‘Queen of Mean’ has died
I remember watching a documentary on this lady some years ago now, i couldn’t sleep, i came down stairs and stuck the TV on to find it just starting.
The ‘Queen of Mean’ is Leona Helmsley was a billionaire New York City hotel operator and real estate investor. She was a flamboyant personality and had a reputation for tyrannical behavior that earned her the nickname.
She was born Leona Mindy Rosenthalin Marbletown, Ulster County, New York, to Polish Jewish immigrants, daughter of a hatmaker, and raised in Brooklyn. As an adult, she legally changed her surname to Roberts, according to an obituary in the New York Times. At the time, she was a model, most famous for appearing in billboard ads for Chesterfield cigarettes.
In 1964 after working as a secretary at a New York real estate agency, she became a broker. By the end of the 1960’s the woman recalled by acquaintances as gravel-voiced, 60 a day smoker and workaholic, had made her fortune through the conversion of apartment buildings from rentals to condominiums.
In 1968 when she met and began her involvement with the then-married multi-millionaire real estate investor Harry B. Helmsley. In 1970, she joined one of Harry Helmsley’s brokerage firms as a senior executive. At that time, she was already a millionaire in her own right. Harry Helmsley divorced his wife of 33 years and married Leona in 1972.
Supposedly under her influence, Harry Helmsley began a program of conversion of apartment buildings to condominiums. He later began to concentrate on the hotel industry, building the Helmsley Palace on Madison Avenue. Together the Helmsleys built a real estate empire in New York City including 230 Park Avenue, the Empire State Building, the Tudor City apartment complex on the East Side of Manhattan, and Helmsley-Spear, their management and leasing business. The couple also developed properties that included the Park Lane Hotel, the New York Helmsley Hotel and the Helmsley Palace Hotel, and hotels in Florida and other states.
Leona Helmsley became infamous during the 1980’s for being a tyrannical “boss from hell” whose petulance seemed ill-suited to the hospitality industry. Despite the Helmsleys’ wealth, they were notorious for disputing payments to contractors and vendors.
She was also stabbed in the lung by a burgalr who broke in to their home. This did nothing to damage her energy. She was convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989 and served 19 months in prison (and two more months in house arrest), after receiving an initial sentence of 16 years.
Leona Helmsley died from congestive heart failure, aged 87, on August 20, 2007, at her summer home in Greenwich, Connecticut Cardiovascular disease ran strong in her family, claiming the lives of her father, son and a sister.
A movie has been made baout her life and is an excellent watch - Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990)