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1627-6 Interviews FRI NOV 18 1983 ED: FINAL SECTION: FRONT PAGE: 20A LENGTH: 1189 LONG ILLUST: photo: Ben Novack (2 ) SOURCE: MARY VOBORIL Herald Staff Writer DATELINE: MEMO: 'MR. FONTAINEBLEAU' REFLECTS ON DECLINE, FALL OF EMPIRE Rare artifacts from hotel to go on auction block. Cane in hand, "Mr. Fontainebleau" ambled slowly along the long sad rows of thick-cheeked cherubs, long-limbed nymphs, Grecian urns, French Provincial this, French Provincial that. "God bless the people who acquire some of these things, " Ben Hadwin Novack said in a reflective moment. "Let them enjoy them. I never really enjoyed them. " And he never will. The auction begins Saturday. It was Novack who built the crescent-shaped hotel that seems to be the center of every publicity shot of Miami Beach' s Hotel Row. It was Novak who named it the Fontainebleau, after the country town south of Paris. It was Novack who filled it with fragile Gallic furniture, trying to make it look like a chateau on the Cote d'Azur, with embellishments. French antiques were flanked by Chinese, Grecian, Italian artifacts; Louis XIV, meet papier mache. People paid $5 just to tour the place. Hideous, some said. Classy, others said. The hotel opened in 1954 . Novack went bankrupt in 1977 . The costly treasures have been in storage ever since, packed away in wooden crates, unopened until a week ago. Still tarnished, still dusty, they're arranged on black velvet drop cloths. Awaiting buyers . Old debts have been satisfied, said Novack. Profits from this weekend' s sale at Santini Brothers, 3250 NW 119th St. , will be his and his alone. "You' re looking at the end of an empire. These are the shreds of an empire, " said Novack, 76 . "The courts took all the sentiment out of me. The only thing I feel bad about is what happened in general. These, these are things . Just things. Why should I be sad?" He passed by a smallish Russian clock flanked by little onion domes, marble desk sets fitted with gilt inkwells and bronze lions but no pens, lampstands fashioned out of gamboling bronze nymphs, rows of delicate crystal. "I had more glasses, " Novak said. "Lots and lots of glasses; boxes of glasses. " "I think they were Lalique, " said auctioneer Jim Gall. "A lot of what?" said Novack, bending closer. His hearing is not as good as it once was. Neither is his memory. He is, after all, 76 . "You have some letters there from President . . . what was his name?" "Nixon, " said a bystander. "Yeah, " Novack said. "Nixon. " Stuffed in one cardboard box alongside a gold-edged Liberace mug was a campaign portrait of the disgraced President, his wife, his daughters, his sons-in-law. "To Ben Novack, with our best wishes, " read the handwritten inscription. It was signed, "Pat Nixon. " And there are other portraits : Ben with Miss U.S.A. , Ben with Miss Universe. Ben as a young male model, on the beach, imperially slim. Ben in a white sport coat and teal bow tie. There is a citation for Novack, a onetime haberdasher, honoring him as one of the best-dressed men in America. In the chilly air of Thursday morning, he wore black wingtips, peach- colored slacks, a beige hat and a short beige jacket pulled on over the tails of a taupe shirt. The courts, he said, have aged him 100 years. None of it has mellowed him; he will never be known as Gentle Ben. His opinions are as acidic as ever. "I did enough for Miami Beach, but I did not get them to reciprocate, " he said. "They got what they deserved. Decline. " Novack once said there was one foe he could never beat: The Miami Herald. He blamed The Herald' s editorial stands against casino gambling for destroying the fortunes of Miami Beach -- and with it his hotel . His face lit up like a schoolboy' s when he recounted, for two Herald employes, the story of the time he won a retraction. "The Miami Herald tried to bury me as Mafia, until they apologized to me in the front section of the paper. The Knight Boys apologized. Hah. They said, 'Ben, don' t go to court against us. ' " Does he want to be remembered as the man who built the Fontainebleau? He paused briefly, astonished at the question. "I am Mr. Fontainebleau, " he said. "Look, I have it right here. " His hand snaked inside his shirt and pulled out a heavy gold charm on a heavy gold chain. It was a tiny reproduction of the crescent-shaped part of the Fontainebleau. "Look at what it says. " On the bottom was an engraving: "Fontainebleau Hotel. Miami Beach. " He has forgotten where he got it. "I have gifts, " Novack said. "They say, 'You will always be Mr. Fontainebleau. . . . ' " "I never walked into the Fontainebleau again. I couldn' t stand to walk into what I created, into what people say they created. They have as much right to say they built the Fontainebleau as to say they built the British Empire. " Once the hotel needed no name outside its doors. After Novack the letters went up: *Fontainebleau-Hilton. *They called it "The Miracle at 44th Street. " "When Hilton put their name up, it should have been in the bathroom, " Novack said. "That ' s how much work they did there. " Some of the items on sale are sheer kitsch: grinning, papier-mache whippets dressed as courtiers with inch-long eyelashes. Ceramic ashtrays in the shape of a monkey head, a zebra head. Smokers extinguish their cigarets on the animal ' s tongue. Novack won' t say how much he expects from the auction. "I want to make enough to buy Bernice a lavalier, " he said. The red- haired Bernice, a still-beautiful ex-model, is the mother of his grown son and the second of his three wives. All three have been sorting through the crates, said Gall, the auctioneer. Novack said he plans to move to an oceanfront home in Boynton Beach. With his Bronx accent, it came out "Bernton" Beach. "Im going to build up Bernton Beach, " he said. "I tried to build up Miami Beach, but they wouldn ' t listen. " " . . .All I needed was a little more time. My country club, they stole. My land, they stole. Everything they stole. . . All I needed was some time. We were as solvent as the Southeast Bank. That ' s how solvent the Fontainebleau was . We paid all the bills, plus interest. " No creditor was slighted in the bankruptcy proceedings, he said. "We paid 100 cents on the dollar. With interest. " He claims he never told a lie in his entire life, but his comments about finances are contradictory. It is hard for a stranger to sort out the subtleties of humor, of sheer bluster, of truth. There are the diamonds in the trunk, the gold charm and chain, the gem- studded pinkie rings. Women' s emerald and diamond dinner rings, a sparkling gold bracelet that will be sold this weekend. Six years ago, he insisted he was broke. "People think I put millions away, " he said at the time. "Let them think it. The world loves a winner. " On Thursday, he said two things: "I hold my weight down, because I have no money to buy food. " And, "I got enough money to last me the rest of my life. " Bernice Novack said she ' s not any more sentimental about all the bronze and marble and gilt and gaucherie than is her ex- husband. "These are just things, " she said. "Like Ben said. " ADDED TERMS: interview novack biography quote END OF DOCUMENT.