For a number of weeks in 1970, Michael Brody turned probably the most beloved millionaire on the planet.
The 21-year-old margarine inheritor, from Scarsdale, NY, vowed to offer away his fortune — all individuals needed to do was ask — setting off a whirlwind month that led to cash raining down on Manhattan streets, an look on “Ed Sullivan” and Brody making an attempt to land a helicopter on the White Home garden.
It’s all recalled within the new documentary “Dear Mr. Brody,” out there on demand on Amazon Prime and Google Play.
By no means thoughts that Brody didn’t have, as he as soon as claimed, $10 billion. He apparently had a $1.25 million belief fund (value $9 million in in the present day’s {dollars}) from a grandfather who was the primary individual to model margarine and bought the corporate, Good Luck Margarine, in 1948.
“On the age of 21, I’ve been instructed, Michael acquired perhaps $250,000 of the belief and a month-to-month allowance of $20,000 or $30,000,” Keith Maitland, the movie’s director, instructed The Put up.
Brody’s caper started when he met a woman named Renee in December 1969: She confirmed up at to his home to make a hash supply for her drug-dealing boyfriend and didn’t depart. Three weeks later, Brody married the 19-year-old.
“Michael was on a seashore in Jamaica, on his honeymoon [in early] January 1970,” Maitland stated. “His feeling was that there was love between [he and Renee], blue skies above them, and the world ought to expertise what they have been experiencing.”
Spreading the love, Brody apparently gave away some $50,000 in suggestions in the course of the journey. As a romantic gesture, he purchased out a Pan Am 707 flight again to New York, in order that he and his bride may fly house non-public. After they landed, a military of reporters awaited them on the airport.
“I feel Pan Am obtained wind of the plan and tipped off the media in an effort to get publicity,” Melissa Glassman, a producer on the movie, instructed The Put up. The eye will need to have impressed Brody. “He spontaneously introduced that he was going to offer away all of his cash. He revealed his house deal with, in Scarsdale, and requested individuals to mail in requests.”
Rapidly, greater than 200,000 letters — sob tales and pipe goals — poured in. There was the child who wished $5,000 so he may go to Japan and shoot a film. The spouse of an imprisoned drug addict despatched in a photograph of their baby with a request for funds that might “maintain the smile on his face.” Folks despatched X-rays whereas searching for money to cowl medical doctors’ payments.
Instantly, Brody started writing checks and handing out money. Folks lined up on the entrance garden of his upscale house. A girl named Bunny Jones acquired $60,000 for the launching of a Harlem recording studio and allowed Brody to make use of her Broadway workplace as a Manhattan headquarters. It, too, was quickly besieged with people clamoring for a handout.
Over the subsequent week, Brody would stroll the streets of Manhattan and hand out $100 payments to strangers. He and his crew of hangers-on, usually with joints of their fingers, repaired to the East 60s residence of his father, who was reportedly out of city as all this went down. Quickly, the sidewalk in entrance of the constructing was jammed up with fortune seekers. Hamming it up, Brody tossed $20 payments out the window whereas flipping the chicken.
On Jan. 11, the newly minted celeb appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Present,” performed a Bob Dylan track on his acoustic guitar because the host marveled over “the teen gifting away $25 million.” Viewers members applauded wildly.
A day later, he and Renee chartered a helicopter with the intention of touchdown on the White Home Garden. Brody instructed the press that he was going to supply the North Vietnamese $10 billion to dealer an finish to the Vietnam Struggle. (Not that he had $10 billion.)
However because the chopper got here to airspace above the presidential garden, Secret Service brokers have been on excessive alert. “They stored telling the pilot that if he lands on the garden, he’ll get shot down,” bodyguard Michael Aronin says within the documentary. Brody stored throwing $20 payments on the pilot, insisting he land.
Lastly, although, the pilot obtained chilly toes and pivoted to a close-by airport. Brody and his crew — together with Aronin — taxied to the White Home, the place they insisted on seeing Nixon in order that the struggle may very well be stopped. Secret Service brokers detained the group earlier than kicking them out and arresting the bodyguard, who had an impressive warrant.
At a press convention proper after the incident, Brody griped, “I got here down with a surefire peace plan … President Nixon showed how a lot he cared by arresting an individual I got here down with. I [wanted] to offer $10 billion and numerous love and what did he give me?”
Reporters and establishment-hating hippies ate it up. RCA Information supplied Brody a contract. And in the course of all this, the Grateful Lifeless recruited him to open a present in Hawaii.
“He was paid $300 for the gig, requested the cash in singles and threw all of it into the gang,” stated Maitland. “He additionally occurred to be dosed with LSD by a Grateful Lifeless roadie.”
Again in Manhattan, Brody stored writing checks as if drawing from a bottomless pit. However by Jan. 19, these checks have been bouncing. His admirers started turning in opposition to him, shouting from the road. A matted Brody was requested by a reporter what his goal was.
“To convey peace to the world,” he stated. “The world will understand that they’re killing themselves over paper. I’m the phoniest factor there ever was. I’m a giant phony. I’m not actual. If I die, the entire world dies with me.”
In actual fact, Brody was ill-equipped to deal with such a wild spree and the scrutiny it generated. His mom had died when he was 3 and, a boyhood good friend remembers within the movie, he was raised by babysitters and housekeepers whereas his father, a infamous playboy, pale out of the image.
Brody was so determined for pals that he’d invite native youngsters over for poker nights after which fortunately lose to maintain them coming again.
“Michael struggled to seek out connections,” stated Maitland. “I feel that gifting away his cash was about discovering connections. However it went off the rails.”
There was one thing else at play. In response to Ed Dwyer, a journalist who wrote about Brody for High Times magazine, these joints that he chain-smoked contained greater than mere marijuana.
“If Michael Brody was only a pothead, I don’t assume any of this could have occurred,” Dwyer says within the doc. “Are you aware something about PCP? I wouldn’t advocate it to anybody at any time. It makes you are feeling like you could have all this energy and vitality and you actually don’t.”
As Maitland instructed The Put up, “PCP was the gas that stored the engine working.”
Phrase unfold that issues have been going unhealthy and that the cash was not as a lot as Brody had promoted. A New York Instances article quoted him saying he “was tripped out on drugs” when he determined to blow his inheritance.
“What a joke I’ve pulled on the world,” he added. “They assume I’m Jesus Christ.” On Jan. 19, 1970, The Put up’s entrance web page blared: “Brody’s Hundreds of thousands – Extra Questions.”
Contemplating the whirlwind nature of all of it, Aronin marveled, “It’s an Andy Warhol ’quarter-hour of fame’ story.”
In an effort to get away from the madness and the throngs of critics, Brody tried to maintain a low profile as 1970 wound down. He and Renee moved to a house in Woodstock. However the come-down from every thing — perhaps the medicine, positively the celebrity — was brutal. After having given away an estimated $350,000, he turned more and more depressed.
He wound up in a psychological establishment. Renee, as she explains within the doc, “went to California in a VW bus with [the couple’s baby son] Jamie.”
Brody was launched in 1971 or ’72, solely to be arrested at house in Norfolk, Conn., for making threatening calls to the White Home. Talking to Nixon’s receptionist, he threatened to set himself on hearth and vowed to kill the president.
He was launched on bail, then re-arrested and charged with arson when his $100,000 rental house burned to the bottom. Brody quickly ended up in a psychological hospital as soon as once more. Upon launch, he was ingesting a case of beer a day.
On Jan. 26, 1973, he went to the house of Renee’s father and shot himself with a looking rifle.
Wanting again at all of it, having gone by greater than 12,000 of the letters despatched to Brody, Maitland stated, “The obstacles and points, which held individuals again in 1970 — discovering cash for faculty, paying off medical prices, coping with tragic drug dependancy points — are the identical as they’re in the present day. I feel we may use a Michael Brody proper now, simply with out the unraveling he endured.”
