Schine Took a New Path After McCarthy Era

By the time he died in a plane crash alongside the Golden State Freeway, G. David Schine had fashioned a respected career a continent away from the Washington hearing rooms where he had been part of a furor that eventually toppled communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Schine’s resume included stints as Los Angeles hotelier, executive producer of the film “The French Connection,” record producer and chairman of a company that developed the technology to sharpen color television.

“Another page in history has turned,” said Jack Fox, 67, of Sherman Oaks who, as a reporter for the New York Post, turned a tip from one of Schine’s disgruntled fellow GIs into the first story on the Schine case 40 years ago. “Out of the famous three [including McCarthy and Roy Cohn] at that time, he was the only one left.”

Fox said he followed Schine’s career through the newspapers after he moved to Los Angeles.

“I’ve watched with some interest,” said Fox. “After he got separated out of the McCarthy/Cohn mess, he handled himself with dignity. I never saw anything which connected him with extreme right-wing causes.”

Schine, 69, was a pilot, but it is not clear whether he was at the controls of the Beechcraft Sundowner that crashed Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Burbank airport. Also killed in the crash were his wife, former Miss Universe Hillevi Schine, 64, and their son Frederick, 34, a former George Bush administration official who also was a licensed pilot.

The elder Schine once operated the Schine Inns hotel chain and ran the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He produced records by the pop group the DeFranco Family in the 1970s, and in retirement continued to dabble in entertainment and production, said Hal Dash, a family spokesman. Schine was preparing an anthology of old Republic Studios newsreels and films for a series called “Saturday Matinee.”

Schine was also formerly chairman and president of High Resolution Sciences Inc., which developed the technology to correct the imperfection in color television displays known as “chroma crawl,” which manifests itself as dots moving constantly upward on the screen.

In the 1950s, Schine was a staffer on McCarthy’s investigations subcommittee, the senator’s platform for his much-criticized national campaign to cleanse America of what he perceived as hidden communist influences.

Like so many young men of that post-World War II era, Schine was drafted into the Army as a private. Unlike the others, he became the focus of a political firestorm.

The Army charged that McCarthy and his right-hand man, Roy Cohn, had used undue influence to arrange special favors for their protege. A man who served with Schine in the 47th Infantry Regiment at Ft. Dix recalled that he was the only private who had a limo sent to pick him up in the bivouac area at lunchtime.

During subsequent hearings by McCarthy’s subcommittee, the senator charged that the Army was packed with with communist sympathizers. McCarthy’s abuse of Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens during those nationally televised proceedings eventually led to his condemnation by the Senate and his political downfall.

Commenting about his McCarthyite past in a 1975 interview, the elder Schine said, “I didn’t think we were doing enough in this country to express our ideals and objectives. I just did it to serve my country.” Ironically, one of McCarthy’s prime targets was Hollywood, where Schine would later make his mark as businessman.

Fox said that at the time of the furor, Schine “was a very, very young man, immature, and there was a chance to become powerful. . . . Once he had seen what that caused, I can’t speak for what was in his mind, but his actions seemed to show he put that behind him and made a life.”

Dash said Frederick Schine took off from Riverside and picked up his parents in Burbank on Wednesday for a planned two-day trip to the Bay Area to scout theater locations for a revival of the play “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde,” which the elder Schine intended to produce.

Frederick Berndt Schine worked as chief of staff for the district office of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and headed the California branch of GOPAC, House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s fund-raising committee, Dash said.

Rohrabacher’s office declined to comment on the accident. Family members were in seclusion Thursday.

Federal air safety officials said the cause of the crash, which could take six months to determine, remained under investigation Thursday.

Investigators were trying to figure out, among other things, whether engine failure was a factor, since the propeller was not turning on impact. It appeared that the plane was carrying plenty of fuel before the crash, officials said.

Thomas Wilcox, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said the aircraft had 50 gallons of fuel when it left Riverside, more than enough to reach both Burbank and then Palo Alto, the ultimate destination.

It was not possible to tell how much fuel remained at the time of the crash because the tanks were damaged by impact with utility poles just before the crash. Leaked fuel would have quickly evaporated, Wilcox said.

G. David Schine’s wife, Hillevi Rombin Schine--a native of Alfta, Sweden, who was Miss Universe in 1956--met her future husband in San Francisco, according to Dash.

In recent years, she worked for charitable causes and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she did volunteer work in the department that acquires historic clothing. She also designed women’s shoes, taking out patents on several models.

Former neighbor Mia Scott described a storybook match between Schine and the Swedish beauty queen: “He was the rich, handsome American millionaire, like a fairy tale.” Their son Frederick, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, had returned to Los Angeles after working in Washington for the Ronald Reagan and Bush administrations. He was still in his early 20s when he ran the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Energy.

At the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division, where he was a reserve officer, Frederick Schine served in the patrol, detective and fugitive details, said his supervisor, Officer Peter Repovich. Schine was named Reserve Officer of the Year for the Hollywood Division in 1994.

“It was an easy choice,” said Repovich, whom the younger Schine talked into running, unsuccessfully, for a state Assembly seat in 1994.

The elder Schines are survived by five children, Vidette Perry, 37; Mark, 35; Kevin, 34; Axel, 32, and Lance, 30, and four grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Johnson is a Times staff writer and Riccardi is a correspondent. Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Efrain Hernandez Jr. contributed to this story.