The Heidi Chronicles : Tinseltown’s Gossip Mills Shift Into Overdrive With Rumors About Alleged Madam to the Stars

Famed publicist to the stars Lee Solters took an urgent phone call from New York City. Please share the intimate details, the caller implored, and for heaven’s sake don’t leave out the names!

Producer Amanda Goodwin staked out her usual breakfast spot at trendy Hugo’s on Santa Monica Boulevard. But she happily tossed business aside to gossip with a friend about the not-so-usual topic of whoring in Hollywood.

“It is like a steamroller,” Goodwin said over cappuccino and a cranberry muffin. “Once people start talking about it, everyone has to get a part of it.”

Most summer movies have come and gone, but the dog days of August in Hollywood have suddenly come alive thanks to the wondrous spectacle surrounding a green-eyed brunette named Heidi Fleiss, the accused madam to the stars.

Sex scandals, like most everything in Hollywood, have a short shelf life, and no one suggests that this one will be any different. But for the moment, Fleiss excites, vexes, antagonizes, entertains, terrifies and beguiles a town that loves nothing more than a good show with a steamy story line.

Feminists have protested her arrest, comedians have exploited it, and some of the industry’s most powerful have sweated it. Even the alleged madam’s name, up to now synonymous with an Alpine waif, has become sullied.

“One thing is for sure,” one studio executive said, “there will be no Hollywood children named Heidi for years.”

Authorities allege that the 27-year-old party girl is the grande dame of Tinseltown’s seamy side and last week charged her with five counts of pandering and one count of possession of cocaine for sale. Her big black book of names and addresses and her scheduled arraignment in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Monday have this rumor-crazed company town atwitter.

“When this started breaking, my phone was ringing with every friend I have ever known--studio executives, actors, agents, everybody--wanting to know what I knew,” gossip maven Rona Barrett said. “It has become the talk of the town.”

An actress at Hugo’s stroked her hair provocatively and toyed about playing Heidi in a movie version of the affair. Comedian Jay Leno poked fun at the brouhaha on late-night television. A two-page lampoon titled “Heidi’s Trick Book” is being faxed around town, complete with explicit jokes about the sexual tastes and prowess of Hollywood’s most powerful figures.

“I am glad my husband’s name is not in her book,” joked one unmarried studio executive who said only single women can speak with such confidence.

Much of the vicarious glee comes at the expense of Columbia Pictures, which moved to center stage in the unfolding affair last week when a top executive publicly denied involvement with the allegedly top-dollar madam.

“I think they could only have been interested in this woman because of what she cost,” joked screenwriter Larry Gross, jabbing at the studio’s eagerness to court extravagantly paid movie stars.

Many Hollywood insiders--and virtually anyone else with the slightest sliver of gossip--have been bombarded with questions about Heidi, as the alleged madam is widely known, even by those who have never met her.

Solters said they have approached him everywhere--at the deli, at the carwash, even at the office of his Beverly Hills dentist.

“Let’s face it, in Hollywood it is all about sex and names,” said Solters, an industry fixture for 53 years. “It is like a spongecake. As soon as you say Hollywood, it adds a layer of whip cream. Sex is a couple of cherries on top of that. Before long, you don’t have a spongecake anymore, you have a deluxe cake.”

But the tangled tale of illicit sex, drugs and possible financial impropriety has struck far too close to home for some. From studio back lots to boardrooms, some of the whispering about Fleiss borders on paranoia: Who do you know, who else knows and do they have something on me?

“There is some kind of perverse excitement watching someone else get caught, when everyone has their own skeletons,” Goodwin said. “In that sense everyone in this town is involved in this in one way or the other.”

Although Fleiss has remained publicly silent on her alleged list of clients, the profligate Hollywood grapevine has gleefully filled in the blanks. Speculation linking Michael Nathanson of Columbia to the scandal became so persistent that his attorney publicly denied that Nathanson was involved, even though he was never publicly implicated. Rock singer Billy Idol also issued a statement declaring he has “never used her professional services.”

New York-based gossip columnist Mitchell Fink said dozens and dozens of names have surfaced in entertainment circles on both coasts.

“If everybody I heard was on the list, Heidi was very busy at work,” said Fink, who writes for People magazine. “That is all part of the game. That is what makes the game. There are so many people that you could point to and say: ‘Here is a guy who is down, let’s kick him real good now.’ ”

Some young people in Hollywood find the scandal especially delicious. One 25-year-old producer said his peers in the industry see it as deserved comeuppance for a generation of studio executives who got ahead during the dissolute 1980s.

Now in their 30s and 40s, some in this group have a penchant for expensive drugs and clubs featuring live sex acts, the producer said, a lifestyle the younger Hollywood set is less inclined to emulate.

“We just laugh at it,” he said, referring to the fuss over Fleiss. “We hope it gets a few of senior management out of our way.”

Academy Award-winning producer Julia Phillips, whose bestseller about her drug-addicted life in Hollywood left virtually no one unscathed, said she has been besieged with jittery inquiries about Fleiss. Phillips said the anxiety points to the worst about the entertainment industry.

“They are worried about what names will come out and which heads will roll because of it,” she said. “People live double lives as a matter of course. It is a part of the fabric of American life, and who creates American life more than Hollywood?”

Phillips complained that much of the to-do about Fleiss misses the point. Instead of getting worked up about a “girl making a little extra cash on the side,” Hollywood should get angry over the way the film industry treats women, she said.

“There is an old saying that Hollywood makes whores out of the women and sissies out of the men,” Phillips said. “That hasn’t changed. These guys really do feel more comfortable in the company of hookers because that is how they see women.”

A female executive at one major studio said the affair has many women privately fuming. The sad truth about Fleiss, the executive said, is that she probably is among the best-paid women in Hollywood.

“Just close your eyes, think of England, and collect your money,” the executive said. “(Whether) it is about madam Heidi or executive promotions, there is an incredible double standard.”

It is hardly news in the entertainment industry that certain flamboyant producers are believed to patronize high-priced call girls. But the rumored--yet unsubstantiated--link between senior studio executives and Fleiss lends piquancy to an otherwise entertaining scandal, some Hollywood insiders say.

The names circulating include several who prize their reputation as family men, they say, and speculation about studios footing bills for drugs and sex threatens to blow a summer fascination into an interminable nightmare.

“A lot of people would like people at Columbia to take a fall because they’re not nice people,” said an agent, citing the recent negative publicity surrounding “Last Action Hero,” the studio’s summer flop. “There’s a lot of ill will floating around.”

To some, however, a Columbia link does not sound credible. “It seems to be a manufactured thing,” producer Howard Rosenman said. “Somebody concocted this meshugas (craziness),” he added, attributing the rumors to “people who are jealous of people with positions of power and authority . “

Hollywood is certainly well acquainted with the sex scandal--and the hyperbole and rampant voyeurism they invite--but it is also legendary for its fleeting attention span. Old-timers say this one, like the others, will soon pass.

The town was driven into a tizzy in 1921 when Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, a celebrated silent screen comic, was charged in the death of a young woman guest who had been raped at one of Arbuckle’s notorious days-long drinking bashes. Arbuckle’s career collapsed, but it was not long before celebrities flocked to his popular nightclub.

Actor Errol Flynn’s reputation as a rogue and Casanova exploded into a sordid scandal in 1942 when he was accused of raping two teen-age girls aboard his yacht. Flynn was acquitted, and today the only lasting reminder of the affair is the phrase “in like Flynn.”

Other scandals followed, including that of director Roman Polanski, who was accused in 1977 of drugging and raping a 13-year-old aspiring actress at the home of Jack Nicholson. Polanski fled the country and remains a fugitive from justice.

And five years ago, Hollywood held its collective breath when Elizabeth (Madam Alex) Adams, then the reigning Beverly Hills madam, was arrested and put out of business. Adams kept her mouth shut, and many believe Fleiss will do the same.

“Everybody is titillated by this . . . but people have been murdered, studios have covered up malfeasance of actors, people have supported the drug habits of actors, and other people have built into budgets allowances for cocaine,” gossip columnist Liz Smith said. “Those are horrible things. Prostitution is way down on my list.”

The reaction was equally tepid among some working on the Sony lot, home to TriStar Pictures and Columbia, where the sounds of jackhammers permeated the air last week as work continued on new cityscape facades. So-called back-shop workers said they were too busy to pay heed to the Heidi Fleiss story.

“It’s Hollywood, isn’t it? Isn’t that what happens in Hollywood?” an electrician said as he mounted a bicycle. “Then they complain about giving you a $1-an-hour raise.”

“There’s too much going on in the world to care about this,” a foreman on a television production said during a work break.

Back at Hugo’s, Phil Gittelman, longtime manager to actors and directors, sipped a glass of lemon water while skipping through the daily report on production activity around town. Talk of Fleiss brought a glimmer to his eyes. With all this excitement, he said, there is bound to be a movie deal, and maybe--just maybe--he could work something out for his clients.

“That’s what it is all about,” he said, smiling.