In 37 years of practicing law and doing often acrimonious divorces, two cases stand out as being by the most enjoyable with the least acrimony.
One was Angie Dickinson’s divorce from Burt Bacharach. The other was a wealthy local businessman and real estate developer.
Ed and Dorothy were still best friends, but they didn’t want to be married anymore. Ed managed all of their investments and Dorothy saw no reason to change that. So, they would continue to own them and Ed would continue to manage them. He could continue to pay himself whatever he thought was reasonable as a salary and Dorothy would remain an Employee so she could be covered by the business’ medical insurance.
Ed had made his first fortune with his first wife providing baby formula to hospitals in the Bay Area after WW II, taking advantage of the baby boom. He got into real estate when he moved to Southern California after marrying Dorothy, a nurse. Ed owned some buildings on Third Street, the main retail street in Santa Monica, but by the 1960s his investments and those businesses were in major decline. People were driving to malls and mini-malls to shop and Downtown Santa Monica was dying.
Anyone who has been to the Santa Monica Promenade in the last 35 years, with the large shopping center anchoring it in the south attached to three long blocks of pedestrian-only Third Street filled with thriving retail and restaurants and alive with the sound of street musicians (who are licensed and have schedules as to when they can perform), knows it’s not dying anymore. It’s one of the most visited areas in Southern California and, if anything, is a victim of success. Most restaurants can no longer pay the ever-rising rents and have had to move to 2nd and 4th Streets; the City passed a zoning change which essentially requires a percentage of Third Street to be rented to restaurants at a lower rate just to keep some on the Promenade.
Ed was one of the primary, if not the primary, force behind the Promenade. Initially, it cost him a lot of friendships — business owners who didn’t think their stores could survive in a pedestrian-only street. Many didn’t, and were replaced by Apple, GAP, Nike, and a hundred other upscale retailers, but the Promenade is thriving and saved Downtown Santa Monica.
There is a small plaque on one building commemorating Ed’s involvement in the Promenade. You have to walk into the foyer to see it. There really should be a statue, like the one of Hans Christian Andersen welcoming people to Tivoli Park in Copenhagen.
Anyway, when I was drafting the list of assets to be divided equally in kind between Ed and Dorothy, there was one which stuck out like a sore thumb: 500 shares of stock in a private, untraded company with a strange name. I asked about it and Ed casually said “Oh, that might be the most valuable asset we own. Those are shares in my son Jann’s business.”
When Jann Wenner , a Berkeley dropout living in San Francisco in the 1960s, decided to start a magazine about music, he asked Ed Wenner and Dorothy, his step-mom, to invest $50,000 in it. Ed thought it was a crazy idea, but told Jann he would just give him the money. Jann wouldn’t take a gift — he insisted that it be an investment in return for shares of the business.
By the time of the divorce, the magazine, Rolling Stone, was a multimedia phenomenon. But, when it started in 1967, it’s format was that of a tabloid newspaper. Those of you old enough to remember will remember the original newsprint version which came folded up and not the later glossy magazine.
Ed died in 1988. He was very active in charitable projects in his final years. I believe Dorothy remarried and moved to Santa Barbara. I never met Jann. I knew a lot of people in the music industry who did know him and most had mixed feelings about him: Genius, generally on the right side of social issues, condescending, hard to be friendly with, not a guy you would want in your foxhole ( to me, that’s the ultimate test).
Which brings me — finally — to my book review. Jann Wenner recently released his memoirs, “Like A Rolling Stone.” It is absolutely awful. As the Washington Post wrote, he should have called it “I Am Very Rich, And All My Friends Are Extremely Famous” because it is page after page of name dropping and self-glamorization.
All of that being said, “Rolling Stone” was a seminal publication which helped shape the lives of more than one generation. It was stridently anti-Vietnam War and anti-racist. It embraced feminism. It made Dylan accessible. It brought us incredible writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe (the Tom Wolfe of The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, not the Tom Wolfe of Look Homeward Angel) and photographer Annie Liebowitz. It has been at the forefront of the issue of Climate Change, putting Greta Thunberg on its cover years ago. It created the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was great, and located it in Cleveland, which was not.
So, I did want to learn a little about Jann Wenner, who was the driving force behind it. Fortunately, there is a book which does that: “Sticky Fingers” by Joe Hagen. Published a few years ago, it began as an authorized biography, which meant that almost all of Wenner’s friends cooperated with the author. However, when Wenner read the manuscript, he de-authorized it, which, of course, means it was not the cloying, worshipful ode that Wenner craved.
It does not downplay his genius, his vision or his accomplishments, but it also portrays his less admirable side. If you want to read a more balanced account of how a magazine helped shape American culture, and the man behind it, both his virtues and his vices, read it. It’s available in every format on Amazon: hardcover, paperback and digital (Kindle).
One was Angie Dickinson’s divorce from Burt Bacharach. The other was a wealthy local businessman and real estate developer.
Ed and Dorothy were still best friends, but they didn’t want to be married anymore. Ed managed all of their investments and Dorothy saw no reason to change that. So, they would continue to own them and Ed would continue to manage them. He could continue to pay himself whatever he thought was reasonable as a salary and Dorothy would remain an Employee so she could be covered by the business’ medical insurance.
Ed had made his first fortune with his first wife providing baby formula to hospitals in the Bay Area after WW II, taking advantage of the baby boom. He got into real estate when he moved to Southern California after marrying Dorothy, a nurse. Ed owned some buildings on Third Street, the main retail street in Santa Monica, but by the 1960s his investments and those businesses were in major decline. People were driving to malls and mini-malls to shop and Downtown Santa Monica was dying.
Anyone who has been to the Santa Monica Promenade in the last 35 years, with the large shopping center anchoring it in the south attached to three long blocks of pedestrian-only Third Street filled with thriving retail and restaurants and alive with the sound of street musicians (who are licensed and have schedules as to when they can perform), knows it’s not dying anymore. It’s one of the most visited areas in Southern California and, if anything, is a victim of success. Most restaurants can no longer pay the ever-rising rents and have had to move to 2nd and 4th Streets; the City passed a zoning change which essentially requires a percentage of Third Street to be rented to restaurants at a lower rate just to keep some on the Promenade.
Ed was one of the primary, if not the primary, force behind the Promenade. Initially, it cost him a lot of friendships — business owners who didn’t think their stores could survive in a pedestrian-only street. Many didn’t, and were replaced by Apple, GAP, Nike, and a hundred other upscale retailers, but the Promenade is thriving and saved Downtown Santa Monica.
There is a small plaque on one building commemorating Ed’s involvement in the Promenade. You have to walk into the foyer to see it. There really should be a statue, like the one of Hans Christian Andersen welcoming people to Tivoli Park in Copenhagen.
Anyway, when I was drafting the list of assets to be divided equally in kind between Ed and Dorothy, there was one which stuck out like a sore thumb: 500 shares of stock in a private, untraded company with a strange name. I asked about it and Ed casually said “Oh, that might be the most valuable asset we own. Those are shares in my son Jann’s business.”
When Jann Wenner , a Berkeley dropout living in San Francisco in the 1960s, decided to start a magazine about music, he asked Ed Wenner and Dorothy, his step-mom, to invest $50,000 in it. Ed thought it was a crazy idea, but told Jann he would just give him the money. Jann wouldn’t take a gift — he insisted that it be an investment in return for shares of the business.
By the time of the divorce, the magazine, Rolling Stone, was a multimedia phenomenon. But, when it started in 1967, it’s format was that of a tabloid newspaper. Those of you old enough to remember will remember the original newsprint version which came folded up and not the later glossy magazine.
Ed died in 1988. He was very active in charitable projects in his final years. I believe Dorothy remarried and moved to Santa Barbara. I never met Jann. I knew a lot of people in the music industry who did know him and most had mixed feelings about him: Genius, generally on the right side of social issues, condescending, hard to be friendly with, not a guy you would want in your foxhole ( to me, that’s the ultimate test).
Which brings me — finally — to my book review. Jann Wenner recently released his memoirs, “Like A Rolling Stone.” It is absolutely awful. As the Washington Post wrote, he should have called it “I Am Very Rich, And All My Friends Are Extremely Famous” because it is page after page of name dropping and self-glamorization.
All of that being said, “Rolling Stone” was a seminal publication which helped shape the lives of more than one generation. It was stridently anti-Vietnam War and anti-racist. It embraced feminism. It made Dylan accessible. It brought us incredible writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe (the Tom Wolfe of The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, not the Tom Wolfe of Look Homeward Angel) and photographer Annie Liebowitz. It has been at the forefront of the issue of Climate Change, putting Greta Thunberg on its cover years ago. It created the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was great, and located it in Cleveland, which was not.
So, I did want to learn a little about Jann Wenner, who was the driving force behind it. Fortunately, there is a book which does that: “Sticky Fingers” by Joe Hagen. Published a few years ago, it began as an authorized biography, which meant that almost all of Wenner’s friends cooperated with the author. However, when Wenner read the manuscript, he de-authorized it, which, of course, means it was not the cloying, worshipful ode that Wenner craved.
It does not downplay his genius, his vision or his accomplishments, but it also portrays his less admirable side. If you want to read a more balanced account of how a magazine helped shape American culture, and the man behind it, both his virtues and his vices, read it. It’s available in every format on Amazon: hardcover, paperback and digital (Kindle).
