tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post7725206889154540064..comments2023-10-30T07:10:34.610-07:00Comments on Underbelly: The Ethno-history of FinanceBucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16452321114185736762noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31671374.post-87828693798421896692008-04-01T14:22:00.000-07:002008-04-01T14:22:00.000-07:00I happen to have known the late Lew Glucksman – in...I happen to have known the late Lew Glucksman – in the 1960s my former inlaws were locker neighbors of his at the Deal Casino on the Jersey shore – and trust me, golfing, bridge playing, bon mot dropping Jimmy Cayne is no Lew Glucksman.<BR/><BR/>Lew wasn't so much scrappy as openly and forthrightly crude. If you were out to dinner with him he would on occasion push the dishes in front of him to the side, declare, "This conversation is boring me," put his head down on the table and go to sleep. (This is how I found out that he snored.)<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, aristocratic Fettes graduate David Ogilvy, the late advertising genius, was also known to misbehave in restaurants. Frequently.<BR/><BR/>Some years ago that I also learned from a young Lehman associate that one morning at 3 AM, at the Claridge's Hotel in London, Lew Glucksman received a telephone call that required immediate action. He ran out into the corridor of Claridge's wearing nothing but his boxers and began pounding on the doors of his sleeping entourage. "Get packing!" he boomed, "We're going to Tokyo in half an hour."<BR/><BR/>Late in his life Lew divorced and remarried. Now, in the honor his second wife, and for a contribution heftier (I assume) than all the money I ever earned in my lifetime, there is a "Lewis and Loretta Brennan Glucksman Ireland House" at New York University. It's located on the east side of Fifth Avenue, half a block north of the Washington Square arch.<BR/><BR/>That's the miracle of American capitalism for you. Only in America can a poor Jewish boy from the boroughs grow up to be a rich Manhattan Irishman.<BR/><BR/>Crankily as ever,<BR/>The New York CrankThe New York Crankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04489472134701718697noreply@blogger.com