Yo, Psychic
Is there anybody these days who doesn’t have their own 900 number?
Consider the direct-mail cards arriving in Southland mail boxes advertising “Jacqueline Stallone’s Money Line.”
For $2.95 a minute, callers take a 1-in-36,500 chance to win $1,000 by calling a 900 number for about two minutes, punching in their birth dates and receiving daily horoscopes. The postcards, sent out by the Toluca Lake-based Stallone Astrology Center, call Stallone the “World’s Most Accurate Astrologer” and “America’s No. 1 Astrologer and Psychic.”
The postcard also carries an important endorsement: “Hollywood stars trust her amazing accuracy, you should too.”
No doubt one is son Sylvester Stallone.
Star Role In Bankruptcies
Legend has long had it that the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, site of the first Academy Awards presentation, is haunted by such celebrity ghosts as Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift.
Now it seems the hotel is also jinxed.
Last week’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Japanese firm Maruko Inc., which has been battered by the overall softness in the hotel industry, marks the second time in a little more than two years that the hotel has been linked to a bankruptcy action.
In May, 1989, the hotel, then owned by Hollywood Roosevelt Limited Partnership, filed for Chapter 11 protection.
Reversal of Spelling
Harvard Law School Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz had been making the point lately that he changed his views on former Beverly Hills junk bond executive Michael Milken after taking Milken on as a client and learning more about his case.
That isn’t the only thing Dershowitz has learned about Milken. Correctly spelling his name is another.
In his current best seller, “Chutzpah,” written before Milken hired him, Dershowitz refers to his future client as Michael Milkin.
Briefly. . .
If you missed the recent auction of former Lincoln Savings & Loan office equipment, Panamanian officials are now selling typewriters, desks, chairs and other items formerly owned by the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit & Commerce International. . . . Speaker is a No-Shaw: CNN anchor Bernard Shaw’s much publicized luncheon talk at the annual Orange County Economic Conference last week was scrapped because he was covering the Madrid peace conference, but CNN’s now-famous Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer filled in. . . . Dennis B. Levine, the investment banker whose arrest triggered Wall Street’s insider trading scandal, was served with a lawsuit recently as he left the studio of a Los Angeles radio program where he was promoting his new book. . . . A Salomon Bros. report on banks and the sliding commercial real estate market includes a section titled: “Real Estate Focus--Was California Dreaming?”
