Leona Helmsley

And these are both just powerful, powerful examples.

So starting off, we have Leona Helmsley.

Yeah, it doesn't sound contemporary,

does it? Hands up, listeners.

He had three kids in college at the time.

Uh, his neighbor in Flushing was a man named Eddie Brady, who was a detective in the New York City Police Department, and Eddie was working hotel security for Harry and Leona Helmsley, owners of, among other things, the Helmsley Palace in New York.

A, a ...

Now, years before Donald Trump, uh, Harry Helmsley was the preeminent real estate mogul in New York City.

Bill would end up working for Leona for 20 years.

All the Feehan kids would work for her as bellhops and waitresses in the, uh, hotel, uh, restaurants, and Bill would often remind them that it was Leona who paid their college tuition.

After 20 years of working for Leona Helmsley, she threw him a cocktail party.

Things didn't work out as nicely for her in her later years.

We're not as wealthy as these guys, but sometimes when you get so wealthy, uh, it, it can cause you to start thinking about yourself differently than other people.

You know, what did Leona Helmsley say? You know, the, the little people, right? Y- y- you know, not us, right? Uh, Fitzgerald said the rich think differently than you and I, and I'm just wondering if that's laced in this story.

There's a cautionary tale in this story about wealth and almost, like, psycho- cosis and, uh, you know, so- sociopathic, uh, behavior.

Am I missing that, Bill, or is that-

Incredible.

Hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, who's died in New York, age 87, notoriously spoiled her bitch Trouble.

Leona, dubbed the Queen of Mean, uh, she's left some relatives seething after leaving them nothing.

Left it all to the hound.

Now, apparently Hillary makes sure that it's all males working with Clinton.

Remember Leona Helmsley? Remember that awful Leona Helmsley? She went to prison.

And her husband, Harry Helmsley, was so sick he had to have nurses around the clock.

She made sure that there were only male nurses.

The building was the Empire State Building.

The man was Harry Helmsley.

And by the time he was done, he controlled 27 hotels, more than 50,000 apartments, and some of the most recognizable skylines in New York, all built on a financing trick.

that he helped invent.

This is another one of our deep dive episodes here on The Wealth Clock.

Here's how a kid from the Bronx with no college degree became one of the largest private real estate owners in American history and how the second half of his life ended up defined less by what he built than by the woman he ended up marrying.

Harry Brackman Helmsley was born in Manhattan, in 1909 and grew up in the Bronx, the son of Henry Helmsley, a wholesale dry goods buyer, named Minnie Brackman.

The family didn't have any money for college, and Harry didn't even finish high school, dropping out of Evander Childs High School before graduating.

The picture he sent in.

But you did find Leona Helmsley attractive.

Beer Cats and Hot Wife Autumn.

I don't even remember what she looked like.

That's why I stand corrected.

Is there a picture of Iggy changing Leona Helmsley's pull-ups?

That wouldn't be pretty.

[laughs]

...

I mean, Iggy was with Leona Helmsley.

She told me that she's on a pension from McDonnell Douglas, if that tells you anything.

Oh, God, yeah.

[laughs]

I like sausage as much as the next guy.

Would this be a pre-depression cuck like Iggy with Leona Helmsley? That's from Big Walt's Missing Teeth.

Pre-depression.

The Don would win the headline.

When he ran up against his rival, Leona Helmsley, real estate rival, he used the press to savage her.

Found out that former employees have said that she was vicious.

You don't treat people that way, Trump would say in the newspaper.