"THE INTERVIEW" WITH MEL HABER! (PART 2 OF 4)
Mel is back!...
"My staff of misfits included a day-to-day manager who sported a Buddha-like belly, a bad toupee, and a pronounced limp; a twenty year-old man-boy with a thick Arkansas drawl who alternately served as a bell captain, bellman, bookeeper and front desk clerk; a temperamental chef with a huge appetite for pornography; a housekeeper who had difficulty making beds because of a bad back; and four sixty-year-old waiters, including an Englishman who caused diners to gag on their escargot by addressing them as "Mum" and "Pops".
---Mel Haber, from "Palm Springs a' la Carte".
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MM: My readers are a young audience. They'll recognize the names of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Cher, Madonna, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson. But how do you explain the appeal of The Ingleside Inn? You write about walking into one of the the two basements (rare in Palm Springs) of the hotel and finding files of Guest Cards left behind by Ava Gardner, Liz Taylor, john Wayne and Howard Hughes--as I mentioned in my introduction of you--from the 1940's. That's a big stretch to today! I mean, we're talking over 50 years of celebrities in that brief mention. How do you explain that appeal? Someone opens a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona and it stays open more than six months, they are considered lucky!
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MH: Well, there's a charm and there's an ambiance. The place was built in 1925. And everybody says 'Why don't you open another Ingleside Inn?' And I said 'If I knew how to build another place 80 years-old I would! I don't know how to duplicate that. But there's a certain intrinsic charm and ambiance about the place. And I must tell you as I've come to find out, that people who love small, intimate properties--they hate what they call the big box hotels. Now, having said that, I happen to be going to New York tomorrow. And I stay at a big-box hotel. I'm one of these guys who likes to sit in a lobby and see a thousand people walk by. But there's a whole clientele for my product. That's why it is so incongruous for me to have an Ingleside Inn and a restaurant--because I still can't even cook a hamburger. The point of the story is in the last line of the book, and it's really the story. 'If I can do it, anybody can'. I really hope that it will be an inspiration and motivation for anybody to try anything they want to do. Because I came to this business, knew nothing about the business, was not interested in the business, had no connections, had no money and I had no particular intelligence. So those are things you don't have control over anyway. The things you do have control over is caring, how hard you're willing to work and building around those two things is legitimate. Everybody has those tools. They're intelligence: whatever God gave is what they're stuck with. But everybody can control how hard they're willing to work, being sincere, listening to the customer--that's what I'd like to point out, Michael. The fact that I don't know anything about wine, food or liquor--I couldn't criticize a customer or correct them or anything. The only thing I could use as a tool was to listen to the customers and if a customer called coffee tea when he wanted coffee--I'd give him tea. I wasn't out to prove anything. I was only out to satisfy the customer. And because I had no knowledge, I had to listen to everything they said. My famous saying is, ' I've never been accused of listening to nobody, but I've been accused of listening to everyone'. It's such a great story. Forget about the guy whose name is Mel Haber. I mean, Michael, I just called my best friend in New York and said 'I think I just discovered the cure for cancer'. He said what? I said 'They're putting me on 60 Minutes cause I have a hot saloon!' For all I know, I'm going broke tomorrow. Amazing!
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MM: Television has been good to you. You've been on '60 Minutes', 'Phil Donahue', 'David Suskind'. How did that turn out for Mel Haber? Television becomes you!
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MH: I enjoyed it. It turns out that I didn't realize I was a ham! I did ten additional shows because I created the word 'Palimony' (this was during the famous 1977 lawsuit between actor Lee Marvin and live-in girlfriend Michele Triola). I mean, that was a great story and a great debate from my side of the fence.
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MM: Let me throw out one name for a thumb nail sketch--and you knew him: Frank Sinatra. I'll let you elaborate.
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MH: Frank Sinatra is the only person I have ever been in awe of. There was an aura of power about him. And everybody knew that about him. And he was a very high profile presence in Palm Springs. Everybody knew where he was having dinner, and where he was having drinks. in those days, when I first opened Ingleside Inn, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria (Shriver)--they were in the hotel once a month. Once they got married and had kids, they wound up renting a house near The Ingleside Inn and then eventually he became governor. They came into the restaurant (Melvyn's) quite a bit and they were great customers. Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn would come here back when Kate Hudson was just a little kid. As a matter of fact, one day as I was walking out of my office and I saw Kurt and Goldie and I said, 'Oh, God! What are you guys doing here?' As it turns out, they needed someplace to go. So, they decided to fly to Palm Springs--Kurt Russell is a pilot--and spend an hour and a half at my pool at The Ingleside Inn and then fly back home in L.A.--which was a quite an honor for me. Marlon Brando spent a couple of days at the place--spending half his time, I might add--sitting in his mobile home outside the property talking on his CB (Citizens Band) radio. If these people knew they were talking to Marlon Brando on their CB Radios, they'd go crazy! John Travolta used to come down here all the time--back when he was in "Saturday Night Fever". All of that was such a blur, Michael. I had five restaurants that I had going and all of that celebrity was going on --and I was the loser. because I was so busy with my restaurant or my hotel--working 18 to 20 hours a day. I didn't have the time to absorb all of the people that I met. I remember one time, I told my wife 'Of all the people I met, I always wanted to meet Dionne Warwick'. And my wife took me into my office at home and showed me my picture with Dionne Warwick!
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MM: Well, this next item was hilarious for me. All three of actor Michael Landon's ex-wives showed up at the restaurant at the same time. My God, how did you handle that nightmare?
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MH: I'll one-up you on that. One night, as it turns out--a married couple that were cheating on each other somehow wound up in adjacent rooms at The Ingleside Inn and both walked of their rooms at the same time and I was standing there--and they were both in shock! They wound up getting a divorce, of course. But both a very prominent couple from Beverly Hills--both decided to sneak away to the small Ingleside Inn where nobody would see them and as fate would have it--I guess it was meant to be--they both walked out of the rooms and saw each other. But those stories go on endlessly. I'm sitting at the bar and a guy walks up to me and says 'Can you do me a favor?' I said certainly! He says 'I'm sitting right around the corner at the first table with my girlfriend. I'm going to go out into the car and I'm going to give you a ring. And after that, would you come around the corner and propose to my girlfriend for me?' So he does that. He gives me the ring, I wait until he walks around the corner and I walk up to his table and say to his girlfriend, 'Excuse me. Would you like to get married?' And she says, without hesitation. ' I hardly know you'. And I said, 'Not to me--to him!' And then she screamed and kissed him and they got married.
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MM: There ya go! Tell us about the night Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw showed up. This is a killer!
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MH: And that's how I got to meet the prolific Marshall Terrill, who wrote the biography of Steve McQueen, ("Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel") right? This is the story I am best known for. It was the first of a million bleeps. In 1975, while I was remodeling the place there was a young guy who hung around everyday. because he was a parking lot attendant at a restaurant two blocks away that was closed for the summer. So, he had nothing to do. He hung around and we became friends. His name is Danny Glick. He promised me that he would send up people from Lion's English Grille--it's been around for years. Come opening night, everybody is dressed beautifully. I am as nervous as can be. In the dining room, I had a maître d' who knew everybody in town. Everybody had jackets and ties. During the course of the evening, many people came up and told me 'Danny told me to come up and look at the place', and one was actor Tony Franciosa. I step outside to take a smoke because I'm nervous, and a motorcycle pulls up--a big blue Harley-Davidson with a girl on the back. And they're dressed the way they should be dressed on a motorcycle. I looked up and said "Buddy, give me a break will ya please? It's my opening night". And the guy looks at me, smiles and he takes off. An hour later Danny shows up and I said 'Danny, you're a sweetheart. It was just marvelous'. He said ' Did ya get all the people? Tony Franciosa, the actor?' I said 'Absolutely'. He said 'How about Steve McQueen?' I said 'Steve McQueen never showed up'. He said 'What are you talking about? That big blue Harley showed up and he promised me he'd come right up'. So, I got famous for chasing away Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw!
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Next Up: We're Gonna Disco
at Cecil's!
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