The Trouble With Leona Helmsley



In Star Trek's Wrath of Khan there was an iconic line delivered by the bewigged, Khan-ish Ricardo Montalban, quoting Melville's Moby Dick, "..from hell's heart I stab at thee.."

One year after her death, Leona Helmsley still looms large on the pop-cultural horizon. There are many reasons for this thusness. One: she was the perfect Dickensian villain ("Le-Ohh-Nah Helmssss-ley"), the sort of asexual chap that would robustly deny an anemic Oliver Twist a second helping of the gruel (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). Two: the so-called "Queen of Mean" was unapologetically real-estate rich and could barely conceal her icy contempt for her legion of servants, often first generation immigrants trying to survive in the jungle. Three: Leona was just funny as all get out. Come on, now. The old gal was a comic writer's dream.

Even the New York Post, which is not unfriendly to the rich, shaped her narrative in often hysterical ways. There was the matter of her dog, "Trouble" that Leona, apparently, trained -- for her own Satanic amusement -- to bite the little people that she employed. Arf! Hys-ter-ical (Though not, we imagine, if one was the recipient of those bunches-of-munches). "We had so much trouble with Trouble," Zamfira Sfara told the Daily News. "I was bitten dozens of times."

And then there was the comic coup de grace. Leona willed the bitch $12 million, insuring her a place in the comedy Hall of Fame as the gift that keeps on giving on a slow news day for the rest of 2007. Exit stage right, Leona; but not so fast: ".. From hell's heart I stab at thee .." From Page Six:

"WHEN Leona Helmsley set up an $8 billion charitable foundation for the care of dogs, she did so by snubbing the poor, new documents reveal. In this week's New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin bares never-before-seen documents from the Queen of Mean's trust. On Sept. 16, 2003, Helmsley signed a mission statement explaining that two goals of the trust were 'the provision of care for dogs [and] the provision of medical and health-care services for indigent people, with emphasis on providing care to children.' But less than six months later, Helmsley modified the statement. 'Version one proposed helping dogs and ailing poor children . . . The final version cut out the children and gave everything to the dogs,' Toobin writes.

The idea of Jeff Toobin, a heavyweight frou-frou New Yorker reporter, wrestling with Leona's legacy leaves us in fetal position crying tears of mirth. The title of the piece? "Rich Bitch: The legal battle over trust funds for pets."

We couldn't make this up if we tried, people.