Trafford Publishing: The Ladies of Beverly Hills

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The Ladies of Beverly Hills

by Sharleen Cooper Cohen

401 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-0785; ISBN 1-4120-5884-8; US$33.00, C$39.00, EUR27.00, £19.00

Four women, linked by a passion for Belson McKintridge, legendary screen idol and notorious womanizer. McKintridge risks everything for one, desperate scam, changing the ladies' exotic world forever.

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About the Book About the Author Excerpts Catalogue Information
About the Book
About the Book

Four women are linked by a passion for the same man, Belson McKintridge, a legendary screen idol and notorious womanizer. McKintridge risks everything for one desperate, international scam, setting forces in motion that will change the ladies' exotic world forever. In Beverly Hills, nearly everything and everyone is for sale.
Phyllis McKintridge, the beautiful daughter of Felix Anhalt, a wealthy real estate magnate, is married to Belson's grandson, Peter. Peter is heir to the fabulous McKintridge estate that includes thousands of acres of choice Beverly Hills property, several houses, a golf course and a huge staff of servants. But Phyllis must learn the painful cost of love and how fleeting her happiness can be in the face of much stronger forces.
Marla Gilbert is not content to stay home with her two children and wonders if it's truly her husband's business that keeps him away so much. When she throws herself into a new career as an interior designer, it opens up avenues of fulfillment she did not associate with the business world.
Vicky Feinstein is a novelist, struggling desperately to be accepted by the right people. She grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in the Beverly Hills and fights her own needs and desires in an attempt to get what she thinks she wants. Kept on the outside by the powerful Belson McKintridge and the vindictive Leslie Paxton Winokur, she claws her way until she gains entry into their exclusive inner sanctum, only to discover it is rotten to the core.
Leslie Paxton Winokur used her talent and fierce ambition to escape her life in a small Texas town and become the top interior designer in Beverly Hills. But her many secrets and strong desire for revenge finally destroy her only chance to have what she really craves.
Here in this golden lotus land of glamour, sensuality and seduction, these four women share a rivalry and drama that no other playground of the rich and famous can match. And no pleasure or passion can compare to the sweetness of revenge against Belson McKintridge.

About the Author

SHARLEEN COOPER COHEN began her business career by creating a highly successful interior design firm. Her work has appeared in major national magazines, such as House Beautiful and Architectural Digest. After a decade as a designer, she turned to writing novels. Seven published novels later (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, REGINA'S SONG, THE LADIES OF BEVERLY HILLS, MARITAL AFFAIRS, LOVE SEX AND MONEY, LOVES OF VALUE and INNOCENT GESTURES), over two million copies of her books are in print in the U.S., Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, China, and the United Kingdom. Three of them have been optioned for television. During her career as a novelist, she toured the United States numerous times, appearing at speaking engagements, book signings and on television and radio.
In 1995 she wrote her first musical, SHEBA, which she co-produced with the Jewish Repertory Theatre, Off-Broadway in New York. SHEBA was one of the JRT's most successful productions and garnered an excellent New York Times review. The SHEBA CD was released in january 2000 by Original Cast Records. To update SHEBA for the new millennium major changes were made, songs were added and the score was reorchestrated. Formerly a sing-thru libretto, SHEBA is now scene and song. A backer's presentation of the new Pop Rock Gospel Musical took place in Los Angeles in 2004. This production, a community outreach project, brought together the African-American and Jewish communities in an entertainment experience, and had the support of both religious communities. It also served as a blueprint for a national tour. SHEBA was awarded Honorable mention in the Stage Play Script category of the 2004 Writer's Digest Writing Competition.
Since SHEBA premiered, she was associate producer of STREET CORNER SYMPHONY on Broadway and also produced JERRY HERMAN'S THE BEST OF TIMES at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End. In January of 1999, she produced COOKIN' AT THE COOKERY, the story of Alberta Hunter, in conjunction with the Arkansas Repertory Theatre.
Her musical, STORMY WEATHER, the story of Lena Horne, had its first reading in New York in December 1998, then in Los Angeles in September 1999, featuring a cast that included Barbara McNair, Tamara Tunie, Kelly Brit, Dennis Cole and Ron Glass. Additional readings, directed by Billie Allen, were held in New York in October 2000 and October 2001, both produced by Amas Musical Theatre. The cast included Phylicia Rashad, Ruth Williamson, and Tamara Tunie, choreography by Hope Clark. STORMY WEATHER was awarded Honorable Mention in the Stage Play Script category of the 2000 Writer's Digest Writing Competition. Amas Musical Theatre produced a workshop of STORMY WEATHER in June 2004, directed by Victoria Pero with choreography by Hope Clarke. The cast included Leslie Uggams, LaTanya Hall, Blair Ross and John Hillner. In February 2005, The Manhattan Theatre Club produced a reading of STORMY WEATHER to assess it's viability for a major production.
Sharleen's original musical, BLACKOUT, with music by award-winning composer Debra Barsha (RADIANT BABY), had a workshop reading in New York December 2003, produced by Amas Musical Theatre. Directed by Phillip George, the cast included Funda Ducal, Patrick Jude, Alan H. Green, Christina Nuki, Jenelle Lynn Randall, Julian Rebolledo, James Sasser and Robin Skye.
She has obtained the stage rights to one of the most popular and highest grossing films of all times, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and is currently working as a book writer and producer with Douglas Day Stewart on a musical based on the original screenplay.
www.sharleencoopercohen.com

Excerpts

from BOOK I Chapter 1
DREAMS
She wanted to give him lots of children, the sooner the better, unless he didn't want them, and she wanted to cook him wonderful meals, unless he'd rather eat out, and she wanted to make love to him any time he'd let her, unless he'd rather make love to her. Whatever Peter wanted was what she wanted. She was going to give him all the security and close family he'd lost when his parents and sister were killed in a plane crash. Her heart ached for him every time she thought of what he must have suffered to be ten years old and the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his entire family. He'd awakened in a hospital to find the only people he had left in the world were his grandparents. His grandmother wanted him to stay at home but his austere potentate of a grandfather packed him off to boarding school at the first available opportunity. Of course Phyllis didn't blame Belson; his wife had been ill and he had done what he thought was right for Peter. After his grandmother died, Peter never lived at home again until he graduated college and went to USC Law School.
Phyllis thanked God every day for giving her Peter to love, but most of all she thanked her father for introducing them. Felix had gotten to know Peter at the Los Angeles Country Club when Peter was in law school, and they had developed a very special friendship. Peter came to rely on Felix as the father he had never had. They played tennis doubles together and golf, and for years Felix's conversations were peppered with mention of *the McKintridge boy.* Phyllis chuckled to herself remembering how she had refused to meet him. She was going with John Aames at the time, and after they broke up, she'd immersed herself in the graduate business program at Claremont. There had been no time for dating or romance until finally Felix overruled her protests and invited Peter to dinner.
Had it been love at first sight? No, Phyllis thought, not exactly love, but in many ways more important. It had been like at first sight. She had liked Peter's shy soft-spoken mannerisms, his sincerity, and the kindness in his smile. It amazed her that anyone as handsome as Peter could be so sentimental, and it overwhelmed her to see tears in his eyes when she told him she loved him. At first she'd had to contrive ways to see him because of his reticence to approach her. It seemed he wanted to make such a good impression on Felix Anhalt's beautiful daughter that he was too much of a gentleman. It was she who took the initiative, who made tennis dates with her girlfriends at the club when she knew he would be playing there. She was the one who studied at the courthouse law library in hopes of running into him (it worked twice), and she even invited him to a play at the Music Center, telling him they were her parents' tickets. Actually, she'd paid scalpers' prices, and when Peter found out they weren't her parents' seats, he overcame his shyness and started asking her out. There was something in his attitude toward her that made her feel cherished. And they both shared and idealization and reverence for love.

from BOOK I Chapter 5
DREAMS
"This is the manner to which my daughter was born, you ignoramus. Do you think for one moment that you could ever provide her with one tenth of it? You're nothing but a filthy German peasant from bastardized stock. My daughter laughed at your proposal when she told me about it. ŒCan you imagine, Father? That dolt dining at McKintridge, telling his stupid ethnic stories at our table, thinking he could mix with our friends.' She laughed, you idiot. We both laughed because you're not good enough to kiss her feet.
Felix trembled, mortified by his words. He had never seen such hatred. He stood there telling himself over and over that it wasn't true. It was a lie, a cruel lie. But the bayonet of words had pierced him fatally. He could feel himself bleeding inside, his self-respect oozing away to be supplanted by insidious fear and in security. He was a child again, when the orange crops failed, when his father's heavy accent embarrassed him, when his uncles were nothing but dumb farmers, when everyone but he could afford to go to college. How had he ever supposed he could marry a girl who had come from all this? Even if she did love him.
It took every ounce of courage to say, "Your daughter and I love each other, sir, in spite of what you think of me.*
"She'll get over it,* Belson shot at him. "Now get out!" And he turned his attention back to the roses.
Felix ran with acid panic in his guts. He was so demeaned that he didn't even know at the time how badly he'd been beaten. He felt an awful shame that kept him from speaking to Margie for days. And then when he tried, she wouldn't see him. At first he couldn't believe it. He wrote letters, telegrams, send flowers. Everything was returned. And he was never able to gain admittance to the estate again. It was a fortress, after all, impossible to penetrate. He was sick at heart, and frightened, enraged, and miserable. What had happened? Why had she stopped loving him? He told himself her father was keeping them apart, telling her lies. But a small part of him didn't believe that. He turned to one of Margie's sorority sisters, Audrey, to intervene for him, but Audrey couldn't get through to Margie either.
And then he read that Belson McKintridge had taken his wife and two daughters on an African Safari. They might as well have gone to the moon.
He told himself that any girl who could be so controlled by that monster of a father would not have been a suitable wife for him, but the pain of her loss bore at him. Three months later Margie was dead. She died in Africa after contracting a virulent jungle disease. And all Felix had left was an equally virulent hatred for Belson.
He vowed to get even.

from BOOK II Chapter 3
VANITIES
What Sherryn did not know was that shortly after Leslie's arrival in California, Belson too became Leslie's benefactor. As hard as she tried not too, as much as she admired Sherryn, Leslie found Belson irresistible. He was so famous and so sophisticated, and so handsome. And he wanted her. He wooed her and teased her and courted her until she fell in love with him. And she fell very hard. It was the first time she'd ever been in love and she was overcome with the excitement of who he was and how he made her feel. She was still young enough and naïve enough to believe that he loved her too, that only their mutual respect for Sherryn was keeping them from a permanent relationship. But it was a strange affair. Belson refused to consummate it. He would touch her and kiss her all over her body until she was mad with desire. He would show her what to do with her hands to assuage her own needs while he observed. But never, never would he do it himself.
After a while she finally began to realize he was toying with her. That was when she started to wheedle gifts from him. It was Belson who gave her the most important pieces in her fabulous art collection, a collection that included one work by each of the major impressionists, one by each of the Fauvists, something by every old master she could get her hands on, including an etching by Rembrandt. She even had a small oil by Goya, her pride and joy. But what she had to do to get these treasures was increasingly difficult. For not only did she have to agree to keep her virginity intact, Belson started asking other things of her as well. He wanted her to watch him perform the sex act with any number and combination of partners. At first she was disgusted and terribly hurt at the suggestion, but after a while her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to try it. It turned her stomach, but even more than that she was consumed with jealousy to watch him give to some boy or two young girls what he so madly withheld from her. After one of his group sessions she would beg him to make love to her. And when he wouldn't she would cry for hours. After a while she taunted him with her virginity, threatening to deflower herself merely to defy him. But he had the last word. As long as she remained a virgin, he would be good to her. Once her hymen was gone, he would be too.
Their never-consummated affair lasted for nearly four years, until Leslie was established as the up-and-coming arbiter of taste in Beverly Hills and she no longer had to endure the monthly physicals to prove her hymen was still unbroken. The affair ended when Sherryn died after a lingering illness. Now, she thought, he is free to marry me. And she waited for his proposal. But he informed her that he would never marry a cracker off the Texas plains. She screamed at him and beat at his chest with her fists; he was a hypocrite of the worst kind. Here he was running with the animals and yet he had the nerve to tell her that she wasn't good enough for him. The problem was that she suspected he was right.

from BOOK II Chapter 6
VANITIES
"I have an inoperable blockage of the artery." Belson's gaze moved slowly from Peter's face to the handsome portrait of himself above the mantel taken by George Hurrell when Belson was thirty-eight. The youthful, unlined face mocked him. "Maybe I should have been a vegetarian, taken more vitamins when I was young, gotten into jogging. Well, no matter. There it is."
Peter felt a sudden hot rush of fear course through his body, and he broke out into a cold, clammy sweat. No! he thought. No, it can't be true. I don't want to lose him.
Belson turned back to him. "I know what you're going to say. Believe me, I've said it all to myself. I've consulted the best. They've poked and prodded me and dyed my arteries." He shook his head slowly, hopelessly. "There is nothing they can do. It's terminal."
Peter didn't know what to say. He was fighting not to cry. Belson abhorred any display of sentiment. But Peter felt the depth of his hurt welling up in him as the sharp knife of loss ripped at him. Belson's eyes were boring into him, daring him to break down, and Peter dug his nails into his palms so he wouldn't, waiting for some indication that an embrace would be welcome, that there was even the smallest desire in Belson to share his grief and fear. But moments passed in silence and the only indication of need was two bright spots on Belson's cheeks showing his anxiety. The tension was almost palpable; Peter had no idea how to alleviate it. Finally Belson spoke.
"There's more bad news," he stated flatly, and Peter steeled himself. What more could there be?
"My financial empire is in shambles." Belson's voice was hoarse as he forced out the words. "And in some ways this is even harder for me to face than my failing health because I've always prided myself on my brilliant business acumen." He sighed with discouragement. "But even brilliance when it is surrounded by incompetence can disintegrate. Don't ever make that mistake, Peter. Be certain, absolutely certain, that the people you choose to advise you are successful in their own right and have nothing to gain by your failure."
"What are you saying, Grandfather?" Peter asked. "What kind of a shambles?"
"All of it," Belson said. "I've lost everything. The only thing left intact and unencumbered is the house and acreage, and there's not enough money to run it even for another month."

from BOOK II Chapter 7
VANITIES
He came over to the bed and kissed her and then kissed Vicky on the cheek. "What shouldn't she bother saying?" Peter asked and sank tiredly into the club chair in the corner. Vicky could see fatigue seeping off of his muscles; his head nearly dropped to his chest.
"That she won't let us rent her our condominium for the price of our mortgage payment of five hundred dollars a month," Phyllis emphasized, alerting him to what she had already told Vicky, "since she's been fired from her job and is going to live on savings for a while until she completes writing a novel." She finished her sentence with an excited upswing of her voice.
In spite of his fatigue Peter smiled in agreement with his wife. "She's right, Vick, don't bother to say no. We move out of here in two weeks. Think you can handle the time delay?"
Vicky was so overwhelmed with gratitude she could hardly speak. "I'll handle it!" And then her eyes filled with tears as she hugged Phyllis and then Peter. "You two are so wonderful," she said. "And just so we understand one another, whatever the subsidy is between what I'm paying you and what this place actually costs per month, I'm going to consider a loan, okay? When I'm a well-known author and Merv Griffin interviews me, I'll pay you back. Deal?"
"Deal," Phyllis said with a grin, and Peter nodded.
Vicky could see that they wanted to be alone so she thanked them again and said good-bye. But when she reached the street and got into her car, she had a terrible pang of conscience and had to force herself not to be sentimental. Peter and Phyllis were her best friends, but their friendship could have no bearing on her plans, except that she would disguise the characters in her novel as much as possible so as not to hurt them. But no matter how good they were to her, or even if she accepted their generous hospitality, she would not be deterred from writing the story that was burning inside to be told.
She was going to take the semiautobiographical novel of three young women growing up in Beverly Hills which she'd started years ago, and turn it into the spiciest best seller of the year. And the two main characters were now going to be Leslie Paxton Winokur and Belson McKintridge. Leslie, with her vicious vendettas, who destroyed anyone who competed with her, anyone who didn't conform to her ideas, including her own children. And Belson, the cruel tyrant, incapable of love, a despicable racist who managed to hide his foul soul from the world and instead of being vilified was revered and beloved. How she would expose them, how she would get even with them for doing to her what they had done.
It was a great idea. She was going to find out everything she could about them, how they dirtied the lives of those around them, how they abused their privileges, and she'd make sure they received their retribution in the end.

From BOOK III Chapter 1
THE LADIES
"I don't want you to think I'm ratting on a buddy," Larry said. "But you're the only person I could turn to on this. The only logical person, that is. You know Peter, you care about him."
Peter? Felix thought. He wants to talk about Peter and not Marla? The relief that flooded through him was exquisite. "Yes, of course I care about him."
"Well." Larry sighed. "Peter's in real trouble. He swore me to secrecy but I just couldn't keep that promise. Especially since I know how worried you've been about him the past few months. God, I never suspected a thing. I was so blind. And so were you. Maybe it's as much your fault as it is mine for not making Peter tell us sooner." He paused and shook his head sorrowfully. "No, it's not our fault. It's Belson's, the stinking bastard. How could he do such a thing to his own grandson?"
"Do what?" Felix asked. He was trying to remain calm but his blood pressure had just shot up over the cuff. All these months of detective work, and the money he'd spent to retain Bob Delman, and they still hadn't found out exactly what Peter and Belson were up to. And now, out of the blue, the answer might be falling right into his lap, gratis, without his making any effort at all.
"Belson has blackmailed Peter into ruining his life. The geezer's an old man, but he still wields so much power over Peter. It's strange, fucking strange. And Peter does everything his grandfather asks him to. The guy's a pussy. Jesus. I don't know how we can stop him. But we've got to try. If this keeps up there could be a major disaster ahead for Peter. And that would certainly affect Phyllis. And me too," he added. And then Larry told him about Peter and Belson, every detail he could remember.
"They're squeezing platinum?" Felix said in amazement when Larry had finished his story. "They'll never get away with it."
"But they are!" Larry insisted. And talk about guts. That old man's balls are made of iron to do what he's doing. Christ. I almost wish they'd let us in on some of their action. Belson has accumulated nearly seventy million on paper so far. And they're going to reach their deadline soon. When they sell their current holdings, they'll have made over a hundred million in 6 months. Kind of makes you sick, doesn't it?"
Felix nodded. But he didn't feel sick, not at all. He was so elated he could hardly control himself. No drug, or piece of tail, or deal in the world could have given him a high as magnificent as this. I've got you, old man, he thought, wishing he could shout with joy. I've got you!

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