The Very Rich Life Of Enrico Di

Portanova
Hugh Roy Cullen was the classic Texas wildcatter. His
grandson is the classic Texas playboy.

Baron Ricky and his wife, Alessandra, know the best of everything and have the money to buy it.

Photograph by Michael Patrick

His name is Baron Enrico di Portanova, and in Houston it is an oddly

ubiquitous name. It is ubiquitous because the baron appears in the gossip
columns on a nearly daily basis, traveling constantly from his various
houses in Europe to a mansion in River Oaks to his villa in Acapulco. Along
the way, he married a Houston girl named Sandy Hovas and transformed
her into Baroness Alessandra, attempted to buy the “21” club in New York
as a token of love for the baroness, hauled in 75 tons of steel and glass to
enclose and air-condition his mother-in-lawʼs back yard on River Oaks
Boulevard, and built Arabesque, the largest villa in Acapulco—32 bedrooms,
26 bathrooms, 4 kitchens, 2 indoor waterfalls—where he recently
entertained Nancy and Henry Kissinger.

The odd part is that no one in Houston seems quite sure who the baron
really is. From time to time, a columnist will explain that he is the grandson
of a Houston oil​man, but the title of nobility, the age of his money, and his
nouveau riche behavior donʼt exactly go together. The contradiction is best
explained by saying that he is the unwelcome heir to a family fortune and
that, in a sense, he made it on his own, the hard way. To get his fortune, he
has waged a twenty-year legal battle that will culminate this spring in what
will be one of the most interesting probate fights Texas has ever seen. If he
wins, the judgment awarded could amount to billions of dollars and go down
in Texas folklore as the greatest of all stories about how fortunes can shape
the lives of their inheritors.

The baronʼs grandfather was Hugh Roy Cullen, an authentic capitalist hero.
Furnished with a fifth-grade education, he became one of the richest men
in the world. He struck oil for the first time near Houston in 1928 while his
wife and children—dressed in their Sunday best—looked on. He went on to
make three more major finds in the next seven years and was one of several
people the press called King of the Wildcatters. Cullenʼs crowning
achievement was finding the Tom OʼConnor field, which was a mile-deep,
billion-dollar pool of oil near Victoria.

As Cullen grew rich, the U.S. economy entered its darkest years. Cullen
voted for Hoover and opposed FDR at every turn. According to his
authorized biography, Hugh Roy Cullen: A Story of American Opportunity,
published in 1954, “he had waged a personal holy war against the two
things he feared the most—growing strength of federal government and
infectious foreign ideologies.” He offered his own version of the New Deal
by building “the big white house,” a huge mansion on six acres in River Oaks
that required a staff of fourteen servants. In 1932, while the house was
under construction, Cullen formed the Quintana Petroleum Company—
named for a group of abandoned shacks that had been a flourishing port on
the Brazos River when Houston was an inland village—and took his wife,
Lillie, and five children to Europe.

In 1936 Cullen began to feel that something in life had gone awry, and he
started trying to divest himself of his fortune. Over the next twenty years he
gave away more than $200 million to the University of Houston, the
symphony, and various hospitals, while the Houston press pointed out that
“only America could have created millionaires and philanthropists.” Cullenʼs
biographers attribute this onset of philanthropy to the death of his oldest
child and only son. Roy Gustav, a young husband and the father of two sons
and a daughter, was killed on a drilling rig in 1936. The biographers do not
consider the possibility that the fate of Lillie Cranz Cullen, who was the
second-oldest child and Baron Rickyʼs mother, might also have had a
profound effect on her father.

Lillieʼs story is as classic as her fatherʼs. She was an American heiress who
was swept off her feet by an Italian playboy who called himself a baron and
would eventually have three wives. Paolo di Portanova and Lillie Cranz
Cullen married on December 16, 1932, and eight months later, on August
16, 1933, she gave birth to their first child—a circumstance that in those
years was cause for mortal embarrassment. Hugh Roy Cullen did not
disinherit his daughter, but she appears to have dropped out of his life. She
is briefly mentioned in his biography but never described, and if she ever
attended any of the large celebrations the Cullens held in Houston, the
newspapers didnʼt notice.

Only the barest details are known about Lillie Cranz Cullen di Portanova.
She and her husband lived in Los Angeles, where they had two sons, Enrico
(who inherited his fatherʼs title of nobility) and Ugo. Lillie and Paolo
divorced, she moved to New York City, and the sons ended up in Italy.
Enrico, the older of the boys, grew up to be a handsome man—tall and well
built with black hair and a voice that was a deep rumble in his chest. Ugo,
we will come to later.

In the mid-fifties Enrico was living in Rome with no expectations that he

would inherit a fortune. In 1957, when Hugh Roy Cullen died, he did begin
receiving $5000 a month from his grandfatherʼs estate, but he received no
clear statement regarding his inheritance. In 1961, to satisfy his curiosity, he
borrowed $10,000 to go to Houston and claim what he felt was due him
from the other Cullen heirs. This was to become the central purpose of his
life.

The Cullens and the di Portanovas will not talk about their earliest
encounters or, for that matter, about any facet of their relationship.
Attorneys for Enrico will say only that the baron was treated badly—when
he came to call, the Cullens shut him out. According to one story, the baron,
a brash young man, showed up at Quintana accompanied by a Roman
lawyer, demanded his inheritance, and got thrown out on his ear. Whether
or not the story is true, it is certain that Enrico and his Houston kin didnʼt
have much in common. Lillie di Portanovaʼs three younger sisters, having
seen her mistake, had all married middle-class men who fit easily into the
family business and eventually became pillars of Houstonʼs financial and
philanthropic communities. Harry and Roy Cullen, Roy Gustavʼs sons, had
also turned out to be sensible people; both went to the University of
Houston and then to Quintana.

All of the Cullens lived quietly, completely confident of who they were and
how they fit into Houston society. They served on the boards of hospitals,
museums, and schools and managed to avoid notoriety, following Hugh Roy
Cullenʼs advice that they wear the same kind of clothes as their friends,
drive the same kind of cars, and live in the same kind of houses. As co-
executors of Hugh Roy Cullenʼs estate, Lillieʼs three sisters—Agnes Arnold,
Margaret Marshall, and Wilhelmina Robertson—were in a position to see
that the advice was followed.

Enricoʼs aunts could not deny that he was an heir to his grandfatherʼs
estate. Both Hugh Roy and Lillie Cullen had provided in their wills for their
residual estates to be divided equally into trusts for the eight children of
their four daughters. (They had previously provided for Roy, Cornelia, and
Harry, the children of Roy Gustav.) Enricoʼs three aunts could, however, be
very vague about exactly what it was that he had inherited. State laws at
that time gave executors a great deal of freedom. The only way an
aggrieved heir could get an accounting from an executor was to file suit, a
process that took at least three or four years. Enricoʼs problem was
compounded by the fact that Hugh Roy Cullenʼs legacy consisted primarily
of trusts that held oil leases managed by Quintana. Not knowing how to
estimate the earnings on the leases, Enrico was totally dependent on the
Cullen family for information. They were never rude or ugly to him, and they
did send each of the di Portanova brothers money. But they would not give
an accounting.

Enrico was like the blind man trying to figure out the elephant. A letter
written by the comptroller at Quintana survives from a more amicable time
in 1961, when Enrico had been in Houston. “Dear Enrico,” it begins, “After
our several talks of the past few days it seems appropriate that I furnish you
with certain factual information.” The comptroller then went on to describe
Hugh Roy Cullenʼs early success as if Enrico wasnʼt sure how his
grandfather had gotten rich.
With his great wealth and, good looks, and continental charm, Baron Ricky fit right into Houston social life in
the sixties.

Seeking the Fortune

The baron returned to Rome after the 1961 visit to Houston, but his mind
was not at rest regarding the inheritance. The other heirs appeared to have
much more money, and he didnʼt like the way he had been treated. In Rome,
he traded precious stones and owned a jewelry store, but he was not a
wealthy man. What he lacked in assets or personal accomplishments, he
made up for with a pleasant personality and good looks. Furthermore, his
fluency in English and Italian and his American background gave him
mobility in the sort of international fast set that forms in cities like Rome.
Recognizing his own lack of aptitude for business, he and his future wife,
Ljuba (the j is silent) Otasevic, went to Sicily to ask a friend named Edward
Condon for help.
The two men had met ten years earlier, when Condon had been running
TWA in Italy. He had both social and financial connections in the United
States. He had married Payne Whitney (steel and banking), whose mother,
Joan Whitney Payson, once owned the New York Mets, and his forebears
had started the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. But he was
not immune to bad luck. By the early sixties he was divorced and running a
Sicilian crate factory.

Enrico visited Condon in Sicily and later showed him a fiduciary income tax
statement from one of the Cullen trusts. Condon looked at the document
and decided that the assets should be producing more income than his
friend was receiving. He recommended that Enrico move to Houston so that
the Cullens couldnʼt overlook his claims on the family fortune. Ljuba had
proposed the same thing, and she and Enrico encouraged Condon to come
along. His factory wasnʼt doing very well, so he agreed. The three of them
would seek their fortune in Houston.

If the Cullens had ignored their Italian cousin before, they couldnʼt continue
to do so after 1963. Ljuba and Enrico arrived first. They stayed at the Hotel
America until they found a place at Inwood Manor, one of the first and most
exclusive high-rise apartments in River Oaks. Baroness di Portanova made a
lasting impression on the city. A beautiful woman with fine features, thick
black hair, dark eyes, and a striking figure, she spoke English with a
mysterious foreign accent, wore clothes by Valentino, and carried off her
appearances in public with great panache. The baroness had grown up in
Yugoslavia, where her father was an officer in the Royal Air Force; the Nazis
put him in a concentration camp from 1941 to 1944. After the war, Ljuba
won a position on the national womenʼs basketball team and in 1956
dribbled her way out of Yugoslavia by using the passport she had been
granted as an athlete. She stayed with relatives living in England and then
went to Italy, where she found work as an actress in the Italian movie
industry. Both Dino de Laurentiis and Pier Paolo Pasolini hired her for
movies. Universal International signed her to a contract in 1959, but her
career never amounted to much; she had no leading roles and appeared in
no major films.

Edward Condon arrived in Houston later than the di Portanovas, but he

made an equally deep impression, at least on women. He was, as they say,
fabulously handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair that brought to mind the
movie star Stewart Granger. He was urbane, worldly, and sophisticated, and
perhaps just as compelling in a man so handsome, he was a loner.

Whatever Houston thought of the di Portanovas and Condon, the di

Portanovas thought Houston was a hellhole. The climate was awful, the city
ugly, the people provincial. After their life in Rome and on the
Mediterranean, Houston seemed like Saudi Arabia with swamp instead of
desert. To distract themselves, the di Portanovas moved a monkey into

their ninth-floor apartment, and neighboring tenants often thought they

heard the baroness playing basketball in her living room.

The di Portanovas and Condon had two specific goals: to secure an

accounting from the Cullens and to get Enricoʼs mother, Lillie Cranz Cullen
di Portanova, to change her will in favor of Enrico and his brother, Ugo. As it
stood, the will directed that all of her property be returned to the Cullens.
Getting it changed would not be easy.

Lillie di Portanova did not prefer the Cullens to her own sons, nor was she
close to her younger sisters. The distance between them was such that
acquaintances of the family in Houston assumed that Lillie di Portanova had
been dead for years. Enrico and Ljubaʼs problem was not Lillieʼs emotional
preference but her mental competence. As far as the Cullens were
concerned, she was mentally incompetent. Until she was proven otherwise,
they would not recognize any changes she made in her will.

In 1963 Lillie di Portanova was living alone at the Times Square Motor Hotel
in one of the seedier sections of New York City. The hotel was clean but not
the sort of place where you would expect to find a woman who kept $1
million in her personal accounts. Mrs. di Portanova stayed at the hotel for
approximately ten years. She stalked the streets of Manhattan in a black
overcoat, carrying shopping bags under her arms. According to the hotel
staff, she bought coats at Bergdorf Goodman, cut off the buttons and
replaced them with safety pins, then cut off the collars and decorated what
remained with old scraps of velvet. She also wore an old-fashioned black
hat and black boots that came halfway up her calves. Almost every day she
went out on her rounds in the city, although her legs, swollen and at times
afflicted with running sores, gave her pain.

The staff at the hotel not only tolerated their eccentric guest but became
fond of her. She could be mean as hell, but she had a good side and held
out the possibility of extraordinary tips. A couple of the tips she had given
bellhops for bringing her Cokes became legends within the hotel. One desk
clerk acted as her personal emissary to the world and spent hours at a time
talking to her through her closed door.
Enricoʼs first wife, Ljuba, a former Yugoslav basketball star.

Houston Chronicle

Good Times On South Post Oak

Enrico di Portanova opened an office in downtown Houston in 1964, and Ed

Condon ran it, with the assistance of a woman named Vivian Flynn. Their
stated business was oil exploration and investments. Condon retained a
Beverly Hills attorney named Dwain Clark to help him and Enrico arrange for
a competency hearing for Lillie di Portanova and a revision of her will.

In 1965, without initiating legal proceedings, Enrico received $841,425 in a

lump sum from the Cullen trusts. But if the Cullens thought that a large
disbursement would satisfy Enrico, they were mistaken. The money
convinced him that he had been right to come to Houston in the first place
and made it all the more imperative that he secure an accounting. It also
raised the necessity of doing something about his brother. According to
Hugh Roy Cullenʼs will, Ugo was to be treated the same as Enrico and the
other grandchildren, but Ugo was incapable of making his own claim. He
was three years younger than Enrico and as eccentric as their mother. An
immense man, he lived with his father in Sorrento, Italy. Problems with his
behavior led Paolo and Enrico to seek guardianship for his protection.
Furthermore, the amount of money that Ugo received each year from his
trusts could be dramatically increased if he could be represented in
Houston. But to represent Ugo, Enrico would have to become his legal
guardian. He would have to have Ugo declared non compos mentis—at the
same time that he was having their mother declared compos mentis.

But life in Houston wasnʼt all work. Enrico met John Blaffer, a native
Houstonian who knew how to have a good time and didnʼt care what people
thought of him while he did. Blaffer had impeccable Houston credentials:
his father, Robert Lee Blaffer, was a founder of Humble Oil. John Blaffer
worked two hours a day and, having an unusually quick mind, accomplished
more than most men did in eight hours. As an experienced oilman, he was
helpful to Enrico, pointing out that if his motherʼs trusts were being charged
for drilling fees in an oil field, they should also be paid royalties. Blaffer
entertained constantly, and he introduced Enrico to all his friends. That was
something the Cullens hadnʼt done.

Blaffer had married a woman from a socially prominent, well-to-do family in

Dallas, and they had had a proper family. He had also met a young woman
who was a salesclerk in a shoe store downtown. A free spirit, she was tall
and thin, almost demure-looking with her hair pulled back in a bun. She was
no great beauty, but neither was John Blaffer, who was a large, rumpled-
looking man.
When John Blafferʼs friend and realtor Howard Horn approached him with a
deal on a new apartment complex on South Post Oak, Blaffer took him up
on it and bought the building. Blafferʼs mistress took over the management
of the apartments and made them a sanctuary for the sort of people she
and Blaffer enjoyed by renting to interesting men and attractive, divorced
women. Married men who wanted a nest away from home were also
welcome, and in 1966 and 1967 the apartments on Post Oak became one of
the more compelling spots. Gloria King, recently divorced from a Dallas
cotton tycoon, moved in. Her ex-husband was Sheppard King, who once
owned the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas; he had created a flap by
running away to marry an exotic dancer. The less socially prominent
Detective Paul Nix, Homicide Division, Houston Police Department, also
came to stay.

Blafferʼs mistress held a continuous open house in her apartment. Her five
oʼclock cocktail parties drew the rich and restless from all over town, and
you never knew whom you would meet there or what would happen. What
attracted people to the apartments was the atmosphere of license. Most of
the apartments faced courtyards, so it was almost impossible not to know
what everyone was doing. Blafferʼs mistress had achieved informally what
future apartment complexes would try to institute through rental policies
and advertising campaigns that called for singles only.

Enrico fit in well with this group. He had the sense of fun that Blaffer
required in friends, and like Blaffer, he wanted to have a good time and
wasnʼt worried about cost or repercussions. He knew the best of everything
—food, clothes, jewels, cars, hotels.

It should be remembered that the Post Oak area at this time was in its
infancy. Essentially suburban, it was considered the outer edge of the city,
and there was as yet no hint that just beyond the confines of the
apartments a cluster of buildings that could pass for the downtown of a
major city was about to spring up. Life in the foundations can be pretty
much as we imagine life in the ruins.

The days at the apartment complex were dedicated to pleasure. After

putting in his hours at the office, Blaffer would summon his inner circle for
lunch to discuss the previous evening and lay plans for the future. To
punctuate the endless party on South Post Oak, Blaffer would throw big
parties for two or three hundred people at the Allen Park Motel, which he
owned, and there were also spur-of-the- moment trips to Acapulco and
hunting trips in Texas. After Enrico bought a twin-engine plane, where to
have lunch became a more challenging question; the Cadillac Bar in Nuevo
Laredo was a favorite answer.

By August 1966 Enrico had arranged for a hearing at a bank in New York
City to consider the sanity of Lillie di Portanova. Three psychiatrists would
attend—one for the Cullens, one for the di Portanovas, and one
independent—as well as attorneys for both sides. Enricoʼs job was to deliver
his mother to the hearing, but first he had to find something presentable for
her to wear. She had grown immensely fat on a diet of Coca-Cola and sweet
cream. Edward Condon and Dwain Clark combed the city looking for a dress
that would fit a four-hundred-pound woman. The two men finally found a
suitable garment at Lane Bryant and were ready to present Mrs. di
Portanova and their case that abnormal behavior did not constitute insanity.
The psychiatrists found her of sound mind, and on the same day she
changed her will and signed documents creating trusts for her two sons.
Not long after the hearing, Lillie di Portanova entered a hospital in New York
City, where she died on December 23, 1966. Her estate was valued at $4.8
million.

In October of the same year, another hearing was held at the Villa Martha in
Sorrento, Italy, to determine Ugo di Portanovaʼs mental condition. Judge
Pellegrino Senofonte from the Court of Naples, along with a clerk, arrived at
the villa and was met by an attorney for the family and a doctor for the
state. A servant led the official party to the bedroom of Ugo di Portanova,
who had been told that gentlemen interested in his artistic production were
coming to see him. They found a large man with long hair and a thick beard
lying in bed. After the visitors were announced, Ugo put on a robe and,
remaining barefoot, invited them in. The judge noted in his official report
that the bedroom was furnished with a bed that had slightly dirty linen and
was cluttered with furniture of all kinds (a piano, tables, a trestle, a large
wooden table), a record player, books, booklets, large cardboard boxes full
of refuse, picture albums, and two cameras. A large plank lay over two
trestles and around it were chisels, pliers, and tongs. Ugo explained the
equipment by saying he was making a Christ. He also said the pictures of
the human body that were in the room were his work. Ugo talked about his
recent confinements in psychiatric hospitals. He told the men that he was
writing a book “with a philosophical content.” Hegel was his favorite
philosopher, and he declared the Bible an immoral book because it
represented a cruel and vindictive God. Judge Senofonte declared Ugo non
compos mentis.

In Houston, the monkey had taken its toll on the apartment at Inwood
Manor. The management evicted the di Portanovas, and they moved to a
ranch-style house of baronial proportions at 8828 Sandringham. The house
sat on two acres in a grove of pines where other equally grand houses
occupied lots large enough to diminish the houses to normal size. Enrico
and Ljuba had a full staff of servants, and Enrico had brought an Italian
groom, Franco Necci, back from Europe to take care of the horses. But the
new house was not a happy home. Ljuba was having severe back problems,
and Enrico was still going to the apartments on South Post Oak, which were
a five-minute drive away—a special convenience, because he had started
seeing Blafferʼs mistress.

“Why Donʼt You Look Up My Husband?”

Depending on the point of view, 1967 was either an apex or a nadir for
Enrico. He got much of what he wanted financially but lost a lot of what he
had. His marriage came to an end, he endured a terrifying experience, and
he saw his best friend struck by tragedy.

Enrico began the year by having Ugo declared a ward of the Harris County
Court (later the Second Probate Court) in Houston and then applying with
his father, Paolo, for the guardianship. Paolo would be the guardian of Ugoʼs
person, and Enrico would be the guardian of the estate. To pursue his
causes in the courts, Enrico had secured the legal services of Woody and
Rosen, a small but very aggressive, very hungry law firm. Clyde Woody and
Marian Rosen had been involved in defending Candace Mossier in her
murder trial. Their practice was primarily criminal law and domestic relations
and offered a striking contrast to that of the Cullensʼ law firm, the well-
established Vinson & Elkins. In February Paolo and Enrico applied for
$120,000 per year, based on Ugoʼs estimated annual income of $250,000.
On receiving that, they decided to push harder still. Enrico filed a notice to
show cause in the county court on March 29, 1967, asserting that he, as
guardian, was “entitled to the possession and management of all properties
belonging to Ugo.” Enrico also demanded that Ugo immediately be paid
$841,425, the same amount Enrico had received in 1965. The following
week, Woody and Rosen had personal citations delivered to the Cullen-
appointed trustees of Ugoʼs estate demanding an itemized, verified
accounting.

Clyde Woody, recalling the suit, says that the Cullen family was simply too
powerful in Houston to defeat. The Cullens filed a plea in abatement,
denying that the county court had jurisdiction. The judge agreed with the
Cullens, dismissed the di Portanovasʼ petition, and referred them to the
district court. Rather than wait the three or four years it would take for the
case to come up there, they entered into negotiations to settle out of court.
In the settlement Ugoʼs old trustees resigned and new ones were
appointed, among them Enrico and Edward Condon. For Enrico, it was a
partial victory; he had gained some control, but he still hadnʼt received an
accounting of the estate.
Meanwhile, matters had gone out of control at home. In February he and
Ljuba had broken up and reconciled. In June Ljuba entered Methodist
Hospital for back surgery. And in August their married life together came to
an end when, as Enrico would eventually testify in their divorce trial, he
“unloaded her in Monte Carlo.” According to court transcripts, Enrico found
Ljuba in bed with another man. Banished from Enricoʼs life, Ljuba went from
Monte Carlo to Rome to collect her things from their apartment. To get to
Rome she hitched a ride on Hollywood producer Sam Spiegelʼs yacht; he
was headed toward Capri with Kirk Douglas and others. Still hoping to work
things out, Ljuba called Enrico from the yacht so that Douglas and Spiegel
could urge him to take her back. “Kirk,” Enrico said, “you stay out of it. I
donʼt think we can be together anymore.”

Life was not entirely bleak for Enrico when he returned to Houston in the
fall. The previous spring, Edward Condon had introduced him to an
interesting young woman named Sandy Hovas. Condon first saw her at a
consular ball in Houston, asked for a dance, and got her telephone number.
Sandy was a Houston girl who had had the misfortune of growing up middle
class in the presence of real wealth. Her family lived in River Oaks, but her
father owned a chain of rather ordinary furniture stores. At Lamar High,
Sandy, nicknamed Buckets, had been considered nice, bright, and lots of
fun. Condon befriended her, and when she called him to ask for shopping
advice for a trip to Rome, he took her to see Ljuba, who was in Houston.
The two women discussed the best places to buy shoes, handbags, and
dresses. “And if you want to see an attractive man,” Ljuba joked, “why donʼt
you look up my husband? Heʼs in Rome.”

When he was in Houston, Enrico also had the old group at the apartments
on South Post Oak to keep him from being lonely in the house on
Sandringham Road. On the evening of October 28, 1967, Gloria King and a
world traveler named Norma Clark agreed to come over to help plan a
dinner party. Gloria King had gone out on an errand, and Norma Clark was in
the living room with Enrico when the sound of a gunshot came from the
kitchen. The young Italian groom, Franco Necci, staggered into the room
and collapsed on the floor, bleeding from a chest wound. A tall man dressed
in a brown jacket and brown trousers followed from the kitchen, waving a
.45 automatic and shouting, “Iʼm going to kill all you SOBs.”

As Necci lay bleeding to death on the floor and Enrico begged the robber to
spare their lives, Gloria King drove up in front of the house. She noticed a
gold sedan parked on the street with its hood up, but she paid it no mind
and went inside. When she walked into the living room, the robber turned
the pistol on her and motioned her over to where Norma Clark and Enrico
were standing. He handcuffed the two women together, then made Enrico
open the wall safes hidden in the house. The existence and location of two
of the safes were fairly common knowledge, but somehow the robber also
knew about a third, secret safe. After finding nothing of value there, he
handcuffed Enrico to a chair and took $350 in cash from the baron and a
six-carat diamond ring worth $15,000 from Norma Clark. He missed a
valuable ring and earrings that Gloria King had hidden in her clothing and
another $360 on the groomʼs body.

After the intruder left, Enrico managed to get to a telephone and call an
ambulance and his friend Detective Nix, who was in his apartment on South
Post Oak at the time. The homicide detective did not notify police
headquarters of the crime until after he had arrived at the baronʼs house. In
time Nix was assigned to the case, and he decided that the crime had been
arranged by someone close to the baron. The intruder had gone straight to
the safes, and he had somehow known about the third safe. Nixʼs theory
was corroborated in the course of the investigation by an unidentified
source, who informed the police that the robber was working under
instructions “to kill the Italian.” According to Nixʼs reconstruction of the
event, the robber entered through the kitchen and encountered Necci, who
spoke no English and was obviously Italian. He shot the Italian, then
proceeded with a robbery to create the appearance of another motive for
the murder, never realizing that Enrico, who speaks English without an
accent, was also Italian. Paul Nix believed the baron was supposed to be
killed, and he still believes it today.

In retrospect, all of this seems like a game of Clue for sophisticates: the
Baron, the Groom, the Robber, the Socialites, the Detective. But it all
happened, and the baron believed his life was in danger. He hired around-
the-clock armed bodyguards and moved from Sandringham Road to Gloria
Kingʼs apartment, where he stayed—sleeping in the eight-by-ten spare
bedroom—until Nix picked up Carl Thomas Preston.

An ex-convict and a drug addict with an expensive habit, Preston had

heroin on him at the time of his arrest. He was positively identified in a
police lineup by Gloria King, Norma Clark, and Enrico. In 1969 Preston was
tried for possession of heroin, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison.
When he was in prison awaiting trial for the murder of Necci, Enrico,
according to Nix, offered him $100,000 to talk. Nix says Preston started to
take the money, then refused, saying that his life wouldnʼt be worth much if
word got around that he had talked. Enrico, through his lawyers, says he
never offered Preston a cent.
Houston Chronicle

After the groomʼs murder: Enrico, King, and Clark (l. to r.).

The Mink-Lined Trench Coat And Other Luxuries

Just before Thanksgiving, 1967, and exactly a week after Prestonʼs arrest,
Edward Condon wrapped his car around a tree. He had been to a party and
was on his way home in his red Maserati Mistral. The son of the Spanish
consul was riding with him. They had both been drinking and were in high
spirits when the Maserati, speeding along Sunset Boulevard beneath the
vault of live oak trees, went out of control on slick pavement. The collision
threw the consulʼs son clear, but Condon was trapped in the wreckage. One
leg had to be amputated, and he spent the next ten weeks in Methodist
Hospital. Often, when Enrico came to see Condon in the hospital, he
brought Sandy Hovas along with him. By the time Condon went home, the
relationship between Sandy and Enrico was an established fact.
It was no surprise to anyone when divorce proceedings between Enrico and
Ljuba were begun. Ljuba had initially agreed to let Woody and Rosen
represent both her and Enrico in the divorce. Enrico had told her that if she
was nice and didnʼt cause a scandal, he would give her $3000 a month, her
jewelry and other personal possessions, a 1966 Mustang, and $25,000 to
buy a house. Enrico considered the settlement generous, but Ljuba balked.
One reason she did was that in a very short time, Enrico had become
considerably richer. Not only was money pouring in from the trusts, but
Enrico and Condon were making money hand over fist in the stock market.

Ljuba had made one serious mistake in the divorce negotiations: she had
never filed a countersuit. If Enrico chose to, he could leave the country, drop
his suit, and cut off Ljubaʼs temporary alimony payments of $5000 a month.
There would be nothing she could do about it but file a new divorce suit and
lose many months of alimony in the meantime. In April 1968 Enrico did
indeed depart Houston for Rome, putting Condon in full control of all of his
affairs, with the assistance of Vivian Flynn. On April 22 Condon withdrew
$1.56 million from the 1966 trusts for Enrico and Ugo and had it transferred
to a numbered bank account in Switzerland.

Judging from correspondence between Condon and Enrico that eventually

surfaced as evidence in the divorce trial, Enrico found happiness in Rome
with Sandy Hovas. Their apartment, located in the best neighborhood, was
on two different floors and had two terraces and a rooftop garden copied
from the gardens at Pompeii. Inside, Louis XV antiques and a museum-
quality collection of jade and coral furnished a 75-foot-long living room. In
May Enrico wrote to Condon: “Let me say that from now on Iʼll let you pick
out all my wives as Sandra has been wonderful and fits in beautifully in
Rome, never gripes or puts me down.”

To assure their happiness, Condon wrote that he had arranged things so

that Enrico would have $20,000 a month absolutely free of debts and taxes.
Enrico mentioned that he had found a Louis XV desk for $25,000. Send
more money!

For the most part, the mail from Rome to Houston (part of which Enrico
denies having written) is fairly typical for people living in a foreign country. It
expresses regret for the events that are missed and longing for those things
that canʼt be found away from home.

Rick to Ed, October 10, 1968:

Received the tragic news on the Maserati. Needless to say I am so upset

that Sandra and I are both having our periods together. . . . that bunch of
stupid American peasants raced my beautiful machine over those goddam
flat, ugly, unprepared roads. . . .You allow a Texan to drive a Maserati it is like
allowing a baboon to play a Stradivarius. . . . Please have Vivian pack my
mink lined trench coat as the weather is getting colder. If you would like to
wear it Sweetie go right ahead. All of us girls should be draped in mink after
40.

Rick to Ed, June 19, 1969:

Thank you for taking care of my auntʼs funeral. I hope everything went well.
By the looks of things the longevity on the Cullen side of the family is not
very good so more than ever I feel the necessity to enjoy myself to the
fullest while there is still some time left.

Rick to Ed, March 18, 1969:

We can return to Rome in the style we have come so used to. Let me know
more information either way on our helicopter. I feel that it should follow us
this summer during the month of August if for no other reason than that it
would be so chic! $$$$$ . . . I hope that in the near future I would be in a
position as my father and think of nothing other than the best things in life,
sun, sex, and spaghetti.

Sandra to Vivian, December 15, 1968:

 o. 8 pairs of white (Jockey Life hip briefs) underwear . . .
p. 4 to 6 copies of Vodka and Caviar by Paul Mauriat . . .
q. Spanish Moonlight by John Gary—stereo 3 copies.
r. 2 or 3 albums of Edie Gorme singing Mexican songs with the (I believe)
Trio Los Panchos.
s. 2 or 3 albums (if you can find them) with the Mexican song TODO El
AÑO sung on it.
u. 8 cans of King Orthon Turkish coffee.
v. 3 bottles (large) of saccharin.

The households of the di Portanovas became extensive and numerous in

these years. According to what divorce lawyers call a description of lifestyle,
dated December 4, 1970, Enrico, in addition to the apartment in Rome, had
a house in Acapulco, a house in Palm Springs, and a house on a farm
outside Rome. He had five racehorses in England and four racehorses in
Rome. He had a speedboat. He had two Maseratis, one Lamborghini, one
Rolls-Royce, and one King Air Beechcraft. He received $64,000 each month
from trusts and had $1 million in a Swiss bank. He had one secretary in
Houston, four servants in Mexico, two servants in Rome, one chauffeur in
Rome, one servant in Palm Springs, two full-time pilots, and one sailor. He
had lost $150,000 in one night of gambling at Monte Carlo and had given
Cadillacs away as gifts. He was prodigal.
Ricky and Sandra with Paolo di Portanova and his wife, Rita.

Houston Chronicle

Some Suits And Countersuits

Tragically, however, his relationship with his best friend was coming apart.
The problem was money. In addition to the $1.56 million that had already
been transferred, in February 1969 Edward Condon transferred $590,000
to Hans Seligman-Schurch, a private investment bank in Basel, Switzerland.
In 1970 Condon sent another $296,000 out of the U.S. in cashierʼs checks.
Enrico testified that he never received the money and that Condon had told
him that he had dropped $400,000 in a bad business deal. When he heard
about the $400,000, Enrico was floored, then furious. He called his bankers
in Houston and stripped Condon of all powers. And he ultimately filed suit
against Condon, demanding an accounting of the more than $2 million.

Condon, who decamped for the Costa del Sol of Spain, claimed that the
money he transferred had come from several sources, including the di
Portanova trusts and a trust that he administered for his mother. He also
claimed that he and Enrico had invested the money jointly in the stock
market and that when they had started losing money, Enrico fired him.
Condon sued Enrico for breach of contract, demanded an accounting, and
asked for $250,000 in damages.

Houston Citizens Bank and Trust, acting in a fiduciary capacity for the
holdings of Ugo di Portanova, filed suit against Edward Condon and Enrico
di Portanova for “acting in concert” to misappropriate funds belonging to
Ugo. The bankʼs list of claims exceeded $1 million. Ljuba, in her divorce suit,
claimed that the baron and Condon had conspired to deprive her of
community income by transferring the money out of the country. All that
was lacking to make a complete set of theories was for someone to accuse
Ljuba and Enrico of conspiring against Condon, but alas, no one did.

Legally, an equally involved episode was Enricoʼs divorce from Ljuba. After
Enrico dropped his original suit and left the country, Ljuba hired attorneys to
file suit, charging harsh, tyrannical, and cruel treatment. Woody and Rosen,
acting for Enrico, filed a countersuit that accused Ljuba of committing acts
of adultery with several male individuals, who were identified to Enrico. Both
of these suits were dropped. Ljuba dismissed her attorneys and hired Percy
Foreman, who accepted three star sapphires and a diamond necklace as a
deposit against his $50,000 minimum fee and the third of the final
settlement that would be his. Foreman included “Sandra Hovas, a single
woman” in his list of additional defendants. After that, the lawyers for both
sides agreed that the grounds for divorce would be irreconcilable
differences, thus limiting the proceedings to the division of property. Judge
Jack Smith appointed George T. Barrow, a private attorney, to act as master
in chancery. Barrow would listen to sworn testimony and make final
recommendations to the judge.

Barrow took testimony for almost all of 1971. The typed transcript—
exclusive of exhibits, depositions, and so on—is almost four thousand
pages long. Though property was the issue, the trial was not lacking in
acrimony. Ljubaʼs attorney accused the baron of wanting to have her killed,
of suggesting to Condon that he have it written in the newspapers that she
“loved to screw Jews, so that maybe a nice young Arab would send her to
her Tito in the sky,” and of trying to have marijuana planted on her.

The case finally ground to a halt when Enrico, after submitting to three
weeks of cross-examination, got in his airplane and flew away. Doctors in
Rome wired that his health was failing and that he had entered a clinic for
observation. The last testimony in the transcript was from a woman named
Gerry Sammer, a friend of Ljubaʼs who had been in a restaurant in Rome on
a day when Enrico—too ill, according to the doctors, to return to court—had
entertained a large group of Houstonians, Barrow made his
recommendations, but both sides rejected them, so it was necessary to
hold a new trial. Ljuba finally won, getting $1.01 million, all of her jewelry, all
of her furs, and a townhouse on North Post Oak Lane. Enrico paid court
fees, which were catastrophic; the fee for the master in chancery alone
came to $93,000, and Percy Foreman got nearly $300,000.

Baron Ricky also failed to return to Houston in the spring of 1971 for the
murder trial of Carl Thomas Preston. Norma Clark was living in London and
Capri, and so Gloria King was left as the stateʼs principal witness. The
defense attorneys, according to the Chronicle, “patently hinted that
someone other than Preston killed the groom.” Necci had been shot with a
.45 automatic, yet two police detectives testified that no empty .45-caliber
hull had been found at the scene. Gloria King, who had not been present at
the shooting, said she was positive that Necci and the baron had never had
any problems. The jury believed Prestonʼs alibi that on the night of the
murder he had been at a motel in Arizona and acquitted him of the charge
of murder. To date, no other suspects have been found.
Parties, parties: the di Portanovas and Viscountess de Rosiere.

Peter Yenne

Non Compos Mentis

The rest of the seventies was a time of relative peace and prosperity for
Baron Ricky. He married Sandy Hovas and settled into a migratory schedule
that took them to Acapulco in the winter, London in the spring, and Rome in
the summer and fall, with occasional visits to New York and Houston. Like a
caterpillar becoming a butterfly, his new wife passed through a series of
metamorphoses—from Sandy, to Sandra, to Sondra, to Alessandra, finally
emerging as Baroness Alessandra. They lived elegantly yet did not forget
the poor. After the earthquake in Nicaragua, they sent their jet, the Barefoot
Baronessa, loaded with medical supplies. They built a center for earthquake
victims in Italy and gave to every charity in Houston. Because the baron is
not an American citizen, his contributions have been made without the
benefit of tax deductions.

The baron, having taken care of so many of his own problems, became
more concerned with the welfare of his brother. With the help of their father,
Enrico saw to it that nothing was spared to make Ugo happy, and their effort
is reflected in a stack of files in the Second Probate Court that grows at a
steady pace.

In the early seventies Ugo was still living in Europe for most of the year.
Because of his size (very large) and his suspicion of strangers, a minimum
of five trusted servants accompanied him at all times. His staff consisted of
a supervisor-executive secretary, a regular secretary, a housekeeper, a
maid, a houseman, a gardener, several bodyguards, and a servant of
unspecified function.

Umberto La Matta, Ugoʼs supervisor and executive secretary, has written

several letters to the Second Probate Court explaining the therapy devised
for Ugo. The staff, on doctorsʼ orders, humor Ugo and never contradict him.
Whenever he wishes to buy anything, they accede to his wishes without
question. He is urged to participate in sports—swimming, boating, skiing,
tennis—and the staff members also encourage his intellectual and artistic
pursuits. At one time, La Matta reported, a secretary was typing the
manuscript of Ugoʼs book detailing his philosophy of life, and at another
time, Ugo was rewriting the Bible. Ugo likes to give parties, particularly for
young children, and he enjoys traveling, always with his five servants, who
are supplemented with additional staff in each location. He has a house in
Sorrento and apartments in Rome, Naples, and Lugano. He regularly visits
Acapulco, Paris, Capri, Monte Carlo, and Houston, where he has bought two
large apartments and a farm. Because of Ugoʼs condition, the physical
layout of quarters occupied by him must be planned with great care. For a
visit to Acapulco, Ugoʼs father reconstructed his house to meet his special
requirements and provided a piano, painting tools, a projection room, and a
recording room. Ugo and his staff normally travel by commercial carriers.
He owns a Fiat, a Mini Cooper, an Austin, a Cadillac, two Volkswagens, a
Rolls-Royce, a station wagon, an Oldsmobile, a Mercedes, a jeep, and a
yacht. Regarding the yacht, La Matta wrote, “We had several unpleasant
incidents caused by Ugoʼs complaint that the boat was too small for his
requirements. He has requested a larger ship of his own capable of holding
his friends and guests.”

To appreciate how seriously this regimen of therapy is adhered to, it is also

helpful to study Paolo di Portanovaʼs applications to the court for increases
in support payments. In 1967, explaining the necessity for more money, he
wrote: “Ugo di Portanova has on many occasions requested that a chapel
be erected on the grounds of the villa.” In the same application he wrote:
“Ugo di Portanova has on many occasions requested that a terraced flower
garden be constructed.” Ugoʼs annual allowance is now hovering at $1
million, making him one of the richest non compos mentises in the world.

Hurt Feelings

One of the difficult things to comprehend concerning the di Portanovas is

the sheer size of their fortune. The amount of money has grown at an
incredible rate. Considering that Enrico began with approximately $4 million
inherited from his grandparents and his mother, it hardly seems possible
that today he has, according to court records, an annual income of $8
million and, according to one of his lawyers, an estimated net worth of $50
million—apart from investments in real estate. The price of oil has increased
dramatically and the baron has invested wisely, but the most plausible
explanation for the size of the fortune is to assume that the “aboveground”
assets—that is, everything that wasnʼt oil reserves—in the Hugh Roy Cullen
and Lillie di Portanova estates represented only the tip of an iceberg.

Money, however, did not assuage the baronʼs feelings toward the Cullens.
He felt they had mistreated his mother, and he still resented the high-
handed manner in which they had dealt with him. The old wrongs had
festered and, in the light of his new status, appeared even more grievous.
Having settled out of court in 1969, Enrico had never gotten an accounting
of his estate, and he had never had his moment of vindication.

In a sense, it would seem that the baron had come to depend upon the
conflict with the Cullens to give his life meaning. The fight was his challenge
and the ground upon which he could prove himself. It provided a reason to
hire lawyers who would represent the serious side of his life. In the fall of
1977, Enrico found a lawyer who could personify his cause. After a burglary
at the Regency Hotel in New York, the hotelʼs insurors claimed limited
liability and the baron and baroness called Roy Cohn to represent them.
Cohn had first become famous as chief counsel for the late senator Joe
McCarthyʼs Permanent Investigations Subcommittee and had developed a
reputation as a legal barracuda in his private practice in New York. He
seemed like the ideal man to take on the establishment in Houston. Also,
the probate code in Texas had changed so as to favor such a fight.
Beginning in 1973, the Legislature had passed a series of amendments to
the code that increased the jurisdiction of probate courts over independent
executors. By 1979 the code had been amended in a way that left no doubt
that executors could be required by the court to give an accounting to
beneficiaries of the estate or to the court.

Enricoʼs problem, as Cohn saw it, was that Quintana had absolute control
over the Cullen trustsʼ assets but was not accountable to the di Portanovas.
He wondered who owned Quintana and why, if the residual estates of Hugh
Roy Cullen and Lillie Cullen were to have been apportioned among the
trusts of the grandchildren, Enrico and Ugo werenʼt stockholders. Cohn
discovered that at the time of Lillie Cullenʼs death these estates owned 127
of the 250 shares of Quintana stock—a controlling interest. The stock
should have been divided equally among the grandchildren.

Cohn, with former state senator A. R. “Babe” Schwartz as his local co-
counselor, filed suit in Houston on July 25, 1979. In later pleadings, he
asserted that in 1964 the executors, Enricoʼs motherʼs three younger sisters
(Agnes, Margaret, and Wilhelmina) had sold all 127 Cullen shares of
Quintana to their husbands (Isaac Arnold, Douglas B. Marshall, and Corbin
J. Robertson, respectively) and to their nephews, Roy and Harry Cullen. The
sale, according to Cohn, violated not only the wills of Hugh Roy and Lillie
Cullen but also the Texas Probate Code, which prohibits the representative
of an estate from purchasing, either directly or indirectly, the property of
the estate.

The plaintiffs in the case—Paolo di Portanova, Gregory Hovas (the

baronessʼs brother), Babe Schwartz, Southern National Bank, First
International Bank, and Republicbank, in their various capacities as
guardians and trustees for Ugo and his estate, as well as Enrico as
intervenor—want the di Portanovas to be compensated both for their share
of the gains that the other Cullen heirs have reaped from Quintana since
1964 and for the business opportunities missed because they were not
shareholders. In other words, they want part ownership of Quintana, part of
everything the Cullens have made in the last eighteen years at Quintana,
and part of any independent deals that any of the Cullens made because
they happened to own Quintana. Cohn says he thinks Quintana distributes
half a billion dollars in income every year.

The depositions Cohn took from Corbin Robertson, Douglas Marshall, and
Isaac Arnold, Jr., make interesting reading. Robertson, who is chairman of
the board of Quintana, said he has no idea how he got the Quintana stock,
and Marshall, who is a vice president, said the same thing. Arnold knew only
that he had inherited it from his father. None of the men were very clear
about anyoneʼs title at Quintana or about who makes what decisions. It all
sounded so informal that there seemed to be very little difference between
company and family.

In 1981, after Cohn had started taking depositions, the Cullens brought in
Joseph Jamail to augment the legal defense they were getting from Vinson
& Elkins, the firm that has handled their legal affairs for as long as anyone
can remember. Jamail, who has made his reputation as a personal injury
lawyer, will talk about the case only reluctantly. He says that the Quintana
stock is worthless because the company owns no assets and that Quintana
functions essentially as a clearinghouse to manage the oil leases of the
Cullens and the di Portanovas. Jamail, who is adept at appealing to the
emotions of a jury, will try to structure the trial as an attempt by the
flamboyant di Portanovas to take money away from the shy, hardworking,
stay-at-home Cullens. He will also argue that the di Portanovasʼ case has
no merit and that the Cullens have no duty to include Enrico and Ugo in
their transactions.
This is Mrs. Hovaʼs vaguely Mediterranean house on River Oaks Boulevard, the one with the back yard
encased in glass.

Nicolas Russell

“21,” the Kissingers, And San Marino

At times it seems that the baron lives two lives—one in court and another in
the gossip columns. In 1980 the New York Times reported that he was
giving Sandra the “21” club, or at least a controlling interest in it. A
celebration party was planned in Monte Carlo, but the deal fell through.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to see our friend referred to as Texas
Oilman Baron Enrico di Portanova. That same year we saw Rick and Sandra
on a two-page spread in the home section of the Houston Chronicle. They
had decided to air-condition the back yard at Sandraʼs motherʼs house on
River Oaks Boulevard and wanted to assure the neighbors that they werenʼt
building a monstrosity. “We like good weather,” Sandra said by way of
explaining all the steel and glass that they were hauling in. Architectural
drawings showed an enclosed area that looked like a savings and loan lobby
combined with a health spa. Immense chandeliers hung over a forty-by-
forty-foot swimming pool sunk into a floor of travertine marble. “Elaborate
parties,” reported the Chronicle, “include not only local guests but out-of-
town guests who often become house guests.” The Chronicle did not say
what Mrs. Hovas, who has made the transformation from Eddie Bess to
Elizabeth, thought about the addition.

The River Oaks house is small, however, compared to Arabesque, the di

Portanovasʼ villa in Acapulco. Under construction for five years, the house
has 32 bedrooms, 4 kitchens, and 26 bathrooms. When seen from across
the bay, it is said, the villa rises from the water like the Taj Mahal. For a
closer look, you have to hire a helicopter if youʼre not invited, because the
only road to Arabesque is blocked by guards carrying machine guns.

But all is not frivolity. The baron and baroness appear to be taking a more
serious role in public life. In 1981 San Marino—the smallest republic in the
world—appointed the baron to act as its consul general to the United
States. San Marino occupies 23.4 square miles on the slopes of Italyʼs
Mount Titano, and its primary industries are tourism and postage stamps.
The baron and baroness attended parties for the first anniversary of
President Reaganʼs inauguration, and of course, they have a warm and
growing friendship with the Kissingers.
Baron Rickyʼs grandparents, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cullen.

University of Houston archives

The Noble Truth

On January 15, eighteen lawyers representing the parties involved in the di

Portanova-Cullen lawsuit met in the Second Probate Court in Houston with
Judge Pat Gregory, who also presided over the Howard Hughes probate
fight. Gregory set the trial date for May 24. Should the di Portanovas win
the first round, the second phase of the trial will be an accounting to
determine damages. It could well lead to one of the largest settlements in
the history of the United States.

You canʼt help but wonder what Hugh Roy Cullen would think of Baron
Enrico di Portanova. It would be safe to say that Cullen couldnʼt stand his
son-in-law, Paolo di Portanova. Five feet six inches tall, di Portanova was an
unabashed playboy when he married Lillie Cranz Cullen—the sort of man
who would carry a silver cigarette case and wear a pencil-thin moustache.
He had worked in Hollywood, and he tried his hand at fashion, working with
Oleg Cassini in a business they called Casanova. But in an odd sense, Hugh
Roy and Paolo were alike. They both started out with nothing, but they
believed in themselves and they believed that in America you could become
whoever you wanted to be. Hugh Roy Cullen was a self-made man and
Paolo di Portanova was, too.

The Cullen biography says that Lillie went with her aunt to Los Angeles,
where she met and married the Italian actor Paolo Portanova. Paolo claimed
to be a baron by virtue of the marriage in 1740 of a Neapolitan banker
named Apuzzo to a Spanish baroness named Carolina di Portanova. This
story is not borne out by the standard reference works on European nobility
—Almanack de Gotha, International Register of Nobility, Ruvignyʼs Titled
Nobility of Europe, and Royalty, Peerage, and Aristocracy of the World,
which has a special Italian section. There is a noble family in Spain called
Puerta Nueva, but their title is marquis, not baron, and it wasnʼt granted
until 1746. The books list no di Portanovas or Apuzzos. The Istituto
Genealogico Italiano of Florence, an authority in such matters, says there is
a family called Accusani, barons of Retorto and Portanova, but Enrico and
Paolo are not in its records as members of the Accusani family.

One thing not immediately obvious to an American is that an authentic title

of nobility precludes the possibility of an obscure family background.
Enricoʼs background, however, could hardly be more obscure. In a family
history published to go into a cornerstone at the University of Houston, the
Cullens gave December 16, 1932, as the date of marriage for Paolo and Lillie
and August 16, 1934, as the date on which Enrico was born; in fact, he was
born on August 16, 1933. To compound the confusion, Enrico has been
almost as casual as his father about what name he used. Born Roy Paul, he
attended Hollywood High School as Enrico, then showed up the next year
as Roy Paul at the Hollywood Professional School, which educates many of
the child movie actors. He left school without graduating, then appeared in
Rome in the fifties as Enrico Apuzzo and worked in fumetti, which—
depending on your point of view—are either soap operas that appear in
magazine form or love comic books with black and white photographs.

It is fairly easy to condemn Baron Ricky for extravagance and lack of

productivity. And it is difficult to understand why he would sue over the
trusts, particularly when you consider that they were written as lifetime
trusts, with the stipulation that if the baron leaves no lineal descendants,
the principal of the trusts will revert to any remaining Cullen heirs. But put
yourself in the baronʼs place. Would you have been satisfied with $60,000 a
year? Wouldnʼt you have wanted to know how much there was, to begin
what could be a journey into a vast fortune?

As for Hugh Roy Cullen, the institutions for which he waged his personal
holy war—free enterprise and private property—have made Baron Ricky
possible. Cullen made the money; he wrote the will. Baron Enrico di
Portanova is just another sequel in a story of American opportunity.