NOTORIOUS NEW YORKERS
On the eve of the holiday season, Todd Kingston Plummer tells the Scrooge-like tale of billionairess Leona Helmsley, New York’s “Queen of Mean”
THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT Real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley leaving court after being charged for illegally evading millions in taxes. 88
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t was a scene out of a Hollywood movie. On a raw March day in New York City in 1992, 71-year-old Leona Helmsley was admitted to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, the very hospital to which her family had donated the Helmsley Medical Tower a few years before. Earlier that day, having been convicted of evading $1.7 million in taxes, a federal judge sentenced her to four years in prison plus 750 hours of community service, and ordered her to pay a $7.1 million tax-fraud fine. Hours after hearing the news, the self-made billionaire collapsed. Her heart
was literally giving out. Just months prior, she had confessed to the gossip columnist Cindy Adams in a rare, televised interview that the stress of the lawsuit was taking a toll. “I cry a lot,” said Helmsley. Hers had been a swift rise, advancing from humble beginnings to become one of the wealthiest women in the world. It was an even swifter descent, creating enemies left and right, eventually earning herself the iconic nickname “Queen of Mean.” But ultimately—despite the society gossip, the press frenzy, the lavish displays of ’80s wealth and excess—who was Leona Helmsley?
ALLAN TANNENBAUM/GETTY
Bah, Humbug!
AVENUE MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER—DECEMBER 2022
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