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Stock Holder Chapter 2

John Donald MacArthur owns Bankers Life & Casualty Company of Chicago, the second largest stock accident and health insurance company in the world. He owns Bankers outright—lock, stock and barrel. He is the stockholder. The sales force of Bankers numbers thirty-five hundred, and in 1967 the company had admitted assets of more than $350,000,000. If shares of Bankers Life were offered on the open market they would bring more than $1,000,000,000.

John MacArthur also owns—outright—Bankers Multiple Line Insurance Company ; Certified Life In-surance Company of California ; Constitution Life Insurance Company ; Marquette Life Insurance Company; International Life Insurance Company ; Protection Mutual Insurance Company of Pennsylvania ; Southeastern Title and Insurance Company; Gotham Life Insurance Company of New York; Union Bankers Insurance Company; Western American Life Insurance Company; and Western Life Assurance Company of Hamilton, Ontario.

The insurance companies John MacArthur owns have assets of more than $500,000,000, and a value on the open market in excess of $1,500,000,000. Had he not merged Westminster Life Insurance Company, Northern Mutual Casualty Company, State Life Insurance Company of Tennessee, State Life Insurance Company of Kentucky and Hotel Men's Mutual Benefit Association with other firms, his list of owned insurance companies would be even more impressive. Yet for this fantastically wealthy man, insurance has become little more than a sideline.

John MacArthur built, and he owns, the town of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Palm Beach Gardens is the home of the Professional Golfers Association and the huge RCA computer-building plant. MacArthur owns the PGA golf courses and clubhouse and, of course, a large block of RCA stock.

John MacArthur is the largest landowner in Florida. His holdings include eighty percent of the real property in Lake Park, which is the fastest growing section of sprawling Palm Beach County. He owns 32,000 acres in Sarasota County, 10,000 acres in Palm Beach County, 10,000 acres in Orlando, 3,000 acres in Dade County and 354 acres in Surfside. He also owns the Colonnades Beach Hotel in Palm Beach Shores, with 1,000 feet of oceanfront; a portion of the Sunshine State Parkway, a toll road ; the Nassau Harbor Club, Palm Beach Development Company, Layton's Park Trailer Camp, Southern Realties and Utilities Company, Fort Pierce Port and Terminal Company, Miami Prefabricators, Florida Aviation, MacArthur Television Productions, radio station WEAT and television station WEAT-TV.

John MacArthur's holdings outside Florida in-clude Citizens Bank and Trust Company of Park Ridge, Illinois ; the Wilton Hotel in Long Beach, California, and a dozen other hotels ; Brookshore Printing Company in Chicago; Mailers, Inc., in

Chicago ; Marshall John Advertising Agency in Chi-

cago ; and Red Top Brewing Company in Cincinnati.

John MacArthur has extensive farm and ranch lands in Illinois, Arizona, Georgia, Colorado and Michigan. He has a salvage operation in Alaska, a record company in New York, oil wells in New Mexico, resort land in Wisconsin, real property in West Germany and Argentina. He owns a chain of restaurants and a fleet of airplanes.

And he acquired it all on his own. Nothing was given to him, he didn't inherit a dime. He was born March 6, 1897, in Pittston, Pennsylvania, the seventh and last child of a dead-broke evangelist. At age seventy-two, his health, except for ulcers, was as robust as his bank account.

He lives in the hotel he owns, the Colonnades, next to the town he owns, Palm Beach Gardens, and each morning he rises at five and goes to the coffee shop in his hotel and holds court for a bewildering assortment of guests.

Congressmen, senators, governors, even presiden-tial candidates journey to the Colonnades to make their pitch for money. They invariably come away empty-handed. "I'm broke," John MacArthur tells them. "Everything I have is tied up in the corpora-tions. And I believe it's against your laws for a corporation to donate money."

John MacArthur has an especial dislike for any-thing connected with government. He has been in-vestigated innumerable times by state insurance de-partments, contends that his success has led to persecution. "They see all that money and figure I've got to be crooked," he says bitterly. Then he smiles, his eyes twinkle, and he says, "Of course they're right."

But John MacArthur's difficulties with the government haven't been limited to state insurance de-partment investigations. He has survived—and prospered—despite legal attacks from the Justice Department, the United States Post Office, the Federal Trade Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Land developers, wheeler-dealer promotion men, fast-buck artists, ex-convicts, the unemployed and destitute, all come to the Colonnades, all are listened to. John MacArthur is available to everybody, but except for rare instances does business only when he can turn a profit—a huge one. The reason people continue to come to the Colonnades is the absolute simplicity involved in getting huge sums of money. There's no red tape : no co-signers are required, no board of directors studies the merits of the loan. Fifty million dollars, a hundred million, more—it's there for the taking if John MacArthur says "okay."

John MacArthur is an enigma to the leaders of charity drives. They can't believe that a man of his age and wealth isn't concerned with preserving his name in concrete and marble. Evangelist Billy Graham, in a plea for $25,000,000, wrote, "I have followed your Christian career for many years and am certain that God has had much to do with your good fortune. You might be interested to know that I learned a great deal about the Lord from your father, a great minister at whose feet I used to sit and who was largely responsible for my vocation."

"Baloney," John MacArthur said. "My father died thirty-five years ago. He was eighty-eight years old then, hadn't preached in public for at least ten years before that."

One of John MacArthur's closest associates believes his attitude toward charitable contributions is a healthy one : "Especially where Billy Graham is concerned. Hell, he once offered Mickey Cohen twenty thousand dollars to get up on the podium and say he'd been saved."

A check of Los Angeles court records does indeed indicate that the famed evangelist and the diminutive West Coast mobster were strangely chummy. Graham testified to a Grand Jury that he had lent Mickey Cohen ten thousand dollars. Actually, Cohen was rolling in money ; but he couldn't spend it without arousing suspicion. In order to finance his high living, he had to be able to explain to Internal Revenue Service where the money came from. Checks signed by people like Billy Graham, and marked "loan," proved to be an excellent dodge. Cohen paid cash for the checks from his hidden assets, told IRS he managed to survive only because of the generosity of friends.

In any event, John MacArthur wasn't moved off his wallet by Billy Graham's suggestion that he donate money in exchange for a building being named after him. In fact, John MacArthur has never been accused of a philanthropic bent. He agrees : "Charity is for three types. Those who believe in God, those who want to be remembered when they're gone, and those who want to impress somebody. I'm an atheist, I hope people forget me, and if I want to impress anyone I'll paste the annual statement on the wall."

Nor does he try to impress anyone. "I have more enemies per square foot than any man around," hesays, though he professes ignorance of the reasons why. He professes no similar ignorance when asked how a poor minister's son became a billionaire:

"Hard work, luck and opportunism in that order. I've also got one hell of a good bunch of people working for me. Ninety percent of the people you deal with are honest and loyal. You've got to trust people. If you go around biting on quarters to see if they're lead, you'll wind up with a mouthful of chipped teeth."

What drives a man to accumulate a billion dollars? John MacArthur was asked.

"I had to show somebody," he replied.

The people who work for John MacArthur, especially his insurance agents, have an enormous personal loyalty to him. As additional millions roll in, they take vicarious pleasure in his success, knowing the way he started—ill-educated, penniless, peddling insurance door-to-door. Legends of his selling prowess are related in reverent tones by old-timers who were with him in the lean days. "John was a super salesman," they say. "He could sell reading glasses to a blind man."

John MacArthur's employees call him "The Skipper," think of him as kind, benevolent, interested in their personal problems. They sell insurance with the same zeal and for the same reasons a football team wins one for the retiring coach. To meet John MacArthur, to shake his hand, is, for his employees, to be greeted by the gods.

The Saturday Evening Post called John Mac-Arthur "shrewd and witty . . . a sort of Hildy Johnson . . . sentimental."

Look praised him for hiring the handicapped. Collier's said he was "public-spirited."

Fortune found him "refreshingly honest."

The Miami Herald lauded his "drive, guts, belief in self."

The American Museum of Natural History hon-ored him for public service.

Eleanor Roosevelt and President Eisenhower called a MacArthur company (Bankers Life) "Tops."

The governor of Minnesota, the Miami police de-partment, the F.B.I., the Department of Labor, a United Nations committee, all have commended him.

The United States government recognized him as a hero during World War I.

The Horatio Alger Award was given him.

John MacArthur's Number One fan is newscaster Paul Harvey. Harvey waxes ecstatic at the drop of MacArthur's name. For Harvey, John MacArthur epitomizes all that's right about this country. On numerous occasions he has interrupted his broad-casts to say just that.

Even Las Vegas' bashful billionaire, Howard Hughes, has grudgingly admitted that John Mac-Arthur is the toughest man he knows to get the best of in a business deal. In September, 1967, R & H Holding Company, owned by John MacArthur and headed by Maurice Friedman, had title to the Frontier Hotel property in Las Vegas. When Friedman got the axe from gaming authorities, John MacArthur entered into negotiations with Howard Hughes for the sale of the land. It was property Hughes dearly desired and it was relatively useless to MacArthur. Nevertheless, it was given a liberal

market value of $11,203,324. Hughes paid $14,000,-

000 for it. Incidentally, Maurice Friedman, Mac-

Arthur's man in Las Vegas, was recently sentenced to six years in prison and fined $100,000 for masterminding the Friar's Club gin rummy cheating case. Las Vegas publisher Hank Greenspun, shoe manu-facturer Harry Karl, real estate tycoon Richard Corenson, singer Tony Martin and comedians Phil Silvers and Zeppo Marx were among those bilked out of more than $450,000 in the rigged card game.

Still, the name John MacArthur is hardly a household word. He stays in the background, makes certain that what is printed is bland and easily for-gettable, largely the product of public relations experts. Ask a hundred people who John MacArthur is and chances are you'll draw a hundred blank stares. John MacArthur doesn't want fame or recog-nition because—some people say—the rags-to-riches story of the poor boy turned billionaire is not, despite the Award, a Horatio Alger story.

"This is a man," one MacArthur observer said, "so personally corrupt that he brazens out deals and screws people in ways that others on his level never do."

Perhaps. But if that's true, there are reasons.

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Stock Holder Chapter 1

It was almost twelve o'clock of a rain-lashed, starless Florida night in October, 1962. Within three weeks the annual swarm of tourists would descend on the Palm Beach area, but this was still the slack season.

There were only four men in the hushed, dimly lit Colonnades Beach Hotel dining room. They sat around a table near the wall-sized window that over-looked the lonely beach. Outside, the Atlantic winds howled, the surf roared and rumbled, but here were heard only the civilized sounds of heavy silver laid on a padded tablecloth, the clink of ice cubes in glasses, the murmur of obsequious voices. The table where the men sat was littered with ashtrays, half-empty water glasses and the remnants of the dinner three of them had eaten. They had been in the dining room since the rain had started, at six that morning.

The three who had eaten were tired and fidgety. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the stale air above their heads. They were dressed much alike, in dark suits and blue shirts, and had the smooth, well-manicured look of executives who maintain country club memberships and do a good deal of business on the golf course. They were stiff from sitting, their eyes were reddened by smoke and they kept examining their watches as if to indicate it was time to go. A stranger observing the scene would have wondered why they didn't, for the fourth man in the group hardly seemed the type to detain them.

The stranger would have been puzzled by what the man was doing there in the first place. At best he had the look of a retired postman living on Social Security, at worst that of an elderly beach bum. Old, wizened, with skin darkened to mahogany by the Florida sun, he had been sitting for eighteen hours and now seemed to have fallen into a trance. Occasionally he ran his fingers through his thinning white hair or leaned an elbow on the table and cupped his chin in his hand, but for long periods he sat absolutely still.

He wore an almost white, well-wrinkled shirt, open at the collar, unpressed pants and scuffed shoes. He had a short neck and a mustache that didn't appear worth the effort. He was five-ten when he straightened up, which was seldom, and he had a comfortable paunch.

The old man hadn't spoken more than a dozen times all day and then only to ask questions. He had remained motionless, his face drained of expression, and his three companions couldn't tell if he'd been listening or off in some private reverie. Irritation crinkled the edges of their voices ; they began to wonder if he was drunk. He had been drinking since early afternoon. Now, sunk in a melancholy haze, he stared out at the lashing rain. He glanced up at the approach of a bow-tied waiter carrying a telephone.

"For you, Mr. MacArthur," the waiter told him.

"Who is it?"

"Mr. Stolkin in New York."

The old man sat as if lost in thought. He made no move for the telephone, stared unseeing at the inch-long ash on his filter-tip cigarette and didn't appear to notice as it crumbled into his scotch. The others exchanged glances of revulsion, except for the waiter who kept his face carefully impassive.

The three men settled back to wait for him to make up his mind. Into his hooded eyes came a glimmer of interest. He remembered other telephone calls, late at night, from Ralph Stolkin, and wondered what this one was about. He thought he had a pretty good idea. His tablemates had none at all. They knew Ralph Stolkin by reputation and tried to imagine a connection between him and the old man. It was a futile exercise.

Ralph Stolkin was described by the Wall Street Journal as a "Chicago financier." In reality he was a playboy, a yacht-sailing, jet-setting con man who was lucky not to be in jail. His father-in-law, Abraham Koolish, had received a ten-year prison sentence for his part in the Sister Kenny Foundation mail fraud, which certain cynical Chicagoans contend Ralph Stolkin masterminded. In 1952 Stolkin had a thirty percent controlling interest in RKO Radio Pictures, which he had purchased from Howard Hughes. Stolkin was elected president of RKO but was forced to resign when news of some of his earlier business activities came to light. He was now the major stock-holder in National Video Corporation and in MPI Industries, Inc. He owned 109,538 shares of National Video, 854,309 shares of MPI.

The three executive types began drumming their fingers on the table, partly from curiosity, partly from impatience. "Shall I tell him you've gone to bed?" the waiter asked smoothly.

For a moment the old man seemed to consider it. Then from under his failed mustache came the beginnings of a smile. "No," he said, twisting out the stub of his cigarette. He lifted the receiver.

"How are you, Ralph?"

"John, baby ! Great to talk to you again."

John MacArthur lit a fresh cigarette. He hunched over the table, the telephone crooked in the hollow of his shoulder as if he were too tired to think about holding it. "What do you want, Ralph?"

"Aren't you glad to hear from me? How've you been, anyway? Screwing any widows?"

"My neck's the only thing that gets stiff any more. What do you want?"

"I need money, John. I need it bad. The tax collector means business this time."

"I haven't any money, Ralph. You know that. What little I have goes to support Catherine and me in our retirement."

"A million dollars. I need a million dollars right away. It's life or death. I've got good collateral."

John MacArthur stretched, made no attempt to disguise a yawn. "I can't loan that kind of money. I don't have it."

"I said I have collateral. Good collateral."

"And I said I don't have it. Besides, I'm retired. I don't work anymore. I'm just trying to enjoy my last years."

"It's desperate, John. IRS is plenty sore."

John MacArthur's companions had stopped fidgeting and they could hear Ralph Stolkin's voice on the phone get higher and more excited. John MacArthur gathered them in with a look that seemed to include them in some private game of his own. His eyes sparkled with mischief : just watch this, they seemed to say. "Ralph, why don't you try the bank?" he asked, swallowing a laugh and holding the phone out so everyone could hear the obscene rejoinder.

"Goddammit," Stolkin spluttered, "this is important. Don't play games. . ."

"I can't help you." John MacArthur took a drink of his ash-laden scotch. "Maybe Louis Feil ..."

"Would you call him?"

"It's past midnight."

"This is urgent."

"For you, Ralph. Not for me."

"Okay. For me."

"I'll call him for old times' sake. For old times' sake, Ralph. You phone him in twenty minutes. I can't promise anything. It's up to Louis."

"Tell him you know me. That I'm good for it." "It's up to him."

"Twenty minutes. I'll call him."

John MacArthur replaced the receiver, drained his drink, gestured to the waiter, who took the empty glass and hurried away with it. Then he leaned forward and put the tips of his fingers together as if in an attitude of prayer. He stared out the window at the whirling surf, the straining palm trees, the black night.

The waiter returned with the drink. John MacArthur took a long pull from it, sighed and rubbed his stomach. "Well," he said, "it's about time for dinner. Lamb stew," he told the waiter.

"The chef's gone to bed. Maybe I could fix a sandwich?"

"Get the chef's ass out of bed," John MacArthur said mildly. "He's only had three customers all day.

Now that he's got a fourth he can do a little work."

Meditating on the temperament of chefs, the waiter walked slowly away, shaking his head, resigned.

John MacArthur lit a cigarette from the remains of the old, swallowed some scotch, reached for the phone and gave the hotel operator a number to call in New York.

"I was asleep," Louis Feil said.

"Ralph Stolkin wants money."

"Oh?"

"He'll call you in a few minutes." John Mac-Arthur hung up, stretched, smiled at the others. "No more business tonight," he said genially. "I'm an old man and these hours really are too much."

The three acted as one: with fury. They had sub-mitted their proposition from California, and four days ago they had received a response : "Get here right away or no deal."

They had made hurried flight reservations, had traveled all night and met John MacArthur the next morning. "How much are you prepared to offer?" he asked.

The three had been surprised. "We told you what we'd pay," one said. "You told us to get here right away."

"Sure I did. But I didn't say your proposition was satisfactory. Now—here's what I'd like." John MacArthur proceeded to outline stiffer, harsher terms.

Frantic long-distance calls, pleading, arguing, and, finally, the three had received authority to meet the new demands. They met with John MacArthur the next morning. "That's what I told you I'd like," he said. "Now—here's what I'll take." Again he demanded more.

The three had been angry. But by last night they had obtained the additional authority. "Good," John MacArthur told them. "Let me sleep on it." He had gone to his room in the hotel, pleased with himself, and had gone to bed. But sleep evaded him. Some-thing was wrong. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Hell," he said out loud, "I'll bet you could get even more if you made them wait a little longer."

So the three sat and watched him eat the lamb stew. "Listen," one said. "We came in good faith. I think we're entitled to an answer."

"You've got one. I haven't made up my mind yet." "Tomorrow?"

"I'm busy tomorrow. You fellows go back to Los Angeles. I'll call you when I've thought it over."

"Thought it over? We've met your terms. Look, we could...."

"Sue? Go ahead. I've got thirty-five hundred law-suits now. Yours will make thirty-five hundred and one."

John MacArthur was smiling, but his tone was final. Unless they wanted to risk being cut off entirely there was nothing they could do. They sat silent, sullen, watched as he ate, listened as he began to talk. They were forced to admit he could be a clever conversationalist. He was witty, earthy, proficiently profane. He finished his meal, wiped his plate industriously with a piece of bread and managed to get blotches of gravy on both cuffs of his shirt. He held them up for the others to see. "Anyway, it was time to have it washed."

John MacArthur was well into a second after-dinner drink and was still talking when the phone the waiter had left on the table began to ring. He didn't wait for Ralph Stolkin to identify himself. "How did Louis Feil treat you?"

"Goddammit, John, I wanted a loan, not a mortgage on my soul."

"Did the two of you get together?"

"He wants twenty percent. For thirty days—thirty goddam days—and he wants twenty percent." "Louis is a cautious man."

"He's a damn pirate."

"Ralph.. . ." John MacArthur's tone was soothing, comforting, vastly sympathetic. He could picture Ralph Stolkin, red-faced, furious. He could also picture Louis Feil, sleeping serenely.

"John, this is rape."

"Only one way to handle rape—relax and enjoy it." "Twenty percent for thirty days is. . . ."

"You could try the bank. Or did we discuss that?" "Fuck you."

"You'd like that."

"Dammit, John, I've got good collateral. I told you that. Don't you believe me?"

"I wouldn't believe you if you were knee-deep in Bibles."

"I just want.. ."

"You listen. I did you a favor. I told Louis Feil you were a friend of mine. I can't do any more than that. Whatever deal the two of you make isn't my concern. I'm retired. Louis handles these things."

"John. . . ."

John MacArthur hung up. He knew Ralph Stolkin would accept his terms, and he smiled as he reflected on how easy it was to make two hundred thousand dollars. What he couldn't know was that the deal would turn out even sweeter. For Ralph Stolkin had no intention of using the money to pay IRS. Instead he would buy a yacht. By the time Louis Feil got around to collecting what was owed, interest, penalties and legal fees would bring the total to six and a half million dollars.

John MacArthur looked at his guests. "I should go to bed now. I'm an old man."

The three men didn't want to leave. They started to talk about another meeting. Any time would be all right, they said. But their host insisted he was tired, he'd call them in California. He stood up, dismissing them, and they tendered reluctant goodbyes. He watched them leave, sat down again and finished his scotch.

It had been a good day. Ever since he had been a very little boy he had tried to do as well as he could each day. It gave him a warm feeling, a feeling of satisfaction to make each twenty-four-hour period a new and profitable adventure. Sometimes, as he had often said, he didn't like the rules, especially the one that judged a man by his bank balance. But then he didn't make the rules. He only lived by them.

He gazed down at the table, looked over the remains of food on the plates. The waiter had discreetly vanished. John MacArthur took a plastic bag from his pocket and scraped a partially eaten salad into it. Then he got up and walked from the dining room, the bag swinging at his side. As he went out he nodded to each haggard-eyed employee that he passed. In the lobby he stopped in front of a mirror.

"John," he said sternly, "you're a son-of-a-bitch." He grinned, tapped the glass. "But I like you," he said, and headed toward his room.

For the unknown billionaire, John MacArthur, one of the three richest men in America, it had been a typical day.

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