THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 169 FEBRUARY 28, 2018
went after their rival with ruthless effi-
ciency. “There was a lot of screaming,” recalls
Robinson, a college and club booking agent
at Harvey and Corky. “They’d call us up and
say this band had worked with them for 20
years, and it wasn’t right.” None of that mat-
tered to Harvey, who learned his strong-arm
tactics worked.
He was becoming a local celebrity whose
name could be heard in radio promos. When
The Police came to town, their perfor-
mance was billed as “Corky and Harvey Present
The Police.” The Cars, Mountain, even the
Rolling Stones — Harvey and Corky brought
them all. (Corky Burger could not be reached
for comment.)
Their second concert featured Chuck Berry,
whose interaction with the promoters becamefriends behind. In March 1973, he invited Adler
and about a dozen other John Bowne gradu-
ates to a Grateful Dead concert; when Adler
arrived after a 740-mile drive, he says: “He
treated us like shit. I thought, ‘What happened
to my friend Harvey?’ He was being an asshole.
He ignored us. He was the big shot. We were
too little for him. It was awful. That’s the first
time I saw him becoming a schmuck.”
For years, most music promotion in
Buffalo had been handled by a family-run
company, Festivals East. Harvey and Corkythe stuff of local legend. Peeking through the
curtain when it was time to go on, the rocker
saw he had a full house, for which he had been
promised a $10,000 attendance bonus. Then,
on the spot, he decided that wasn’t enough, and
said he wouldn’t play unless Harvey and Corky
immediately forked over an additional $50,000
— in cash, in a brown paper bag.
As Harvey has told the story, he asked his
“heads of security,” some off-duty SWAT
officers, to handle the matter, and they warned
Berry there might be a riot. But Robinson
says a different, possibly apocryphal, version
has become folkloric: Corky, she says, beck-
oned a relative who allegedly had mob ties. “He
comes backstage, carrying a cane, and he gets
in Berry’s face: ‘You get out on that stage right
now, or first I’m going to take my cane to you,
and then I’m going to have my guys come down
and take care of you!’ ” Berry did as he was told.
In their business dealings, the partners func-
tioned as good cop/bad cop, Robinson notes,Harvey used sarcasm and
humor in his friendships, but
I never knew him to have
a girlfriend, or even to date.
A HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDeach with a different style. “Corky always had
a smile on his face and was very well-dressed,
whereas Harvey, even in those years, dressed
like a slob.” That was telling. Weinstein’s slov-
enliness, she believes, was either a deliberate
rebellion against expectations or a masochistic
declaration against his physical self. “Harvey’s
appearance is a sign he hung around his own
neck,” she reflects.
Still, whenever there was a problem, Harvey
showed no lack of self-confidence. “He’d just
blow the water out of the pool,” adds Robinson.
“He was extremely effective, especially if there
was a block.”
Only once did he try to bully her, as he was
starting to bully others. When he began to
push her around verbally, she resisted, and he
backed off. “You can feel people when they’re1 Wachowiak,
photographed
Feb. 2 on the
site of a theater
where Harvey
Weinstein once
worked in
Buffalo, New
York, was one of
his earliest
alleged victims,
though not
his first. “He was
comfortable,”
she says. “This
was not his first
rodeo.”
2 Frank Sinatra
was flanked
by Harvey (right)
and Weinstein’s
business
partner Burger
in 1974
in Buffalo. 2Adler said he was taking Patti back home, and
his friends decided to go along for the ride.
Eight young men and Patti bundled into
two cars, a 1965 Dodge and a Ford Custom,
and headed for the city. Soon, they pulled
up in front of a large building at 151 Central
Park West, with a doorman and elevator
man. The boys had never seen anything like
it. Riding the elevator to the 10th floor, they
emerged in a massive space whose 70-foot-
long living room was adorned with paintings.
There were two huge Jackson Pollocks,
four Mark Rothkos, a few Motherwells and
Rauschenbergs. Pre-Columbian sculptures
rested on stands. The biggest apartment in the
building, its walls had been reconfigured to
accommodate the artwork. Among the cogno-
scenti, the home was called “the Frick of
Central Park West.”
Patti’s father was Ben Heller, an art collec-
tor and personal friend of Pollock’s. His name
meant nothing to Harvey, but his lifestyle
did. “This was Harvey’s first touching-elbows
with another class, and I can remember his
eyeballs just popping out,” says Adler.
As the young man gazed around him, won-
derstruck, he saw the future he wanted, the
kind of life he longed to grasp. “Someday,” he
told Adler, “I’m going to live like this.”D
ropping out of college, Weinstein and
Burger launched Harvey and Corky
Present, a concert promotion company,
demonstrating the kind of entrepreneurship
Max never had.
“They were able to bring stuff to town that
Buffalo hadn’t seen before,” says Michael Healy,
then a local entertainment journalist. “They
were very good promoters, self-promoters, and
Buffalo is a grateful town if you do something,
so people liked them a lot.”
There were women — lots. “Everybody knew
Harvey really liked women, but there was no
suspicion of anything out of line,” adds Healy,
who remembers attending a Halloween party
in a house Harvey was renting. It was crowded,
and there were “a lot of beautiful women. It was
bacchanalian, without decadence.”
Now Harvey began dating. Starting late in
college, and continuing until his first mar-
riage to Chilton (his secretary) in 1987, he had
“several decent-length relationships,” accord-
ing to a friend.
An early employee remembers seeing him
“with very attractive women before he was
‘Harvey Weinstein.’ Harvey had game. He could
be really charming, really self-deprecating.
This was not just some crude beast.”
But he was beginning to change. As he
embraced his new life, he began to leave his old