Matchmaker, Make Me a Match That Won’t Strike Out

Returning to the ever-dependable theme that society is crumbling and we’re all doomed, we turn our attention this morning to the dating scene.

Or, more specifically, the professional matchmaking scene--an industry that exists because lots of people never quite got the hang of the boy-girl thing.

Let’s face it, one of life’s crueler hoaxes is being led to believe that if we somehow survive our teens, our dating problems will be behind us.

Try telling that to Esther Ashley, who decided last year at age 71 to cast her dating fate to “Orly, the One and Only Matchmaker,” which is how former Israeli beauty queen Orly Hadida answers the phone on her message machine.

Some of you may be surprised to learn that people actually make a living in the matchmaking trade. The information Orly Hadida provided to Ashley indicated that “the one and only matchmaker” had appeared on at least 13 different TV programs or news shows, another half-dozen radio shows and been featured in various magazines.

Ashley also received a printed sheet describing “Orly’s VIP Club,” an offer that would entitle a client to meet “powerful, extraordinary” potential mates earning upward of $500,000 to $1 million annually.

The cost for such a bolt from heaven would be a mere $10,000. Hadida’s flyer referred to the service as “an investment in your future.”

Coming out of a bad marriage, Esther Ashley thought 10 grand sounded like a reasonable investment in her future. She wrote Orly a check, up front, and waited to meet her dream dates.

Gee, I bet you can guess where this is going, can’t you?

Ashley, now 72 and living in a mobile home in Anaheim, sued Hadida last week after claiming that the measly four dates she got in the first five months were hardly in keeping with her specifications for compatible high-class guys in her age group who knew how to treat a lady.

In fact, she alleges, one of the guys she met was younger than her own son, who was 51 at the time. Her suit also alleges that at least one of the four didn’t qualify as even a borderline millionaire, and that it got so bad, according to a member of the firm taking her case, that one of the men showed up for a dinner date with horse manure stuck to his shoes.

Hadida, who has never been publicity-shy before, is keeping a low profile. Robert Allen, senior clerk at the law firm representing Ashley, said Hadida won’t return his calls. Ashley said she wrote two letters of complaint to Hadida in which she demanded a refund and never got a reply. My calls to two phone numbers for her matchmaking service weren’t returned.

To Allen, the case is simple. “My feeling is that the whole thing is a scam,” he said. While looking into Ashley’s complaints, the firm found two other women who had similar complaints and who, according to Allen, had even been lined up with the same men as had Ashley.

That struck Allen as odd, because the other two women are in their 40s and 50s, while Ashley is now 72.

Ashley contends in her suit that Hadida doesn’t screen the men as thoroughly as her advertising suggests.

“The thing that scared her (Ashley) is that, with all three of the women I talked to” while investigating the case, “they thought they were buying screened men,” Allen said. “What’s really upsetting to me is that Jack the Ripper could call (Hadida) and this woman would give the names, addresses and phone numbers of fairly well-off women in Orange County, and what the hell is Jack the Ripper going to do? They thought they were buying the security they wouldn’t get if they met someone in a singles bar or in meeting someone at work, but apparently they’re not screened at all. Any mass murderer could get lined up with all kinds of well-to-do women.”

I’m assuming Orly Hadida would challenge that assertion. One of the printed materials Hadida gave Esther Ashley was a National Enquirer article describing how she arranged a match that culminated in a marriage on TV.

Allen is willing to concede that Orly may have matched people from time to time. But he’s convinced that in Ashley’s case, Orly took advantage of a “vulnerable” woman and then assumed she’d never go public with any complaint.

“She was looking for a kind face,” Allen said of Ashley. “A kind word from somebody who she could just sit and have dinner with once a week, just to shoot the breeze; just a companion to talk to and maybe go to the park with. She figured she was going to get pre-screening. She’s been all over the world. She’s hobnobbed with senators and presidents. She’s a high-class lady. She doesn’t want some local yokel to sit there and talk to her.”

The case will play itself out through the courts.

In the meantime, I only lament a world where people will charge--and other people will pay--$10,000 for a little kindness from strangers.

Allen says the 10 grand isn’t the issue. “She’s outraged that Orly is out there ripping off women, in general.”

Orly, pick up your phone. Defend yourself.

We eagerly await your next public appearance.