked up the phone and called Lauria—not to deny the story but to try to unmask Lauria’s Viacom source, who Sumner speculated was a “young, male executive” who worked for MTV.

“You will be thoroughly protected,” Sumner assured Lauria in the call, which Lauria taped in its entirety and the Beast made available to the public. “We’re not going to hurt this guy. We just want to sit him down and find out why he did what he did. You will not in any way be revealed. You will be well‑rewarded and well‑protected.”

Lauria refused to disclose his source and instead turned the en‑ counter into another story, which, thanks to Sumner’s direct involvement, got even more media attention. New York Times media columnist David Carr called the tape “a classic, a must‑hear document of mogul prerogative in full cry.”

When Viacom’s Carl Folta saw the story, he told Dauman, “You’re not going to believe this.”

Folta asked Sumner about it, and Sumner denied making any such call.

“Sumner, they’ve got it on tape!” Folta exclaimed. 

“Then fix it,” Sumner said.

The Electric Barbarellas debuted in MTV’s 2011 lineup and, thanks in part to the publicity surrounding Sumner, attracted nearly a million viewers. The “premiere was the #1 original cable series across all TV,” according to an email from an MTV executive to Naylor. But the show attracted some scathing reviews—a “hypercontrived, superstaged, and hair‑extensioned mess,” as a New York magazine critic put it.

Ratings rapidly fell off, and MTV canceled the show.

Redstone stayed in touch with Naylor, speaking with her by phone three to five times a week, according to Naylor. He encouraged her Hollywood aspirations and showered her with Viacom stock and other payments that totaled over $20 million, according to Herzer.

“Some who have been close to Redstone said he has long since crossed into unconscious self‑parody, making graphic sexual comments over social or business meals,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote. Said one executive: “He acts like a 15‑year‑old kid at summer camp.”

In the fall of 2010, Brandon Korff, Sumner’s twenty‑five‑year‑old grandson, enlisted Patti Stanger, the “Millionaire Matchmaker” of the Bravo reality TV hit, to find a suitable romantic match for his grandfather. Sumner’s serial dating—not to mention the accompanying bonanza of lavish gifts—was driving him crazy.

Brandon was the second of Shari Redstone’s three children from her marriage to Ira Korff, whom she’d divorced in 1992. Notwithstanding his troubled relationships with his children, Sumner doted on his grandchildren. Brandon dated a series of models and actresses in Los Angeles, some of whom in turn dated Sumner. Sumner was relentless in his insistence that Brandon socialize with him and introduce him to potential romantic companions, sometimes calling him at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. 

Brandon brought his then‑girlfriend, a willowy brunette with long, flowing hair, to the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, where they posed for photographers with Sumner. Throughout the evening Sumner brazenly flirted with Brandon’s date, often putting his arm around her, a spectacle witnessed by senior Viacom executives sitting nearby.

A year later, Brandon invited another girlfriend and tried to enlist Malia Andelin as Sumner’s date, perhaps in hopes of fending off a similar incident. He emailed Andelin in May: “Lets us 4 go I dont want him to humiliate himself and us at MTV and if u were not here he may bring a whore.” But Andelin turned him down.

It eventually proved too much for Brandon. With the approval of other family members, he turned to Stanger.

Stanger had moved to Hollywood from Miami, where she ran a large dating service, hoping for a career as a producer. Her role model was Sherry Lansing, the former model and actress turned successful studio executive. Stanger never worked in the executive rungs like Lansing, but now she was probably much more famous, thanks to The Millionaire Matchmaker. 

Brash, outspoken, earthy, and funny, Stanger seemed made for reality TV. However blunt her comments, she never strayed far from a traditional narrative of love and marriage. She’d never met Sumner Redstone, but knew he was a mogul and, more to the point, a billionaire. So Stanger drove to Beverly Park to meet Sumner in person, in order to, as she put it, “read his energy.”

Her first impression was that he might have been good‑looking in his youth, but he now looked very old. She knew he was eighty‑six, but his appearance was startling nonetheless, especially his disfigured hand. She had plenty of available women interested in rich older men. Still, this might be a challenge.

Redstone seemed instantly smitten by Stanger, who checked all the boxes he told her he was looking for in both a date and a potential marriage partner—Jewish, with dark brown hair, and younger (though late forties or fifties would be fine). Sumner flirted with her, sprinkling his speech with profanities, to which she responded in kind. In the course of the interview he persuaded her to sit on his lap, which she did briefly before politely but firmly extricating herself. (Stanger had a strict rule against dating clients.

That Sumner was willing to date middle‑aged women opened up a world of possibilities. She had a long list of single, charming, and attractive older women most of her wealthy male clients wouldn’t even consider.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

Stanger explained that Sumner would be enrolled at the VIP level, which guaranteed twenty‑four‑hour, seven‑day‑a‑week access to the Millionaire Matchmaker herself. The fee was $120,000 a year, payable up front, which covered a year, although it rarely took her that long—on average, she maintained, just three dates.

One of Sumner’s first dates was with Renee Suran, an actress, a model, and the ex‑wife of the guitarist Slash. Suran was beautiful, tall, and brunette, and Sumner was crazy about her. But she didn’t reciprocate his ardor and wasn’t all that interested in his money. Sumner appeared hurt by the rejection and kept begging Stanger to arrange another date with her.

No one else seemed to measure up. Sumner often called Stanger the day after a date, screaming and berating her for an unsatisfactory match. “You don’t talk to women like that,” Stanger warned him. “I’m not fixing you up again unless you call and apologize.” Then she hung up on him. When he inevitably called back, she told him to calm down. “Are we ready to focus on love?”

Over the course of the year Sumner and Stanger became close. He seemed to like that she stood up to him and teased him, and he enjoyed her company. He told her repeatedly that she was his “dream girl.” 

At the end of his contract Sumner was the rare Stanger millionaire (or, in his case, billionaire) who hadn’t found a successful match. “What else do you have?” he kept asking, even after meeting someone he liked. Stanger offered him a 10 percent discount to renew for a second year, but he didn’t want to pay. So she encouraged him to have a second date with someone he’d earlier said he liked but had nonetheless passed over—a woman named Sydney Holland. “If what you want is me, you should go out with Sydney,” Stanger argued. “Sydney is the mini version of me.”

Holland was a personal friend of Stanger’s, not a client of the dating service. She grew up in affluent La Jolla, California, a San Diego suburb, the daughter of a dentist who died when she was twenty. She had a history of dating (and marrying) older men, and was now struggling financially. So when Stanger approached her about Sumner, she all but begged Stanger to arrange a date Stanger obliged, but issued some stern warnings: “Do not sleep with him on the first date. He’s old‑fashioned, like out of the 1940s. He could have anyone in Hollywood for sex. He’s looking for the real thing.”

Sumner responded by sending her a gift—a Judith Leiber crystal‑encrusted handbag in the shape of a panther (current versions retail for over $5,000). “I’m a panther and I’m going to pounce,” the accompanying note read.

Less than a year later, in 2011, Sumner proposed marriage, and Holland “happily accepted,” she recounted. He gave her a nine‑carat diamond ring, which she proudly showed off to Stanger. Sumner showered Holland with cash, more jewelry, art, and flowers—specifically, red roses and orchids. He bought her a house in West Hollywood, just across the Beverly Hills line, and she commuted back and forth in a new Porsche. He wrote her love notes, some on stationery from the Japanese restaurant Matsuhisa. “I will always love you. You can always depend on me. Love, Sumner,” read one.

Holland reached out to her lawyer, Andrew Katzenstein, for tax advice about the ring and other gifts. Did she have to declare the “gorgeous diamond” as income? Yes, he replied (in an email leaked to the New York Post), but added that many people “ignore” the rule. She also told Katzenstein that she was a named beneficiary in Sumner’s will to the tune of $3 million. Katzenstein estimated that, thanks to Sumner’s largesse, Holland was now worth $9 million or $10 million.

“Starting to get some comfort?” he asked. 

“20 would be best!!!” she replied. “Just saying.” 

The Porsche, house, club memberships, and cash made an impression on Tim Jensen, a Paramount employee hired in 2011 to be Sumner’s full‑time driver. When Jensen first met her, Holland had been driving a small red compact car so decrepit that its side mirror was held in place with duct tape, according to Jensen. Jensen soon realized that even though he’d been hired by Paramount/Viacom as a driver for the studio head, Holland was his de facto employer. One of his primary duties was to take checks made out to “cash” to a Bank of America branch and return with the currency—thousands of dollars at a time—which he handed to Holland. Holland, in turn, used cash to pay seven different women who visited Sumner on a regular basis. To keep track, Jensen kept a spreadsheet listing the various women and payments. In a year they totaled more than $1 million. Jensen complained to a Viacom security official in New York, in part because he didn’t feel safe carrying so much cash, and also because he didn’t consider paying these women to be within the scope of his employment. His complaint went nowhere, but Holland became “hostile,” according to Jensen, and he was fired soon after.

Stanger was convinced that despite their age difference and Holland’s obvious financial motive, Holland was in love with Sumner. Stanger had known plenty of women who were romantically drawn to much older men. Holland took Stanger’s advice to heart. She served at Sumner’s beck and call. Soon she was indispensable.

When Sumner asked Holland to move in with him, she did, taking on the roles of wife, secretary, business manager, and, increasingly, nurse. She redecorated the mansion. She arranged visits there with Sumner’s longtime friends Charlie Rose, Michael Milken, and Sherry Lansing, not to mention the women she imported for his sexual gratification. She oversaw his dealings with CBS and Viacom, organized a CBS board meeting at the house, arranged his Sunday movie screenings, and got him to his dentist and doctor appointments.

Sumner made many demands on Holland, all of which she maintained she met: that she be present for every lunch and dinner with him; that she go to sleep when he did (even though this was much earlier than she preferred); that she not take overnight trips without him; that she stop seeing her friends. Sumner, however, “could do whatever he wanted.”

Holland was hardly the only woman in Sumner’s life. He was still courting Malia Andelin. And he had continued seeing and confiding in his old flame Manuela Herzer. Holland may have been first among equals, but she and Herzer had forged an alliance. While Herzer’s house was being renovated in 2013 at Sumner’s expense, Sumner invited Herzer and her daughter Kathrine to live with him and Holland.

With Herzer’s arrival, the atmosphere changed dramatically inside Sumner’s mansion. Surveillance cameras were installed throughout the Redstone property, and nurses and staff were subjected to lie detector tests. Anyone deemed disloyal to Holland or Herzer was fired. As the women consolidated their control over the mansion, its staff, and Sumner himself, the number of people with unrestricted access to him dwindled. This included his immediate family—Shari and the grandchildren he so doted upon. Holland or Herzer sat in on all their visits or had staff members present who would report on their conversations. Most of the family’s calls to Sumner were also blocked, though Holland and Herzer then told Sumner his family never called. According to Jagiello, “Sydney and Manuela reacted angrily when they learned that a nurse or member of the household staff had put those calls through and made clear that it was a fireable offense.”

In what Jagiello described as a “constant bombardment,” Holland and Herzer “regularly disparaged Shari to Mr. Redstone, telling him that she was a liar, was only after his money, and was defying his wishes in both personal and business matters.”

Holland and Herzer seemed to tolerate Sumner’s continuing infatuation with Malia Andelin, who still showed up at the mansion nearly every week notwithstanding Sumner’s purported engagement to Holland. Sumner called her constantly, sometimes multiple times a day, leaving long messages saying he loved her. “I am sorry I am crying,” he told her. “Every time I think of you I cry. I can’t help it. And remember, if you ever need anything at all—money, advice, whatever—you call me. I will always be there for you.” He called her “my one and only.”

Andelin tolerated this, but she had no romantic feelings for Sumner. Although Sumner often made lewd and inappropriate sexual comments, Andelin doubted he was even physically capable of sex in any conventional sense. Andelin felt it was more that he wanted his cronies, like Bob Evans and Larry King, to think he was sleeping with attractive young women. Andelin felt Holland and Herzer were jealous of Sumner’s affection for her but knew there was little they could do about it. Her presence also gave them what may have been some welcome evenings off from catering to Sumner’s whims. The two women even helped Sumner pick out expensive gifts for Andelin, like diamond earrings and a Rolex watch, sometimes inflating the tab by adding purchases of clothing and jewelry for themselves.

Herzer counseled Andelin that she could be asking Sumner for much more. Turning down his marriage proposal years earlier was the biggest mistake of her life, Herzer confided.

Andelin had never asked Sumner for money and initially resisted when Sumner said he wanted to help buy her a house. But she gave in after he said he’d choose one for her if she didn’t. She ended up with a $2.65 million cottage in exclusive Corona del Mar, not far from her home in Laguna Beach. As time went on, Sumner’s gifts to Andelin grew more extravagant. Six‑ and even seven‑figure deposits of cash and CBS and Viacom stock started showing up in her account.

Andelin was well aware of what other people thought of her and Sumner’s relationship. She didn’t like it. She hated the idea that people thought of her as another Holland or Herzer. Still, she accepted the money and gifts. The more she did, the lower her self‑esteem sank. Sometimes she wondered: Was she experiencing a version of Stockholm syndrome, in which a victim of abuse develops an attachment to the perpetrator? For all Sumner’s faults, over their years together Andelin developed some compassion for him. She felt he was fundamentally lonely and deeply insecure.

She also rationalized the arrangement by thinking of it as her job. However “foul‑mouthed and crude” he could be, as she put it, she considered Sumner a mentor, a brilliant businessman from whom she could learn a great deal. And perhaps she could change Sumner for the better.

In this she had her work cut out for her. At a dinner at e. baldi restaurant in Beverly Hills, Sumner complained that the director Steven Spielberg had been pushing him to be nicer about Barack Obama. Obama was wildly popular with the Hollywood elite, but Sumner was no fan of the president. “Obama is a . . . ,” Sumner loudly said, using the N‑word.

Andelin was horrified. “You can’t say that word!” she exclaimed. “It’s a joke,” he insisted.

“You still can’t say it, especially where people might hear you.”

At one point Sumner asked Andelin if she thought he was a “horrible person.” “If I was your age and we met, would you be friends with me?” he asked. “Is there a chance you would even like me if I were your age?”

Andelin didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but, following Shari’s advice, she was honest. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re not very nice.”

Sumner started to cry.

Excerpted from UNSCRIPTED: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams, to be published on February 14, 2023 by Penguin Press. Copyright © 2023 by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams.

Richard Ekstract turns 92 on February 20th. After a brilliant career as a magazine publisher, art collector and real estate developer, he is now on a mission to stamp out fake news. You can join in.

Richard and Eileen Ekstract are working with Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication to create the Ekstract Center for News Credibility to address how misinformation and disinformation continue to plague our society on a national level. Temple University said. “Named in the honor of alumnus Richard Ekstract, the goals for the proposed Center are to 1) strengthen local news-community relationships and invigorate an industry that is facing challenging times and 2) grant people a stable resource of quality reporting on the issues taking shape in their immediate surroundings.”

If you are interested, there will be a two day reception in Palm Beach February 27th and 28th on this exciting new initiative. Please RSVP to: Karen Gallagher, Asst. Dean, Development and Alumni Relations
karen.gallagher@temple.edu.

Photo of Eileen and Richard Ekstract

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