Unscripted, page 6
After The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Naylor had on one occasion sold $157,000 in Viacom stock, questions arose about Sumner’s increasingly unseemly behavior. “Some who have been close to Redstone said he has long since crossed into unconscious self-parody, making graphic sexual comments over social or business meals,” the magazine reported. Said one Hollywood executive: “He acts like a 15-year-old kid at summer camp.”
EPISODE 4
The Inner Circle VIP Social Club
In the fall of 2010, Brandon Korff, Sumner’s twenty-five-year-old grandson, enlisted Patti Stanger, the “Millionaire Matchmaker” of the Bravo reality-TV hit, to find a suitable romantic match for his grandfather. Sumner’s serial dating—not to mention the accompanying bonanza of lavish gifts—was driving him crazy. “I can’t deal with him,” Brandon confided in Stanger. With Paula out of the picture, perhaps what Sumner needed was a steady romantic companion to bring some stability to his personal life.
Brandon had witnessed his grandfather’s antics firsthand. He’d recently moved to Los Angeles to work at MTV after graduating from George Washington University and had sometimes stayed with Sumner. He was boyishly handsome, sporting trendy stubble on his face, and was soon driving a Bentley around town and accompanying Sumner to numerous entertainment industry events. He often watched sports with his grandfather on TV and attended the weekly Sunday movie screenings Sumner held at his home.
Brandon was the second of Shari Redstone’s three children from her marriage to Ira Korff, whom she’d divorced in 1992. Notwithstanding his troubled relationships with his children, Sumner doted on his grandchildren: Kimberlee, Brandon, and Tyler, Shari’s three children; and Brent’s daughters, Keryn and Lauren. Law ran in the family: Brent and Shari were both lawyers like their father, and so were Kimberlee, Keryn, and Tyler (who was also an ordained rabbi).
Brandon didn’t share their scholarly bent. In Los Angeles he dated a series of models and actresses, some of whom in turn dated Sumner. Sumner was relentless in his insistence that Brandon socialize with him and introduce him to potential romantic companions, sometimes calling him at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. It was Brandon who had introduced Sumner to Singh, the young woman who landed the job in PR at Showtime, a move that Brandon almost immediately regretted.
Sumner’s constant demands on Brandon, not to mention his pursuit of some of the same women, contributed to a sometimes-awkward relationship between grandfather and grandson. Brandon brought his then-girlfriend, a willowy brunette with long, flowing hair, to the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, where they posed for photographers with Sumner. Throughout the evening Sumner brazenly flirted with Brandon’s date, often putting his arm around her, a spectacle witnessed by senior Viacom executives sitting nearby.
A year later, Brandon invited another girlfriend and tried to enlist Malia Andelin as Sumner’s date, perhaps in hopes of fending off a similar incident. He emailed Andelin in May: “Lets us 4 go I dont want him to humiliate himself and us at MTV and if u were not here he may bring a whore.” But Andelin turned him down.
It eventually proved too much for Brandon. He felt he needed professional help finding his grandfather a companion. With the approval of other family members, he turned to Stanger.
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Stanger had moved to Hollywood from Miami, where she ran a large dating service, hoping for a career as a producer. Her role model was Sherry Lansing, the former model and actress turned successful studio executive. Lansing ran Paramount for twelve years and was chair of the studio when Sumner acquired it. Stanger never worked in the executive rungs like Lansing, but now she was probably much more famous, thanks to the recent broadcast phenomenon of reality TV. Production companies now had their own “unscripted” departments to handle the burgeoning reality phenomenon.
Stanger’s mother and grandmother had both been traditional matchmakers in the conservative Jewish community in which she grew up, and she drew on their experiences to launch a Hollywood dating service. Lansing introduced her to veteran producer Arthur Cohn, who encouraged her to pursue matchmaking full-time. “Someday you’re going to have your own TV show,” he predicted.
Which she did, starting in 2008 on the Bravo cable network. On The Millionaire Matchmaker, Stanger interviewed millionaires, screened potential dates, and then threw them together in a VIP “mixer,” culminating in a date for the winner, all filmed, edited, and televised.
Brash, outspoken, earthy, and funny, Stanger seemed made for reality TV, even if her sweeping generalizations sometimes sparked controversy. However blunt her comments, she never strayed far from a traditional narrative of love and marriage. She limited contestants to two drinks at the VIP mixers and banned sex until a couple was in a “committed relationship.” The show was a hit for Bravo.
Stanger was a celebrity by the time Brandon called. She’d never met Sumner Redstone, but knew he was a mogul and, more to the point, a billionaire. So Stanger drove to Beverly Park to meet Sumner in person, in order to, as she put it, “read his energy.”
She walked past the koi pond and was ushered into the house, where Sumner was sitting in a chair in front of his fish tanks, watching his ticker tape mounted on a nearby wall. Her first impression was that he might have been good-looking in his youth, but he now looked very old. She knew he was eighty-six, but his appearance was startling nonetheless, especially his disfigured hand. She had plenty of available women interested in rich older men. Still, this might be a challenge.
Redstone seemed instantly smitten by Stanger, who checked all the boxes he told her he was looking for in both a date and a potential marriage partner—Jewish, with dark brown hair, and younger (though late forties or fifties would be fine). Sumner brazenly flirted with her, sprinkling his speech with profanities, to which she responded in kind. In the course of the interview he persuaded her to sit on his lap, which she did briefly before politely but firmly extricating herself. (Stanger had a strict rule against dating clients.)
That Sumner was willing to date middle-aged women opened up a world of possibilities. She had a long list of single, charming, and attractive older women most of her wealthy male clients wouldn’t even consider.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
Stanger explained that Sumner would be enrolled at the VIP level, which guaranteed twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week access to the Millionaire Matchmaker herself. The fee was $120,000 a year, payable up front, which covered a year, although it rarely took her that long—on average, she maintained, just three dates.
Redstone offered to pay her $60,000 right away and the balance later. He seemed uncomfortable and told her he’d been placed on an allowance to curb his increasingly lavish spending on women.
Stanger was incredulous. “What? I don’t believe your sob story,” she said. “You can get $120,000. I’ll trust you, but if you don’t deliver the other $60,000 I’ll cut you off.”
Redstone seemed pleased. “No one ever trusts me,” he said. (He eventually paid.)
One of Sumner’s first dates was with Renee Suran, an actress, a model, and the ex-wife of the rock guitarist known as Slash. Suran was beautiful, tall, and brunette, and Sumner was crazy about her. But she didn’t reciprocate his ardor and wasn’t all that interested in his money. Sumner appeared hurt by the rejection and kept begging Stanger to arrange another date with her.
No one else seemed to measure up. Sumner often called Stanger the day after a date, screaming and berating her for an unsatisfactory match. “You don’t talk to women like that,” Stanger warned him. “I’m not fixing you up again unless you call and apologize,” and then she hung up on him. When he inevitably called back, she told him to calm down. “Are we ready to focus on love?”
Over the course of the year Sumner and Stanger became close. She called him “old man” and “Nubby,” referring to his injured hand, and sprinkled her remarks with profanity that matched his own. He seemed to like that she stood up to him and teased him, and he enjoyed her company. He told her repeatedly that she was his “dream girl” and that she was the one he wanted, a proposition she rebuffed. Still, other than the swearing and periodic outbursts when he’d lose his temper, she found him to be a gentleman of the old school. He sent a car for her when they went out to dinner and always wore a suit. He tried to coax her into moving her reality show from Bravo to a Viacom channel.
At the end of his contract Sumner was the rare Stanger millionaire (or, in his case, billionaire) who hadn’t found a successful match. “What else do you have?” he kept asking, even after meeting someone he liked. Stanger offered him a 10 percent discount to renew for a second year, but he didn’t want to pay. So she encouraged him to have a second date with someone he’d earlier said he liked but had nonetheless passed over—a woman named Sydney Holland. “If what you want is me, you should go out with Sydney,” Stanger argued. “Sydney is the mini version of me.”
Holland was a personal friend of Stanger’s, not a client of the dating service. The two women did have a lot in common: similar physical attributes; age (Holland was thirty-nine years old); religion (they were both Jewish); and an interest in health, wellness, and New Age spirituality. Holland was a recovering alcoholic and didn’t drink. She and Stanger were both into herbal medicine. They even shared a last name—Holland’s maiden name was Stanger—though they didn’t know of any common family ancestry.
Holland grew up in affluent La Jolla, California, a San Diego suburb, the daughter of a dentist who died when she was twenty. Holland had a history of dating (and marrying) older men. Cecil Holland, a building contractor and former model she’d married in 2000 when she was twenty-nine, was sixteen years older than she was. The marriage lasted three years.
Six years later, at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, Holland met Bruce Parker, the top sales executive for Callaway Golf, who’d made a fortune when the manufacturer of the popular Big Bertha driver went public in 1992. (His Callaway stock alone was worth over $21 million.) He was fifteen years older than Holland.
A month after they met, she moved into Parker’s Wilshire Boulevard apartment and he leased her a Mercedes. But just months later, in October 2009, Parker had a heart attack and died while he and Holland were having sex. Despite their participation in AA meetings, an autopsy identified the cause as “acute cocaine toxicity.” Parker was just fifty-three years old.
Apart from the trauma of a sudden death in such awkward circumstances (the police investigated Holland for murder, though no charges resulted), Holland was struggling financially. Many of her bills went unpaid, and she’d racked up court judgments and liens of $47,540. She described herself as an entrepreneur, but she’d moved from one failed business venture to the next: “eco-friendly” yoga apparel; a line of sportswear and lingerie; even her own matchmaking business, the Inner Circle VIP Social Club, modeled on Stanger’s Millionaire’s Club. (Stanger didn’t appreciate Holland’s attempts to poach her clients but didn’t view Holland as serious competition.) Holland even hoped to launch her own matchmaking reality show but lacked Stanger’s brash, made-for-television personality. Nothing had panned out.
Holland claimed Parker had promised her a $10,000-a-month allowance and the Mercedes. To the dismay of Parker’s extended family and heirs, Holland consulted a lawyer and refused to move out of his apartment. She kept the Mercedes and wanted to be named an executor of Parker’s estate. She left—taking a set of Gucci luggage with her—only after Parker’s family paid her a $164,000 settlement.
So when Stanger approached her about Sumner, the prospect of meeting a billionaire couldn’t have been more timely from Holland’s perspective. Holland all but begged Stanger to arrange a date for her with Sumner. Stanger obliged, but issued some stern warnings: “Do not sleep with him on the first date. He’s old-fashioned, like out of the 1940s. He could have anyone in Hollywood for sex. He’s looking for the real thing,” meaning love and marriage.
Holland described their courtship as idyllic, “consisting of long drives along the Malibu coast, listening to Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra.” At restaurants they shared Sumner’s favorite dessert, chocolate mousse. Holland began appearing in public as his girlfriend, “at his side at charity events, movie premieres, and parties.” Sumner was as instantly smitten with Holland as he’d been with Fortunato. Before she knew it, they “were spending nearly every waking moment with each other,” Holland maintained.
Soon after they met, Holland and Sumner had dinner with Manuela Herzer and her son Bryan so Herzer could size up Holland. Holland passed muster, and Herzer bestowed her stamp of approval on the relationship.
Less than a year later, in 2011, Sumner proposed marriage, and Holland “happily accepted,” she recounted. He gave her a nine-carat diamond ring, which she proudly showed off to Stanger. (Sumner sent Stanger a diamond Cartier “Love” bracelet as a thank-you.) Sumner showered Holland with cash, more jewelry, art, and flowers—specifically, red roses and orchids. He bought her a house in West Hollywood, just across the Beverly Hills line, and she commuted back and forth in a new Porsche. Sumner paid for her membership at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club and, after that was revoked, at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, where the initiation fee was $250,000. He wrote her love notes, some on stationery from the Japanese restaurant Matsuhisa. “I will always love you. You can always depend on me. Love, Sumner,” read one.
Holland reached out to her lawyer, Andrew Katzenstein, for tax advice about the ring and other gifts. Did she have to declare the “gorgeous diamond” as income? Yes, he replied (in an email leaked to the New York Post), but added that many people “ignore” the rule.
She also told Katzenstein that she was a named beneficiary in Sumner’s will to the tune of $3 million. Katzenstein estimated that, thanks to Sumner’s largesse, Holland was now worth $9 million or $10 million. “Starting to get some comfort?” he asked.
“20 would be best!!!” she replied. “Just saying.”
The Porsche, house, club memberships, and cash made an impression on Tim Jensen, a Paramount employee hired in 2011 to be Sumner’s full-time driver. When Jensen first met her, Holland had been driving a small red compact car so decrepit that its side mirror was held in place with duct tape, according to Jensen.
Jensen soon realized that even though he’d been hired by Paramount/Viacom as a driver for the studio head, Holland was his de facto employer. One of his primary duties was to take checks made out to “cash” to a Bank of America branch and return with the currency—thousands of dollars at a time—which he handed to Holland. Holland, in turn, used cash to pay seven different women who visited Sumner on a regular basis.
To keep track, Jensen kept a spreadsheet listing the various women and payments. In a year they totaled more than $1 million. Jensen complained to a Viacom security official in New York, in part because he didn’t feel safe carrying so much cash, and also because he didn’t consider paying these women to be within the scope of his employment. His complaint went nowhere, but Holland became “hostile,” according to Jensen, and he was fired soon after.
Although Stanger was no longer on retainer to Sumner, she continued to dole out advice to Holland: Give Sumner whatever he wants. Do anything for him within reason. And do not, under any circumstances, cheat on Sumner with another man. Sumner—like many men of his generation—maintained a brazen double standard as far as women were concerned: he could have as many affairs and sexual encounters as he wanted, but anyone he dated, was engaged to, or married was held to a strict standard of monogamy. For Sumner, loyalty was as prized a quality in his wives and mistresses as it was in his business subordinates.
Stanger was convinced that despite their age difference and Holland’s obvious financial motive, Holland was in love with Sumner. Stanger had known plenty of women who were romantically drawn to much older men. Holland took Stanger’s advice to heart. She served at Sumner’s beck and call. She’d interrupt lunch with friends (as she often did with Stanger) the instant Sumner called.
Soon Holland was indispensable. When Sumner asked Holland to move in with him, she did, taking on the roles of wife, secretary, business manager, and, increasingly, nurse. She redecorated the mansion. She arranged visits there with Sumner’s longtime friends Charlie Rose, Michael Milken, and Sherry Lansing, not to mention the women she imported for his sexual gratification. She oversaw his dealings with CBS and Viacom, organized a CBS board meeting at the house, arranged his Sunday movie screenings, and got him to his dentist and doctor appointments.
Sumner made many demands on Holland, all of which she maintained she met: that she be present for every lunch and dinner with him; that she go to sleep when he did (even though this was much earlier than she preferred); that she not take overnight trips without him; that she stop seeing her friends. Sumner, however, “could do whatever he wanted.”
EPISODE 5
“What’s Mine Is Yours”
In June 2012, Paramount celebrated its hundredth anniversary at its studio lot, the only one still located in Hollywood. About a hundred guests and employees entered through its historic arched gateway and, with flutes of champagne in hand, strolled past the sound stages and film lots that had launched the careers of Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Cary Grant, and Mae West and cinema classics from Wings (1927) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) to Chinatown (1974).
Despite her still-contentious relationship with her father, Shari Redstone was there to mark the occasion, but she had no speaking role. As the theme music from The Godfather played from speakers mounted in trees, Sumner entered wearing a dark suit and flamboyant tie. He was helped along by Dauman. Holland, in a revealing dress and Lucite stiletto heels, followed just behind. Her appearance prompted curiosity.
