Michael and Marjorie Fasman: Two of a Kind

Nothing that out of the ordinary here--the gracious house in Beverly Hills, the attractive couple inside discussing the community activities they are involved in and the upcoming dinner in their honor being given by one of their favorite charities. Marjorie Fasman, seated in a room with her own gorgeous floral arrangements, was going on about making the centerpieces for the occasion, saying she guessed flowers and centerpieces were “her thing.” She was always making them for some function, one following another. Michael Fasman agreed, saying that their three-car garage had yet to see a car--it was nothing more than her warehouse.

And so on. Marjorie Fasman can go on at length about her creations. Time to show one off.

“I must show you the one I call the military-industrial complex.”

So much for the ordinary, a word that describes neither the centerpieces nor the Fasmans.

“The military-industrial complex” was upstairs in a bedroom-turned studio. It is a startling-looking framework of broken slats on which are placed stacks of tiny gold bars and coins, rockets shooting off and a herd of pigs upended into a trough.

It, along with “Think Peace,” “Xanadu,” “High Rise,” “Fast Track,” “Hot Tub,” and other visual comments on the contemporary scene will be among the 50 pieces she has made for tables at Sunday’s Venice Art Walk dinner in their honor at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. It’s a fund-raising event for the Venice Family Clinic, a free primary health care facility, and includes a daylong gallery tour and silent auction followed by the dinner.

“Usually I’m not political when it’s a public function. I did a centerpiece during Watergate that I called the Richard M. Nixon Shredding Machine. It had the Constitution and the Bill of Rights going in one end and coming out confetti. But that was for a private dinner party. The Art Walk pieces come close to being political, I suppose.”

The Fasmans have long been supporters of the clinic. They helped form the Silver Circle of $1,000 minimum annual donors and she has been on the Art Walk planning committee since its inception six years ago. They are being honored for that support, Millie Loeb, the clinic’s development director, said recently, but beyond that for more than 40 years of service to the entire community.

Being honored is a first for them, the Fasmans said. They are usually in on the planning for someone else’s honored occasion and they are particularly pleased it is the clinic that has singled them out.

The clinic appeals to them, they said, for what Marjorie called its sweetness and dedication, and for the fact it never fails to treat people with dignity.

“I am horrified by the way poor people are being made to seem the enemy today,” she said.

Are Marjorie and Michael Fasman active in the community or are they community activists? A little of both, perhaps.

They are not ostentatious people but their wealth is apparent--in the artwork and special treasured objects of their home, in the rarefied traveling they have done in Africa and Asia, in the elegance of their clothes, hers especially, in something about their bearing. They are a handsome couple who both look much younger than their years. She is 69 (“and I haven’t had my face done”) and he is 76. She is the perfectly groomed lady. Her manner is ladylike also, but with a good deal of flair. She seems to pick and choose the conventions she observes, and enjoys the shock value of going against others. He is a gentleman, self-assured, considerate and relaxed.

They belong to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club and Hillcrest Country Club, and frequent the tennis club often, the country club seldom. The word liberal is still an honorable one to them and they describe themselves as such with no apologies.

Much of their work has been in the peace movement. She helped found Intermedia, a group to help peace activists reach the public through the media. It is now defunct “because others were doing a bigger job.” They have both worked for the bilateral nuclear freeze initiative and for voter registration. They belong to the Thursday Night Group, support Physicians for Social Responsibility, have already contributed to the new Pro Peace movement that plans to march across the country next year.

Their other public service is extensive and more indicative of wealth and social status. They are on the board of the Hereditary Disease Foundation. Michael, an attorney, is active in bar associations, and is on the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council, supports Democratic politics financially, is a founder of the Maple Center (a drug control and counseling program in Beverly Hills) and is active in the Jewish Welfare Fund.

She is a founding member of the UCLA Medical Center Auxiliary, on the board of the Los Angeles Conservancy, KCET Women’s Council, and serves on the City of Beverly Hills Greystone Commission. She has been with the Los Angeles Ballet, the Junior Arts Center, the Women’s Committee of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. And so on.

They who have arrived. And not yesterday.

Marjorie Fasman arrived early on in life. She is the daughter of Sol Lesser, one of Hollywood’s legendary producers, who among other films such as “Kon Tiki” and “Our Town,” made seven Tarzan movies. She describes her parents’ influence on her as profound. She clearly adored the man she calls “my dad,” but found his approval hard to get. Her mother, whom she calls, with a mixture of admiration and disquiet, “an absolutely perfect lady,” was quiet and powerful but “could not cope with being Mrs. Sol Lesser, so she took to her bed. We didn’t have the term ‘passive aggressive’ then. . . . She became a really wonderful lady in her later years.”

A Hoydenish Girl

Marjorie Lesser’s girlhood was one of exclusive schools where she made up for her insecurity, she said, by acting “hoydenish”--her mother’s word for it. Boarding school was “an exile” and she was “a miserable little girl who played lots of tricks.”

She was raised, she said, to assume an influential position in society. She dropped out of college, married Morris Pfaelzer II, had two daughters, and began assuming her position in society, which meant she began a serious commitment to volunteer work, for the Community Chest and with UCLA’s University Religious Conference.

The only paid job she ever had, she said, was when her husband was in the Navy during the war. Her father hired her, “and anyone who knew him will tell you it was not out of nepotism” to work on two Tarzan scripts for which she got screen credits.

It never occurred to her to turn that into a career. She talks about her career seriously, and by it she means volunteerism. Women of her class did not work for money. There was something wrong about accepting money for what one did.

She seems to approach the causes she works for with a mixture of noblesse oblige and gut reaction to social problems. And she seems as serious about the fund-raising events she has been involved in, as she is the causes they benefit. It is important to her they be done right and that people have fun.

“I rarely take a presidency,” she said of her involvements. “I prefer chairmanships, doing something that’s very intensely focused.” She likes doing the Art Walk, she said, because it involves both caring for people and art. “I don’t think a world without art is one I’d want to live in.”

The religious conference consisted of ground-breaking ecumenical panels that “talked of religious differences in the United States and got people to understand what democracy was about. Later, we also expanded to include blacks and Mexican Americans. We wound up going all over Southern California. I like to think we made an impact.”

Her husband told her she was doing the work of a professional and not getting paid. It was time to quit. So she did. After 20 years, she was divorced from Pfaelzer (who has since died), and says of the marriage, “it was apparently highly traumatic the whole time.”

Marjorie Fasman has a breezy way of delivering an observation like that. It is no tell-all revelation that invites familiarity. She maintains the same cordial reserve and honesty with which she has been describing the facts of her life, offers no explanations and moves on.

She had been divorced just six months when she met Michael Fasman in 1960.

Fasman was a successful real estate and business lawyer by then. His childhood had been the opposite of hers. He grew up in Chicago, working from the time he was 12, finishing school as quickly as possible, earning a law degree at 22. He was a widower with two daughters at the time he met Marjorie.

“She was a pickup,” he is delighted and amused to say. She and an escort entered an outdoor restaurant in Beverly Hills where he was having lunch with his partner. There was a brief humorous exchange as she fought her way past his umbrella table.

He wrote a message on his business card and gave it to the waitress: “I notice you’re not wearing a wedding band. May I call you?” She wrote back: “You may call if you are not married.”

After their first date he went home and told his daughter, “I’m going to marry that gal.”

She resisted. She was learning how to be independent. She refused his invitation to attend John Kennedy’s inauguration in Washington--it implied too much commitment. Later, at a concert with another man who wanted to marry her, she realized how ridiculous it was not to be with Michael. She felt right with him. He was the first person she had ever known who made her feel completely comfortable and good about herself. They were married March 30, 1961.

The Perfect Match

They seem the perfect match. She describes herself as “not politically astute,” which is clearly not so. What she really means, she went on to say in so many words, is that she cannot always be counted on to keep her mouth shut. She uses “hot words,” she said. She spouts off. She lacks tact.

He fondly describes all that as Marjorie’s “always being out front.”

Be it peace or social justice or the arts, they are in accord in their beliefs, he said.

“I feel the same way. I have to keep calm to keep her from going off the deep end. I back her. The only place where we ever differ is when she gets rabid about her fear of the bomb, as if it’s going to happen next week. I have to kibosh her.”

Although they are not conventionally religious people, she said she believes their values stem from the fact they are deeply religious, in that “we truly believe in the sanctity of life. . . .

“What surprises me,” she said, “is that the people who have more and more seem less content and more afraid. I’m shocked that people with wealth are acting so sullen and besieged. It (wealth) should bring out something positive. They should be happy with what they have and share it.”