Gilded Lily Read online

  “Geraldo had a difficult time trying to fix things up when Fred went shopping,” recalled Lourdes Mattos, Geraldo’s widow. “I think Geraldo spent an awful lot of time just repairing the damage from those flights of euphoria.”

  But as bad as his depressions became, observers say they never seriously affected his ability to do business. “There was no one like him in business,” said Marcelo Steinfeld. “Nobody could have ever put together the fortune he did so fast, even with all his psychological problems.” Indeed, in just over twenty years, Alfredo built a sizable empire, with property and assets spread around the world.

  By the late 1960s, Alfredo Monteverde had a staggering net worth of nearly $300 million. Although he had a long list of business interests in Rio, his most successful enterprise remained Ponto Frio.

  But when his depressions became overwhelming, Alfredo was indeed forced to retreat temporarily from the daily responsibilities of running his businesses. Friends say that during one of those early bouts of depression, he tried to commit suicide. Regina knew that her son suffered from the same malady that had plagued his father, and she often told Alfredo that she feared he would end up killing himself if he didn’t get the proper treatment.

  During his worst crises, Alfredo checked himself into a luxurious suite at the beachfront Excelsior hotel or the nearby Copacabana Palace where a steady stream of specialists were admitted by his majordomo Caruso, who was dispatched to the local pharmacy with a small stack of prescriptions for antidepressants, vitamins, and sleeping pills, hastily scrawled on hotel stationery. In the early days, Rosy would fly into Rio from wherever she happened to be in the world, to help her beloved brother through his darkest hours. But later, when she was preoccupied with her own business and demands on her time, Alfredo was left pretty much to the mercy of his various psychiatrists and closest business associates when a depression struck. On occasion, a nurse would visit to give him regular injections of vitamins B12 and C, which were considered an early form of therapy for manic-depressives.

  For despite his phenomenal success in business, there was always something missing in Alfredo’s life—something money could never buy. In a letter to his sister written in the summer of 1956, Alfredo tried to come to grips with his depression when he wrote, “we really make little progress in finding our happiness. When I came back from [a trip to] the States I did everything to fill my life—worked hard, played hard, but of no use for I was unhappy inside of myself. I thought that it was my old spring disease that came again.”

  Perhaps it was the “spring disease”—a deep dissatisfaction with himself and those around him—that was to blame for the string of wives and girlfriends he seemed to collect over the years, like the mills and factories and plots of land he recklessly snapped up for Globex. The patterns rarely changed—the manic womanizing seeming to coincide with his periods of utter euphoria. He would fall madly in love with a beautiful woman, live with her for anywhere from a few months to a few years, and then send her packing.

  “The women arrived at Fred’s house with a suitcase, but they always left with an apartment, a car, whatever they needed,” recalled his sister. “He always took care of them.”

  While still in his twenties, he became involved with Sylvia Bastos Tigre, a woman from one of Rio’s most important legal families, who was nearly double his own age. Typically, he was enamored with her during the first several months of their courtship. Unlike the two others, who would come later, Alfredo did not marry Sylvia.

  “Sylvia is wonderful,” he noted in an undated letter to Rosy. “She does all to please me and help me. What she possesses, and nowadays is a rare jewel, is goodness [sic].”

  Sylvia, who was extremely well connected in Rio society, encouraged him to behave like the important Brazilian entrepreneur he was on his way to becoming. She convinced him to buy a yacht and a vacation home at Aguas Lindas and join the important clubs in the city.

  But the relationship didn’t withstand the “spring disease,” and Alfredo impetuously ended everything in a moment of depression. “We never understood Fred’s attraction to Sylvia,” said his friend and former employee Maria Luisa Goldschmid. “We thought it was some kind of strange mother complex because Sylvia was old enough to be his mother.”

  Aviva Pe’er, who had been crowned Miss Israel in June 1954, seemed more like the type of woman for Alfredo. At least she seemed to be willing to put up with Alfredo’s zanier moments. On New Year’s Eve, he invited Aviva and his friend Maria Luisa to a hotel bar in downtown Rio following the annual Ponto Frio party. It was three in the morning, and instead of leaving his car outside, he decided to drive it through the wide open doors of the hotel lobby. Alfredo parked the car, calmly gave the keys to the startled concierge, and headed in the direction of the bar with his shocked entourage.

  “Fred drove right through reception,” recalled Maria Luisa, adding that his actions were not the result of an overindulgence in alcohol. “It was just Fred. This was the kind of thing he loved to do. Of course, it caused all sorts of confusion. The police were called, and Fred had to pay a huge fine. But we all had a great time.”

  In 1955, following his dalliance with Miss Israel, he married a woman named Zani Roxo in New York, only to divorce her less than a year later in Florida.

  Marie Paule Flore Delebois, a pretty Frenchwoman whose mother Charlotte had worked for the French Resistance during the war, was next. Alfredo fell in love with Scarlett, as she was known in Rio because of her flaming red hair, and flew her to New York where he married her in a civil ceremony in July 1959. A year later, the couple adopted an infant girl and boy, both of whom had been abandoned at a local orphanage on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. A case of adulthood mumps had made Alfredo sterile. But the marriage didn’t last. “Fred fell in love with an image, and the image didn’t quite correspond to reality,” said his sister Rosy, referring to his breakup with Scarlett.

  In February 1962, the marriage to Scarlett was annulled. At the time of the breakup Scarlett agreed to custody of the little girl, Alexandra. Mother and daughter left Brazil for good, and took up their new lives in France. Alfredo, a newly single father, was left with the son, Carlos.

  Single again, Alfredo headed back into his familiar nightly routine. He frequented Sacha’s in Copacabana and hosted all-night poker games at his beachfront penthouse, which was considered the largest apartment in Rio at the time with over 10,000 square feet of space and stunning views of the ocean on the city’s fabled Avenida Atlantica, next to the elegant Copacabana Palace hotel.

  “We’d be playing poker at his penthouse on Avenida Atlantica when a little after midnight Caruso would put out this magnificent buffet feast that was simply fantastic,” said Alfredo’s friend Al Abitbol, a French émigré, who began to build his clothing empire in Rio at the same time that Alfredo started Ponto Frio.

  “He was a crazy genius,” said his friend Marcelo Steinfeld, who recalled how Alfredo once lost $200,000 at a poker game. “In those days, that was a staggering amount of money. Alfredo got up and calmly informed his opponents that he would indeed pay out what he owed, but he insisted upon doing it at the local police station. Of course, after that, everyone just begged off and told him not to worry, that it was just a game, after all.”

  After his failed marriage to Scarlett, the handsome thirty-eight-year-old businessman once again became Rio de Janeiro’s most eligible playboy.

  “Every woman in Rio turned her head when Seu Alfredo walked by,” recalled Alvaro Pães, a flower vendor who managed the large flower market below Alfredo’s office on the Rua do Rosario—Ponto Frio’s new headquarters in the 1960s. “He was rich and he was good looking, and he had what every woman wanted. He knew how to make them crazy.”

  Although he could have any woman he desired in Rio, true happiness eluded him. “He talked in riddles about his life,” said Alvaro. “It was as if he was searching for something he couldn’t find.”

  Alvaro didn’t get involved in Alfredo�
��s personal problems although he always knew when he was in the grips of a new romance. For Alvaro, it always coincided with the times that Alfredo ordered copious amounts of flowers. He ordered yellow roses for his third wife—the blonde divorcée Alvaro knew only from a distance as the elegant Dona Lily.

  “He was in love, but then he was always in love,” said Alvaro. It’s true that Alfredo often wore his heart on his sleeve.

  In his euphoric states, Alfredo would drive up to the flower market, throw the keys of his car to Alvaro, and tell him he could take the car wherever he wanted, provided it was back by the time he needed to drive home at the end of the day. Some days, he would invite Alvaro up to his office for coffee and chocolate. The two would talk about politics and listen to music.

  Ironically, just as he sensed his life spinning out of control, Alfredo would take up his favorite samba. “Everything is in its place / Thank God, thank God,” he used to sing out loud to Alvaro. “When I come home from work / I say to God, many thanks / I sing samba the whole night / And on Sundays and holidays.”

  The harmony celebrated in the samba he loved so much would elude Alfredo for the rest of his life. It was not available to him at any price.

  YET HE SEEMED so happy in February 1965 when he walked out of the Office of the City Clerk in lower Manhattan with his beautiful new bride on his arm. In fact, friends recalled that he was deliriously happy after the marriage to Lily Watkins Cohen. Alfredo celebrated their wedding by taking Lily to the French jeweler Boucheron and buying one of the biggest diamond rings in the store.

  In the early days of their marriage, they acted like a happy, upper-class family. The four children—Alfredo’s adopted son, Carlos, and Lily’s two sons and daughter—were enrolled in good schools in Rio, and Lily hosted wonderful dinner parties for family and friends. Most weekends, the Monteverde clan headed to Alfredo’s summer retreat at Aguas Lindas, where they went sailing and snorkeling.

  In a family portrait taken of Lily and the children soon after their marriage, Lily is the very picture of the well-to-do matron—slim and smiling, with perfectly coiffed hair, a fashionable silk foulard tied loosely around her neck—surrounded by four beautiful children.

  For her part, Lily was relieved to be back in Rio, which was decidedly more cosmopolitan than Montevideo, a quiet backwater where it was nearly impossible to find a Parisian-trained hairdresser and a good bottle of champagne, among other luxuries she could now simply never do without.

  Alfredo appeared to be a dream come true. Not only was he handsome and a good father to her children, he was one of the richest men in Brazil. With Alfredo, Lily was living the fairy tale she had dreamed of as a teenager at the Colegio Anglo-Americano. Now they not only vacationed in South America, but Alfredo took her on expensive tours of Switzerland, Italy, and France. She could now shop in Paris and New York, and lounge on the French Riviera. When Lily complained to him that she had little to do during the long, hot afternoons in Rio, he helped her launch a boutique in the most elegant part of Copacabana, next to the Metro Theater and a few blocks from the Copacabana Palace hotel where Lily now frequented the hotel’s lavish hair salon several times a week.

  “We set up the store as part of Fred’s larger company,” said Trotte, the accountant. “It was a diversion for Lily.”

  The store was named Galati, after the city in Romania where Alfredo was born. It sold only the finest Baccarat crystal from France, imported jewelry, and other objets d’art.

  “She had the best of everything in her store,” said her friend Vera Contrucci Dias. “But it wasn’t really a serious business. It was just something Alfredo had opened for her so that she had something to do during the afternoons.”

  Although the store became a favorite haunt of Rio’s young socialites, Lily and Alfredo were never part of the elite crowd in the city. “They were never among the first team,” said Danuza Leão, who has chronicled Rio society for years. “Of course, everyone knew who Alfredo Monteverde was, but he didn’t frequent any of the high-society events. Lily and Fred weren’t exactly boldface names in those days.”

  With four young children to raise and a rich man’s house to run, perhaps the pretty debutante in the white organdy dress at the CIB balls in the 1950s was now simply too busy to worry about high society. Moreover, Alfredo was not the kind of man who cared about appearing in the social columns, even though many of his friends in Rio belonged to the city’s richest and most prominent families.

  Indeed, Lily seems to have been too wrapped up with more mundane things, like shopping, to work on her entrance into high society. That would come much later.

  Like Mario, her first husband, Alfredo quickly learned about his new wife’s extravagance. Alfredo could never understand why Lily insisted upon ordering bottles of champagne from Le Bec Fin, then Rio’s finest French restaurant, rather than just buy them directly from the liquor store, which charged significantly less. Or why she would order the restaurant’s elaborate French meals and try to pass them off as her own creation. In a society where servants were plentiful, and wealthy women like Lily were rarely judged by their husbands on their cooking or housekeeping abilities, Alfredo could never figure out why Lily tried so hard to make herself into the perfect housewife.

  “She had this geisha complex,” said one of her acquaintances from the 1960s. “She went out of her way to please men.”

  In Rio, they had busy social lives that revolved around their children and friends, even if they were far removed from the grand soirees and balls that Lily would have loved to attend. Alfredo’s weekly poker games continued, complete with the midnight feasts, this time orchestrated by Lily, with a little help from the French chefs at Le Bec Fin, who also helped her organize sumptuous dinner parties at the Monteverde residence.

  It was to one of those dinners that Alfredo invited his friends, the Safra banking brothers—Joseph and Moise. Together with their older brother, Edmond, they had set up their banking business in São Paulo. Edmond now spent most of his time in Geneva, running his Trade Development Bank.

  Edmond Safra was well-known to Alfredo, and Brazil’s other wealthy Jews. He was the banker they sought out when they wanted to hide money offshore, far from the reach of Brazil’s military dictatorship. According to his business associates, Alfredo was among the biggest depositors at Edmond’s bank in Switzerland and also did business with the Safra Bank in São Paulo.

  In addition to the soirees she organized for Alfredo’s business associates and the couple’s friends in Rio, Lily was also much admired for her children’s parties, complete with magicians, clowns, and crowds of happy children. “She threw these great parties for the kids,” said Maria Luisa, who later moved to the United States after her marriage to a fellow Ponto Frio employee in Rio. “It was Lily who gave my daughter her first Barbie.”

  In addition to her hostess skills, Lily also tried to be supportive of Alfredo, especially when he was in the grips of a terrible depression. At one point, in an effort to show solidarity with her husband, Lily checked herself into the exclusive São Vicente Clinic in Rio’s upscale Gavea neighborhood for a sleeping cure, which was a popular form of therapy for mild depression in the 1960s. Alfredo, who was deeply concerned that his new wife was suffering from depression, decided to surprise her when she arrived at the clinic. He loaded his car with a hammer, some nails, and the couple’s Van Gogh that he had asked a friend to transport from the international airport in a Volkswagen camper van. He took seventeen-year-old Victor Sztern with him to help him hang the painting in her room.

  “He could move heaven and earth for the people he loved,” said Sztern, who recalled looking over his shoulder to keep hospital personnel out of the room while Alfredo hammered the nail into the wall of the hospital room and put up the Van Gogh. “He just wanted to surprise Lily, to make sure that even for the short time she was going to be in the hospital she would be happy.”

  Although she eagerly encouraged her new husband’s indulgences, especially
when they involved gifts of exquisite jewelry, Lily was guarded about her own extravagances and never told her second husband what she regularly spent, especially on clothing—her passion. Perhaps she worried that Alfredo would react in much the same way Mario had reacted when she spent thousands on lingerie.

  “Money was just paper to her,” recalled Abitbol, who owns an upscale chain of boutiques called Elle et Lui in Rio. “Lily was my best customer. She would go into my stores and buy ten or fifteen dresses, at about $200 each.”

  Although he was thrilled with his best customer’s shopping habits, Abitbol also felt extremely uncomfortable about the terms. “‘Don’t tell Fred.’ That’s what she always said to me,” recalled Abitbol. “It was always our little secret how much of Fred’s money she spent.”

  After one of Lily’s afternoon shopping sprees at one of his boutiques, Abitbol found himself dining with Alfredo and Lily the same evening. He was surprised to see that Lily was not wearing any of her latest purchases from his store.

  “Didn’t you like any of the dresses you bought?” asked Abitbol, in a whisper, while Alfredo was out of earshot.

  Lily replied that she was going to give all the dresses she had bought to her friends. Lily’s generosity and her good breeding were well known in the couple’s social circle. In the late 1960s Alfredo asked his architect to sell a piece of beachfront property that he owned in the Ipanema neighborhood. The architect, Fernando Pinto Dias, managed to sell the property for well above the asking price. It was Lily who insisted that Alfredo pay Fernando a commission on the sale of the property.