Chapter 2: Party Girl On The Sunset Strip: Heidi Chases Thrills Instead Of Stability And Finds Out There’s a Whole Secret Underground World Of Partying for the Super Rich (the 1980s)
In episode 2 we delve into the sordid history of the Sunset Strip, where Heidi Fleiss finds herself waitressing in the 80s. Then Heidi hits VIP club Helena’s with the stars and later makes a love connection with mysterious millionaire Bernie Cornfeld at his mansion Grayhall.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Previously on Heidie World, we met Heidi Flice, the young
(00:36):
brilliant girl who turned her babysitting job into a successful
babysitting ring, and we introduced you to the Flies Family,
a close knit, brady bunch of Jewish bohemians in LA's
Los Feelis neighborhood led by patriarch and beloved local pediatrician,
doctor Paul Fleiss. Welcome to Heidi World. Chapter two, Party
(01:07):
Girl on the Sunset Strip. Heidi chases thrills instead of
stability and finds out there's a whole secret, underground world
of partying to the super rich. At Club Helena's the
nineteen eighties. It's the year nineteen eighty five. Heidi Flice
(01:28):
is nineteen years old. She wears cropped half shirts without
a bra, and likes to flash her tits at people
to shock them. She's also still living at home with
her dad and brother, which now means an apartment in
Santa Monica. Her parents are divorced, and her younger brother Jesse,
acts out by becoming a tiny punk rocker. Armed with
a good fake ID, Heidi takes on the Los Angeles
(01:51):
clubbing scene, where she has the best possible access to
her ideal sexual prey rich older men who want to
meet sexy young girls. These are some of the clubs
that Heidi frequents. Ice Paradise twenty four, the world famous Cathouse,
(02:12):
which is owned by Ricky Rachman, a musician from Van
Nuys who will become the host of MTD's flagship hard
rock show Head Banger's Ball, Eddie Nash's Seven Seas. You
may know of Eddie Nash from his involvement as the
alleged mastermind of the Wonderland Murders, which were one of
the inspirations for Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Knights. Clubs like Vertigo,
(02:35):
Vice and Scream, where Heidi says the less than zero
set gathers. Heidi is ready to stop relying on her
family and definitely ready to stop living with her dad
and brother. To make some money, she gets a waitressing
job at a restaurant in Sunset Boulevard called Cravings. Cravings
is an upscale cafe that no longer exists, whose location
(02:58):
now houses a place that is named the Butcher, the Baker,
and the Cappuccino Maker. Cravings serves nineteen eighties Cow Mediterranean Fair,
which means overpriced Italian food such as vegetable forward pizza
and pasta prima vera. Similar to one of Heidi's favorites,
Wolfgang Puck's trendsetting restaurants, Spago, Cravings is not only super trendy,
(03:24):
it's on the fucking Sunset Strip.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
When I was eighteen and nineteen, I got a job
waitressing with a couple of my girlfriends.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
This is what I learned from the experience.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Do not disrespect your server in any way or your
food will be tampered with. You got a tip no
matter what, even if you only had a cup of coffee.
If you don't, you will be fucked with. And I
had a lot of fun working there until things got
out of control. Like one of the girls, Liz, she
started smoking special cigarettes in the bathroom, while another girl
I grew up with who had the face of an angel,
(03:57):
started stealing from the register. It was very uncomfortable for
me because I have the look, you know, the look
that makes you the culprit, and all I was trying
to do is be a good waitress.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I think that she used Cravings as a place to
get involved in a very fast running crowd. Shane of flice. Now,
let's zoom out here and do a little La history
about the Sunset Strip. Sunset Boulevard is one of LA's
major thoroughfares, running east to west across the city, stretching
(04:32):
from downtown LA all the way.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
To the beach.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
The Sunset Strip is the name of a mile and
a half long stretch of Sunset between West Hollywood and
Beverly Hills. Until the eighties, the Sunset Strip was unincorporated,
which meant that it didn't fall under the jurisdiction of
the LA Police Department. In the nineteen twenties, a bunch
of casinos and nightclubs opened on the Strip, offering gambling,
(04:57):
which was legal in La Proper during Prohibition. The places
on the Sunset Strip served booze in back rooms, which
brought in the brand new film industry's hard partying social set,
including the very first movie stars, forever establishing the Sunset
Strip's reputation as a liminal zone for glamorous hard partying.
(05:20):
In the nineteen thirties and forties, a new generation of
plush nightclubs opened on the Strip. These clubs had velvet curtains,
stage shows, and big, beautiful neon signs out front places
like Ciro's The Macambo and Cafe Trocadero, which further established
the strip. The Macambo had a tropical theme with glass
(05:42):
cages filled with cockatoos, macaws, and parrots. It hosted Frank
Sinatra's first appearance in La and an Ella Fitzgerald Residency
personally lobbied for by Marilyn Monroe in a challenge to
the club's racist performance policy. The Sunset Strip's high classic
era club us, which you can see in a lot
of film noirs, have cinematic decor and dreamlike immersiveness set
(06:07):
against the disgusting regularness of outside. This has taken to
logical extremes in the nineteen fifties with the casino hotels
built in the desert city of Las Vegas, like the
Flamingo built by Bugsy Seagull and Walt Disney's escapist Fantasia Disneyland. Again,
Hollywood stars and players flocked to the swank Sunset Strip
(06:29):
supper clubs, where gossip columnists were waiting to report their
studio approved hijinks in trade mag columns the next day.
Like an ancient version of Doumois. Many of the Sunset
Strip supper clubs were run by or paid a cut
to the Jewish gangsters who were at that time running
vice in la people like Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Seagull.
(06:53):
By the sixties, the old supper clubs had faded and
were no longer considered cool. The strip scene became dominated
by beatnik cafes that stayed open late and jazz clubs,
most notably coffee shops, Lash Nightclub, Pandora's Box. A new
generation of club promoters open rock clubs on the Strip
like the Whisky a Go Go, attracting young people to
(07:15):
see locally made stars like The Birds, The Doors and
Sonny and Chare, a band of Laurel Canyon proto hippie
art weirdos known as Vito and his Freakers were hired
by club owners to show up at the clubs and
dance outrageously, to prompt other people to dance and give
the tourists looking for an authentic taste of the burgeoning
(07:37):
but already commodifying California counterculture something to write home about.
The Sunset Strip's new reputation as a haven for flower
children grew until kids from all over the city of
Los Angeles started showing up to hang out there. Older
conservatives complained about the hippie teenagers, and an arbitrary curfew
for young people was established. Long the police were brought in,
(08:01):
where they proceeded to beat the shit out of a
bunch of kids. This inspired protests, which in turn inspired
the Buffalo Springfield song for what It's Worth, which I
don't have enough money to play on this show. The
rock scene became even more debauched in the seventies with
the founding of Sunset Strip hotels like the Tropicana and
the Hyatt, which became known as the Riot House for
(08:24):
its association with led Zeppelin. This is the Sunset Strip
of Almost Famous, home to the increasingly underaged groupie scene
at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, which broke British glam rock
in America. In the eighties, the glam and hard rock
scene mutates into its final form, hair metal, and this
(08:46):
is where Heidi Fleis finds herself on the strip at
the absolute peak of the nineteen eighties hair metal years.
Partying on the Sunset Strip is a rite of passage
for locals, transplants, and tourists alike. Like any other gold
rush town, the strip is always going through booms and busts.
It had yet another wave of popularity recently during COVID,
(09:07):
when it became the place for TikTok influencers living in
mansions in the Hollywood Hills to see and be seen partying.
The TikTokers even repopularized the Old West theme steakhouse Saddle Ranch,
which is most famous from the Sex and the City
episode where they go to La and Miranda rides the
mechanical bowl. The Sunset Strip's ongoing reputation as Sodom and
(09:33):
Gomora on Earth is total catnipped for anyone looking to
party in La, so of course Heidi Flies is drawn
there as a young woman. Cravings is walking distance from
clubs like the Roxy, the Whiskey, and the Rainbow Bar
and Grill, which are all at their peak. Bands who
got their start on the Sunset Strip at these clubs,
like Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses still hang out
(09:56):
there while they're topping the charts. Let us look at
what the strip was like in the years Heidi was
working and hanging out there. I recommend Penelope Spherras is
The Decline of Western Civilization, Part two, The Metal Years
in nineteen eighty five. The strip is the epicenter of
partying and excess and Heidiflice is right there, waitress saying,
(10:19):
ready to become part of it all.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Be confident.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Body language is very important. You must have good posture.
Speak with a subtle yet sexy attitude, project desire. You
want this person to feel that they will be missing
out if they are not with you. You can come
on strong as long as you express yourself in the
(10:47):
right manner and a subtle.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Please come with me attitude.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Tell them not to look at you or stand near you,
because all you can do is think about them.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
While she's working at Cravings, Heidi becomes best friends with
a woman named Jennifer Young, who comes from a Hollywood family.
This is a pattern we see throughout the entire Heidi
Fly saga. A lot of people in it are second
generation LA residents whose parents are prominent in the city
in some way. Heidi is obviously the first example, with
her father, the prominent pediatrician. Jennifer Young's father was an
(11:24):
Oscar winning actor named gig Young birth name Byron Barr.
Gig Young was nominated for Best Supporting Actor three times
in nineteen fifty two for alcoholism drama Come Fill the Cup,
in nineteen fifty nine for the Doris Day romantic comedy
Teacher's Pet, and in nineteen sixty nine for Sidney Pollock's
new Hollywood period piece They Shoot Horses, Don't They? About?
(11:48):
A Depression era A dance athon he won in nineteen
sixty nine for his portrayal of the dance's MC. He
was married five times and was briefly engaged to Elaine Stretch.
His most famous wife was Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery, who
divorced him over his alcoholism. After losing the nineteen fifty
one Oscar gig, Young told Gossip columnist Luella Parsons, so
(12:12):
many people who have been nominated for an Oscar have
had bad luck. Afterwards, after his win for They Shoot Horses,
Don't They, the bad luck arrived. His alcoholism became an
increasing issue on sets, and he was fired from Blazing
Saddles for collapsing due to alcohol withdrawal. In nineteen seventy six,
Young was hired as the voice of Charlie on Aaron
(12:33):
Spelling's new show Charlie's Angels, then fired and replaced when
his addiction interfered with his work. He continued to book
jobs sporadically in the seventies. His last role was in
the posthumously released nineteen seventy eight Bruce Lee film Game
of Death. Gig Young was also a patient of quack
psychotherapist doctor Eugene Landy, best known for treating the Beach
(12:57):
Boys Brian Wilson with his unconventional twenty four hour marathon
therapy techniques and then having his license revoked for malpractice.
Landy came up in the same era of New age
medicine as Heidi's dad, and ran a clinic in the
early seventies called Free Foundation for the Rechanneling of Emotions
and Education. Landy was a guru type and aspiring music
(13:20):
business hanger on. Again. This was the era of pushing
the boundaries of therapy, especially in California, where the line
between legitimately helpful new therapy technique and thought control experiment
slash cult could be very thin. Despite being married five times,
Jennifer Young was gig Young's only child, and he denied
(13:41):
having fathered her in court battles over child support, which
he lost. In nineteen seventy eight, sixty four year old
gig Young married his fifth wife, a thirty one year
old German magazine editor named Kim Schmidt, who he met
in Hong Kong while filming Game of Death. Three weeks
after the wedding, the couple were found dead in their
Manhattan apartment with a diary open that said we got
(14:05):
married today. The cops decided that Young had shot his
wife and then himself, but there was no clear motive
for the murder. Suicide conspiracists started theorizing about his connections
to doctor Eugene Landy. When Heidie World returns, Heidi gets
(14:27):
to party at ELA's hottest nineteen eighties club, Helene Us.
(14:50):
Welcome back to Heidie World. So Heidie pell's up with
Jennifer Young, and the two young waitresses paint the town
red every night after. Jen introduces Heidi to a new
echelon of partying, a more exclusive level. So far, Heidi
has just been clubbing in Hollywood with the pleaves. Jen
(15:10):
takes her to a VIP club, the kind where you
have to know someone to get in. It's a club
called Helena's, a nondescript door at Rampart and Temple. At Helena's,
the clientele includes Prince Madonna, Marlon Brando, Joni Mitchell, The
Pointer Sisters, George Michael, Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep,
(15:33):
Angelica Houston, and Harry Dean Stanton. Helena's is infamous as
a club where celebrities openly can do drugs. Helena's is
run by Helena kallianotis, a Greek refugee actress, belly dancer,
and close friend of Jack Nicholson. Jack and Helena met
(15:53):
through his friend Five Easy Pieces screenwriter Carol Eastman, who
brought Jack to the Greek restaurant in the vast Lli
Helena belly danced at. Nicholson, who was not yet a star,
put Helena an easy rider as a commune dweller, and
had her dance in the Monkey's movie Head, which he wrote.
Kalia Niota's most notable performance is as one half of
(16:15):
the lesbian hitchhiking couple in Five Easy Pieces, alongside Tony Basil,
the choreographer of later Oh, Mickey, You're So Fine, You're
so fine, You Blow My mind fame. Kalia Niotis lived
in Jack's guesthouse and acted as his property manager. Angelica
Houston was a regular at Helena's and Jack Nicholson's longtime partner.
(16:37):
She recalls meeting Helena.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
I met Helena at Jack Nicholson's. It was the first
night I met Jack, about nineteen seventy two or seventy three.
I remember this amazing looking woman. She had a tattoo
on her upper arm that was a crucifix that said mom.
She was fascinating and scary. Soon learned that Helena has
the gentlest of hearts.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Helena first hosted a popular night at skateland Roller Rank
in Resita with Ed Begley Junior, before taking over the
lease for a belly dancing studio in the space that
became Helena's. Helena's was next to a scientology building and
across the street from LAPD's notorious rampart division. The most
famous people Helena turned away from the club were armsteeler
(17:28):
Adnan Kushogi, and once accidentally, Prince because she thought he
was a real prince and she despised royalty when she
realized her tremendous fuck up. She gave Prince a permanent
table of his own where he would come sit and
drink water, sometimes bringing his father. Helena's lasted from nineteen
(17:48):
eighty five to nineteen ninety one, when Helena suffered a
serious car accident. While she eventually moved out of Jack's
back house, Helena, who is eighty three, is still very
close with him and organized the twenty seventeen memorial for
their mutual friend Harry Dean Stanton. Although Helena says she
didn't do any drugs herself, the spot with the no
(18:10):
camera's rule developed a particular reputation. Here are some quotes
from a twenty eighteen Hollywood Reporter story about the club.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
It was so much fun because that was the thing
to dance Pana Helena's and do drugs. Melanie Griffith actress,
Everybody was coped out and getting laid Rita Wilson actress,
Prince on the dance floor, Paul Getty in his wheelchair
doing circles, Sean Penn punching someone over, Madonna, people being themselves.
(18:46):
It just happened. A bunch were really famous.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Going to Helena's ups the ante for Heidi even more.
It raises her expectations for what constitutes fun. She now
knows that there's a whole hidden world of luxurious, even
more limited access partying, and she's completely determined to work
her way in.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
You can put the best looking twenty two year old
in front of my face and it's just like ooh
to me. An older guy that is educated, affluent, intellectual,
and worldly is much more of a sexual turn on
than someone like marking Mark.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I'm talking like so old he needs a walker.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Greyhall Mansion is a Beverly Hills estate that played Chris
Christofferson's rock Star character's house in the nineteen seventy six
A Star Is Born and hosted Eddie van Halen's wedding
to Valerie Bertinelli. Gray Hall has a secret underground tunnel
that once connected it to pickfair the estate of silent
star super couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Gray Hall
(19:58):
is for sure haunted, and its last famous owner was
Mark R. Hughes, the CEO of Herbal Life, the caffeine
pill supplement multi level marketing scheme. Hughes was found dead
in two thousand if a drug overdose, eerily echoing his mother,
who was addicted to amphetamine diet pills and died from
an overdose of the opioid Darvon. One night, Jennifer Young
(20:20):
drags Heidi to a party at Greyhall Mansion now owned
by a self made entrepreneur named Bernie Cornfeld. Heidi doesn't
really want to go and tells herself she'll just wait
in the car for her friend. But as soon as
Heidi sees the gigantic house, she knows this is where
she belongs.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
One night, I called my friend Jennifer Young to pick
me up and she was like, only if you go
to this party with me. So I said yes, with
no intention of actually getting out of the car whence
we arrived.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
But then we pull up to the house.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
The minute I walked through the front door, I asked
Jennifer who owns this house? And she pointed to Bernie,
who looked like Santa Clause.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And I was thinking, fuck, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Going to live with this guy and life is going
to be easy street. That is how I met Bernie
Coornfeld at his home, Greyhall Mansion.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
It is love at first sight between Heidi and the mansion.
Heidi's lust for luxury, real estate and the finer, more
expensive things in life bonds her to the rich, older
men she likes who like all the same things, and
also young, favacious Jewish women. Bernie Kornfeld is a Romanian
and Russian jew born in Istanbull who moved to Brooklyn
(21:35):
as a child. His first hustle was running an age
and weight guessing stand at Coney Island. Cornfeld was a
social worker then got into mutual funds, starting at a
company called Investors Overseas Service that was a Ponzi scheme
in the late nineteen sixties, whose Switzerland based company ran
a two point five billion dollar mutual fund business out
of one hundred countries. The company collapsed in nineteen sixty
(21:58):
nine when profits fell far short of what was expected,
and in nineteen seventy the investors sued. It was then
revived by New Jersey finance guy Robert Vesco, who allegedly
turned it into a front company for the CIA, until
it collapsed again and ruined a bunch of banks. Cornfeld
was arrested in Switzerland, where iOS was based, and spent
(22:18):
eleven months in a Swiss jail. In nineteen seventy five,
he was also charged with telephone fraud for a scam
where he used a thing called blue boxes to do
what's called phone freaking with a pH and get around
long distance charges. However, he was eventually acquitted in nineteen
seventy nine, which Is when he moved to Beverly Hills,
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was still quite a lot of money. After his acquittal,
Cornfeld held court in Beverly Hills for famous friends like
Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis, as well as wealthy businessmen
like Elfred S. Bloomingdale, the heir to the department store
fortune and a close confidant of President Ronald Reagan. Bloomingdale
(22:59):
had a public sex scandal when his mistress, Vicky Morgan,
demanded financial compensation in court for palimony. This embarrassed Bloomingdale,
who was dying of cancer, his wife, and their pals,
the Reagans, Since Vicky Morgan had been doing survival sex
work since falling on hard times. Bloomingdale's lawyers tried to
claim that the arrangement had been entirely sex for hire,
(23:21):
but ultimately awarded her the equivalent of nearly half a
million dollars before she was then shockingly murdered by her roommate,
who had become psychotically obsessed with her. After Vicky Morgan
was murdered, a lawyer named Robert K. Steinberg, who had
considered representing the killer roommate, said he had custody of
sex tapes recovered from Morgan's apartment that showed Vicky Morgan,
(23:46):
Bloomingdale and friends engaging in sadomasochistic sex parties with prominent
members of the Reagan White House. Steinberg claimed he would
destroy the tapes unless the White House told him not to,
and the sex tapes nowed. Now does that mean the
sex tape showing White House officials and compromising positions with
sex workers didn't exist, of course not. Phantom sex tapes
(24:10):
also show up in the story of the Manson family murders.
In telm O'Neill's Chaos, he finds evidence that the cops
confiscated sex tapes from the clo Drive house where Roman
Polanski and Sharon Tate lived, which allegedly depicted the couple
and their famous friends engaging in group sex and SMM scenarios.
In the Ed Sanders book The Family, he also hears
(24:32):
tale of these s and M tapes, as well as
sex and snuff films made by the Manson family. Sanders
actually coins the term snuff film in the book The
Family off the term that he also coins snuff buffs,
in reference to people who show up at the Manson
trial hearing just to gawk the tapes never materialized for Sanders,
(24:55):
although people are always claiming to have them, but that
doesn't mean they didn't exist. The Heidi Fly story also
has some phantom audio tapes. Stories like this, which happen
partially underground are plagued with unprovable but true seeming details.
When sex tapes of the rich and powerful doing things
they are supposedly again surface, like these alleged Reagan White
(25:18):
House sex tapes, they are likely to be buried before
the public ever gets a chance to see them. Anyway,
back to Heidi and Bernie Cornfeld.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
He introduced himself, We talked.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
He offered me a new job, answering phones at twice
the salary I had been making as a waitress.
Speaker 6 (25:41):
We weren't really a couple in that sense.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It's not my thing, but we were good friends.
Speaker 6 (25:47):
We saw a lot of each other.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Bernie Cornfeld businessmen.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
He was always trying to teach me things the god.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
He had a weird way of getting his point across.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Heidi moves into Gray Hall with Bernie immediately. Her parents
are not thrilled. They had still been hoping Heidi would
straighten up and decide to go to college, but they
also know how wilful she can be.
Speaker 7 (26:16):
I didn't approve of that jet, said lifestyle. I was horrified,
and I let her know. Paul flies pediatrician.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
For four years. Bernie is Heidi's sugar daddy, if not
her official boyfriend, because he doesn't believe in such labels. Nevertheless,
he spoils her with the expensive material things she craves,
and she respects his important status. They travel the world
together on his private jet, going to his various properties
and luxury hotels around the globe, from Hotel Xanadu in
(26:51):
the Bahamas to his twelfth century castle in the Swiss
French Alps. She's working as Bernie's assistant for way more
than she made way. She also feels she understands Bernie,
who is clearly overcompensating for a youth where beautiful women
weren't sexually interested in him.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
On my twenty first birthday, he gave me a million
in cash and a cornish okay, he's not exactly tight
with money.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
For a while, everything works beautifully with Heidi and Bernie
traveling the world, sometimes bringing other women in for sex,
until the day Heidi realizes that Bernie is fucking other
women without her, and furthermore that she doesn't want that,
no matter the lifestyle that comes with it. They stay
often at Xanadu, which was built by Howard Hughes and
(27:43):
bought by Cornfeld, who turned it into Timeshares. In the
penthouse of Xana Do, Heidi decides it's over.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
He just couldn't be monogamous and it drove me crazy.
By then, I'm twenty two, and I'm thinking I have
to get out of the sitch situation of having an
older guy that's just beating me to treads mentally.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
And I'm thinking it's all my fault. I'm a loser
and my self esteem is zero.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
We would fight and I would fly to Europe for
one day and he'd call me and say I love you,
and then I'd fly back the next I woke up
one morning in the Howard Hughes penthouse. My view is
the bright blue ocean and the whole world is out there,
and I decide I'm going home. I'm going to go
do something.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Heidi's relationship with Bernie ends peacefully, although she feels heartbroken,
and they remain very close friends until his death. She
looked up to Bernie but also loved his glamorous escapades
and stories about hanging out with his pal Hugh Hefner,
true to her penthouse revelation. After she and Bernie break up,
Heidi decides to try and pursue a real career. She's
(28:54):
twenty three, now done with waitress saying, and eager to
make some real money of her own. She doesn't have
to rely on a rich boyfriend to give her Heidi
decides she wants to be like her sort of friend,
Jen Young's mom, Elaine Young, a realtor who bills herself
as the Realtor to the Stars. Elaine Young is another
(29:15):
LA native whose father worked at Universal Studios as an
art director. She levied herself into the showy world of
LA real estate, selling houses to stars like Elvis Presley,
Burt Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor. She even sells
a house to football star turned pitchman Oj Simpson, a
(29:36):
beautiful house in the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood on Rockingham Drive.
Speaker 7 (29:44):
Never let an opportunity pass you, by, Elaine Young, Realtor
to the Stars.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
You can see how Heidi might have picked up a
few ideas from Jen's realtor to the Stars Mom about
brand building as well. If you bill yourself is catering
to an exclusive client, tell and can get a fish
or two on the line yourself through your own personal connections,
the rest of the exclusive client tele you seek will
start coming to you. So Heidie do is something she
(30:15):
has hardly ever done before. She studies really hard for
an exam the realtor test to get her realtor's license,
and she passes the realtor test and gets a realtor's license.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I was determined to find a career.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I got my real estate license and a job at
a fancy office in Beverly Hills. My first client was
a lawyer from Disney Pictures. After just a few minutes
of conversation with her, I knew right away a condo
she would be interested in, and I showed it to
her and she loved it. And then she turned around
and did the transaction with another broker.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Heidi is frustrated by her lack of instant success in
the real estate business. She loves to gamble, but hates
to lose. She learns another valuable lesson about being cutthroat.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Every profession is competitive.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It doesn't matter if you're a doctor, an architect, or
if you're selling shoes.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It is all the same.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
It comes down to you and how badly you want
it and how hard you are willing to work for it.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Nostalgi de la beaux is a French term I just
learned off Wikipedia that means nostalgia for mud. It means
you have an attraction to low life culture, to the
romance of the gutter. Heidi was clearly drawn to the
sea deier side of La just as much as she
was drawn to the glittering mansions in the hills. She
says as much herself that she was attracted to the
(31:52):
world of sexfice because it was culturally taboo. She understood
the implicit connection between extreme wealth and elite vice. Where
one exists, so does the other, and sometimes these vices gambling,
for example, can be a great equalizer. When Heidi World returns,
(32:16):
Heidi meets lineback producer Yvonne naj Welcome back to Heidi World.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
I came to this country when I was eighteen years
old without a penny in my pocket, and I grew
to become one of the most admired photographers in town.
And I went on to a directing career that got
me to a certain level. You know. So what you
see here is the direct result of the career that
(33:05):
I built in nothing else. Ivan Nage, producer.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I always have this thing when I go to nightclubs
that when the most loser, creepiest guy would ask me
to dance, I would just always say yes. So some
guy that looks like a creep dressed disgusting comes and
asks me to dance one night, and I say yes,
And it happened to be Yvonne Naje.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
One night at Helena's, Heidi meets a Hungarian director named
Yvonne naj Nase is fifty two years old, divorced from
actress Irene Sue, and on the prowl for Heidi. It
is not love at first sight. Unlike Bernie Cornfeld, who
is very rich and well liked by all, Nase is
(33:55):
not particularly rich and a universally loathed all around dirtbag.
He's a Hollywood hanger on. He started out taking photos
of the band Buffalo Springfield ended up in the low
budget B movie world of the nineteen seventies. If you
like Quentin Tarantinos once upon a time in Hollywood, you
(34:15):
are going to love this part, which is about von
Naj's career in Hollywood. Nause's directing career consisted of the
following Bad Charleston Charlie, a nineteen seventy three comedy about
inepte gangsters with a small cameo from David Carrodine. Bad
Charleston Charlie starred and was written by b Movie Studio
Crown International Pictures regular Ross Hagan. Hagan was a Hollywood
(34:38):
lifer who played cowboys in sixties TV westerns like Lancer,
and starred in not one, but three sexploitation movies about
female biker gangs. He plays a Hollywood cowboy in the
nineteen eighty four movie Angel, Robert Vincent O'Neill's nineteen eighty
four cult classic, famous for its video store poster and
tagline high school honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night.
(35:03):
Angel is actually a sympathetic portrayal of sex work and
not a teen sexploitation movie at all. Hagen's final credit
before his twenty ten death was voicing one Last Cowboy
in Red Dead Redemption. Hagan and Naj made a second
feature in nineteen seventy three that they co wrote, called
Pushing Up Daisies about criminals who rob a bank dressed
(35:25):
as nuns. The movie itself was something of a heist.
It was shot on discarded film short ends over seventeen weekends.
In nineteen seventy five, Yvonne Naj directed Deadly Hero, about
a psychotic, trigger happy New York cop vigilante who becomes
a local hero, which came out a year before Paul
(35:46):
Schrader and Martin Scorsese's similarly themed Taxi Driver. Deadly Hero
is very insane and features cameos from Debbie Harry and
Christine of Blondie. In nineteen seventy six, Nase wrote the
story Trackdown, whose story resembles that of another pull Strader joint.
Nineteen seventy nine's hardcore track Down stars James mitchum son
(36:08):
of Robert, as a man trying to track down his
sister who left Montana for Hollywood and was trafficked into
prostitution the tagline what if it was Your sister. Nauj
moved into TV, where he was a journeyman TV director
in the seventies and eighties for shows like Starsky and Hutch, Chips,
and The Hitchhiker. He also directed TV movies like Once
(36:31):
Upon a Spy starring Ted Danson and Christopher Lee, Midnight
Lace with Susan Tyrrell and Blackie Dammit, Father of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Keatis, and a
widely maligned made for TV movie starring Gary Coleman as
a teenage arsonist.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
Von nauj was a less than mediocre director. I could
tell in the first five minutes whether Yvonne had directed it.
He's an enemy of talent Andy Seda, director and friend
of Avon's.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
By the time Heidi meets Yvonne naj in nineteen eighty nine,
directing is no longer his main career. He's now primarily
a sports bookie and drug dealer. But because he straddles
the not so distant worlds of illegal vice and mainstream
Hollywood entertainment, he is welcomed at a spot like Helena's
(37:25):
and Heidi, as we know, is a gambler. While she
is put off by his appearance an entire general vibe,
the revelation that Yvonne is a bookie intrigues her, and
she places a sports bet with him for five hundred dollars.
The next day, she goes to pick up her winnings
and finds Nase on an expensive fifty five foot boat.
(37:48):
The walls of the boat cabin are lined with photographs
of Nause with well known Hollywood playboys and nude women.
Heidi asks, what the fuck happens on this boat and
he laughs at her.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I made a bet with him and I happened to win.
I went straight back to the Bahamas, and Yvonne followed
me there. I did not know he was a lunatic,
not yet.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yvonne Naje and Heidi Flies get into a relationship marked
immediately by emotional and physical abuse. He rapes her over
a gambling dat and she's too fucked up by the
whole experience to report it. She asks Bernie Cornfeld about
Yvonne Naje and he tells her to stay far, far away.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I never thought of him as my boyfriend at the time.
I thought for a while to fend him off, actually,
and I hit my head on a table really hard too,
and then I kept thinking, what do I want to do?
Go home where my sister who just had her final
operation is throwing up and it's my fault.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
And so I spent the night at his house afterwards
and that was it.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yvon Nage also enables Heidie's worst tendencies to gamble and
abuse drugs. Their intersection is a toxic nightmare from the
get go, but they also cannot let go of each other,
and this is where we get into disputed territory. At
some point, Yvonne Nage introduces Heidie Flie to a woman
named Alex Adams, who is, at the time they meet,
(39:23):
the premier madam in Beverly Hills. Alex Adams, known also
as Madame Alex, rules the high end escorting game without
ever leaving the bedroom of her bel air mansion on
Doheeney Drive. For years. Madame Alex conducts business entirely from
her bedroom in one of her trademark lumus, speaking on
(39:44):
the phone to her wealthy and well connected clientele. Alex
had been building her madaming empire in la since the sixties,
and will explain how she did that in episode three.
But by the time Heidi meets her, Alex is in
her fifties and has so several serious health conditions keeping
her confined to bed. Alex had never been a sex
(40:05):
worker herself. She was a managerial type who organized everything
for her employees through her lifeline, the telephone. Nobody seems
to agree on how Heidi and Alex first met. According
to Heidi, she met Alex around town. According to Yvonne Naje,
he quote unquote gave Heidi to Alex to pay off
(40:25):
a gambling debt. However it went down. Heidi and Alex
hit it off instantly. Alex loved to impress people, and
Heidi was genuinely impressed. She was also a fast study
and a teacher's pet, rising in the ranks quickly to
become Madame Alex's favorite. Heidi says she never had sex
with anyone when she worked for Madame Alex. She was
(40:46):
more of an assistant. But Alex differs.
Speaker 7 (40:51):
Yvonne brought Heidi here in nineteen eighty nine. He turned
her out. He made her work for me to pay
off a four hundred and fifty dollars gift bed I said,
why do you want to do this? And he said
I need the four fifty And I said, I thought
you loved her, why do you want to sell her?
It was awful. He's a piece of work, this man.
(41:14):
I can't remember who I sent her to. Jesus, it
was years ago, but I think it was a very
wealthy Texan Madame Alex.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
Obviously I didn't want her to work, and the last
thing I wanted to do was to sell her to Alex.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
That was his job.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
He'd sell people to Alex. Alex had him collect money,
scare girls, do errands, and for this she'd get.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Him laid and pay him due.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
Why are you bringing me this thing? She was a
five ideal intense.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
When Heiday is twenty two, Alex and Yvonne naj convince
her to go out on a job.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
I got fucked up on drugs, cocaine and kuailubs and
they talked me into having sex with an Arab at
the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for five thousand dollars. He was
so nice he paid me in travelers checks and I
gave two thousand to Yvonne.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
I wasn't scared because I was fucked up.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
While their first meeting may have been a bit strange,
a close connection between Heidi and Madame Alex is forged
over the next year as Heidi starts working for Alex.
Whether or not she continued to do sex work, she
definitely does do assistant work for Alex and shadows her closely,
which helps her learn Alex's business. Heidi says she was
(42:48):
sent on a bad group date to Las Vegas that
made her want to work more behind the scenes. What
is certain is that Heidi started working for Madame Alex
sometime in the late eighties and aggressively sucked up to
her her learning her trade and very specific methodology, but
also becoming her constant companion. Heidi and Alex have a
(43:08):
mutual respect. Heidi respects that Alex is so powerful and rich,
and Alex respects Heidi's street smarts and strong ambition.
Speaker 7 (43:19):
We'd giggle, we'd get bored tonight. We'd call up other
Madams and ask them about girls. They'd think that they
were being taped and freak out.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Alex did not drive. She would call me to take
her on errands when she needed help. I tried to
help her, no matter what time it was. I was
really good about that. Many times Alex called it two
am because she thought someone was on her roof or
ringing her doorbell. And she would also call it dawn
on a Saturday and say, oh, don't you feel like
fresh orchids today? And so I would get up and
(43:49):
drive her twenty minutes the Flower martin downtown LA.
Speaker 7 (43:55):
I was more than good to Heidi. She was so
respectful and I was flattered. She's a freak. Mena fascinated
by freaks. They become obsessed. Heidi is lovable in her
way when she's not being a twat.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Heidi takes Alex everywhere that Alex wants to go to
an art fair where she drops six thousand dollars on
trinkets that Heidi thinks are a bunch of junk. To
Nieman Marcus for expensive chocolates, where all the salespeople know
Alex and she's treated like a queen. Two estate sales
where she overbids on a Salvador Dolly print of dubious
origin that Heidi swears looks just like the museum gift
(44:34):
store posters, to open houses what she likes to walk
through and critique the homes. She also once calls Heidi
for urgent help after getting bit on the labia by
a spider. Madame Alex also uses cocaine in a way
that I have never heard of anyone doing before. She
crushes it up in a kleenex and pretends to blow
her nose but actually inhales In. She thinks it's very
(44:58):
funny to pretend to be an old one with a
cold when she is in fact a madam flying on
blow to show that she is savvy and loyal, Heidi
tells Alex that Yvonne is overcharging her for drugs and
black market plane tickets. Alex claims to be aware but
doesn't confront him, perhaps also showing Heidi that Alex has
(45:19):
some key flaws she may be able to take advantage
of later.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
If they hit you once, then they'll hit you twice.
If they cheat on you once, they will cheat on
you twice.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Heidi Flice and her abusive pseudo boyfriend, Yvonne naj are
breaking up and getting back together every week. Yvonne continues
beating Heidi up and threatening to kill her. She routinely
calls the cops to file complaints against him, but ultimately
withdraws them or the cases are abandoned because the cops
don't prioritize domestic violence complaints, which might have something to
(45:58):
do with the fact that more than a few of
them engage in domestic violence themselves. When Heidi tells Yvonne
she is leaving him for good, he punches her in
the face. She flees to Madame Alex's side, who convinces
her not to call the cops, fearing what Yvonne's wrath
will be like if she does.
Speaker 7 (46:18):
He beat me up once when I was trying to
keep him from hurting Heidi. Poor Heidi didn't deserve Yvonne.
God she was living with a monster.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Heidi stops talking to Yvonne nauj for six months, and
on May twenty third, nineteen eighty nine, she obtains a
restraining order against him. One of Heidi's best friends is
an eighteen year old actress and real estate agent named
(46:52):
Wendy Tar. In nineteen eighty nine, Tar is shot in
the head while showing an apartment in downtown LA during
an attempted Heidi sits by Tar's bedside for three days
while her friend is in a coma, and then dies.
According to Madame Alex, Tard worked as a call girl,
she knew as quote Heidi's friend Bridget, and was trying
(47:14):
to pivot to real estate full time when she was murdered.
Heidi is completely fucked up by all of this. She
feels powerless and like the system is telling her that
her friend's death doesn't matter, so she writes a letter
to a popular TV show called America's Most Wanted. America's
Most Wanted is a show where host John Walsh presents
(47:35):
unsolved cases and asks civilians to keep an eye out
and call in tips. Heidi appears on camera as a
talking head on America's Most Wanted in a segment that
airs February twenty fifth, nineteen ninety, asking the public to
provide information about the murder of her friend. She is
frustrated that the cops are doing nothing and feels like
(47:56):
the platform of being on TV might at least make
the villians look for the killer. The day after the
episode airs, her friend's killer, a paroled rapist felon named
James Edward Knowell, turns himself in and pleads guilty, eventually
receiving a life sentence. From all of this, Heidi Flice
(48:18):
learns a valuable lesson about the power of mass media.
Speaker 5 (48:22):
Fighting broke out overnight, a frustrated opening fire with a.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Next time on Heidi World, enter the world of Heidie's mentor,
Madame Alex as we trace her journey through a Catholic
girlhood in the Philippines. A nineteen fifties marriage in the
American suburbs and a flower shop job at the Ambassador
Hotel that leads her to LA's sexual underground and a
high end escort service in the sixties that blossoms into
(49:03):
a very profitable, notorious business in the seventies and eighties
that leads her to meet a girl named Heidi Flice
Previously on Heidie World, we met Heidi Flice, the young
(00:36):
brilliant girl who turned her babysitting job into a successful
babysitting ring, and we introduced you to the Flies Family,
a close knit, brady bunch of Jewish bohemians in LA's
Los Feelis neighborhood led by patriarch and beloved local pediatrician,
doctor Paul Fleiss. Welcome to Heidi World. Chapter two, Party
(01:07):
Girl on the Sunset Strip. Heidi chases thrills instead of
stability and finds out there's a whole secret, underground world
of partying to the super rich. At Club Helena's the
nineteen eighties. It's the year nineteen eighty five. Heidi Flice
(01:28):
is nineteen years old. She wears cropped half shirts without
a bra, and likes to flash her tits at people
to shock them. She's also still living at home with
her dad and brother, which now means an apartment in
Santa Monica. Her parents are divorced, and her younger brother Jesse,
acts out by becoming a tiny punk rocker. Armed with
a good fake ID, Heidi takes on the Los Angeles
(01:51):
clubbing scene, where she has the best possible access to
her ideal sexual prey rich older men who want to
meet sexy young girls. These are some of the clubs
that Heidi frequents. Ice Paradise twenty four, the world famous Cathouse,
(02:12):
which is owned by Ricky Rachman, a musician from Van
Nuys who will become the host of MTD's flagship hard
rock show Head Banger's Ball, Eddie Nash's Seven Seas. You
may know of Eddie Nash from his involvement as the
alleged mastermind of the Wonderland Murders, which were one of
the inspirations for Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Knights. Clubs like Vertigo,
(02:35):
Vice and Scream, where Heidi says the less than zero
set gathers. Heidi is ready to stop relying on her
family and definitely ready to stop living with her dad
and brother. To make some money, she gets a waitressing
job at a restaurant in Sunset Boulevard called Cravings. Cravings
is an upscale cafe that no longer exists, whose location
(02:58):
now houses a place that is named the Butcher, the Baker,
and the Cappuccino Maker. Cravings serves nineteen eighties Cow Mediterranean Fair,
which means overpriced Italian food such as vegetable forward pizza
and pasta prima vera. Similar to one of Heidi's favorites,
Wolfgang Puck's trendsetting restaurants, Spago, Cravings is not only super trendy,
(03:24):
it's on the fucking Sunset Strip.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
When I was eighteen and nineteen, I got a job
waitressing with a couple of my girlfriends.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
This is what I learned from the experience.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Do not disrespect your server in any way or your
food will be tampered with. You got a tip no
matter what, even if you only had a cup of coffee.
If you don't, you will be fucked with. And I
had a lot of fun working there until things got
out of control. Like one of the girls, Liz, she
started smoking special cigarettes in the bathroom, while another girl
I grew up with who had the face of an angel,
(03:57):
started stealing from the register. It was very uncomfortable for
me because I have the look, you know, the look
that makes you the culprit, and all I was trying
to do is be a good waitress.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
I think that she used Cravings as a place to
get involved in a very fast running crowd. Shane of flice. Now,
let's zoom out here and do a little La history
about the Sunset Strip. Sunset Boulevard is one of LA's
major thoroughfares, running east to west across the city, stretching
(04:32):
from downtown LA all the way.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
To the beach.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
The Sunset Strip is the name of a mile and
a half long stretch of Sunset between West Hollywood and
Beverly Hills. Until the eighties, the Sunset Strip was unincorporated,
which meant that it didn't fall under the jurisdiction of
the LA Police Department. In the nineteen twenties, a bunch
of casinos and nightclubs opened on the Strip, offering gambling,
(04:57):
which was legal in La Proper during Prohibition. The places
on the Sunset Strip served booze in back rooms, which
brought in the brand new film industry's hard partying social set,
including the very first movie stars, forever establishing the Sunset
Strip's reputation as a liminal zone for glamorous hard partying.
(05:20):
In the nineteen thirties and forties, a new generation of
plush nightclubs opened on the Strip. These clubs had velvet curtains,
stage shows, and big, beautiful neon signs out front places
like Ciro's The Macambo and Cafe Trocadero, which further established
the strip. The Macambo had a tropical theme with glass
(05:42):
cages filled with cockatoos, macaws, and parrots. It hosted Frank
Sinatra's first appearance in La and an Ella Fitzgerald Residency
personally lobbied for by Marilyn Monroe in a challenge to
the club's racist performance policy. The Sunset Strip's high classic
era club us, which you can see in a lot
of film noirs, have cinematic decor and dreamlike immersiveness set
(06:07):
against the disgusting regularness of outside. This has taken to
logical extremes in the nineteen fifties with the casino hotels
built in the desert city of Las Vegas, like the
Flamingo built by Bugsy Seagull and Walt Disney's escapist Fantasia Disneyland. Again,
Hollywood stars and players flocked to the swank Sunset Strip
(06:29):
supper clubs, where gossip columnists were waiting to report their
studio approved hijinks in trade mag columns the next day.
Like an ancient version of Doumois. Many of the Sunset
Strip supper clubs were run by or paid a cut
to the Jewish gangsters who were at that time running
vice in la people like Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Seagull.
(06:53):
By the sixties, the old supper clubs had faded and
were no longer considered cool. The strip scene became dominated
by beatnik cafes that stayed open late and jazz clubs,
most notably coffee shops, Lash Nightclub, Pandora's Box. A new
generation of club promoters open rock clubs on the Strip
like the Whisky a Go Go, attracting young people to
(07:15):
see locally made stars like The Birds, The Doors and
Sonny and Chare, a band of Laurel Canyon proto hippie
art weirdos known as Vito and his Freakers were hired
by club owners to show up at the clubs and
dance outrageously, to prompt other people to dance and give
the tourists looking for an authentic taste of the burgeoning
(07:37):
but already commodifying California counterculture something to write home about.
The Sunset Strip's new reputation as a haven for flower
children grew until kids from all over the city of
Los Angeles started showing up to hang out there. Older
conservatives complained about the hippie teenagers, and an arbitrary curfew
for young people was established. Long the police were brought in,
(08:01):
where they proceeded to beat the shit out of a
bunch of kids. This inspired protests, which in turn inspired
the Buffalo Springfield song for what It's Worth, which I
don't have enough money to play on this show. The
rock scene became even more debauched in the seventies with
the founding of Sunset Strip hotels like the Tropicana and
the Hyatt, which became known as the Riot House for
(08:24):
its association with led Zeppelin. This is the Sunset Strip
of Almost Famous, home to the increasingly underaged groupie scene
at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, which broke British glam rock
in America. In the eighties, the glam and hard rock
scene mutates into its final form, hair metal, and this
(08:46):
is where Heidi Fleis finds herself on the strip at
the absolute peak of the nineteen eighties hair metal years.
Partying on the Sunset Strip is a rite of passage
for locals, transplants, and tourists alike. Like any other gold
rush town, the strip is always going through booms and busts.
It had yet another wave of popularity recently during COVID,
(09:07):
when it became the place for TikTok influencers living in
mansions in the Hollywood Hills to see and be seen partying.
The TikTokers even repopularized the Old West theme steakhouse Saddle Ranch,
which is most famous from the Sex and the City
episode where they go to La and Miranda rides the
mechanical bowl. The Sunset Strip's ongoing reputation as Sodom and
(09:33):
Gomora on Earth is total catnipped for anyone looking to
party in La, so of course Heidi Flies is drawn
there as a young woman. Cravings is walking distance from
clubs like the Roxy, the Whiskey, and the Rainbow Bar
and Grill, which are all at their peak. Bands who
got their start on the Sunset Strip at these clubs,
like Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses still hang out
(09:56):
there while they're topping the charts. Let us look at
what the strip was like in the years Heidi was
working and hanging out there. I recommend Penelope Spherras is
The Decline of Western Civilization, Part two, The Metal Years
in nineteen eighty five. The strip is the epicenter of
partying and excess and Heidiflice is right there, waitress saying,
(10:19):
ready to become part of it all.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Be confident.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Body language is very important. You must have good posture.
Speak with a subtle yet sexy attitude, project desire. You
want this person to feel that they will be missing
out if they are not with you. You can come
on strong as long as you express yourself in the
(10:47):
right manner and a subtle.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Please come with me attitude.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Tell them not to look at you or stand near you,
because all you can do is think about them.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
While she's working at Cravings, Heidi becomes best friends with
a woman named Jennifer Young, who comes from a Hollywood family.
This is a pattern we see throughout the entire Heidi
Fly saga. A lot of people in it are second
generation LA residents whose parents are prominent in the city
in some way. Heidi is obviously the first example, with
her father, the prominent pediatrician. Jennifer Young's father was an
(11:24):
Oscar winning actor named gig Young birth name Byron Barr.
Gig Young was nominated for Best Supporting Actor three times
in nineteen fifty two for alcoholism drama Come Fill the Cup,
in nineteen fifty nine for the Doris Day romantic comedy
Teacher's Pet, and in nineteen sixty nine for Sidney Pollock's
new Hollywood period piece They Shoot Horses, Don't They? About?
(11:48):
A Depression era A dance athon he won in nineteen
sixty nine for his portrayal of the dance's MC. He
was married five times and was briefly engaged to Elaine Stretch.
His most famous wife was Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery, who
divorced him over his alcoholism. After losing the nineteen fifty
one Oscar gig, Young told Gossip columnist Luella Parsons, so
(12:12):
many people who have been nominated for an Oscar have
had bad luck. Afterwards, after his win for They Shoot Horses,
Don't They, the bad luck arrived. His alcoholism became an
increasing issue on sets, and he was fired from Blazing
Saddles for collapsing due to alcohol withdrawal. In nineteen seventy six,
Young was hired as the voice of Charlie on Aaron
(12:33):
Spelling's new show Charlie's Angels, then fired and replaced when
his addiction interfered with his work. He continued to book
jobs sporadically in the seventies. His last role was in
the posthumously released nineteen seventy eight Bruce Lee film Game
of Death. Gig Young was also a patient of quack
psychotherapist doctor Eugene Landy, best known for treating the Beach
(12:57):
Boys Brian Wilson with his unconventional twenty four hour marathon
therapy techniques and then having his license revoked for malpractice.
Landy came up in the same era of New age
medicine as Heidi's dad, and ran a clinic in the
early seventies called Free Foundation for the Rechanneling of Emotions
and Education. Landy was a guru type and aspiring music
(13:20):
business hanger on. Again. This was the era of pushing
the boundaries of therapy, especially in California, where the line
between legitimately helpful new therapy technique and thought control experiment
slash cult could be very thin. Despite being married five times,
Jennifer Young was gig Young's only child, and he denied
(13:41):
having fathered her in court battles over child support, which
he lost. In nineteen seventy eight, sixty four year old
gig Young married his fifth wife, a thirty one year
old German magazine editor named Kim Schmidt, who he met
in Hong Kong while filming Game of Death. Three weeks
after the wedding, the couple were found dead in their
Manhattan apartment with a diary open that said we got
(14:05):
married today. The cops decided that Young had shot his
wife and then himself, but there was no clear motive
for the murder. Suicide conspiracists started theorizing about his connections
to doctor Eugene Landy. When Heidie World returns, Heidi gets
(14:27):
to party at ELA's hottest nineteen eighties club, Helene Us.
(14:50):
Welcome back to Heidie World. So Heidie pell's up with
Jennifer Young, and the two young waitresses paint the town
red every night after. Jen introduces Heidi to a new
echelon of partying, a more exclusive level. So far, Heidi
has just been clubbing in Hollywood with the pleaves. Jen
(15:10):
takes her to a VIP club, the kind where you
have to know someone to get in. It's a club
called Helena's, a nondescript door at Rampart and Temple. At Helena's,
the clientele includes Prince Madonna, Marlon Brando, Joni Mitchell, The
Pointer Sisters, George Michael, Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep,
(15:33):
Angelica Houston, and Harry Dean Stanton. Helena's is infamous as
a club where celebrities openly can do drugs. Helena's is
run by Helena kallianotis, a Greek refugee actress, belly dancer,
and close friend of Jack Nicholson. Jack and Helena met
(15:53):
through his friend Five Easy Pieces screenwriter Carol Eastman, who
brought Jack to the Greek restaurant in the vast Lli
Helena belly danced at. Nicholson, who was not yet a star,
put Helena an easy rider as a commune dweller, and
had her dance in the Monkey's movie Head, which he wrote.
Kalia Niota's most notable performance is as one half of
(16:15):
the lesbian hitchhiking couple in Five Easy Pieces, alongside Tony Basil,
the choreographer of later Oh, Mickey, You're So Fine, You're
so fine, You Blow My mind fame. Kalia Niotis lived
in Jack's guesthouse and acted as his property manager. Angelica
Houston was a regular at Helena's and Jack Nicholson's longtime partner.
(16:37):
She recalls meeting Helena.
Speaker 5 (16:41):
I met Helena at Jack Nicholson's. It was the first
night I met Jack, about nineteen seventy two or seventy three.
I remember this amazing looking woman. She had a tattoo
on her upper arm that was a crucifix that said mom.
She was fascinating and scary. Soon learned that Helena has
the gentlest of hearts.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Helena first hosted a popular night at skateland Roller Rank
in Resita with Ed Begley Junior, before taking over the
lease for a belly dancing studio in the space that
became Helena's. Helena's was next to a scientology building and
across the street from LAPD's notorious rampart division. The most
famous people Helena turned away from the club were armsteeler
(17:28):
Adnan Kushogi, and once accidentally, Prince because she thought he
was a real prince and she despised royalty when she
realized her tremendous fuck up. She gave Prince a permanent
table of his own where he would come sit and
drink water, sometimes bringing his father. Helena's lasted from nineteen
(17:48):
eighty five to nineteen ninety one, when Helena suffered a
serious car accident. While she eventually moved out of Jack's
back house, Helena, who is eighty three, is still very
close with him and organized the twenty seventeen memorial for
their mutual friend Harry Dean Stanton. Although Helena says she
didn't do any drugs herself, the spot with the no
(18:10):
camera's rule developed a particular reputation. Here are some quotes
from a twenty eighteen Hollywood Reporter story about the club.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
It was so much fun because that was the thing
to dance Pana Helena's and do drugs. Melanie Griffith actress,
Everybody was coped out and getting laid Rita Wilson actress,
Prince on the dance floor, Paul Getty in his wheelchair
doing circles, Sean Penn punching someone over, Madonna, people being themselves.
(18:46):
It just happened. A bunch were really famous.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Going to Helena's ups the ante for Heidi even more.
It raises her expectations for what constitutes fun. She now
knows that there's a whole hidden world of luxurious, even
more limited access partying, and she's completely determined to work
her way in.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
You can put the best looking twenty two year old
in front of my face and it's just like ooh
to me. An older guy that is educated, affluent, intellectual,
and worldly is much more of a sexual turn on
than someone like marking Mark.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I'm talking like so old he needs a walker.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Greyhall Mansion is a Beverly Hills estate that played Chris
Christofferson's rock Star character's house in the nineteen seventy six
A Star Is Born and hosted Eddie van Halen's wedding
to Valerie Bertinelli. Gray Hall has a secret underground tunnel
that once connected it to pickfair the estate of silent
star super couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Gray Hall
(19:58):
is for sure haunted, and its last famous owner was
Mark R. Hughes, the CEO of Herbal Life, the caffeine
pill supplement multi level marketing scheme. Hughes was found dead
in two thousand if a drug overdose, eerily echoing his mother,
who was addicted to amphetamine diet pills and died from
an overdose of the opioid Darvon. One night, Jennifer Young
(20:20):
drags Heidi to a party at Greyhall Mansion now owned
by a self made entrepreneur named Bernie Cornfeld. Heidi doesn't
really want to go and tells herself she'll just wait
in the car for her friend. But as soon as
Heidi sees the gigantic house, she knows this is where
she belongs.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
One night, I called my friend Jennifer Young to pick
me up and she was like, only if you go
to this party with me. So I said yes, with
no intention of actually getting out of the car whence
we arrived.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
But then we pull up to the house.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
The minute I walked through the front door, I asked
Jennifer who owns this house? And she pointed to Bernie,
who looked like Santa Clause.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And I was thinking, fuck, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Going to live with this guy and life is going
to be easy street. That is how I met Bernie
Coornfeld at his home, Greyhall Mansion.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
It is love at first sight between Heidi and the mansion.
Heidi's lust for luxury, real estate and the finer, more
expensive things in life bonds her to the rich, older
men she likes who like all the same things, and
also young, favacious Jewish women. Bernie Kornfeld is a Romanian
and Russian jew born in Istanbull who moved to Brooklyn
(21:35):
as a child. His first hustle was running an age
and weight guessing stand at Coney Island. Cornfeld was a
social worker then got into mutual funds, starting at a
company called Investors Overseas Service that was a Ponzi scheme
in the late nineteen sixties, whose Switzerland based company ran
a two point five billion dollar mutual fund business out
of one hundred countries. The company collapsed in nineteen sixty
(21:58):
nine when profits fell far short of what was expected,
and in nineteen seventy the investors sued. It was then
revived by New Jersey finance guy Robert Vesco, who allegedly
turned it into a front company for the CIA, until
it collapsed again and ruined a bunch of banks. Cornfeld
was arrested in Switzerland, where iOS was based, and spent
(22:18):
eleven months in a Swiss jail. In nineteen seventy five,
he was also charged with telephone fraud for a scam
where he used a thing called blue boxes to do
what's called phone freaking with a pH and get around
long distance charges. However, he was eventually acquitted in nineteen
seventy nine, which Is when he moved to Beverly Hills,
(22:39):
was still quite a lot of money. After his acquittal,
Cornfeld held court in Beverly Hills for famous friends like
Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis, as well as wealthy businessmen
like Elfred S. Bloomingdale, the heir to the department store
fortune and a close confidant of President Ronald Reagan. Bloomingdale
(22:59):
had a public sex scandal when his mistress, Vicky Morgan,
demanded financial compensation in court for palimony. This embarrassed Bloomingdale,
who was dying of cancer, his wife, and their pals,
the Reagans, Since Vicky Morgan had been doing survival sex
work since falling on hard times. Bloomingdale's lawyers tried to
claim that the arrangement had been entirely sex for hire,
(23:21):
but ultimately awarded her the equivalent of nearly half a
million dollars before she was then shockingly murdered by her roommate,
who had become psychotically obsessed with her. After Vicky Morgan
was murdered, a lawyer named Robert K. Steinberg, who had
considered representing the killer roommate, said he had custody of
sex tapes recovered from Morgan's apartment that showed Vicky Morgan,
(23:46):
Bloomingdale and friends engaging in sadomasochistic sex parties with prominent
members of the Reagan White House. Steinberg claimed he would
destroy the tapes unless the White House told him not to,
and the sex tapes nowed. Now does that mean the
sex tape showing White House officials and compromising positions with
sex workers didn't exist, of course not. Phantom sex tapes
(24:10):
also show up in the story of the Manson family murders.
In telm O'Neill's Chaos, he finds evidence that the cops
confiscated sex tapes from the clo Drive house where Roman
Polanski and Sharon Tate lived, which allegedly depicted the couple
and their famous friends engaging in group sex and SMM scenarios.
In the Ed Sanders book The Family, he also hears
(24:32):
tale of these s and M tapes, as well as
sex and snuff films made by the Manson family. Sanders
actually coins the term snuff film in the book The
Family off the term that he also coins snuff buffs,
in reference to people who show up at the Manson
trial hearing just to gawk the tapes never materialized for Sanders,
(24:55):
although people are always claiming to have them, but that
doesn't mean they didn't exist. The Heidi Fly story also
has some phantom audio tapes. Stories like this, which happen
partially underground are plagued with unprovable but true seeming details.
When sex tapes of the rich and powerful doing things
they are supposedly again surface, like these alleged Reagan White
(25:18):
House sex tapes, they are likely to be buried before
the public ever gets a chance to see them. Anyway,
back to Heidi and Bernie Cornfeld.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
He introduced himself, We talked.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
He offered me a new job, answering phones at twice
the salary I had been making as a waitress.
Speaker 6 (25:41):
We weren't really a couple in that sense.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It's not my thing, but we were good friends.
Speaker 6 (25:47):
We saw a lot of each other.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Bernie Cornfeld businessmen.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
He was always trying to teach me things the god.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
He had a weird way of getting his point across.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Heidi moves into Gray Hall with Bernie immediately. Her parents
are not thrilled. They had still been hoping Heidi would
straighten up and decide to go to college, but they
also know how wilful she can be.
Speaker 7 (26:16):
I didn't approve of that jet, said lifestyle. I was horrified,
and I let her know. Paul flies pediatrician.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
For four years. Bernie is Heidi's sugar daddy, if not
her official boyfriend, because he doesn't believe in such labels. Nevertheless,
he spoils her with the expensive material things she craves,
and she respects his important status. They travel the world
together on his private jet, going to his various properties
and luxury hotels around the globe, from Hotel Xanadu in
(26:51):
the Bahamas to his twelfth century castle in the Swiss
French Alps. She's working as Bernie's assistant for way more
than she made way. She also feels she understands Bernie,
who is clearly overcompensating for a youth where beautiful women
weren't sexually interested in him.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
On my twenty first birthday, he gave me a million
in cash and a cornish okay, he's not exactly tight
with money.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
For a while, everything works beautifully with Heidi and Bernie
traveling the world, sometimes bringing other women in for sex,
until the day Heidi realizes that Bernie is fucking other
women without her, and furthermore that she doesn't want that,
no matter the lifestyle that comes with it. They stay
often at Xanadu, which was built by Howard Hughes and
(27:43):
bought by Cornfeld, who turned it into Timeshares. In the
penthouse of Xana Do, Heidi decides it's over.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
He just couldn't be monogamous and it drove me crazy.
By then, I'm twenty two, and I'm thinking I have
to get out of the sitch situation of having an
older guy that's just beating me to treads mentally.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
And I'm thinking it's all my fault. I'm a loser
and my self esteem is zero.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
We would fight and I would fly to Europe for
one day and he'd call me and say I love you,
and then I'd fly back the next I woke up
one morning in the Howard Hughes penthouse. My view is
the bright blue ocean and the whole world is out there,
and I decide I'm going home. I'm going to go
do something.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Heidi's relationship with Bernie ends peacefully, although she feels heartbroken,
and they remain very close friends until his death. She
looked up to Bernie but also loved his glamorous escapades
and stories about hanging out with his pal Hugh Hefner,
true to her penthouse revelation. After she and Bernie break up,
Heidi decides to try and pursue a real career. She's
(28:54):
twenty three, now done with waitress saying, and eager to
make some real money of her own. She doesn't have
to rely on a rich boyfriend to give her Heidi
decides she wants to be like her sort of friend,
Jen Young's mom, Elaine Young, a realtor who bills herself
as the Realtor to the Stars. Elaine Young is another
(29:15):
LA native whose father worked at Universal Studios as an
art director. She levied herself into the showy world of
LA real estate, selling houses to stars like Elvis Presley,
Burt Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor. She even sells
a house to football star turned pitchman Oj Simpson, a
(29:36):
beautiful house in the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood on Rockingham Drive.
Speaker 7 (29:44):
Never let an opportunity pass you, by, Elaine Young, Realtor
to the Stars.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
You can see how Heidi might have picked up a
few ideas from Jen's realtor to the Stars Mom about
brand building as well. If you bill yourself is catering
to an exclusive client, tell and can get a fish
or two on the line yourself through your own personal connections,
the rest of the exclusive client tele you seek will
start coming to you. So Heidie do is something she
(30:15):
has hardly ever done before. She studies really hard for
an exam the realtor test to get her realtor's license,
and she passes the realtor test and gets a realtor's license.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I was determined to find a career.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I got my real estate license and a job at
a fancy office in Beverly Hills. My first client was
a lawyer from Disney Pictures. After just a few minutes
of conversation with her, I knew right away a condo
she would be interested in, and I showed it to
her and she loved it. And then she turned around
and did the transaction with another broker.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Heidi is frustrated by her lack of instant success in
the real estate business. She loves to gamble, but hates
to lose. She learns another valuable lesson about being cutthroat.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Every profession is competitive.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It doesn't matter if you're a doctor, an architect, or
if you're selling shoes.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It is all the same.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
It comes down to you and how badly you want
it and how hard you are willing to work for it.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Nostalgi de la beaux is a French term I just
learned off Wikipedia that means nostalgia for mud. It means
you have an attraction to low life culture, to the
romance of the gutter. Heidi was clearly drawn to the
sea deier side of La just as much as she
was drawn to the glittering mansions in the hills. She
says as much herself that she was attracted to the
(31:52):
world of sexfice because it was culturally taboo. She understood
the implicit connection between extreme wealth and elite vice. Where
one exists, so does the other, and sometimes these vices gambling,
for example, can be a great equalizer. When Heidi World returns,
(32:16):
Heidi meets lineback producer Yvonne naj Welcome back to Heidi World.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
I came to this country when I was eighteen years
old without a penny in my pocket, and I grew
to become one of the most admired photographers in town.
And I went on to a directing career that got
me to a certain level. You know. So what you
see here is the direct result of the career that
(33:05):
I built in nothing else. Ivan Nage, producer.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I always have this thing when I go to nightclubs
that when the most loser, creepiest guy would ask me
to dance, I would just always say yes. So some
guy that looks like a creep dressed disgusting comes and
asks me to dance one night, and I say yes,
And it happened to be Yvonne Naje.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
One night at Helena's, Heidi meets a Hungarian director named
Yvonne naj Nase is fifty two years old, divorced from
actress Irene Sue, and on the prowl for Heidi. It
is not love at first sight. Unlike Bernie Cornfeld, who
is very rich and well liked by all, Nase is
(33:55):
not particularly rich and a universally loathed all around dirtbag.
He's a Hollywood hanger on. He started out taking photos
of the band Buffalo Springfield ended up in the low
budget B movie world of the nineteen seventies. If you
like Quentin Tarantinos once upon a time in Hollywood, you
(34:15):
are going to love this part, which is about von
Naj's career in Hollywood. Nause's directing career consisted of the
following Bad Charleston Charlie, a nineteen seventy three comedy about
inepte gangsters with a small cameo from David Carrodine. Bad
Charleston Charlie starred and was written by b Movie Studio
Crown International Pictures regular Ross Hagan. Hagan was a Hollywood
(34:38):
lifer who played cowboys in sixties TV westerns like Lancer,
and starred in not one, but three sexploitation movies about
female biker gangs. He plays a Hollywood cowboy in the
nineteen eighty four movie Angel, Robert Vincent O'Neill's nineteen eighty
four cult classic, famous for its video store poster and
tagline high school honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night.
(35:03):
Angel is actually a sympathetic portrayal of sex work and
not a teen sexploitation movie at all. Hagen's final credit
before his twenty ten death was voicing one Last Cowboy
in Red Dead Redemption. Hagan and Naj made a second
feature in nineteen seventy three that they co wrote, called
Pushing Up Daisies about criminals who rob a bank dressed
(35:25):
as nuns. The movie itself was something of a heist.
It was shot on discarded film short ends over seventeen weekends.
In nineteen seventy five, Yvonne Naj directed Deadly Hero, about
a psychotic, trigger happy New York cop vigilante who becomes
a local hero, which came out a year before Paul
(35:46):
Schrader and Martin Scorsese's similarly themed Taxi Driver. Deadly Hero
is very insane and features cameos from Debbie Harry and
Christine of Blondie. In nineteen seventy six, Nase wrote the
story Trackdown, whose story resembles that of another pull Strader joint.
Nineteen seventy nine's hardcore track Down stars James mitchum son
(36:08):
of Robert, as a man trying to track down his
sister who left Montana for Hollywood and was trafficked into
prostitution the tagline what if it was Your sister. Nauj
moved into TV, where he was a journeyman TV director
in the seventies and eighties for shows like Starsky and Hutch, Chips,
and The Hitchhiker. He also directed TV movies like Once
(36:31):
Upon a Spy starring Ted Danson and Christopher Lee, Midnight
Lace with Susan Tyrrell and Blackie Dammit, Father of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Keatis, and a
widely maligned made for TV movie starring Gary Coleman as
a teenage arsonist.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
Von nauj was a less than mediocre director. I could
tell in the first five minutes whether Yvonne had directed it.
He's an enemy of talent Andy Seda, director and friend
of Avon's.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
By the time Heidi meets Yvonne naj in nineteen eighty nine,
directing is no longer his main career. He's now primarily
a sports bookie and drug dealer. But because he straddles
the not so distant worlds of illegal vice and mainstream
Hollywood entertainment, he is welcomed at a spot like Helena's
(37:25):
and Heidi, as we know, is a gambler. While she
is put off by his appearance an entire general vibe,
the revelation that Yvonne is a bookie intrigues her, and
she places a sports bet with him for five hundred dollars.
The next day, she goes to pick up her winnings
and finds Nase on an expensive fifty five foot boat.
(37:48):
The walls of the boat cabin are lined with photographs
of Nause with well known Hollywood playboys and nude women.
Heidi asks, what the fuck happens on this boat and
he laughs at her.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I made a bet with him and I happened to win.
I went straight back to the Bahamas, and Yvonne followed
me there. I did not know he was a lunatic,
not yet.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yvonne Naje and Heidi Flies get into a relationship marked
immediately by emotional and physical abuse. He rapes her over
a gambling dat and she's too fucked up by the
whole experience to report it. She asks Bernie Cornfeld about
Yvonne Naje and he tells her to stay far, far away.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I never thought of him as my boyfriend at the time.
I thought for a while to fend him off, actually,
and I hit my head on a table really hard too,
and then I kept thinking, what do I want to do?
Go home where my sister who just had her final
operation is throwing up and it's my fault.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
And so I spent the night at his house afterwards
and that was it.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yvon Nage also enables Heidie's worst tendencies to gamble and
abuse drugs. Their intersection is a toxic nightmare from the
get go, but they also cannot let go of each other,
and this is where we get into disputed territory. At
some point, Yvonne Nage introduces Heidie Flie to a woman
named Alex Adams, who is, at the time they meet,
(39:23):
the premier madam in Beverly Hills. Alex Adams, known also
as Madame Alex, rules the high end escorting game without
ever leaving the bedroom of her bel air mansion on
Doheeney Drive. For years. Madame Alex conducts business entirely from
her bedroom in one of her trademark lumus, speaking on
(39:44):
the phone to her wealthy and well connected clientele. Alex
had been building her madaming empire in la since the sixties,
and will explain how she did that in episode three.
But by the time Heidi meets her, Alex is in
her fifties and has so several serious health conditions keeping
her confined to bed. Alex had never been a sex
(40:05):
worker herself. She was a managerial type who organized everything
for her employees through her lifeline, the telephone. Nobody seems
to agree on how Heidi and Alex first met. According
to Heidi, she met Alex around town. According to Yvonne Naje,
he quote unquote gave Heidi to Alex to pay off
(40:25):
a gambling debt. However it went down. Heidi and Alex
hit it off instantly. Alex loved to impress people, and
Heidi was genuinely impressed. She was also a fast study
and a teacher's pet, rising in the ranks quickly to
become Madame Alex's favorite. Heidi says she never had sex
with anyone when she worked for Madame Alex. She was
(40:46):
more of an assistant. But Alex differs.
Speaker 7 (40:51):
Yvonne brought Heidi here in nineteen eighty nine. He turned
her out. He made her work for me to pay
off a four hundred and fifty dollars gift bed I said,
why do you want to do this? And he said
I need the four fifty And I said, I thought
you loved her, why do you want to sell her?
It was awful. He's a piece of work, this man.
(41:14):
I can't remember who I sent her to. Jesus, it
was years ago, but I think it was a very
wealthy Texan Madame Alex.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
Obviously I didn't want her to work, and the last
thing I wanted to do was to sell her to Alex.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
That was his job.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
He'd sell people to Alex. Alex had him collect money,
scare girls, do errands, and for this she'd get.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
Him laid and pay him due.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
Why are you bringing me this thing? She was a
five ideal intense.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
When Heiday is twenty two, Alex and Yvonne naj convince
her to go out on a job.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
I got fucked up on drugs, cocaine and kuailubs and
they talked me into having sex with an Arab at
the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for five thousand dollars. He was
so nice he paid me in travelers checks and I
gave two thousand to Yvonne.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
I wasn't scared because I was fucked up.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
While their first meeting may have been a bit strange,
a close connection between Heidi and Madame Alex is forged
over the next year as Heidi starts working for Alex.
Whether or not she continued to do sex work, she
definitely does do assistant work for Alex and shadows her closely,
which helps her learn Alex's business. Heidi says she was
(42:48):
sent on a bad group date to Las Vegas that
made her want to work more behind the scenes. What
is certain is that Heidi started working for Madame Alex
sometime in the late eighties and aggressively sucked up to
her her learning her trade and very specific methodology, but
also becoming her constant companion. Heidi and Alex have a
(43:08):
mutual respect. Heidi respects that Alex is so powerful and rich,
and Alex respects Heidi's street smarts and strong ambition.
Speaker 7 (43:19):
We'd giggle, we'd get bored tonight. We'd call up other
Madams and ask them about girls. They'd think that they
were being taped and freak out.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Alex did not drive. She would call me to take
her on errands when she needed help. I tried to
help her, no matter what time it was. I was
really good about that. Many times Alex called it two
am because she thought someone was on her roof or
ringing her doorbell. And she would also call it dawn
on a Saturday and say, oh, don't you feel like
fresh orchids today? And so I would get up and
(43:49):
drive her twenty minutes the Flower martin downtown LA.
Speaker 7 (43:55):
I was more than good to Heidi. She was so
respectful and I was flattered. She's a freak. Mena fascinated
by freaks. They become obsessed. Heidi is lovable in her
way when she's not being a twat.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Heidi takes Alex everywhere that Alex wants to go to
an art fair where she drops six thousand dollars on
trinkets that Heidi thinks are a bunch of junk. To
Nieman Marcus for expensive chocolates, where all the salespeople know
Alex and she's treated like a queen. Two estate sales
where she overbids on a Salvador Dolly print of dubious
origin that Heidi swears looks just like the museum gift
(44:34):
store posters, to open houses what she likes to walk
through and critique the homes. She also once calls Heidi
for urgent help after getting bit on the labia by
a spider. Madame Alex also uses cocaine in a way
that I have never heard of anyone doing before. She
crushes it up in a kleenex and pretends to blow
her nose but actually inhales In. She thinks it's very
(44:58):
funny to pretend to be an old one with a
cold when she is in fact a madam flying on
blow to show that she is savvy and loyal, Heidi
tells Alex that Yvonne is overcharging her for drugs and
black market plane tickets. Alex claims to be aware but
doesn't confront him, perhaps also showing Heidi that Alex has
(45:19):
some key flaws she may be able to take advantage
of later.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
If they hit you once, then they'll hit you twice.
If they cheat on you once, they will cheat on
you twice.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Heidi Flice and her abusive pseudo boyfriend, Yvonne naj are
breaking up and getting back together every week. Yvonne continues
beating Heidi up and threatening to kill her. She routinely
calls the cops to file complaints against him, but ultimately
withdraws them or the cases are abandoned because the cops
don't prioritize domestic violence complaints, which might have something to
(45:58):
do with the fact that more than a few of
them engage in domestic violence themselves. When Heidi tells Yvonne
she is leaving him for good, he punches her in
the face. She flees to Madame Alex's side, who convinces
her not to call the cops, fearing what Yvonne's wrath
will be like if she does.
Speaker 7 (46:18):
He beat me up once when I was trying to
keep him from hurting Heidi. Poor Heidi didn't deserve Yvonne.
God she was living with a monster.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Heidi stops talking to Yvonne nauj for six months, and
on May twenty third, nineteen eighty nine, she obtains a
restraining order against him. One of Heidi's best friends is
an eighteen year old actress and real estate agent named
(46:52):
Wendy Tar. In nineteen eighty nine, Tar is shot in
the head while showing an apartment in downtown LA during
an attempted Heidi sits by Tar's bedside for three days
while her friend is in a coma, and then dies.
According to Madame Alex, Tard worked as a call girl,
she knew as quote Heidi's friend Bridget, and was trying
(47:14):
to pivot to real estate full time when she was murdered.
Heidi is completely fucked up by all of this. She
feels powerless and like the system is telling her that
her friend's death doesn't matter, so she writes a letter
to a popular TV show called America's Most Wanted. America's
Most Wanted is a show where host John Walsh presents
(47:35):
unsolved cases and asks civilians to keep an eye out
and call in tips. Heidi appears on camera as a
talking head on America's Most Wanted in a segment that
airs February twenty fifth, nineteen ninety, asking the public to
provide information about the murder of her friend. She is
frustrated that the cops are doing nothing and feels like
(47:56):
the platform of being on TV might at least make
the villians look for the killer. The day after the
episode airs, her friend's killer, a paroled rapist felon named
James Edward Knowell, turns himself in and pleads guilty, eventually
receiving a life sentence. From all of this, Heidi Flice
(48:18):
learns a valuable lesson about the power of mass media.
Speaker 5 (48:22):
Fighting broke out overnight, a frustrated opening fire with a.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Next time on Heidi World, enter the world of Heidie's mentor,
Madame Alex as we trace her journey through a Catholic
girlhood in the Philippines. A nineteen fifties marriage in the
American suburbs and a flower shop job at the Ambassador
Hotel that leads her to LA's sexual underground and a
high end escort service in the sixties that blossoms into
(49:03):
a very profitable, notorious business in the seventies and eighties
that leads her to meet a girl named Heidi Flice
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