"The Interview " with Mel Haber Part 3

"THE INTERVIEW" WITH MEL HABER (PART 3 OF 4)

I doubt that Mel knew he'd we'd be celebrating The Holidays like this but...

Merry Christmas...

MM: Cecil's was the equivalent of New York City's Studio 54 in Palm Springs. When you look back, what is the single identifiable factor that lent that certain magic to Cecil's or Melvyn's?

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MH: The place (Cecil's Disco) was designed in such a way--there were two statistics that say a lot. One night at Cecil's, there were 42 Rolls Royce's in the parking lot. I don't think there's a dealership in the world that had 42 Rolls Royce's on their lot! That was the kind of crowd we attracted. Number two: the place was designed in such a way that this is a disco in Palm Springs in a shopping center. We had no dress code. Eighty-percent of the guys wore jackets and fifty-percent wore ties! In a disco in a shopping center in Palm Springs. It was just a place where you got dressed up to meet members of the opposite sex. As a matter of fact, that's where I met my wife! I was 44 years old. The disco board at Cecil's was up on the second level. You could see everybody come in and see everybody dancing and watch the cocktail waitresses. And my wife was a beautiful school teacher who walks in for the first time with a girlfriend. She sees me up in the disco booth and pokes her girlfriend and says 'Isn't that guy a little old to be a disc jockey?' It was truly love at first sight--all these years ago.

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MM: You've sat down with some of the most famous people in the world. You're an astute observer of people. Is there a certain identifiable trait that successful people have that stands out most to you?

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MH: No. And that happens to be a very good question because I am a great fan of people of accomplishment. It doesn't necessarily have to be money, but anybody who has accomplished something. And as I sat with these people, I tried to identify just what you asked me! And I couldn't. I couldn't figure out why this particular person was so successful at what they were doing. Of the people that I know, I think a lot of them have chutzpah--the Jewish word; they step up to the plate. One time, I had the pleasure of meeting (billionaire) Kirk Kerkorian. I'm a great reader of biographies and I had a collection of books. So at the the time Kirk Kerkorian came in, I ran home and I brought back his biography and I said 'Mr. Kerkorian, would you be kind enough to autograph this for me?' And he said 'What do you want me to write?' And I said 'Write To My Friend Mel, Kirk Kerkorian'. Well, the next time he came in the manager said 'Mr. Kerkorian wants to see you'. I got nervous. I ran to his table and I said 'Mr. K. you wanted to see me?' He said, 'You know, the last time I was in here you embarrassed me. You asked me for my autograph'. I said, 'Mr. Kerkorian, do you have any idea who you are?' He was absolutely serious that I had embarrassed him because I had asked for his autograph. So, who knows what quality makes somebody as great as they are?

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MM: What drove you? What drove Mel Haber to develop this world-famous hotel and restaurant with his blood, sweat and tears--16 hour days six and a half days a week for years? Something drove you.

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MH: Greed. G-R-E-E-D.

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MM: Greed?

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MH: Yeah, Greed.

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MM: Really?

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MH: (Laughing): Well, I come out of Brooklyn with just a work ethic that you have when you come out of back East that you just work and work. When I first came out here, Michael, my competitors said 'Look at this jerk. If he wanted to work 18 hours a day, he could have stayed back in New York'. These guys closed their restaurants three months a year, they'd close the restaurant at 11 O'clock at night; they didn't stay open until 2 AM. So just by sheer, brute force I was able to compete just by being there much longer than they were. And they said, 'Look, if I wanted to work 18 hours a day I'd never come to Palm Springs. I came out here t play golf during the day, open my restaurant four or five hours a night, close it three months a year and travel'. And I'm the last one to say that they were crazy! I am also fortunate enough to have some staff that have been there 34 years. And I built a product. People don't come there because Mel Haber is there. They come there for the ambiance, or they like the food or the help there. And I'm not a star. Hopefully, I'm an extricated attraction.

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MM: Or the main attraction. And I want to get to this. You were the host for a while of a show on radio called "Celebrity Radio" and you gave advice on the singles dating scene. Okay, I'm single.

Talk to me. What are your observations today from your vantage point of having operated Cecil's and restaurants about what makes the singles scene so difficult to navigate?

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MH: Well, first of all you have sexually transmitted diseases which didn't exist when I had Cecil's. AIDS was not a word in the early 1980's. Mothers Against Drunk Driving helped raise awareness about reckless partying every night. Those two elements coincided with the end of disco. People partied back then almost seven nights a week. Today, they're nervous. And rightfully so. Also, the Internet has come into play, where all people try to find others on The Internet. My biggest observation when I ran Cecil's--and I met so many single people--and a lot of the ladies used to talk to me. They'd meet a guy and after a dance say 'he's not my number 10'. And I used to say, 'Well, maybe the guy's a 7. Why don't you go with a 7 until you find an 8, go with an 8 until you find a 9 and you can't go from zero to a hundred overnight. And incidentally, I'm a very big philosopher on love relationships, I really am. You can't really know somebody until you go out with them, because everybody puts on a facade. Everybody has a shell out there. Until you really get to know them, you don't have a clue. Now if someone is repulsive, I don't suggest that you try and strip that layer off. There's another thing that I believe in. I don't buy the cliche' 'You can't judge a book by its cover'. I think the cover is the book. I think the way that ladies dresses is her tastes--nobody else's. The way she combs her hair is the way she thinks she looks good. And if I don't like her taste in clothing, nobody dressed her. She is the cover!

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MM: Okay, Mel. I'll have to give that some thought. I admit, I wasn't expecting to hear that. But that's why it's fun to visit here.

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Note from Michael Manning: To each and every one of you, dear readers, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas with my Warmth and my Love. Each year, I continue to find myself both surprised and sincerely touched by the depth of feeling so many of you consistently communicate to me. If only the whole world were like each of you! I Thank You with all my heart. And I'm aware that I owe many of you visits. I am still operating without my Laptop Computer (while it's in tghe repair shop), so my access is erratic. But I will catch up with you. Meantime, hug someone you love and celebrate Christmas!

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Mel wraps up our visit tomorrow with a cup of coffee and a word about an organization near and dear to his heart: The Angel View Crippled Children's Fund. Please join us!

Mel Haber by the numbers

Palm Springs a la Carte paints Mel Haber by the numbers

Mel Haber (born October 24, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York) is the owner and proprietor of the Ingleside Inn and Melvyn's Restaurant in Palm Springs since 1975. He has served on the board of the Angel View Crippled Children's Foundation for more than twenty-five years and has been its president for the past fifteen.

Early years

Haber is the youngest of four children and the only boy of Louis and Mary Haber. The son of a garment district salesman, Haber grew up in an apartment overlooking Ocean Parkway in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. He attended Erasmus High School, which boasted a healthy roster of famous and important people throughout the years. Some of its alumni included actors Jeff Chandler, Moe Howard, Bernie Kopell, Barbara Stanwyck; singer Barbra Streisand, author Micky Spillane; chess player Bobby Fischer and Sid Luckman, the former quarterback of the Chicago Bears.

When Louis Haber died at fifty-two of a heart attack, Mel became the family's breadwinner. To make ends meet, the twelve-year-old started delivering groceries, sold peanuts and beer at Ebbets Field and spent his summers in the Catskills as a busboy. He says it was there were he learned “motion efficiency," which is commonly known as “working smart,” a trait he used when he eventually operated six different restaurants. Once Haber graduated high school, he enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) on the west side of Manhattan in the fall of 1954.

Successes and failures

Two months after Haber enrolled in F.I.T., he quit after he received a phone call from businessman Artie Schifrin, who offered him a job at $85 a week working for Wallfrin Industries. In December 1954, ABC aired a three-part series called “Davy Crockett, Indian Fighter.” The coonskin hat worn by actor Fess Parker set off a craze with the nation's youth, and several manufacturing companies, including Wallfrin Industries, jumped on the multi-million dollar business bandwagon and began producing coonskin items. The craze lasted longer than anyone expected and finally ended when raccoon tails surged from twenty-five cents each to $5 a pound by May 1955.

Out of work for the first time in his life, Haber regrouped at age nineteen. He first sold shoes and then stocks before he received a life-changing phone call from Schifrin, who switched Wallfrin Industries from a bicycle accessories business to an automotive novelty business and desperately wanted him back.

Wallfrin Industries

Following World War II, the greatest and longest economic boom in world history was launched, and by the late fifties, approximately ten million cars were sold on an annual basis. It was an era in which American teenagers (the Baby Boom Generation) did everything in their cars. Between 1961 and 1968, Wallfrin Industries produced 750 different items such as hula dolls that gyrated in rear windows, religious statues for the dashboard, fuzzy dice for the rear view mirror, self-adhesive pin striping and tiger tails to hang on the gas tank. Their most successful product was Amber Lens Dye, which sold more than one million units.

Automatic Radio purchased Wallfrin Industries in 1968 for $3 million, of which Haber collected 10 percent. Haber used the money to start several new businesses on the side. He launched a boiler-cleaning business, a front-end wheel-alignment franchise, a company factoring medical centers, an import business, a vacuum forming business, and an automotive-chemical manufacturing business. None of them were money makers and Haber shut them down and regrouped. Facing a textbook mid-life crisis, Haber traded in his large house in Long Island and Rolls Royce for a used Fiat and a furnished apartment in Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles.

Palm Springs

Invited by a friend to visit Palm Springs, Haber stumbled upon the Ingleside Inn in 1975. The property, located at 200 Ramon Road, was in a state of disrepair thanks to an absentee owner. Haber learned the original owner was the widow of Humphrey Birge, manufacturer of the Pierce Arrow motorcar. She built the private estate at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains in 1925 and sold it a decade later to Palm Springs Councilwoman Ruth Hardy, who transformed the place into a 20-room hotel. She successfully ran the Inn for the next thirty years as an exclusive private club whose guests came by invitation only. Hardy's clientèle included Howard Hughes, John Wayne, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Salvador Dali, Norman Vincent Peale and J.C. Penney.

After Hardy's death in 1965, the stardust from the old days had largely faded away over the next decade. Haber, who knew nothing about operating a resort, made a spontaneous handshake deal to buy the property for $300,000. On April 15, 1975, Haber was officially the proud new owner of the Ingleside Inn.

Ingleside Inn and Melvyn's

Haber shut down the Inn that summer and spent another $250,000 in restoration costs, including Melvyn's restaurant. The Inn opened its doors on September 15, 1975 and was an immediate success.

Over the years, the Inn has become a magnet for Hollywood's elite, U.S. Presidents, royalty, aristocrats, captains of industry and celebrities visiting Palm Springs. They include Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Marlon Brando, Arnold Schwarzenneger and Maria Shriver, Sylvester Stallone, Liza Minelli, Liberace, Jerry Lewis, Barry Manilow, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Rita Hayworth, Pat Boone, Debbie Reynolds, Larry King, John Travolta, Sidney Sheldon, David Hasselhoff, President Gerald Ford, George Hamilton, and celebrity travel columnists Donald Pile and Ray Williams,.

The status of the hotel took a quantum leap upward when Frank Sinatra and Barbara Marx held their pre-wedding party at Melvyn's in July 1976, and another when the restaurant and Inn were later named one of the world's premier hotel and dining venues by Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Cecils and other restaurant ventures

Tapping into the popularity of disco, Haber opened Cecils, a 9,000-square-foot Chinese restaurant/discotheque on October 1, 1979. The $1.2 million disco rivaled Studio 54 in popularity and attracted celebrities like Kirk Douglas, Sonny Bono, Evel Knievel, Reggie Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Joan Collins, Jack Paar, Mary Martin, Carol Conners, Lola Falana, Lyle Waggoner, Ed Marinaro, Deney Terrio and John Travolta.

Haber followed Cecils with a pair of dining ventures in the early 1980s: Saturdays and Doubles. Saturdays was a knock off of the T.G.I.Friday's franchise while Doubles was a large restaurant inside the famed Tennis Club. Haber unexpectedly found himself the second largest employer in Palm Springs with approximately 200 people on his payroll (the local hospital was the largest).

Angel View

Pop culture historians had proclaimed disco dead by 1980, but it was alive and well in Palm Springs. Haber sold Cecil's to a pair of local businessmen in 1985. That same year he also unloaded Doubles and Saturdays. With more time on his hands, Haber devoted himself to the Angel View Crippled Children's Foundation, which was based in nearby Desert Hot Springs.

The foundation was originally created by a small group of people from the Coachella Valley who felt the area's natural hot springs would be useful in the rehabilitation of children with polio. Angel View's mission broadened to include those children afflicted with a wide-range of physical challenges. Haber served as a board member in 1983 and became Angel View’s president in 1993. The foundation opened its seventeenth home and named it the Mel Haber House on November 14, 2002.

Touche

Palm Springs had been awaiting Mel Haber's return to the club scene and in January 1994, he obliged them with the opening of Touche, a $1.3 million Moroccan-themed bar, nightclub and restaurant. More than 500 people showed up on opening night, including Andy Williams, George Hamilton, Connie Stevens, Jack Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Marc Lawrence and Jackie Mason. Despite an international plug from Runaway with the Rich and Famous featuring Robin Leach, a curious pattern started to emerge at Touche: Haber was turning people away on weekends but had no mid-week business. He eventually discovered that people's work and play habits had changed, and that there was also more enlightenment about alcohol and substance abuse through the media. Haber sold Touche in 1996 for $250,000, and had come full circle: he had returned his attentions back to The Ingleside Inn and Melvyn's, which were still thriving.

Author and Palm Springs Walk of Fame

With the sale of Touche safely in the rear view mirror, Haber wrote an anecdotal book called Bedtime Stores of the Legendary Ingleside Inn in 1996. The book mainly focused on funny stories and misadventures involving the Ingleside Inn and Melvyn's. With a dedication by Arnold Schwarzenneger, the book sold approximately 10,000 copies. That same year Haber received a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Fame on October 24, 1996, which was his sixtieth birthday. The city of Palm Springs also decided to make the Ingleside Inn an official historic site in 1996, which commemorated Haber's second decade in the desert.

By the new millennium, Palm Springs was infused with new life when the younger generation went through a retro movement and yearned for Hollywood's authentic glamor days. As a result, the Ingleside Inn and Melvyn's has become the center of the nostalgia movement.

In January 2009, Haber will see the publication of his second book, Palm Springs a la Carte: The Colorful World of the Caviar Crowd at The Favorite Desert Hideaway, co-authored with biographer Marshall Terrill.

Palm Springs a la Carte served up Feb. 1, 2009

Palm Springs a la Carte gets served up February 1, 2009

Mel Haber still doesn't know how to cook a steak, make a Bloody Mary or open a cash register.

That's not an astounding statement to make unless you have been a very successful restaurateur and have been in business for more than three decades. Haber, who was the operator of six different restaurants, including the legendary Melvyn's Restaurant and the Ingleside Inn in Palm Springs, made every mistake in the book and succeed in spite of himself.

Perhaps even more amazing is the fact how the former automotive novelty manufacturer from Coney Island, Brooklyn, stumbled into the desert in 1975 and made a name for himself in a business he knew nothing about – the hospitality industry.

Palm Springs a la Carte: The Colorful World of the Caviar Crowd at Their Favorite Desert Hideaway (Barricade Books, 2009) is a charming, often hilarious book describing the adventures of novice restaurateur and hotelier, Melvyn Haber, an automotive accessory manufacturer from the bowels of New York City who is a legend in the sugar-frosted society of Palm Springs.

Haber admits he made every mistake in the book, which didn't preclude him from running one of the most successful restaurant's and hotels of all time. His establishments have attracted a guest list that reads like a Who's Who of the world. Visitors have included Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Marlon Brando, Liberace, Liza Minnelli, President Gerald Ford, Steve Allen, Lucille Ball, Dinah Shore, Rita Hayworth, Jerry Lewis and June Allyson.

Haber restored the historic inn and grounds, and built his own restaurant, Melvyn's. He learned the business the hard way and lived through a comedy of errors that would have bankrupted most investors in today's ultra-competitive hotel and restaurant markets. He managed not only to survive, but flourish, and became an example of the American dream in its fullest flower.

The book is filled with entertaining stories that offer a peek into the colorful world of celebrities, Hollywood elite, royalty, diplomats, mafioso and lovable con artists at their favorite desert hideaway. As a raconteur, Haber has few equals. With this book, he finally lifts the velvet rope to give readers the best seat in the house, and enthralls them with witty stories about his black-tie clientèle.

These days you're likely to see Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Sylvester Stallone, Cher, David Hasselhoff, Barry Manilow, Lance Bass, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Donald Trump and John Travolta enjoying themselves at the site. It remains one of the world's top dream resorts.

Haber feels his story should be an inspiration to everybody, because in his own words, “If I can make it, anybody can.”

Mel Haber is currently the owner of the Ingleside Inn and Melvyn's restaurant. He is also the president of the Angel View Crippled Children's Foundation and has served on its board for twenty-five years, the last fifteen as president. He resides in Rancho Mirage, California.

Palm Springs a la Carte (ISBN 1-56980-353-6; 978-1-56980-353-0) is published by Barricade Books and will be distributed through the National Book Network.

To pre-order Palm Springs a la Carte, visit www.amazon.com or www.inglesideinn.com.