THE various agencies investigating Bill Clinton‘s pardon of Marc Rich would be well advised not to play the heavy with Herbert Black, the Montreal scrap-metal tycoon who is a good friend of the former fugitive’s ex-wife, Denise Rich.
Black, who was with Denise at the White House the night she whispered “pardon Marc” in Clinton’s ear (and who, as I exclusively revealed, gave her a 57th-birthday party at Le Bernardin as the scandal mounted), is not a man to be easily cowed by authority.
He stands up for his friends and comes down hard on his enemies. Just ask Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who have suffered grievously since 1999, when “Herbie” Black filed the first civil suits against the auction houses alleging price-fixing.
The April issue of W magazine has a rare interview with Black in his just-completed Montreal chateau. The 57-year-old divorced father of two comes across as a charming but ruthless international commodities trader – not unlike Marc Rich, save the charm.
Antiques collector Black says many of his fellowmega-auction customers tried to dissuade him from suing the houses and their bosses, his former friends Diana Brooks and Christopher Burge.
“Everybody said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You’re right, but these people are our friends.’ Nobody wanted to make a public statement that they had been had,” he recalls.
And maybe none of these insiders wanted to lose out on the fabulous perks and special deals the auction houses provided to top clients. “They are too integrated into the family of Sotheby’s and Christie’s,” Black charges.
“What was Ann Getty going to do? She’s on the board of Sotheby’s. If she’s being cheated, can she take them to court? It’s a lot more difficult to accuse somebody of being a RICO racketeer when he’s your neighbor.”
Footnote: I’ve been hearing of many prominent women the handsome and funny Black has squired. In the W piece, he mentions a girlfriend of two years ago, Carolyne Roehm. “She has the body of a 30-year-old!” he enthuses. You can’t get more gallant than that.
Play’s real-life plot twist
EVEN the brilliant Michele Lee got a bit nervous during her star turn in Broadway’s “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” the other night. One of her scenes in the Charles Busch hit involves dropping the names of Henry Kissinger and Princess Diana into a bragging discourse she’s having with co-star Linda Lavin.
The trouble was, on this night, Henry and Nancy Kissinger were front and center in the theater, along with producer Doug Cramer‘s other special guests, Lee Radziwill and Jordan’s Princess Firyal. There was a chuckle from the audience when Henry the K’s name came up, and some say Nancy dug him in the ribs.
Anyway, they all went backstage afterward to visit with Lee, Lavin and Tony Roberts, and Kissinger seemed quite happy to be part of the plot. If Busch does a few rewrites and gets in that he also won a Nobel Peace Prize, maybe the ex-secretary of state will come back for another visit.
Had his Phil of Hearst?
NOW that the Hearst Corp. has succeeded in its takeover of the San Francisco Chronicle, it has to bottom-line the paper into prosperity. I hear that over the next few months, the newsroom staff will be drastically trimmed via buyouts and layoffs. No. 3 on the Chronicle masthead is Sharon Stone‘s husband, Phil Bronstein, and some insiders think he will eventually take an early-retirement package and devote himself full time to being the star’s househusband.
An Ace up their sleeve
WALL STREET could use a little magic just now, so many at the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation’s April 2 dinner at The Pierre will be looking for Ace Greenberg to pull something out of his hat. Amateur magician and Bear Stearns honcho Greenberg will get up and do tricks as a favor to his pal, PDF chair Page Morton Black. Ace’s late father suffered from the crippling disease.
No Friar restraint
IT’S not so long since the old fogies at the Friars wouldn’t let women into their club. Tomorrow, though, a bunch of leading female sportscasters will be at the Friars to recall the days when they were also barred from the locker rooms of professional teams. WFAN’s Ann Ligouri is moderating a “Sports in the New Millennium” panel featuring ESPN’s Linda Cohn, Olympian Donna DeVerona and USA Today columnist Christine Brennan. (If the gals really want to relive ancient history, they should slip into the club’s steam room after their gabfest.)
Career magically revived
THE “Harry Potter” phenomenon touches everyone, even a legendary hell-raiser like actor Richard Harris. His career has been quiet of late, but when the news got out that he’s playing Prof. Dumbledore in the first movie from the book series, Richard began receiving some 3,000 letters a week from young Potter fans. I guess it’s not such a stretch from the mystical “MacArthur Park” to a school for wizards.
Dinner may yield winner
AGELESS theater diva Elaine Stritch was spotted dining on elk chop at Mark’s on Madison Avenue the other evening, and deep in discussion with Tony-winning director George Wolfe, New Yorker writer John Lahr, producer John Schreiber and superagent Sam Cohn. You can take it that this is the team that will bring Elaine’s autobiographical one-woman play to Broadway in the fall.