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 (00:00):
Ye Yes. Previously on Heidi World, we met Heidi Flice,
(00:36):
the young brilliant girl who turned her babysitting job into
a successful babysitting ring, and we introduced you to the
Flice family, a close knit brady bunch of Jewish bohemians
in l A's Los Feeless neighborhood, led by patriarch and
beloved local pediatrician, Dr Paul Flice. Welcome Too, High World.
(01:05):
Chapter two, Party Girl on the Sunset Strip. Heidi chase's
thrills instead of stability and finds out there's a whole secret,
underground world of partying for the super rich. At Club
Helena's the nineteen eighties. It's the year 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 I D. Heidi takes on the Los
(01:50):
Angeles 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, the world famous Catouse,
(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, had 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
(02:34):
like Vertigo, 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
(02:57):
location now houses a place that is named the Butcher,
the Baker, and the cappuccino Maker. Craving serves 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 trend setting restaurants, Bago, Cravings is
(03:21):
not only super trendy, it's on the fucking Sunset Strip.
When I was eighteen and nineteen, I got a job
waitressing with a couple of my girlfriends. This is what
I learned from the experience. 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
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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, started stealing from
the register. It was very uncomfortable for me because I
have the look, you know, the look that makes you
(04:04):
the culprit, and all I was trying to do is
be a good waitress. I think that she used Cravings
as a place to get involved in a very fast
running crowd. Shane of Flice. Now, let's stoom out here
and do a little l A history about the Sunset Strip.
(04:27):
Sunset Boulevard is one of l A's major thoroughfares, running
east to west across the city, stretching from downtown l
A all the way to the beach. 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
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it didn't fall under the jurisdiction of the l A
Police Department. In the nineteen twenties, a bunch of casinos
and nightclubs opened on the Strip, offering gambling, which was
legal in l A proper during Prohibition. The places on
the Sunset Strips served booze in back rooms, which brought
in the brand new film industry's hard partying social set,
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including the very first movie stars, forever establishing the Sunset
Strips reputation as a liminal zone for glamorous hard partying.
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
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like Ceros, the Macombo and Cafe Trocadero, which further established
the strip. The Macombo had a tropical theme with glass
cages filled with cockatoos, macaws, and parrots. It hosted Frank
Sinatra's first appearance in l A and an Ella Fitzgerald residency,
personally lobbied for by Marilyn Monroe in a challenge to
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the club's racist performance policy. The Sunset strips high classic
era clubs, which you can see in a lot of
film noirs, have cinematic decor and dreamlike immersiveness set against
the disgusting regular nous of outside. This has taken to
logical extremes in the nineteen fifties with the casino hotels
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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
supper clubs, where gossip columnists were waiting to report their
studio approved hijinks in trade mad columns the next day.
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Like an ancient version of doom Wis, 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 l A people like Mickey Cohen and
Bugsy Seagull. By the sixties, the old supper clubs had
faded and were no longer considered cool. The strip scene
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became dominated by beat nick cafes that stayed open late,
and jazz clubs, most notably coffee shop slash nightclub Pandora's Box.
A new generation of club promoters open rock clubs on
the Strip like the Whiskey Ago Go, attracting young people
to see locally made stars like The Birds, The Doors,
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and Sonny and Share. A band of Laurel Canyon Proto
hippie art weirdos known as Veto 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 but already commodifying California counterculture something to write home about.
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The Sunset Strips 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. Before too long, the police
were brought in, where they proceeded to beat the ship
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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 than the seventies
with the founding of Sunset Strip hotels like the Tropicana
and the Hyatt, which became known as the Riot House
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for its association with Led Zeppelin. This is the Sunset
Strip of Almost Famous, home to the increasingly underage 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
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this is where Heidi Fly finds herself on the strip
at the absolute peak of the nine eighties hair metal years.
Partying on the Sunset Strip is a rite of passage
for locals, transplants, and tourists. Like like any other gold
rush ice town, the strip is always going through booms
and busts. It had yet another wave of popularity recently
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during COVID when it became the place for TikTok influencers
living in mansions in the Hollywood Hills to see and
be seen partying. The TikToker is even repopularized the Old
West theme steakhouse Saddle Ranch, which is most famous from
the Sex and the City episode where they go to
l A and Miranda rides the mechanical bowl. The Sunset
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Strips ongoing reputation a sodom and Gomorrah on Earth is
total catnip for anyone looking to party in l A,
So of course Heidi Flights 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
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the Sunset Strip at these clubs like Motley Crue and
Guns and Roses still hang out there while they're topping
the charts for the US. Look at what the strip
was like in the years Heidi was working and hanging
out there. I recommend Penelope Spirits as the decline of
Western Civilization Part two. The Metal Years in the strip
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is the epicenter of partying and excess, and Heidi Flice
is right there, waitress saying, ready to become part of
it all. Be confident. Body language is very important. You
must have good posture. Speak with a subtle yet sexy attitude,
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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 right manner and a subtle please come
with me attitude. Tell them not to look at you
or stand near you, because all you can do is
(10:57):
think about then. 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 Flight saga. A lot of people
in it our second generation l a residence whose parents
are prominent in the city in some way. Heidi is
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obviously the first example, with her father, the prominent pediatrician.
Jennifer Young's father was an 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
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nineteen sixty nine for Sydney Pollock's new Hollywood period piece
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? About a depression era Dancethon.
He won in nineteen sixty nine for his portrayal of
the Dances MC. He was married five times and was
briefly engaged to Elaine Stretch. His most famous wife I
was Bewitch star Elizabeth Montgomery, who divorced him over his alcoholism.
(12:05):
After losing the nineteen fifty one Oscar, he Young told
Gossip columnist Luella Parsons, so 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
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to alcohol withdrawal. In nineteen seventy six, Young was hired
as the voice of Charlie on Aaron 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
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Young was also a patient of quack psychotherapist Dr Eugene Landy,
best known for treating the Beach Boys Brian Wilson with
his unconventional twy me 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,
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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 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
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very sin Despite being married five times, Jennifer Young was
gig Young's only child, and he denied having fathered her
in court battles over child support, which he lost In
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.
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Three weeks after the wedding, the couple were found dead
in their Manhattan apartment with a diary open that said
we got 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 Dr Eugene Landy. When Heidi World returns,
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Hiety gets to party at l A's hottest nineties club,
Plaine Us. Welcome back to Heidi World, so Heidi pells
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up with Jennifer Young, and the two young waitresses paint
the town read every night. After her work, Jen introduces
Heidi to a new echelon of partying, a more exclusive level.
So far, Heidi has just been clubbing in Hollywood with
the pleas. Jen takes her to a v I P club,
the kind where you have to know someone to get in.
It's a club called Helena's, a nondescript door at Rampart
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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, Angelica Houston, and Harry Dean Stanton. Helena is
his infamous as a club where celebrities openly can do drugs.
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Helena's is run by Helena kalianotis a Greek refugee actress,
belly dancer, and close friend of Jack Nicholson. Jack and
Helena met through his friend Five Easy Pieces screenwriter Carol Eastman,
who brought Jack to the Greek restaurant in the Vallie,
Helena belly danced at. Nicholson, who was not yet a star,
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put Helena an easy rider as a commune dweller, and
had her dance in the Monkeys movie Head, which he wrote.
Callia niots most notable performance is as one half of
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, Blow my mind fame. Callia Niots lived in
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Jack's guest house and acted as his property manager. Angelica
Houston was a regular at Helena's and Jack Nicholson's longtime partner.
She recalls meeting Helena. I met Helena at Jack Nicholson's.
It was the first night I met Jack, about two
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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. Helena first
hosted a popular night at skateland Roller rank in Recita
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with Ed Begley Jr. 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 L. A. P. D. S notorious Rampart Division.
The most famous people Helena turned away from the club
were armstealer Odd Non Koshogi, and once accidentally Prince because
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she thought he was a real prince and she despised
royalty when she realized her tremendous sunk 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 when Helena suffered a serious car accident. While
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she eventually moved out of Jack's back house, Helena, who
is eighty three, is still very close with him and
organized the seventeen memorial for their mutual friend Harry Dean Stanton.
Although Helena says she didn't do any drugs herself, the
spot with the no camera's rule developed a particular reputation.
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Here are some quotes from a Hollywood reporter story about
the club. It was so much fun because that was
the thing to dance Peano Helena's and do drugs. Melanie
Griffith actress, everybody was coked out and getting laid Rita
Wilson actress, Prince on the dance floor, Paul Getty in
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his wheelchair doing circles, Sean Penn punching someone over, Madonna,
people being themselves. It just happened. A bunch were really
famous going to Helena's ups the auntie for Heidi even more.
It raises her expectations for what constitutes fun. She now
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knows there's a whole hidden world of luxurious, even more
limited access partying, and she's completely determined to work her
way in. You can put the best looking twenty two
year olds in front of my face, and it's just like, oh,
to me, an older guy that is educated, affluent, intellectual,
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and worldly is much more of a sexual turn on
than someone like Marky Mark, I'm talking like so old
he needs a walker. Gray Hall Mansion is a Beverly
Hills estate that played Chris Christofferson's Rock Star character's house
in the Star is Born, and hosted Eddie van Halen's
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wedding to Valerie Burton Nelly. 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 is for sure haunted, and its last famous
owner was Mark R. Hughes, the CEO of herbal Life,
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the caffeine pills supplement multi level marketing scheme. Hughes was
found dead in two thousand of 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 drags Hidi to a party at gray Hall Mansion,
now owned by a self made entrepreneur named Bernie Kornfeld.
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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. 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
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of the car once we arrived. But then we pull
up to the house. The minute I walked through the
front door, I asked Jennifer who owns this house? And
she pointed to Bernie, who looked like Santa Pause, and
I was thinking, Fuck, I'm going to live with this guy,
and life is going to be easy street. That is
how I met Bernie Cornfeld at his home, Gray Hall Mansion.
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It is love at first sight between Heidi and the mansion.
Heide'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, vivacious Jewish women. Bernie Cornfeld is a Romanian
and Russian jew born in Istanbul who moved to Brooklyn
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as a child. His first hustle was running an age
and weight guessing stand at Coney Island. Cornfield was a
social worker, then gotten too mutual funds, starting at a
company called Investors Overseas Service that was a Ponzi scheme
in the late nineteen sixties, who Switzerland based company ran
a two point five billion dollar mutual fund business out
of a hundred countries. The company collapsed in nineteen nine
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when prophets fell farsh sort of what was expected, and
in nineteen seventy the investors sued. It was then revived
by New Jersey finance guy Robert Fasco, who allegedly turned
it into a front company for the CIA, until it
collapsed again and ruined a bunch of banks. Cornfield was
arrested in Switzerland, where iOS was based, and spent eleven
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months in a switch 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. Was still
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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 businessman like Alfred S. Bloomingdale,
the heir to the department store fortune and a close
confidante of President Ronald Reagan. Bloomingdale had a public sex
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gandal 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, but ultimately awarded her the equivalent
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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 Morrigan, Bloomingdale, and friends engaging in
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sado masochistic 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 ever appeared. 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 also show
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up in the story of the Manson family murders. In
Tem O'Neill's Chaos, he finds evidence that the cops confiscated
sex tapes from the clo Drive house where Roman Polansky
and Sharon Tate lived, which allegedly depicted the couple and
their famous friends engaging in group sex and S and
M scenarios. In the Ed Sanders book The Family, he
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also hears 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 gawk. The tapes never materialized for Sanders,
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although people are always claiming to have them, But that
doesn't mean they didn't exist. The Heidie Fly story also
has some phantom audio tapes. Stories like this, which happened
partially underground, are plagued with unprovable but true seeming details.
When sex tapes of the rich and powerful doing things
they are supposedly against surface, like these alleged Reagan White
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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. He introduced himself, We talked.
He offered me a new job, answering phones, twice the
salary I had been making as a waitress. We weren't
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really a couple in that sense. It's not my thing,
but we were good friends. We saw a lot of
each other. Bernie cornfelt businessman. He was always trying to
teach me things, but god, he had a weird way
of getting his point across. Heidi moves into Gray Hall
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with Bernie Immediately. Her parents are not thrilled. They had
still been hoping Heidi would straighten up and decided to
go to college, but they also know how wilful she
can be. I didn't approve of that jet set lifestyle.
I was horrified and I let her know Paul Fish,
pediatrician for four years. Bernie is heidi sugar daddy, if
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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 traveled the world
together on his private jet, going to his various properties
and luxury hotels around the globe, from Hotels Zanna Do
in the Bahamas to his twelfth century castle in the
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Swiss French Alps. She's working as Bernie's assistant for way
more than she made way tressing. She also feels she
understands Bernie, who is clearly overcompensating for a youth where
beautiful women weren't sexually interested in him. On my twenty
one birthday, he gave me a million in cash and
a corny sho Okay, he's not exactly tight with money.
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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 Zanna Do, which was built by Howard Hughes
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and bought by Cornfeld, who turned it into Time Shares.
In the penthouse of Zanna Do, Heidi decides it's over.
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 city. Suation of having an
older guy that's just beating me to treads mentally, and
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I'm thinking it's all my fault. I'm a loser in
my self esteem is zero. 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
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I'm going home. I'm gonna go do something. Hidie'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
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her Penthouse Revelation. After she and Bernie break up, Heidi
decides to try and pursue a real career. She's twenty three,
now done with waitress, saying an ear to make some
real money of her own mone she doesn't have to
rely on a rich boyfriend to give her Heidie decides
she wants to be like her sort of friend, Jen
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Young's mom, Elaine Young, a realtor who builds herself as
the Realtor to the Stars. Elaine Young is another l
A native whose father worked at Universal Studios as an
art director. She levied herself into the showy world of
l A real estate, selling houses two stars like Elvis Presley,
Burt Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor. She even sells
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a house to football star turned pitchman O. J. Simpson,
a beautiful house in the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood on
Rockingham Drive. Never let an opportunity pass you. By Ellane Young,
Realtor to the Stars, you can see how Heidi might
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have picked up a few ideas from Jen's Realtor to
the Stars mom about brand building as well. If you
billy yourself as catering to an exclusive clientele and can
get a fish or two on the line yourself. Through
your own personal connections, the rest of the exclusive clientele
you seek will start coming to you. So Hidida is
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something she 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. I was determined to find a career.
I got my real estate license and a job at
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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. Heidi is frustrated
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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 cut throat. Every profession is competitive.
It doesn't matter if you're a doctor and architect or
if you're selling shoes. It is all the same. It
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comes down to you and how badly you want it
and how hard you are willing to work for it.
Nostalgie de la boux 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
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seedier side of l a 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
world of sex vice because it was culturally taboo. She
understood the implicit connection between extreme wealth and elite old vice.
Where one exists, so does the other, and sometimes these
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vices gambling, for example, can be a great equalizer. When
Heidi World returns, Heidi meets Linebag producer Yvonne Najm. Welcome
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back to Heidi World. 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 is certain level, you know.
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So what you see here is the direct result of
the career that I built in nothing else. Evan Nag, producer.
I always had 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
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asked me to dance one night, and I say yes.
It happened to be von Nash. One night at Helena's,
Heidi meets a Hungarian director named Vann Naj. Naj is
fifty two years old, divorced from actress Irene Sue, and
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on the prowl for Heidi. It is not love at
first sight. Unlike Bernie Cornfeld, who is very rich and
well liked by all, Nag is not particularly rich and
a universally loathed all around dirt back. He's a Hollywood
hanger on. He started out taking photos of the band
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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 are going to
love this part, which is about Yvonne Nag's career in Hollywood.
Nag's directing career consisted of the following Bad Charleston Charlie,
a nineteen seventy three comedy about inepted gangsters with a
(34:28):
small cameo from David Karradeen. Bad Charleston Charlie starred and
was written by b movie studio Crown International Pictures regular
Ross Hagan. Hagan was a Hollywood 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
(34:49):
a Hollywood cowboy in the night four movie Angel, Robert
Vincent O'Neil's cult classic, famous for its video store poster
and tagline high school will honor student by day Hollywood
hooker by night. Angel is actually a sympathetic portrayal of
sex work and not a teen sexploitation movie at all.
(35:10):
Hagan's final credit before 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
as nuns. The movie itself was something of a heist.
It was shot on discarded film short ends over seventeen weekends.
(35:34):
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
Strader and Martin scorsese similarly themed Taxi Driver. Deadly Hero
is very insane and features cameos from Debbie Harry and
(35:55):
Christine of Blondie. In nineteen seventy six, Naj wrote the
story or Trackdown, whose story resembles that of another Paul
Strader joint nineteen seventy nine hardcore Trackdown stars James mitchum,
son 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.
(36:19):
Nag moved into TV, where he was a journeyman TV
director in the seventies and eighties for shows like Starski
and Hutch, Chips and The Hitchhiker. He also directed TV
movies like Once Upon a Spy starring Ted Danson and
Christopher Lee, Midnight Lace with Susanne Tyrrell and Blackie Dammit,
father of the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Keatis,
(36:42):
and a widely maligned made for TV movies starring Gary
Coleman as a teenage arsonist. Avant Nage was a less
than mediocre director. I could tell him the first five
minutes whether von had directed it. He's an enemy of
talent Andy Sedara director and friend of Van's. By the
(37:05):
time Heidi meets Van, Nag, 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 and Heidi, as we know, is
(37:28):
a gambler. While she has put off by his appearance
and 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 Nag on an
expensive fifty five foot boat. The walls of the boat
(37:49):
cabin are lined with photographs of naj with well known
Hollywood playboys, and nude women. Heidi asks, what the funk
happens on this boat and he laughs at her. I
made a bet with him and I happened to win.
I went straight back to the Bahamas, and Ivon followed
me there. I did not know he was a lunatic,
(38:12):
not yet. Yvonne Nage and Heidi fly Is get into
a relationship marked immediately by emotional and physical abuse. He
rapes her over a gambling dad, and she's too fucked
up by the whole experience to report it. She asks
Bernie Cornfeld about von Nage and he tells her to
(38:32):
stay far, far away. 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. And so I spent the night
(38:54):
at his house afterwards, and that was it. Yvon Nage
also enables Heidi'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,
(39:17):
Yvonne Nage introduces Heidi Flice to a woman named Alex Adams,
who is, at the time they meet, the premier madam
in Beverly Hills. Alex Adams, known also as Madam Alex,
rules the high end escorting game without ever leaving the
bedroom of her bel air mansion on Doheni Drive. For years.
(39:38):
Madam Alex conducts business entirely from her bedroom in one
of her trademark lumus, speaking on the phone to her
wealthy and well connected clientele. Alex had been building her
madaming empire in l A since the sixties, and we'll
explain how she did that in episode three. But by
the time Heidie meets her, Alex is in her fifties
(39:59):
and has of her all serious health conditions keeping her
confined to bed. Alex had never been a sex 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 von Naj, he
(40:22):
quote unquote gave Heidi to Alex to pay off 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
Madam Alex's favorite. Heidi says she never had sex with
(40:44):
anyone when she worked for Madam Alex. She was more
of an assistant. But Alex dif first Yvonne brought Heidi
here in he turned her out. He made her work
for me to pay off a four dred fifty dollar
gain umbling. But I said, why do you want to
do this? And he said I need the four fifty
(41:05):
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. 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. Obviously,
(41:26):
I didn't want her to work, and the last thing
I wanted to do was to sell her to Alex.
That was his job. He'd sell people to Alex. Alex
had him collect money, scare girls do errands, and for
this she'd get him laid and pay him to why
(41:49):
are you bringing me this thing? She was a five
ideal intense When Heidi twenty two, Matta Alex and Yvonne
Naje convinced her to go out on a job. I
got sucked up on drugs, cocaine and quai ludes and
they talked me into having sex with an Arab at
(42:10):
the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for five thousand dollars. He was
so nice he paid me in traveler's checks and I
gave two thousand to Yvonne. I wasn't scared because I
was fucked up. While their first meeting may have been
a bit strange, a close connection between Heidi and Madam
(42:32):
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 sent on a bad group date
to Las Vegas that made her want to work more
(42:52):
behind the scenes. What is certain is that Heidi started
working from Adam 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 mutual respect. Heidi respects that Alex
is so powerful and rich, and Alex respects heidi street
(43:15):
smarts and strong ambition. We'd giggle, we get bored at night.
We'd call up other madam's and ask them about girls.
They think that they were being taped and freaked out.
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
(43:37):
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
drive her twenty minutes the Flower martin downtown l A.
I was more than good to Heidi. She was so
(43:57):
respectful and I was flattered. She's a freak. Manifascinated by freaks,
they become obsessed. Hidi is lovable in her way when
she's not being a twat. 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
(44:19):
a bunch of junk. To Nieman Marcus for expensive chocolates,
where all the sales people know Alex and she's treated
like a queen. To estate sales, where she overbids on
a Salvador Dolly print of dubious origin that Heidi swears
looks just like the museum gift store posters, to open houses,
which she likes to walk through and critique the homes.
(44:40):
She also once calls Heidi for urgent help after getting
bit on the labia by a spider. Madam 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 funny to pretend to be an
old in with a cold when she is in fact
(45:02):
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 some key flaws she may be
able to take advantage of later. If they hit you once,
(45:27):
then they'll hate you twice. If they cheat on you once,
they will cheat on you twice. Heidi Flice and her
abusive pseudo boyfriend, Yvonne Nage, 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
(45:49):
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 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 Madam
(46:09):
Alex's side, who convinces her not to call the cops,
fearing what Yvonne's wrath will be like if she does.
He beat me up once when I was trying to
keep him from hurting Heidi. Poor Heidie didn't deserve Yvonne.
She was living with a monster. Heidi stops talking to
(46:31):
Yvonne Nag for six months, and on May 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 Wendy Tar. In nine, Tar is shot in
(46:56):
the head while showing an apartment in downtown l A
during an attempted raw berry. Heidi sits by Tar's bedside
for three days while her friend is in a coma
and then dies. According to Madam Alex, Tard worked as
a call girl, she knew as quote Heidi's friend Bridget,
and was trying to pivot to real estate full time
when she was murdered. Heidi is completely fucked up by
(47:19):
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 as a show where
host John Walsh presents unsolved cases and asked civilians to
keep an eye out and call in tips. Heidi appears
(47:41):
on camera as a talking head on America's Most Wanted
in a segment that airs February, asking the public to
provide information about the murder of her friend. She is
frustrated that the cops are doing nothing and feels like
the platform of being on TV might at least makes
villains look for the killer. The day after the episode airs,
(48:04):
her friend's killer, a paroled rapist felon named James Edward Noel,
turns himself in and pleads guilty, eventually receiving a life sentence.
From all of this, Heidi Flice learns a valuable lesson
about the power of mass media. Police are frustrated. Opening
(48:25):
Away next time on Heidi World, enter the world of
Heidi's mentor, Madam Alex as we trace her journey through
(48:48):
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 l a sexual
underground and a high end escort service in the sixties
that blossoms into a very profitable, notorious business in the
seventies and eighties that leads her to meet a girl
(49:11):
named Heidi Flice,
Ye Yes. Previously on Heidi World, we met Heidi Flice,
(00:36):
the young brilliant girl who turned her babysitting job into
a successful babysitting ring, and we introduced you to the
Flice family, a close knit brady bunch of Jewish bohemians
in l A's Los Feeless neighborhood, led by patriarch and
beloved local pediatrician, Dr Paul Flice. Welcome Too, High World.
(01:05):
Chapter two, Party Girl on the Sunset Strip. Heidi chase's
thrills instead of stability and finds out there's a whole secret,
underground world of partying for the super rich. At Club
Helena's the nineteen eighties. It's the year 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 I D. Heidi takes on the Los
(01:50):
Angeles 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, the world famous Catouse,
(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, had 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
(02:34):
like Vertigo, 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
(02:57):
location now houses a place that is named the Butcher,
the Baker, and the cappuccino Maker. Craving serves 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 trend setting restaurants, Bago, Cravings is
(03:21):
not only super trendy, it's on the fucking Sunset Strip.
When I was eighteen and nineteen, I got a job
waitressing with a couple of my girlfriends. This is what
I learned from the experience. 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
(03:43):
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, started stealing from
the register. It was very uncomfortable for me because I
have the look, you know, the look that makes you
(04:04):
the culprit, and all I was trying to do is
be a good waitress. I think that she used Cravings
as a place to get involved in a very fast
running crowd. Shane of Flice. Now, let's stoom out here
and do a little l A history about the Sunset Strip.
(04:27):
Sunset Boulevard is one of l A's major thoroughfares, running
east to west across the city, stretching from downtown l
A all the way to the beach. 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
(04:47):
it didn't fall under the jurisdiction of the l A
Police Department. In the nineteen twenties, a bunch of casinos
and nightclubs opened on the Strip, offering gambling, which was
legal in l A proper during Prohibition. The places on
the Sunset Strips served booze in back rooms, which brought
in the brand new film industry's hard partying social set,
(05:10):
including the very first movie stars, forever establishing the Sunset
Strips reputation as a liminal zone for glamorous hard partying.
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
(05:33):
like Ceros, the Macombo and Cafe Trocadero, which further established
the strip. The Macombo had a tropical theme with glass
cages filled with cockatoos, macaws, and parrots. It hosted Frank
Sinatra's first appearance in l A and an Ella Fitzgerald residency,
personally lobbied for by Marilyn Monroe in a challenge to
(05:54):
the club's racist performance policy. The Sunset strips high classic
era clubs, which you can see in a lot of
film noirs, have cinematic decor and dreamlike immersiveness set against
the disgusting regular nous of outside. This has taken to
logical extremes in the nineteen fifties with the casino hotels
(06:15):
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
supper clubs, where gossip columnists were waiting to report their
studio approved hijinks in trade mad columns the next day.
(06:38):
Like an ancient version of doom Wis, 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 l A people like Mickey Cohen and
Bugsy Seagull. By the sixties, the old supper clubs had
faded and were no longer considered cool. The strip scene
(06:59):
became dominated by beat nick cafes that stayed open late,
and jazz clubs, most notably coffee shop slash nightclub Pandora's Box.
A new generation of club promoters open rock clubs on
the Strip like the Whiskey Ago Go, attracting young people
to see locally made stars like The Birds, The Doors,
(07:19):
and Sonny and Share. A band of Laurel Canyon Proto
hippie art weirdos known as Veto 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 but already commodifying California counterculture something to write home about.
(07:43):
The Sunset Strips 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. Before too long, the police
were brought in, where they proceeded to beat the ship
(08:03):
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 than the seventies
with the founding of Sunset Strip hotels like the Tropicana
and the Hyatt, which became known as the Riot House
(08:24):
for its association with Led Zeppelin. This is the Sunset
Strip of Almost Famous, home to the increasingly underage 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
(08:45):
this is where Heidi Fly finds herself on the strip
at the absolute peak of the nine eighties hair metal years.
Partying on the Sunset Strip is a rite of passage
for locals, transplants, and tourists. Like like any other gold
rush ice town, the strip is always going through booms
and busts. It had yet another wave of popularity recently
(09:06):
during COVID when it became the place for TikTok influencers
living in mansions in the Hollywood Hills to see and
be seen partying. The TikToker is even repopularized the Old
West theme steakhouse Saddle Ranch, which is most famous from
the Sex and the City episode where they go to
l A and Miranda rides the mechanical bowl. The Sunset
(09:31):
Strips ongoing reputation a sodom and Gomorrah on Earth is
total catnip for anyone looking to party in l A,
So of course Heidi Flights 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
(09:51):
the Sunset Strip at these clubs like Motley Crue and
Guns and Roses still hang out there while they're topping
the charts for the US. Look at what the strip
was like in the years Heidi was working and hanging
out there. I recommend Penelope Spirits as the decline of
Western Civilization Part two. The Metal Years in the strip
(10:12):
is the epicenter of partying and excess, and Heidi Flice
is right there, waitress saying, ready to become part of
it all. Be confident. Body language is very important. You
must have good posture. Speak with a subtle yet sexy attitude,
(10:36):
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 right manner and a subtle please come
with me attitude. Tell them not to look at you
or stand near you, because all you can do is
(10:57):
think about then. 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 Flight saga. A lot of people
in it our second generation l a residence whose parents
are prominent in the city in some way. Heidi is
(11:18):
obviously the first example, with her father, the prominent pediatrician.
Jennifer Young's father was an 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
(11:41):
nineteen sixty nine for Sydney Pollock's new Hollywood period piece
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? About a depression era Dancethon.
He won in nineteen sixty nine for his portrayal of
the Dances MC. He was married five times and was
briefly engaged to Elaine Stretch. His most famous wife I
was Bewitch star Elizabeth Montgomery, who divorced him over his alcoholism.
(12:05):
After losing the nineteen fifty one Oscar, he Young told
Gossip columnist Luella Parsons, so 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
(12:27):
to alcohol withdrawal. In nineteen seventy six, Young was hired
as the voice of Charlie on Aaron 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
(12:49):
Young was also a patient of quack psychotherapist Dr Eugene Landy,
best known for treating the Beach Boys Brian Wilson with
his unconventional twy me 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,
(13:09):
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 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
(13:34):
very sin Despite being married five times, Jennifer Young was
gig Young's only child, and he denied having fathered her
in court battles over child support, which he lost In
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.
(13:58):
Three weeks after the wedding, the couple were found dead
in their Manhattan apartment with a diary open that said
we got 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 Dr Eugene Landy. When Heidi World returns,
(14:26):
Hiety gets to party at l A's hottest nineties club,
Plaine Us. Welcome back to Heidi World, so Heidi pells
(14:56):
up with Jennifer Young, and the two young waitresses paint
the town read every night. After her work, Jen introduces
Heidi to a new echelon of partying, a more exclusive level.
So far, Heidi has just been clubbing in Hollywood with
the pleas. Jen takes her to a v I P club,
the kind where you have to know someone to get in.
It's a club called Helena's, a nondescript door at Rampart
(15:19):
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, Angelica Houston, and Harry Dean Stanton. Helena is
his infamous as a club where celebrities openly can do drugs.
(15:42):
Helena's is run by Helena kalianotis a Greek refugee actress,
belly dancer, and close friend of Jack Nicholson. Jack and
Helena met through his friend Five Easy Pieces screenwriter Carol Eastman,
who brought Jack to the Greek restaurant in the Vallie,
Helena belly danced at. Nicholson, who was not yet a star,
(16:04):
put Helena an easy rider as a commune dweller, and
had her dance in the Monkeys movie Head, which he wrote.
Callia niots most notable performance is as one half of
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, Blow my mind fame. Callia Niots lived in
(16:27):
Jack's guest house and acted as his property manager. Angelica
Houston was a regular at Helena's and Jack Nicholson's longtime partner.
She recalls meeting Helena. I met Helena at Jack Nicholson's.
It was the first night I met Jack, about two
(16:47):
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. Helena first
hosted a popular night at skateland Roller rank in Recita
(17:10):
with Ed Begley Jr. 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 L. A. P. D. S notorious Rampart Division.
The most famous people Helena turned away from the club
were armstealer Odd Non Koshogi, and once accidentally Prince because
(17:33):
she thought he was a real prince and she despised
royalty when she realized her tremendous sunk 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 when Helena suffered a serious car accident. While
(17:54):
she eventually moved out of Jack's back house, Helena, who
is eighty three, is still very close with him and
organized the seventeen memorial for their mutual friend Harry Dean Stanton.
Although Helena says she didn't do any drugs herself, the
spot with the no camera's rule developed a particular reputation.
(18:14):
Here are some quotes from a Hollywood reporter story about
the club. It was so much fun because that was
the thing to dance Peano Helena's and do drugs. Melanie
Griffith actress, everybody was coked out and getting laid Rita
Wilson actress, Prince on the dance floor, Paul Getty in
(18:39):
his wheelchair doing circles, Sean Penn punching someone over, Madonna,
people being themselves. It just happened. A bunch were really
famous going to Helena's ups the auntie for Heidi even more.
It raises her expectations for what constitutes fun. She now
(18:59):
knows there's a whole hidden world of luxurious, even more
limited access partying, and she's completely determined to work her
way in. You can put the best looking twenty two
year olds in front of my face, and it's just like, oh,
to me, an older guy that is educated, affluent, intellectual,
(19:22):
and worldly is much more of a sexual turn on
than someone like Marky Mark, I'm talking like so old
he needs a walker. Gray Hall Mansion is a Beverly
Hills estate that played Chris Christofferson's Rock Star character's house
in the Star is Born, and hosted Eddie van Halen's
(19:44):
wedding to Valerie Burton Nelly. 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 is for sure haunted, and its last famous
owner was Mark R. Hughes, the CEO of herbal Life,
(20:05):
the caffeine pills supplement multi level marketing scheme. Hughes was
found dead in two thousand of 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 drags Hidi to a party at gray Hall Mansion,
now owned by a self made entrepreneur named Bernie Kornfeld.
(20:27):
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. 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
(20:48):
of the car once we arrived. But then we pull
up to the house. The minute I walked through the
front door, I asked Jennifer who owns this house? And
she pointed to Bernie, who looked like Santa Pause, and
I was thinking, Fuck, I'm going to live with this guy,
and life is going to be easy street. That is
how I met Bernie Cornfeld at his home, Gray Hall Mansion.
(21:13):
It is love at first sight between Heidi and the mansion.
Heide'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, vivacious Jewish women. Bernie Cornfeld is a Romanian
and Russian jew born in Istanbul who moved to Brooklyn
(21:35):
as a child. His first hustle was running an age
and weight guessing stand at Coney Island. Cornfield was a
social worker, then gotten too mutual funds, starting at a
company called Investors Overseas Service that was a Ponzi scheme
in the late nineteen sixties, who Switzerland based company ran
a two point five billion dollar mutual fund business out
of a hundred countries. The company collapsed in nineteen nine
(21:58):
when prophets fell farsh sort of what was expected, and
in nineteen seventy the investors sued. It was then revived
by New Jersey finance guy Robert Fasco, who allegedly turned
it into a front company for the CIA, until it
collapsed again and ruined a bunch of banks. Cornfield was
arrested in Switzerland, where iOS was based, and spent eleven
(22:19):
months in a switch 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. Was still
(22:39):
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 businessman like Alfred S. Bloomingdale,
the heir to the department store fortune and a close
confidante of President Ronald Reagan. Bloomingdale had a public sex
(23:00):
gandal 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, but ultimately awarded her the equivalent
(23:24):
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 Morrigan, Bloomingdale, and friends engaging in
(23:48):
sado masochistic 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 ever appeared. 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 also show
(24:10):
up in the story of the Manson family murders. In
Tem O'Neill's Chaos, he finds evidence that the cops confiscated
sex tapes from the clo Drive house where Roman Polansky
and Sharon Tate lived, which allegedly depicted the couple and
their famous friends engaging in group sex and S and
M scenarios. In the Ed Sanders book The Family, he
(24:32):
also hears 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 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 Heidie Fly story also
has some phantom audio tapes. Stories like this, which happened
partially underground, are plagued with unprovable but true seeming details.
When sex tapes of the rich and powerful doing things
they are supposedly against 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. He introduced himself, We talked.
He offered me a new job, answering phones, twice the
salary I had been making as a waitress. We weren't
(25:42):
really a couple in that sense. It's not my thing,
but we were good friends. We saw a lot of
each other. Bernie cornfelt businessman. He was always trying to
teach me things, but god, he had a weird way
of getting his point across. Heidi moves into Gray Hall
(26:04):
with Bernie Immediately. Her parents are not thrilled. They had
still been hoping Heidi would straighten up and decided to
go to college, but they also know how wilful she
can be. I didn't approve of that jet set lifestyle.
I was horrified and I let her know Paul Fish,
pediatrician for four years. Bernie is heidi sugar daddy, if
(26:31):
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 traveled the world
together on his private jet, going to his various properties
and luxury hotels around the globe, from Hotels Zanna Do
in the Bahamas to his twelfth century castle in the
(26:54):
Swiss French Alps. She's working as Bernie's assistant for way
more than she made way tressing. She also feels she
understands Bernie, who is clearly overcompensating for a youth where
beautiful women weren't sexually interested in him. On my twenty
one birthday, he gave me a million in cash and
a corny sho Okay, he's not exactly tight with money.
(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 Zanna Do, which was built by Howard Hughes
(27:43):
and bought by Cornfeld, who turned it into Time Shares.
In the penthouse of Zanna Do, Heidi decides it's over.
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 city. Suation of having an
older guy that's just beating me to treads mentally, and
(28:04):
I'm thinking it's all my fault. I'm a loser in
my self esteem is zero. 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
(28:25):
I'm going home. I'm gonna go do something. Hidie'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
(28:47):
her Penthouse Revelation. After she and Bernie break up, Heidi
decides to try and pursue a real career. She's twenty three,
now done with waitress, saying an ear to make some
real money of her own mone she doesn't have to
rely on a rich boyfriend to give her Heidie decides
she wants to be like her sort of friend, Jen
(29:07):
Young's mom, Elaine Young, a realtor who builds herself as
the Realtor to the Stars. Elaine Young is another l
A native whose father worked at Universal Studios as an
art director. She levied herself into the showy world of
l A real estate, selling houses two stars like Elvis Presley,
Burt Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, and Elizabeth Taylor. She even sells
(29:31):
a house to football star turned pitchman O. J. Simpson,
a beautiful house in the upscale neighborhood of Brentwood on
Rockingham Drive. Never let an opportunity pass you. By Ellane Young,
Realtor to the Stars, you can see how Heidi might
(29:54):
have picked up a few ideas from Jen's Realtor to
the Stars mom about brand building as well. If you
billy yourself as catering to an exclusive clientele and can
get a fish or two on the line yourself. Through
your own personal connections, the rest of the exclusive clientele
you seek will start coming to you. So Hidida is
(30:15):
something she 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. I was determined to find a career.
I got my real estate license and a job at
(30:36):
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. Heidi is frustrated
(31:00):
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 cut throat. Every profession is competitive.
It doesn't matter if you're a doctor and architect or
if you're selling shoes. It is all the same. It
(31:20):
comes down to you and how badly you want it
and how hard you are willing to work for it.
Nostalgie de la boux 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
(31:43):
seedier side of l a 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
world of sex vice because it was culturally taboo. She
understood the implicit connection between extreme wealth and elite old vice.
Where one exists, so does the other, and sometimes these
(32:05):
vices gambling, for example, can be a great equalizer. When
Heidi World returns, Heidi meets Linebag producer Yvonne Najm. Welcome
(32:38):
back to Heidi World. 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 is certain level, you know.
(33:01):
So what you see here is the direct result of
the career that I built in nothing else. Evan Nag, producer.
I always had 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
(33:24):
asked me to dance one night, and I say yes.
It happened to be von Nash. One night at Helena's,
Heidi meets a Hungarian director named Vann Naj. Naj is
fifty two years old, divorced from actress Irene Sue, and
(33:44):
on the prowl for Heidi. It is not love at
first sight. Unlike Bernie Cornfeld, who is very rich and
well liked by all, Nag is not particularly rich and
a universally loathed all around dirt back. He's a Hollywood
hanger on. He started out taking photos of the band
(34:05):
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 are going to
love this part, which is about Yvonne Nag's career in Hollywood.
Nag's directing career consisted of the following Bad Charleston Charlie,
a nineteen seventy three comedy about inepted gangsters with a
(34:28):
small cameo from David Karradeen. Bad Charleston Charlie starred and
was written by b movie studio Crown International Pictures regular
Ross Hagan. Hagan was a Hollywood 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
(34:49):
a Hollywood cowboy in the night four movie Angel, Robert
Vincent O'Neil's cult classic, famous for its video store poster
and tagline high school will honor student by day Hollywood
hooker by night. Angel is actually a sympathetic portrayal of
sex work and not a teen sexploitation movie at all.
(35:10):
Hagan's final credit before 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
as nuns. The movie itself was something of a heist.
It was shot on discarded film short ends over seventeen weekends.
(35:34):
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
Strader and Martin scorsese similarly themed Taxi Driver. Deadly Hero
is very insane and features cameos from Debbie Harry and
(35:55):
Christine of Blondie. In nineteen seventy six, Naj wrote the
story or Trackdown, whose story resembles that of another Paul
Strader joint nineteen seventy nine hardcore Trackdown stars James mitchum,
son 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.
(36:19):
Nag moved into TV, where he was a journeyman TV
director in the seventies and eighties for shows like Starski
and Hutch, Chips and The Hitchhiker. He also directed TV
movies like Once Upon a Spy starring Ted Danson and
Christopher Lee, Midnight Lace with Susanne Tyrrell and Blackie Dammit,
father of the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Keatis,
(36:42):
and a widely maligned made for TV movies starring Gary
Coleman as a teenage arsonist. Avant Nage was a less
than mediocre director. I could tell him the first five
minutes whether von had directed it. He's an enemy of
talent Andy Sedara director and friend of Van's. By the
(37:05):
time Heidi meets Van, Nag, 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 and Heidi, as we know, is
(37:28):
a gambler. While she has put off by his appearance
and 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 Nag on an
expensive fifty five foot boat. The walls of the boat
(37:49):
cabin are lined with photographs of naj with well known
Hollywood playboys, and nude women. Heidi asks, what the funk
happens on this boat and he laughs at her. I
made a bet with him and I happened to win.
I went straight back to the Bahamas, and Ivon followed
me there. I did not know he was a lunatic,
(38:12):
not yet. Yvonne Nage and Heidi fly Is get into
a relationship marked immediately by emotional and physical abuse. He
rapes her over a gambling dad, and she's too fucked
up by the whole experience to report it. She asks
Bernie Cornfeld about von Nage and he tells her to
(38:32):
stay far, far away. 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. And so I spent the night
(38:54):
at his house afterwards, and that was it. Yvon Nage
also enables Heidi'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,
(39:17):
Yvonne Nage introduces Heidi Flice to a woman named Alex Adams,
who is, at the time they meet, the premier madam
in Beverly Hills. Alex Adams, known also as Madam Alex,
rules the high end escorting game without ever leaving the
bedroom of her bel air mansion on Doheni Drive. For years.
(39:38):
Madam Alex conducts business entirely from her bedroom in one
of her trademark lumus, speaking on the phone to her
wealthy and well connected clientele. Alex had been building her
madaming empire in l A since the sixties, and we'll
explain how she did that in episode three. But by
the time Heidie meets her, Alex is in her fifties
(39:59):
and has of her all serious health conditions keeping her
confined to bed. Alex had never been a sex 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 von Naj, he
(40:22):
quote unquote gave Heidi to Alex to pay off 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
Madam Alex's favorite. Heidi says she never had sex with
(40:44):
anyone when she worked for Madam Alex. She was more
of an assistant. But Alex dif first Yvonne brought Heidi
here in he turned her out. He made her work
for me to pay off a four dred fifty dollar
gain umbling. But I said, why do you want to
do this? And he said I need the four fifty
(41:05):
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. 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. Obviously,
(41:26):
I didn't want her to work, and the last thing
I wanted to do was to sell her to Alex.
That was his job. He'd sell people to Alex. Alex
had him collect money, scare girls do errands, and for
this she'd get him laid and pay him to why
(41:49):
are you bringing me this thing? She was a five
ideal intense When Heidi twenty two, Matta Alex and Yvonne
Naje convinced her to go out on a job. I
got sucked up on drugs, cocaine and quai ludes and
they talked me into having sex with an Arab at
(42:10):
the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for five thousand dollars. He was
so nice he paid me in traveler's checks and I
gave two thousand to Yvonne. I wasn't scared because I
was fucked up. While their first meeting may have been
a bit strange, a close connection between Heidi and Madam
(42:32):
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 sent on a bad group date
to Las Vegas that made her want to work more
(42:52):
behind the scenes. What is certain is that Heidi started
working from Adam 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 mutual respect. Heidi respects that Alex
is so powerful and rich, and Alex respects heidi street
(43:15):
smarts and strong ambition. We'd giggle, we get bored at night.
We'd call up other madam's and ask them about girls.
They think that they were being taped and freaked out.
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
(43:37):
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
drive her twenty minutes the Flower martin downtown l A.
I was more than good to Heidi. She was so
(43:57):
respectful and I was flattered. She's a freak. Manifascinated by freaks,
they become obsessed. Hidi is lovable in her way when
she's not being a twat. 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
(44:19):
a bunch of junk. To Nieman Marcus for expensive chocolates,
where all the sales people know Alex and she's treated
like a queen. To estate sales, where she overbids on
a Salvador Dolly print of dubious origin that Heidi swears
looks just like the museum gift store posters, to open houses,
which she likes to walk through and critique the homes.
(44:40):
She also once calls Heidi for urgent help after getting
bit on the labia by a spider. Madam 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 funny to pretend to be an
old in with a cold when she is in fact
(45:02):
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 some key flaws she may be
able to take advantage of later. If they hit you once,
(45:27):
then they'll hate you twice. If they cheat on you once,
they will cheat on you twice. Heidi Flice and her
abusive pseudo boyfriend, Yvonne Nage, 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
(45:49):
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 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 Madam
(46:09):
Alex's side, who convinces her not to call the cops,
fearing what Yvonne's wrath will be like if she does.
He beat me up once when I was trying to
keep him from hurting Heidi. Poor Heidie didn't deserve Yvonne.
She was living with a monster. Heidi stops talking to
(46:31):
Yvonne Nag for six months, and on May 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 Wendy Tar. In nine, Tar is shot in
(46:56):
the head while showing an apartment in downtown l A
during an attempted raw berry. Heidi sits by Tar's bedside
for three days while her friend is in a coma
and then dies. According to Madam Alex, Tard worked as
a call girl, she knew as quote Heidi's friend Bridget,
and was trying to pivot to real estate full time
when she was murdered. Heidi is completely fucked up by
(47:19):
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 as a show where
host John Walsh presents unsolved cases and asked civilians to
keep an eye out and call in tips. Heidi appears
(47:41):
on camera as a talking head on America's Most Wanted
in a segment that airs February, asking the public to
provide information about the murder of her friend. She is
frustrated that the cops are doing nothing and feels like
the platform of being on TV might at least makes
villains look for the killer. The day after the episode airs,
(48:04):
her friend's killer, a paroled rapist felon named James Edward Noel,
turns himself in and pleads guilty, eventually receiving a life sentence.
From all of this, Heidi Flice learns a valuable lesson
about the power of mass media. Police are frustrated. Opening
(48:25):
Away next time on Heidi World, enter the world of
Heidi's mentor, Madam Alex as we trace her journey through
(48:48):
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 l a sexual
underground and a high end escort service in the sixties
that blossoms into a very profitable, notorious business in the
seventies and eighties that leads her to meet a girl
(49:11):
named Heidi Flice,
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