New Britain Herald Newspaper, July 23, 1927, Page 11

Charming Luella Gear, musical com- edy star, whose friendship with young Mr. Heck- scher is said to be the real cause of his recent divorce HEN young G. Maurice Heck- W scher’s wife sued him for di- vorce, and her friends implied that she was displeased with the way he was stepping out with Miss Luella Gear, a comely musical comedy star, it is prob- able that his revered parent, August Heckscher, wealthy New York realtor and philanthropist, took him aside and gave him a little talking to. TFathers are like that. But the elder Heckscher couldn’t do that to-day with any degree of comfort and assurance. If he were foolish emough to try it, G. Maurice might turn right around and say to him, with most unfilial scorn, “You’re telling me how to manage women? That’s a hot one. Come to think of it, you’re not so good at man- aging them yourself.” Not that the senior Heckscher, who will be eighty years old in a few months, has been playing daddy to any show girls or cabaret vampires. But the fact remains that he has been sued for $1,000,000 by Frieda Hempel, beauteous and buxom qpera and concert singer, under a clause of a mysterious contract that Frieda says he and she entered into many months ago. And he is making an extended trip through Eu- rope until some of the excitement occa- sioned by the filing of the suit dies down. It is a situation too piquant, for Broadway to overlook, and they are wise- cracking ad lib abqut it, to their own amusement, and the annoyance of the Heckschers. The idea of the sedate and venerated Heckscher the elder following his son’s lead and getting involved in litigation with a woman after all these years is rathers funny, all but the prejudiced must admit. With August Heckscher on the Con- tinent, and Mme. Hempel in Paris, the details of the Hempel suit have been hard to get, and nobody but the lawyers knows exactly what it’s all about. Mme. Hempel says that Mr. Heck- scher, “for a valuable consideration,” agreed to pay her $48,000 a year for life, the contract dating from April 1, 1926. When he failed to make good this Wealry. How Rich Mr. Heckscher Got Himself in a Mysterious Million-Dollar Law Suit Just When His Gay, Young Son Was Being Divorced, Supposedly for His Attentions to a Pretty Broadway Actress August Heckscher, rich realtor and philan- thropist, who suddenly decided to summer . in Europe when Frieda Hempel, the opera star, sued him for a million dollars year, she immediately set her lawyers to work, and now she not only wants this year’s $48,000, but she wants the court to order the multi-millionaire to pay her $1,000,000 in a lump sum, on “the rea- sonable theory that she may hope to live for twenty odd years more. What the ‘“valuable consideration” was the high-powered and highly paid barristers engaged on both sides refused to tell at the time of filing. One thing Terence J. McManus, one of the opera singer’s lawyers, has said since then, and with finality. “This is not a breach of promise action,” Mr. McManus disclosed. “Marital relation- ships are not involved. I am not at lib- erty just now to say what are the issues. Nor to say whether the contract that is the basis of the action was verbal or written.” The McManus statement rather upset those gossips who remembered that Mme. Hempel recently obtained a Paris divorce from William B. Kahn, silk manufacturer, and was reported to have a successor to Mr. Kahn in mind. Irving L. Ernst, another lawyer in the Hempel line-up, said: “The $48,000-a- year contract was made with Mme. Hempel before she obtained her divorce from Mr. Kahn, but I am at liberty to state that even if Mme. Hempel had not obtained the decree it would not have affected the contract, which was for a valuable consideration,- and had nothing to do with marriage.” Again, the ‘“valuable consideration” is like “the papers” in a ten-twenty- thirty melodrama of the dear, dead days! Taking pity on the newpaper writers some days ago, Mr. Ernst did amplify earlier statements by a little bit, when he issued the following announcement: “The agreement that we base our action on would have involved, had it been lived up to, Mme. Hempel’s abandon- ment of her career as a public concert singer for hire. “It was a philanthropic agreement, and while it would have cost Mr. Heck- scher $48,000 a year, it would have cost Mme. Hempel $200,000 or more a sea- son. She lived up to her part of the bargain this year by not going on tour. Since April 1, 1926, she has not ap- peared on the estage, except for charity.” The singer seems to have done that. Agents trying to book her for tours have been quick- ly turned down. She was careful to explain, when leaving for France, that she was going to see relatives, and that her concert appearances there would be “incidental.” Also presum- ably, they will be for charity. When the suit was brought, Chad- bourne, Stanchfield & Levy, Heckscher’s attorneys, issued a brief statement to the following effect: “We don’t know the basis of the suit. We have asked that it be amended and amplified. It is evident that the plaintiff is trying to ob- tain some of the defendant’s money, but we believe that she has no legal justifi- cation therefor.” To which Mr. Ernst replied: “Our suit is well grounded in morals and in law. They will learn all they wish when it is tried. As to money, Miss Hempel is not a gold-digger. She is an opera star, a concert singer of note, and earny $200,- 000 a season. She doesn’t mted Mr Heckscher’s money. She seeks vindica- tion of a principle.” And there you are. When news- hounds tracked the elder Heckscher to Hamburg, Germany, and cornered him, he wouldn’t say a thing. “My lawyers handle all my legal business,” he side- stepped. “A surprise to me, this suit. Nice day. Good-by.” A year ago it was rumored that the mature financier and philanthropist was interested in Mme. Hempel, who is fair, over forty, and pleasingly plump. Now friends explain that various meetings of the songbird and the multi-millionaire real estater had to do with the contract and the valuable consideration, and so- forth, and had no romantic significance In any case, they are known to have had a meeting in Paris, an! several months later Mme. Hempel followed Mr. Heckscher to America and to Palm Beach.. They saw each other in hotels and restaurants every day, although hos- tesses took care not to invite them to the same house parties, for the elderly Copyright, 1927, Mrs. G. Maurice Heckscher, who recently divorced her husband and was granted the custody of their children Mr. Heckscher was sensitive, and knew that gossip was busy coupling their names. Probably the whole story of the contract won't come out until the case is tried. G. Maurice Heckscher, the real estater’s son, is now a free agent, for his wife, the former Louise Vanderhoef, obtained her Paris divorce and custody of their children. Young Mr. Heckscher is said to be constant in at- tendance upon Miss Gear, who has been charming the multitude as one of the principals in “Queen High” all winter. Broadway is not slow in saying that he will marry the young woman; and he has not made any heated denials, nor has the musical comedy A queen. In her suit, Mrs, Heck- scher jr. did not mention Miss Gear, so far as Paris cablegrams disclose. She sued on the grounds of desertion. Pa- risian divorce laws are convenient, that way, and one can get one’s decree for any one of a dozen reasons. The Heckschers have been living apart for some time, the former Miss Vanderhoef maintaining a Park Avenue apartment, and G. Maurice dividing his time between his bachelor apartment in East Fifty-second Street, his yacht and the Broadway night clubs. The young Mr. Heckscher has been one of the most indefatigable and en- thusiastic men-about-town during the last year, and the life of many a party. Nevertheless, his trouble with his wife has seemed to weigh upon his mind, even when in the company of the facinat- by Johnson Features, Ine. recent Maurice Heckscher chschor photograph G. ing Luella who is a very jolly girl. It got so bad at one time that he applied for police protection, saying he was being shadowed, and expected to be beaten up, kidnaped or something of the sort at any moment. Whatever grounds he had for alarm, he was advised to re- tain a bodyguard, and for months went about attended by muscular individuals who looked like police detectives and talked out of the corners of their mouths. August Heckscher’s philanthropies have been many, and all of them have been stamped with originality. Re- the slums of New > offered to be one of a group onaires to put up the money to build model tenements to house the poor of the city. The houses were to be rented cheaply, of course. The State ing A striking camera study of Frieda Hempel, the prima donna, whose strange law- suit against Daddy Heck- scher has him very much worried and annoyed was to aid. The millionaires were to get no profits at first, and then a very moderate one. There was no rush to get in on the scheme, some millionaires calling it visionary and socialistic, others hinting that August was getting soft in the head in his old age. Mr. Heckscher is the “angel” of the Heckscher Foundation, the donor of a marble art museum to Huntington, Long Island, and the benefactor of other charities. Loyal friends believe that the “con- tract” that forms the .foundation of Mme. Hempel’s suit concerns some am- bitious and high-minded plan of the multi-millionaire to give music to the masses. They don’t know just how, but the wording of the complaint of the opera ‘star and the guarded statements of her lawyers support such a view. The friends of Mme. Hempel, not one whit less loyal to her, snort when some- body suggests that a woman earning §200,000 a season practicing an art that she loves would bring suit unless she considered herself wronged.