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Show ly told me, and people just liked to come in, sit down and stare at him particularly at his head. He had a magnificent head, you know. How different it all is today! Nowadays, the rich are hiding. You can see it in the unlisted telephone fences, the incredinumbers, the high barbed-wir- e bly elaborate alarm systems, the guards and guard Any man who knows room and closet to closet but found nothing amiss. As they were about to leave, one of them turned to Mrs. McClaney's daughter. The people who own this house must be mighty proud of how nice you girls take care of it for them." he said. The people who own this house," Mrs. McClaney's daughter replied, are us." In fairness to today's rich. however, it must be said that they have much more to hide from than their predecessors of wealth. The day what hes worth isnt worth much J. Paul Getty, the oil executive one of the world's wealthiest men at his death in 1976. dogs, the cordons of executives in the trust offices, limos with glass you can see out and the Mafia-typ- e of but not into. (The latter, interestingly enough, have recently been declared illegal by New York State at least for the front w indows, the idea being that the police, if not the public, have the right to peer into a limo's front, if not the rear.) Few rich today, in contrast to yesterday's go in for showplaces. even in rich areas. For example, in the Beverly palace-builder- s. well-define- Air section of California, which is known for its. ostentation, there has been a profound change. A shopping center developer there became so worried about security that he not only refused to grant a business magazine an interview but, after they called, decided to remove his name from signs even on his business properties. Black millionaires, in addition to sharing this security problem, sometimes face a problem of another sort. One day recently, real estate developer Eula McClaney and her daughter drove up Hills-B- el d is one tragedy. Jacqueline Thompson, author of several books about the rich, gives an alphabetical list of what she calls a "representative sampling of scion suicides," including J. Frederick Byers III. Harvey Firestone III, Jerry D. Gamble, Leo Goodwin III, Clifford S. Heinz III. Keith Wold Johnson, William L. Mellon III, Henry Ogden Phipps. Harold F. Pitcairn If I want to impress , gone when a man like Chicagos Potter Palmer, a founder of Marshall Field's, could point across a hotel ballroom to his wife and say loudly, There she stands, with $200,000 on her! These days, the jewel paste th e financial statement on the wall thieves would have reached Mrs. Palmer before her husband had finished the sentence. Kidnapping, for example, a relatively unknown problem in the 19th century, has in the 20th been visited on scores of rich families the Weyerhausers, the Coorses. the Lindberghs, the Hearsts, the Gettys and the Bronfmans. to name a few. True, the FBI maintains that in 95 percent of the cases, the victims have been returned to their families, the kidnappers arrested and most of the money has been retrieved. Yet it is hard to forget that before J. Paul Getty III was safely home, the Getty family first retrieved his right ear. Internal forces also contribute to rich people's misfortunes. There is scarcely a highly publicized rich family in the country that has not had at least The late John D. MacArthur, insurance billionaire, avoided most of the trappings of wealth. and Ethel du Pont Warren. All in all. it is not surprising that for every rich person you read about today or see on television the Lee lacoccas and the Frank Perdues, the David Mahoneys and the Frank Bormans, the George Steinbrenners and the Reggie Jacksons there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of other rich who spend considerable energy trying to avoid publicity. Many refuse to discuss their wealth at all. and some have carried it to such an extreme that they don't know themselves what they're worth. Any man who knows what hes worth." the late J. Paul Getty once told me, "isn't worth much." The late John D. MacArthur probably hid as well as any millionaire in our history. He eschewed the paraphernalia of wealth chauffeurs, servants, even an office. Instead, he conducted his insurance empire from a hotel coffee shop. He also demanded total anonymity in his gifts to charity. "Charitable giving," he declared, is for three types: those who believe in God. those who want to be remembered w hen they are gone and those who want to impress somebody. Im an atheist. I want people to forget me. And if I want to impress somebody. I'll paste the annual financial statement on the wall." Since MacArthur. the reigning mon- to their $500,000 Holmby Hills. Cal., estate in their Mercedes, pressed the remote-contrbutton that opens the that a side door had and noticed gate been opened. Fearing robbery, Mrs. McClaney crossed the street and phoned the police. When the officers arrived, they lowed Mrs. McClanev from room to ol arch of the hiders has been Daniel K. Ludw ig, of tanker fame, Christina Onassis (I) with Yasmin Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth and Ali Khan, photographed at New York disco. To both hide and play isn't always easy. PARADE MAGAZINE OCTOBER 17, 1982 PAGE 7 Ill w ho continued |