Archive for November, 2009

In the U.S. Dist. Court, the government has filed a motion to revoke the $50,000 bond for Edward Levinson.  He had been indicted on bank fraud charges in connection with his construction business, resulting in more than $10 million in losses to banks and prospective home owners and subcontractors. According to the feds, he was tested positive for cocaine… The A & S chairs at St. Louis University have presented the Rev. Larry Biondi with a unanimous petition to dismiss the current acting provost (one of Father Biondi’s many toadies) or else. A reduction in Town & Country’s services is due to a major deficit.  However, beautification grants are being considered. One grant for $5,000 is being suggested for those who live in the Bellerive Country Club Grounds subdivision. A wind storm that knocked over a number of trees at the entrance were replaced, but the residents want the city to pay for the removal of dead trees and stump grinding. The subdivision did not wait for the grant to be issued, according to Ald. Phil Behnen. The work was done in the summer, because one resident wanted to videotape a daughter entering the subdivision on a horse-drawn carriage for her wedding. (Hello?)
ONLY IN OUR TOWN.

The unfinished stretch of Highway I-64/US 40,between I-170 and kingshighway Boulevard, will be named the Jack Buck Memorial Highway, said Carole Buck in a blush of excitement Saturday morning. The renaming of the highway in honor of the legendary broadcaster, had previous problems with pieces of legislature. Carole had just been gussied up at Jon & Co. beauty salon for a run to Dallas to join her son, Joe, for dinner at that town’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Carole then recited lyrics from a song Jack composed in honor of their granddaugher, Natalie. The final lines are: “The best part, I’m the one who gets Natalie’s kisses.” Carole added with a sigh, “Jack’s always with me.I can hear him say, ‘Having fun, blondie?”

(updated: November 21 4:08pm)

And, to think, PR practitioners are starving in China!

As elected officials from Jimmy Carter to Geraldine Ferraro have learned, one cannot always plan for ther activities of one’s relatives.  Still, the columnist wonders what wind wizard Tom Carnahan‘s pro-union siblings – a Democratic U.S. Representative and candidate for Dem nomination for U.S. Senate – will say at Thanksgiving about a reputed tussle between Tom and the local unions over non-union construction at the $1.5 manse in the 5700 block of Lindell Boulevard., owned by Tom and Lisa Carnahan… Young and bright scribe Jeremiah McWilliams will ankle the Post-Dispatch in early December for a post at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  McWilliams penned the Lager Heads colum in addition to other chores. . .Former St. Louis County Police commissioners chairman Brainerd LaTourette, 79, remains hail and hearty as a barrister with Lashly Baer.

At his 90th birthday party at Tony’s, attorney Thomas J. Guilfoil paid tributes to the guests and his law partners and reminded everyone, “It takes a good English lawyer to know the law; it takes a good Irish lawyer to know the judge.”  Surrounded by friends, Guilfoil was embraced by Mayor Francis Slay, who proclaimed that a board room in Room 201 will be hereafter named the Thomas J. Guilfoil room.  Asked what if Paul McKee‘s NorthSide, $5.4 billion development of 500 acres fails to come to fruition, Slay replied, “It would be marketed to developers each seeking say 30 or 40 acres, along with all the properties there the city owns. If it (NorthSide) doesn’t go, we can market it in a better way.”  Slay brought down the house, when he recalled a member of the St. Louis School board, who put a curse on him.  He said, “I got letters, a mass card from the Pink Sisters and a letter from a priest, that read, “If you believe in blessings, you’d better believe in curses.” F.Y.I. Fresh out of law school, Hizzoner was hired by the Guilfoil, Petzall, Shoemake law office and remained there for 20 years.  Partners Gerhardt Petzall with his wife, Barbara (a prof at Maryville) and Jim Shoemake, with his wife, Rita, were on hand.  Jim said, that many years ago, Rita had been in Europe and shopped with one of the firm’s clients, Mark Tucker, owner of the Me, Too shoe distributors, when they ran into Sylvester Stallone, who grew up with Tucker.  “Tucker asked Sly if he was also in the shoe business to which Stallone shot back, “No, I’m in fucking show-business,” quoted Shoemake. Former BJC urologist  Dr. William Catalona of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, a client of Shoemake’s for many years, is now developing a “a more accurate alternative to the PSA exam”, offered Shoemake. Catalona is medical director of the Urological Research Foundation.  A font of information, Shoemake is chairman of the board of Lindenwood University, which he hopes soon will become a class two college in the NIA. Another story unfolded about the time Guilfoil took newbie Slay to Chicago on Teamster’s Central States Pension Fund business (a client) and to meet with Allen Dorfman, who fronted the mob’s interests as head of the fund. “Walls were being torn away in the search for Jimmy Hoffa‘s body,” said Guilfoil. (Dorfman was mentored by Hoffa). “And a week after we met with Dorfman, he was murdered.”  Petzall and Slay told of how they went to Ecuador to try a case for the late Joe Simpkins. Most of the lawyers only spoke Spanish, that was translated by interpreters.  When the case moved to St. Louis, one of the lawyers said in his best Spanish dialect, “I’d like to go to Roxy’s (an east side haunt).” Also, on hand for the kudos were: Sherry Wibbenmeyer; Dianne Meyer; Victor Isart; Marisa and Pranee Nijaturus; Jeannie and Gen. Ken Lewi; Joyce Holson and Barbie Martin.

Merck & Co., Inc. reps around town are buzzing about upcoming layoffs.  Many of the more than 2,000 reps of cardio, respiratory, women’s health and oncology meds will be pink-slipped in January and most of the district

Schnuck

managers will be gone by December’s end. they aver. Merck is one of the seven largest pharmaceutical firms in the world by revenue… That was grocer Scott Schnuck with Murray’s Cheese rep Liz Thorpe and her boss, Robert Kaufelt at Tony’s.  Liz has been featured in People magazine (last week) and with Martha Stewart on the tube; Kaufelt also owns Murray’s Village (in NYC’s west Village), which had been singled out by Forbes magazine as “the best cheese store in the world.” Coming soon and hopefully at Schnucks Stores: the French, seasonal, creamy cheese in spruce bark boxes – Vacheron Mont D’Or     Speaking of great delicacies, look for Viviano’s on

Viviano

The  Hill to begin vending pannetone (Italian fruit cake) in time for the holidays. Tony and John Viviano are now catering Saturday wine-tastings with gratis portions of homemade pasta dishes… According to guessips on Pestalozzi Street, AB InBev is in huddles with Home Depot to carry some of its products… Former St. Louis counselor Eric Banks is now calling Kansas City his home, where he works at Kutak Rock law firm of 400 barristers.

I thought, as I strolled down Grand Boulevard (nee Grand Avenue), that St. Louis must’ve charmed the world afresh with a great symphony orchestra, for that alone, we should be grateful. After a glance at Powell Hall, I recalled walking with Bill Zalken and Orrin Wightman – both symph execs – to inspect Powell Hall’s predecessor, the St. Louis Theatre.  It was tattered and torn and on the screen was a tattered and torn “The Sound of Music” or as a bitter Lauren Bacall referred to as “The Slime of Music”" Zalken and Wightman were scouting for a venue to hold a party for Monsanto with piano virtuoso Van Cliburn as headliner. They loved the proscenium and the acoustics and the rest is history – a new home for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and a move from Kiel Opera House. Zalken harkened back to the days when he engaged a promising, young composer/pianist by the name of George Gershwin to perform at a “Save our Symphony” benefit. That took place during the Golden Age of Grand Avenue and our town. I joined Zalken and Wightman at Busy Bee on the corner of Grand and Washington Avenues.  That’s when Zalken recalled the time it fell upon him to sign up a resident conductor, after the esteemed Vladimir Golshman retired.  Golshman had charmed audiences and board members for many years. Before knighthood, the distinguished Sir Georg Solti was lured to our town to negotiate a contract. He took the documents with him back to his New York base to discuss it with his lawyer.  The late PR pundit Al Fleishman drove Solti to the airport.  After Solti arrived there, he long-distanced Zalken and told him he tore up the contract. He firmly stated something like, “I’m not coming to St. Louis. Fleishman told me in the car I’d have to appear before garden clubs and the like I don’t do that.”  Click!

It was the age and rage over cafeterias along Grand Avenue: Thompson’s, Pope’s, Garavelli’s and the Southern in the Missouri Theatre building. That building also housed most of our doctors. Grand Avenue was our town’s Great White Way with marquees flickering at the Empress Playhouse, Shubert Theatre, Missouri Theatre. St. Louis Thetre and the Lynn.  The big supper club was The Plantation, where greats appeared  They’re also gone now. Ginger Rogers, Cab Calloway, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Carmen Miranda and Eddy Howard. The Latin Quarter became a boon to dance music. They city’s fathers and mothers, including Gen. Leif Sverdrup; David Calhoun; Jim Hickock, Buck Persons; Joe Pulitzer, Jr.; G. Duncan Bauman; Joe Griesedieck; Gussie Busch;  Ben Wells; Ethan Shepley; Harold Koplar; Bob Hyland; A.J. Cervantes; J. A. Baer; Buster May and Lenore Sullivan.