THE SUNDAY PROFILE : The Big Time : Gucci Watch Mogul Severin Wunderman Has It All--but He’s Not Settled Yet

With the 10-foot walls, attack dogs and armed security surrounding his Mediterranean, cliff-top estate, it’s no surprise that Gucci watch mogul Severin Wunderman has been called the Howard Hughes of Orange County.

Dodging the tabloids after an ill-fated marriage several years ago to “NYPD Blue” actress Gail O’Grady, Wunderman, 56, has granted few interviews and allowed even fewer photographs.

“I’m not what you would call a publicity seeker,” he declares, seated comfortably in the office of his Camel Point home overlooking Aliso Pier. “I’m a private person.”

So private that many of those who know him say he remains a mystery. And so private that, after five years in Orange County, Wunderman says he’s never felt he really fit in.

Now the Belgian-born owner of the Severin Wunderman Museum in Irvine says he’s leaving and returning to Europe. He has donated his museum collection to the University of Texas, Austin, and, in preparation for the move, the museum closed its doors to the public two weeks ago.For sale are three of his five California residences--including the one he is sitting in, listed at $10.8 million.

“I’m basically European,” he says, adding that he is restoring a 15th-Century castle in the south of France to live in. “It’s just a more comfortable place for me to live.”

After his recent offer to move the world’s largest permanent collection of works by French artist, poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau from Irvine to downtown Laguna Beach turned into a petty parking war with city officials, he decided it was time to leave. The dispute over the museum relocation centered on a dozen parking spaces. “The community support just wasn’t there,” he says.

Wunderman chooses his words carefully, yet the self-made millionaire speaks candidly from behind his antique desk, relating with quiet-toned authority the triumphs, failures and challenging childhood that have led to his overwhelming success. He says that, at long last, he is able to run his privately held, Irvine-based company, the Severin Group, from a distance.

“My secret for a successful business is to surround yourself with good people. And you have to be willing to take risks,” he says. “At this point, my business is like a 747; once the plane takes off, it flies by itself.”

Whether it flies on autopilot or with the collective navigation of his 600 employees, Wunderman’s company has soared skyward as the sole manufacturer, marketer and distributor of Gucci timepieces and Fila sports watches. Today, Wunderman says, Gucci watches generate $500 million in annual retail sales. Many say the successful marketing of the timepieces--which range from $235 to $14,000--is the direct result of Wunderman’s intense drive and determination.

“He’s extremely defined in what he wants,” says a member of his personal staff. “And, yes, he can be very demanding. That’s why he’s so successful.”

“Doors slam; things fly around the room, but we are family around here,” says another employee. “He always says, ‘I’ve never had an ulcer,’ and I say, ‘I know, Severin, that’s because you give them to other people.’ ”

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After quitting school at 16, Wunderman learned to speak five languages, acquired a vast knowledge of art and embarked on a series of self-propelled business ventures that resulted in a personal empire estimated in court documents at $266 million. He has four children, three grandchildren and five ex-wives.

He bought his first piece of artwork when he was 18--it cost $40, which was a week’s pay. The piece was a portrait of Cocteau’s lover, Jean Marais.

“I wanted things, like everyone else does,” he explains, surrounded by Napoleonic paintings and collectibles. “But there was no one to pay for it, so I made (the money) myself.”

Wunderman admits that there have been times when he’s crushed 10 toes with a single stomp to get what he wanted. “My father taught me to always throw the first punch; that way you’ve already won 50% of the fight right there,” Wunderman says. “I’ve always remembered that, in business, and in life.”

Wunderman is slight of build but fills the room with an imposing presence. Notoriously quick-tempered, with little patience for ignorance or mediocrity, it’s clear right away that this is one self-made man who can smell a lie from across the room and a good business deal from around the globe.

“Having not finished school, it’s strictly street-smarts,” he says with a smile. “In a meeting, I can basically tell which way the wind is going to blow. I can tell immediately.”

He admits to having a temper, and the word demanding is used repeatedly to describe him. In addition to shouting and breaking things, he has tossed more than one cellular phone out the window of his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.

“We have fights,” says Gigi Mauldin French, who has been his personal assistant for more than six years. “I mean, knockdown, drag-out, screaming fights. But he allows that. He doesn’t want a lot of yes men around here. Basically, when you get hired here, he gives you a bunch of rope. You can either knit yourself a safety net or hang yourself with it.”

Wunderman’s sister, Bella Silvers, agrees that her brother can be difficult but adds that it’s an important part of who he is. “If you have to be honest, he’s not what you would call the easiest person to get along with,” says Silvers. “But then, all geniuses are that way.”

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Severin Sam Wunderman, born in Brussels in 1938, was the son of a Jewish glove manufacturer who taught him an early sense of independence.

“My father left home (as a child) because there wasn’t enough to eat,” Wunderman says. “In this country today, there is the law of the gun and the law of the gang. Now they leave home to sell crack. What happened?”

When the Nazis invaded Belgium on their way to Paris in 1940, Wunderman’s parents, Henne and Nathan Wunderman, paid Roman Catholic priest Henry Reynders, also known as Father Bruno, to have Severin, his sister, Bella, and brother, Max, hidden in separate countryside convents. Like many other Jewish parents of the time, the Wundermans sold jewelry and furniture to come up with cash they hoped would ensure their children’s safety.

Separated from his family, Severin was placed in a school for the blind. He was only 3 or 4, yet Wunderman says the experience holds one particularly vivid memory.

“I remember that I was the only child there with sight, and I would hold hands with the blind children and lead them through the halls,” he says. “I was too young to remember a lot of things, but I remember that.”

The Gentile family that cared for him at the blind school baptized young Severin and made him into a choirboy and had no intention of giving him up after the war. His father, a large, muscular man, kidnaped his son after the war and reunited his family.

“My father was one of those people you didn’t mess with,” he recalls. “He came in, tied everyone up and took me out.”

Not long after, Severin’s mother died from surgical complications. He was 7.

“After my mother died, my father just melted away,” he says. “I remember how they used to go for walks after dinner, and they always held hands. . . . It was a real love affair.”

When Severin was 10, he came by himself to the United States, one of the last immigrants to enter through Ellis Island. “I was the last kid to go through,” he says. “After me, they closed it.” After a few months with an aunt in Brooklyn, Severin went to Los Angeles to live with his sister, 10 years his senior.

Bella Silvers, 66, and Max Wunderman, 65, couldn’t possibly forecast the success their little brother would later achieve, but they say there was always something special about him. “Some people are intelligent, and some people are smart. He has always been very, very street-smart,” says Max, who lives in Beverly Hills.

His sister, who still makes her home in Los Angeles, recalls that “from the time (Severin) was a young boy, he’s always had the capability of making money. He was always a very strong person, never letting anybody tell him what to do. He knows how to take command.”

After he quit school at 16, Wunderman began his first lucrative money-making venture, managing a string of 50 newspaper boys during the day. At night, he ran a parking lot business in front of the legendary Garden of Allah on Hollywood Boulevard.

“I remember that for $100, you got a girl, a bungalow, a dinner and a show. There were always satisfied customers, and they always gave us a $5 tip,” he says. “At the time, my sister’s husband was making $65 a week, and I was bringing in more than $300 a week. Let me put it this way: I made a lot of money.”

Three years later, while attending his father’s funeral in Europe, Wunderman met Gori Zucci, the inventor of the first jewelry chain machine, a device that made it possible to put wire in one end and have chain come out the other. With overnight success, Wunderman used the machine to make his first million, but fierce competition forced him out of business a year later.

“That was the first time I was a millionaire, and the first time I went broke,” he says with a laugh.

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In 1964, he married Gigi Gaston America, a young Belgian. They had two children, Nathan and Raphaelle. The marriage ended after 11 years.

Meanwhile, Wunderman joined the London watchmaking firm of Alexis Barthay, the originator of “private label” watches, custom-made for the retail client.

It was in 1972 that Wunderman got his big break, purely by accident. While staying at the New York Hilton, he was leafing through the phone book making cold calls to retail watch manufacturers, when he thought he would give the Gucci company a call, not knowing that he would reach Aldo Gucci, patriarch of the Gucci family.

“It was the first time I ever used a touch-tone phone, and I misdialed the main number,” he says. “I found out later that (Aldo Gucci) was waiting for a guy to call to introduce him to a starlet, and he got me instead. . . . He was swearing at me under his breath in his Florentine accent.”

Admiring his chutzpah, Gucci met Wunderman for cocktails that evening and later asked him to fill a $250,000 order.

“I went to my boss, and he told me that it was a great order but that we could only fill maybe 10% of it,” he recalls.

Undaunted, Wunderman went to Gucci, telling him that he wanted to quit his job and fill the order himself. Gucci agreed to take a chance on the young entrepreneur.

“I told him that I had one problem,” Wunderman says. “I didn’t have any money. He laughed and said, ‘First you tell me you can’t fill my order, you’ve never made a watch in your life, and now you want money?’ ”

As Wunderman tells it, Gucci laughed, leaned back in his chair and pulled out a blank check.

“And that was the start of my business,” he says. “In the first year, (sales) went from $3 million to $12 million. The next year, it went from $12 million to $29 million, and then $29 million to $70 million.”

Aldo Gucci died in 1990, three years after he served a one-year sentence in a Florida federal prison camp for income-tax evasion. His Milan-based company, Guccio Gucci spA, was acquired in 1993 by Investcorp, a Bahrain-based investment bank with other U.S. holdings in Tiffany and Saks Fifth Avenue.

After a few months of uncertainty and interior battles between the remaining Gucci relatives, Investcorp agreed to renew the Severin Group’s contract, and Wunderman’s company remains the single force behind Gucci watches.

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While the stars have been with Wunderman in business, it seems they haven’t been in marriage. After his success with Gucci and divorce from Gigi, he wed Denise Wizman. They were married nine years and have two children, Michael, 19, and Debbie, 30, Wizman’s daughter by a previous marriage whom Wunderman adopted.

Wunderman also had three short marriages--a three-month union with Lydia Mendoza in 1990, a nine-month one to actress O’Grady in 1991 and a 19-day matrimony to Jacqueline Pitcher in 1993.

Wunderman says it was his marriage to O’Grady that generated the most attention, despite the court-imposed gag order on details surrounding their split. From the tabloids to television talk shows, O’Grady, he says, has made the rounds, mentioning his name more than once.

“We both agreed not to talk about it; that was a condition of our divorce,” he says of O’Grady, who plays the secretary on ABC’s “NYPD Blue.” “I’ve stuck to that and kept my word.”

Randy Sue Morrison, Wunderman’s divorce attorney, says that, after all the ups and downs, her client has “mellowed.”

Wunderman credits his girlfriend of 2 1/2 years, Colleen Craig, 25, with his contentment these days.

“She makes me happy. I’m more of a homebody now,” he says.

Wunderman says that his three grandchildren and Craig’s 3-year-old son by a previous marriage bring out the not-so-latent kid in him.

“I really enjoy having the children around,” he says. “They’re always here for Christmas and Thanksgiving.”

He has a ready supply of candy around the house and often plays practical jokes on his employees and his small circle of friends.

“With the challenging childhood he’s had, he didn’t have a chance to be a kid,” offers assistant French. “He has a very childlike quality about him. He does things like putting rubber spiders on the secretaries’ desks at work, pranks like that. He has a very whimsical side.”

After a lengthy bout with pneumonia, Wunderman says health is more precious than money to him at this stage in his life. He says he is just now regaining strength after the illness that began in November with pleurisy and developed into walking pneumonia, resulting in weight loss and weakness.

“I may live in a higher style than most people,” he says, still 10 pounds shy of his usual weight. “But you never realize how important your health is until you don’t have it anymore. I realized that recently.”

No matter where he chooses to live, Wunderman vows never to retire and maintains that he will always take chances.

“Andy Warhol once said that the golden ring of life passes in front of everyone at least once, but 99.9% of the people either never see it or don’t take the chance to grab it,” he says. “I took it.”

Severin Sam Wunderman

Age: 56

Background: Born in Brussels, Nov. 19, 1938. Owner, chairman of the board and CEO of the Severin Group, the Irvine-based manufacturer, distributor and marketer of Gucci timepieces and Fila sports watches.

Education: Dropped out of high school at 16 to start his own business; no formal education.

Family: Parents: Nathan and Henne Wunderman, both deceased. Siblings: Max Wunderman and Bella Silvers. Children: Nathan, 29; Debbie, 30; Raphaelle, 28; Michael, 19.

Passions: Art, antiques, children and animals.

On his heritage: “I’m a fighter, and being Jewish has something to do with it.”

On his children: “None of them are anything like me. I’m the last of the Mohicans.”

On museums: “I’ve always loved museums. That’s where I would hang out when I was 2 cents short of a dollar. . . . In those days, I was always 2 cents short of a dollar.”