By MICHAEL LEVINE
So much in life is a measure of timing. Knowing what to do is often secondary to knowing the right time to do it. Such is the case of Candy Spelling grandly offering up the Spelling Manor of Holmby Hills for sale for $150 million in our severely depressed economy.
Of course, it is her prerogative to do with her home whatever she wishes. It’s a big spread, and I’ve no doubt that with all its perks and privies, it’s worth an awful lot of coin.
Somewhere in the world, there’s sure to be someone who wants it, can afford it and will buy it. Maybe there’s even a “deal” to be had now, in light of the fact that Spelling has a new condo waiting in the wings. She might need the sale of the manor to furnish her new pad in the manner to which she is accustomed. But I doubt this one widow is strapped. I really do.
The Los Angeles Times did a feature story last summer about her decision to purchase and custom-build a $47 million, two-story, 16,500-square-foot condo on the 41st and 42nd floors of the Century, a high-rise under construction on the site of the former St. Regis Hotel in Century City. It included information about previous purchase offers she already had received for her 56,500-square-foot home, which she has occupied by herself since the 2006 death of her husband, TV mogul Aaron Spelling. In that article, according to her lawyer, one prospect promised “nine figures and change plus a jet. Now she will have to start listening to the offers.”
Listening? What about listening to the pain of America? Good people are losing their homes, families go to sleep hungry at night yes, here, in America , and when it comes to taking care of our own backyards, it seems some people are more concerned about perennials and peonies than people. The “bank” in many food banks has run out of dough. Flaunting personal wealth right now couldn’t be in poorer taste. Homeless shelters cannot accommodate the number of people requesting refuge. We haven’t seen financial distress and emotional upheaval like this in decades.
If there’s a “luxury tax” imposed on the purchase of such items as yachts, then surely there should be a moral “luxury shame” attached to the obsequious display of wealth that has surfaced here.
Whatever happened to the maxim “discretion is the better part of valor”? The former Ambassador Lee Annenberg donated, upon her recent demise, her priceless desert ranch essentially to the nation, as a sort of a “western White House” retreat for our current and future presidents and state dignitaries. In time, the property is slated to be open a few days a week for public tours. What a shining example of philanthropy and good will.
Personally, I bear no ill will toward Candy Spelling. She and her late husband accumulated their vast wealth through hard work and success in the American system, which I venerate. Nor am I suggesting that Spelling should vacate her residence and turn it into a soup kitchen, homeless shelter or donate it for any other noble cause for that matter. She’s very much alive, vibrant, and I wish her good health and a long life. It’s her home, and like millions of homeowners around this country, she’s entitled to try to sell it for “a good price.”
I would like to have an offer of nine figures plus change and a jet for anything at anytime. Even if it was a “low” nine figures. In this case, that sum will still more than cover the $47 million price tag of Spelling’s next elevated nest. Her lifestyle, albeit over the top of the very top, is her choice. She can apparently afford it, and God bless her for employing as many people as she must to maintain that lifestyle.
But as a 25-year veteran of public relations, it’s my opinion that Spelling ought to consider some immediate, highly visible and sincere community service right now to offset the luxury shame that is all hers for flaunting her exceptional good fortune in the midst of so much undeserved public misery.
Michael Levine is the founder of the public relations firm LCO-Levine Communications Office in Los Angeles and has written 19 books.
