Master Storyteller Jim Steranko Makes His Mark At The Big Apple Comic Con This March 25th – 26th

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Parent Category: Expos and Conventions

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 21 March 2023 13:40

Written by Brad Balfour

Jim Steranko's cover art for the 1982 Marvel Comics Adaptation of Blade Runner.

More than half a century ago, artist/writer Jim Steranko changed the way comic book storytelling was visualized. He brought in design elements originally conceived through design and fine art ideas. Back then, artists coming from the pop art scene such as Roy Litchenstein appropriated comic book design elements into genre-bending large scale paintings. It took Steranko to do the opposite for comics. His infusion of surrealism, pop art, and graphic design into the medium earned him lasting acclaim for such innovations in sequential art during the Silver Age of Comic Books, particularly with the 1960s superspy series “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” in Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales and in the subsequent eponymous sequential art runs.

With ST #135, Steranko took over Nick Fury, but the series had started with Jack Kirby and John Severin. Although he didn’t originate Fury, Steranko’s art radically changed the look of comics. Though it concluded when Strange Tales ended after some 35+ appearances, the 84-year-old’s influence didn’t end there. He then took on Captain America and the X-Men; there were short runs on X-Men (#50–51, Nov.–Dec. 1968), for which he designed a new cover logo, and Captain America (#110–111, 113, Feb.–March, May 1969). The Pennsylvania native introduced the Madame Hydra character in his brief time on the book as well.

Of course the comics of Captain America — which began in the early 1940s — definitely weren’t his either, but Steranko’s way of stylizing the character again was so highly innovative and influential that, in these cases, he made the characters his own so he could easily take a stand about them.

There was an exhibit of Kirby and Steranko’s work once at the Victoria and Albert Museum years ago. It was very nice work indeed from both artists — and it displayed their specific styles. Some in the comic book world might consider Sternako’s viewpoint on other artists provocative but he never demurred on his thoughts on graphic story making or anything else.

His work has been published in many countries and his impact on the field has remained strong since his comics heyday. He went on to create book covers, became a comics historian — who published a pioneering multi-volume history of the birth and early years of comic books — and created conceptual art and character designs for films including “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and "Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” He was inducted into the comic-book industry’s Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.

And at the December Christmas Con, clad in his distinct outfitting, the octogenarian expressed taut and sharp thoughts on the state of comics past and present — something he’ll do again on March 25-26 at the New Yorker Hotel.

Q: You’ve had a long career in comics and in dealing with the world of media. What do you consider the most important moments in your career that you want people to realize? You wrote Nick Fury, had your own magazine, came up with a design concept that nobody else has ever thought of for comics. Where do you feel one’s education should start?

JS: I think all those things that you mentioned and a few others besides that. They’re all my children, so I do not have a definitive answer when people ask me what my favorites are and what my most important things are that I’ve done in the past.

Q: What were your the biggest challenges/legacy?

JS: My biggest legacy, that’s something… I leave that to my fans and my friends. I don’t make that decision. I want them to make the decision.

Q: When you were developing your concepts for “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” you came into the field with a particular vision and visual style. Where and when did you decide how to step away from comics traditions and add all the collagic effects, the big panoramic images, and the psychedelic influences? Whoever thought a secret agent or someone part of a spy organization would fit in to that kind of environment? You really affected the way comics were conceptualized from that point going forward.

JS: I grew up with comic books, and found that when I was in a position of power, that I couldn’t imitate what came before. I had no interest in being a rubber stamp artist. That’s not what I do. At the time I got into comics, I had a full-time job as an art director and manager — it was eight to five. I also played rock and roll for 12 years, three to five nights a week — that’s a second full-time job. Then, along the way, I got an assignment to do a number of Marvel comics. I worked for them for three years. It was a somewhat uphill battle to convince Stan [Lee] to adopt non-Marvel-type techniques and treatments in my books, Captain America and Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. He resisted that idea, even though they called themselves the “House of Ideas.” But don’t make me laugh. I guess I developed a kind of system where the work was an ultimatum. For example, I would never tell Stan what I was going to do ahead of time because he would say, “Don’t do that.” I’d just bring the work in on the day of the deadline when there was no time to make changes, and they’d have to take it or lose their monthly distribution. So those firsters that you were talking about, those puzzle pages, I called them innovations because they had never been done before in comics.

Q: They hadn’t even been done in normal illustrations as well.

JS: A lot of them. But the number that you’re looking for is, 150 of them I brought to comics in the space of about three years. The unusual thing about that is, that if you took every comic artist from the beginning of comic book history — American comic book history — and added them all up, they wouldn’t be anywhere near that number of 150 — 150 things, graphic things, that had never been done in comics before.

Q: Take artist/writer Neal Adams. A lot of the ideas Neal later incorporated into DC with “Green Lantern” were ideas that you also had about the way a page should look and the elements you could bring on the page.

JS: Neal did not represent what I represented in the field. He had his own agenda and I had mine. Even Jack Kirby, who was the king of all of us, was unparalleled in terms of what he contributed to comic book art. Not only in the number of pages, but the quality of those pages. But Jack had few innovations, maybe not more than two or three. Believe me, I’ve looked at his work and know it very well. I knew Jack and admired him for decades and decades, and he was a good friend of the family. He was a wonderful man but in terms of innovating new things, that was not Jack’s idea. He wanted to draw the greatest action figures and stories that could possibly be done in comic book lore. He achieved that, that was his goal. Mine was something completely different.

Q: One of the things you also did was to be one of the first comic artists to create their own publishing company. You brought out your own magazine — Mediascene (beginning with issue #7, Dec. 1973) and ultimately, it transformed into Prevue.

JS: Yes, I was in publishing for 25 years.

Q: Nobody can question you about your knowledge of comics because you also created histories of comics — “The Steranko History of Comics.”

JS: I wrote the first two comic history books. And, I believe to this very day, they are different from the thousands of comic history books — literally thousands of them. Book shelves full of them. The reason I believe mine are different is because I wrote them from a position inside the business. Get it? Everything else has been written from the outside, by strangers. They’re making comments, some of them really important ones but they’re not from my viewpoint as [a comic book insider]. I knew the artists, writers, publishers personally. I knew them myself as a friend or they if they were enemies along the way. That personal touch, I think, is evident in “The Steranko History of Comics.”

Q: Those books are loved. They have their own voice. When you did the magazine, you not only were doing comics, you were covering pop culture in general so you had your own viewpoint. You did a lot of the interviews, too.

JS: yes I did a lot of TV, film, and…

Q: Music?

JS: I was on the set of many, many Hollywood films. It was an education for me.

Q: Why haven’t you made a movie yourself? You have your legacy in “Captain America” and “Nick Fury.”

JS: I’ve just been so busy along the way that making a film, in the space of a year and a half or two, doesn’t work. However, right now, at this very moment, I’m engaged in one of the largest assignments that I’ve ever had in my life. I’m working for an international corporation to develop a new and different compelling strange world that will be turned into 3D and played by millions of gamers all over the world.

Q: Do you like how the movies treated the characters you worked on and how they interpreted your work? Did you like they way Nick Fury was transformed by Samuel L. Jackson? Do you think they captured the spirit that you were trying to convey?

JS: This may disappoint you, but I have generally found, particularly with the early Marvel adaptations — and the DC ones — that the actors who played the key roles, the superhero roles, looked to me like they had just graduated from college earlier in the week. They have zero authority. And I know that Captain America — one of the [key characters] that I worked on and that I loved, and I still love to this very day — he is the pinnacle of authority and justice. A kid just out of college for a week just can’t make that work. So I stopped looking at the Marvel movies. They have incredible special effects and things that have never been done before. I love that material but I believe the heart of filmmaking really exists in the characters, and I don’t believe those characters.

Q: Who would you like to see make a movie of some of your characters? Do you have anybody in mind? Do you have any character creation that you would like to see turned into a movie?

JS: Not really. I have no jones about that at all. I think eventually the right people on one side of the camera will connect with the right people on the other side of the camera and give us the kind of superhero movies that I think should be made. With really engaging stories and individuals and great acting.

Q: People haven’t appreciated that you’re as much of a writer as you are an artist.

JS: Nobody thinks of me as a writer.

Q: With all those issues of magazines, you delivered great coverage and had great ideas. What do you think about the current state of pop culture now, and how would you write about it if you had the magazine still going?

JS: I could be answering that question for the next 45 minutes but I find myself generally disappointed with contemporary comic books. Why? We have the best looking art that we’ve ever had. We have our pick of the crop of the entire world because of the internet. We have great, great art being produced. The thing is, most of them don’t know anything about narrative technique. Their pages are simply chaotic. I can’t read the stuff. I can’t read it. And I refuse to read it in that form. The artwork is often excellent. Most of the really good stuff is saved for the covers. You’re on your own when you get into the interior of them. Frankly, I can’t read that material. There are exceptions to the rules [but few are] available.

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Making Comic Book Magic Through the Eyes of Impresario Michael Carbonaro & The Big Apple Con

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Parent Category: Expos and Conventions

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 14 December 2022 15:19

Written by Brad Balfour

Boy, it’s hard to keep track of comic book impresario Mike Carbonaro. Maybe he can sit still for a two-hour movie — or so — such as the 93-minute “The Night At The Opera,” a film as fast paced and crazy-quilt as Carbo himself. He’s a Maven of media, especially that which involves superheroes and costumed characters. Now in his mid-60s, this NY-accented character may not be costumed but he is heroic, a rescuer of our pop culture. And he’s profiting from it.

At least once, maybe twice a year, Carbo holds the Big Apple Comic Con in the New Yorker Hotel. On Saturday, December 17th, is Christmas Con, then a co-sponsored Trading Card Con on Sunday. And next year, there’s the extended March 2023 edition.

If the New York Comic Con is like a glittery version of a comic-con, maybe the Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen of cons, then the Big Apple Comic Con is a punk rock equivalent — kind of like The New York Dolls versus The Rolling Stones. It’s hard-core for real lovers of the books, their artists and fans. Oh, it has its share of media stars, panels, signings/photo booths and an artist alley but it’s really for the basic collector.

A very active collector and buyer of comics, discs, and pop culture memorabilia, Carbo’s comic book story began as a young boy who would use his toy dump truck to roll his comics into a treasure chest covered with Superman wallpaper. Over 40 years later, he’s still rolling along and buying comics — only now it’s in a white SUV, sometimes having woken up in the middle of the night to spend $20k on comics. 

In the ‘70s, Carbo attended almost every comic book and collectible convention in the NYC area. He paid his way through private school and college with money made by dealing comic books. In the ‘80s he opened a comic book store in Forest Hills, Queens, NY, which he ran for more than a decade.

Then, ever restless in the 1990s, he launched a new venture — the Big Apple Convention. Over the years, he’s run over 75 comic cons locally. Over the course of its history, the convention has been known as the Big Apple Convention, the Big Apple Comic Book Art and Toy Show, and the Big Apple Comic Book, Art, Toy & Sci-Fi Expo. Larger three-day November shows were known as the National Comic Book, Art, Toy, and Sci-Fi Expo, the National Comic Book, Art, and Sci-Fi Expo and the National Comic Book, Comic Art, and Fantasy Convention. In 2014, the name “Big Apple Convention ” was revived by Carbonaro for the March 2015 show. He’s sold and then reacquired it. But whenever and wherever he did, Carbo was its ringmaster.

In 2000, the bushy-haired dynamo also kicked off a career as a Senior Buyer for Neat Stuff Collectibles. He spent millions of dollars buying comic books and collectibles during his tenure. Then, Carbonaro helped Dave & Adam’s Card World build their comic books business. He’s always gearing up to spend billions on every collectible imaginable — comic books, pulp, toys, and sports cards and artwork. Whatever you’ve got, Carbo will buy it!

In typical Carbo fashion, when we met up he was in a whirlwind. “Get down here to the public library near the Lions. I’m coming from my accountants, meeting a long-time collector and then you. And I’ll be off again.”

MC: This is the most beautiful spot — the Chrysler building right there — 42nd Street, Fifth Avenue, New York Library, and my friend, Arnie Sheinman.
 
Q: What are your memories of comics and the library?
 
MC: You know what? I actually want to build a comic book library. This is not it. But I do enjoy the 42nd Street Library when I’m here. But the reason I’m here is my accountant — who is also Arnie’s accountant, at least for this year, and is across the street.
 
Q: I imagine your accountant has a lot of work to do.
 
MC: You mean when it comes to me? Well, he’s kept me — yes, he’s kept things honest and stable for the last 20 years.
 
Q: You’re always running around with all that cash to buy comics. How do you keep track of of it all?
 
MC: I don’t know. The comics keep track of themselves. But Arnie and I were doing business way back, starting in the earliest days. But you were doing business before me, at the comics shows. We were just talking about this new movie, the Shazam! movie, the “Black Adam”, which is okay. But remember the Captain Marvels? There was a time when the Captain Marvels were the X‑Men — when everyone wanted to have Captain Marvels, this whole period, But Marvel Family No. 1, which is now $1,000 to $20,000, nobody cared that much about Marvel Family No. 1 — 25 dollars, maybe 50 dollars, a hundred bucks, would have been a lot for that. Tons of those all the time. Anyhow, it’s amazing what the movies will do for the awareness, value of a comic book.
 
Q: Do the movies make you more motivated about a particular comic book?
 
MC: Not personally, but from a fiduciary point of view, yes. It makes me want to buy more because everyone wants them, and the value kind of goes up. Then it goes down, as the movie does well or worse, depending. So yeah, it motivates me a little bit to do it.
 
Q: So you weren’t motivated by “Black Adam?”
 
MC: The comics themselves motivate me.
 
Q: And “Black Adam” didn’t do it for you?
 
MC: It was okay. What can I say?
 
Q: How about the comic? Shazam No. 26?
 
MC: Shazam No. 26? That’s another book from the 70s. You can buy it in the dollar bins all of a sudden, the dime bins.
 
Q: Now you’re talking about the Golden Age ones?
 
MC: No, no, this is the 1970s appearance of Black Adam — the Shazam one. But then there’s Marvel Family.
 
AS: So worthless.
 
MC: What about Marvel Family No. 1? Didn’t that have something in it too?
 
AS: No, I’m talking about the Silver [Age] one.
 
MC: Right, right. That’s what Shazam was — kind of silvery.
 
AS: That’s the Marvel stories.
 
MC: Yeah, that’s the one I’m talking about. The 1940s kept Marvel Family as well as the Shazam ones from the ‘70s.
 
Q: Did it ever confuse anybody about, there’s Captain Marvel, there’s a DC Captain Marvel and then there’s Shazam, and then there’s…
 
MC: Yeah. Well, that’s the whole thing of a lawsuit with that. I think it’s interesting. Marvel — I believe DC actually stopped, or paid off, Fawcett [Press] to stop printing Captain Marvel. And then, later on in the Seventies, Marvel bought the rights to it, or owned the rights somehow, and then created it and it became Captain Marvel themselves, calling it Shazam.
 
AS: They named Marvel “Captain Marvel.” It was Captain Mar-VEL.
 
MC: Right, right. And then Marvel Comics created a Captain MAR-vel character in the ’60s. So it was…
 
Q: Then it was [morphed] into a woman?
 
MC: I believe that’s correct, right. Oh, I remember when I had my comics store, that was actually the first graphic novel that really did amazing [business]. We had to keep reordering it, the first printing and the second printing. I had my comic books store in the 1980s — I guess that’s ’83 – ’84, when “The Death of Captain Marvel” came out. That graphic was six bucks, and it was great. That’s like selling six comic books. So I was making three dollars on every six‑dollar sale. I kept reordering that graphic novel and reordering it.
 
Q: And that’s at the retail rate, right?
 
MC: Yeah. That was at my comic books store in Forest Hills — Continental Comics in the ’80s. I had just moved back again to Forest Hills, and the guy whose house I moved into and I invested a little, and I’m paying him rent — is one of the kids that used to buy comic books from me in the 1980s. In a $2.2 million house in the Forest Hills Gardens.
 
Q: So you’re in Forest Hills now?
 
MC: I’m back.
 
Q: Is there a difference between the Queens comic book fan versus the Manhattan comic book fan?
 
MC: Absolutely not. Everyone likes comic books, it’s all equal. We all love them the same. It doesn’t matter where you live or where you are. Comic books are equal. Now some people are a little more crazy about the way they love their comics and how they love their comics, but nevertheless we are all equal lovers of comic books. Whether we buy them, sell them, or whatever, right?
 
Q: Now that you’re back living in Queens, have you ever thought to set up your house in such a way that it becomes a comic book haven?
 
MC: Oh no, no, no, I already have a warehouse, and a basement. Actually the reason I bought it is because of the whole garage and basement of the house, I am turning into a business and an office and all that. And for my Big Apple Comic Book Convention, which is coming up this month. And Christmas.  

BACC is not a corporate show — it’s a collectors show. It’s not 100,000 people, it’s 10,000 people. But we bring celebrities, we bring artists; if you come to the show you can move around and breathe easily, you can get to see everybody; you can do your comic book business, and that’s what I like about it. It’s a fun experience. It’s real social media with other collectors. That’s the thing, you walk into a comic book convention or you collect comic books, regardless of race, color, creed, anything, you have that common interest. That’s something I learned as a kid buying and selling comics, the melting pot of comic books has been a very positive experience for me in my life. 

Q: So Arnie, you told a few stories of me in the past, and one of these is amusing. I would like to negotiate when I buy something, and you mentioned that I negotiated with you and I left the difference on the floor when we did it?
 
AS: A little kid used to come over and pay me in change, and he left more change on the table than he spent.
 
Q: Did he have any valuable change?
 
AS: No, just nickels and dimes. But to an 11-year-old…
 
MC: But buying comic books back then was pretty cool.
 
Q: Then you were an 11-year-old…
 
MC: No, I was 12 or 13. This is 1970.
 
Q: So you’re 12 or 13. Why is it comics and not something else you collect? Although you do collect a lot of other things, do you?
 
MC: No, comics were it. Because I liked collecting comics when I was a kid, I enjoyed it, and comics were — it was something easy to figure out. I liked the numbering system. I liked buying them. I liked seeing them. I liked that Marvel Comics were exciting.

The comic book business is a 24-hour business and when the comics come out, people want to sell them when they want to sell them. And I’ve had guys I’ve known since I was 12 years old. So all of these years I’ve been collecting and I’ve had guys I’ve known all their lives, guys 45 years old, “I’ll never sell, I’ll never sell.” All of a sudden, in the middle of the night they’ll call me and go, “Okay. I’m ready to sell.” And if I don’t answer that bell that day they’ll find someone else to buy it. That’s the cool thing about the comic business, it’s very liquid. If you need money, you want to sell something right away, you don’t have to deal through any brokers. You have to be ready to go. For me, the middle of the night and doing the deal is my life. It was the best dream I could have had and it came true. 
 
Coins and stamps were dull. My dad collected coins and stamps. He taught me how to collect things, and I liked postcards as well. I collected postcards — Coney Island. I won first prize for my Coney Island collection. That was pretty cool. But Coney Island is, you know, the old Luna Park and Dreamland, and all that, that’s all gone now.
 
Q: Did you go out to Coney Island?
 
MC: Yeah, I used to make my mom take me. But it wasn’t the same in the ‘60s.
 
Q: How was the Mermaid Parade for you?
 
MC: Didn’t get to that one. That was way back. This was the ’70s. But I’m flying out to buy a comic book collection in Florida next week, and I’m probably not even going to see Disney [World]. For me the comic book collection is Disneyland.

New York City has been my home. I’ve fallen off the roof at Studio 54 [and] I had a comic book store in Jackson Heights. I like the fact that I run the Big Apple Comic Con in New York City. It makes me feel good that I’m a part of New York and I’ve done something fun here.

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Luxe Hotels Chairman and Founder Efrem Harkham Expresses Business and Life Philosophies in His Recent Memoir

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Parent Category: Expos and Conventions

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 10 October 2019 13:23

Written by Brad Balfour

"Living the Luxe Life: The Secrets of Building a Successful Hotel Empire"
Authors: Efrem Harkham with Mark Bego
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

When veteran hotelier Efrem Harkham bought a struggling hotel in Bel Air 31 years ago, little did he know he was launching what would become the Luxe Hotels brand — an international hospitality company. Now, Luxe includes the Luxe Collection Hotels representation company (which is limited to 200 member hotels) and the corporate-owned properties such as Beverly Hills’ Luxe Rodeo Drive Hotel and Bel Air’s Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel as well the Luxe City Center Hotel in Los Angeles. Harkham sought to make the brand typify the name Luxe and be synonymous with comfort and refinement — something he hopes to do with the recently acquired Life Hotel in Manhattan.

The company employs over 300 and provides marketing, sales, reservations and other services for hotels in Europe, South America and Asia, as well as North America. As he explained in an accented English voice which mixes a touch of his life growing up in both Australia and Israel, he has a global perspective. “We created an international brand through the Luxe hotel name, like The Rose Garden in Rome. We gave it a face lift and BOOM, The Luxe Rose Garden. When that title enhances an existing hotel, it really serves in the duty of the name. Every state has one of these beautiful hotels. It was my idea that day that I’ve got to find these little boutiques in all these beautiful cities which needs to be granted that name. The idea was born right there.”

But there’s more to Harkham than just hotels. Hospitality isn’t just a job but a way of life for this 60-something. And it’s not just hospitality — it’s a mix of class, euro-styled elegance and a professional thoroughness that underlies his places and his business style. Thanks to years of experience — and through seasoned author Mark Bego’s skills (a New York Times bestseller with 62 books on rock & roll and show business under his belt) — Harkham’s life chronicle, "Living the Luxe Life: The Secrets of Building a Successful Hotel Empire" (Skyhorse), came to fruition as an insightful guide to both success in business and in spirit. Through his rags-to-riches American memoir, Living the Luxe Life details Harkham’s business philosophy, a commitment to excellence in all aspects of life, succeeding in a constantly evolving marketplace, and mentoring employees. He firmly believes that his methods provides customers with a superior product. Chapters expand on Harkham’s business model, touching on his belief in philanthropy, education, and patience.

And given his less-than-auspicious roots, one wouldn’t have thought hospitality was in the cards. “I was born in Israel. There were several hundred thousand people that arrived within a period of five years. That is a lot of people for a brand new country to absorb. There were food shortages and no housing, we were living in ramshackle camps. We lived in an old British barrack and we just put up walls inside. There were around a hundred thousand people in that area. One thing that we always did was, despite all the squalor, we always celebrated the Jewish holiday Shabbat, and that was a life saver. We brought joy to the squalor and you just work your way out of it by not giving up.”

Born in the Jewish state, Harkham’s religious experience helped define him and how he responded. “I was a very quiet child and I would watch my family sing and celebrate every Friday for the Jewish day of rest. There are a lot of Jewish holidays! I’m sure living in New York you know. During those years, we were all watching my Dad; my Mom was in a bit of shock, lobbying for us to go to school. We saw kids not having proper education and he lobbied hard for a school for 400 kids. He actually got the funds for a school and had it built for 400 children. He encouraged me and my siblings to help make it happen for the kids and to help them be confident in the world, to be able to find their strength.”

His next stop was even further away from the United States when he acquired Australian roots: “When we arrived in Australia, it was like arriving in Heaven. Oh my God! It is just such a beautiful and peaceful country. My brother was able to secure us a home there before we arrived. I started high school and being an immigrant from Israel was really foreign to the Australian teenagers. I was quiet, shy, introverted, and being the youngest boy in the family, I was passive. Arriving in Australia, I was getting a little chubby from all the good food, so at school I made an effort not to go with the heard mentality. I didn’t want to be like the other guys.”

Though it wouldn’t seem apparent now, Harkham survived his own share of contentious situations, and that taught him a lot. “I was using my ambition and drive to help my parents out of their financial issues. Over the holidays, I worked, I gave them money, they were always short on money. The school’s bully saw the opportunity to poke fun at me. I was the subject of lots of gang outs. I didn’t tell my family about it or my four older brothers. I was too proud to tell them that I was being harassed. I came home with two broken arms and black eyes and they would ask me what happened, and I would say a sports accident. They believed me. This gave me a lot of strength, not to go with the herd and believe that I am okay and that I have a mission to help my parents.”

While growing up in down under, he got his start in business at age 17 in Sydney. He worked as a salesman for Lulu, his older brother’s clothing manufacturing company. Lulu took off after he persuaded a buyer for a large retailer, Rockman’s of Australia, to carry one of the company’s jumpsuits. That achievement led to him establishing a successful track record in the rag trade. And all that drove his move into hospitality. “I felt that that’s why I succeeded in the garment industry. I put myself in my consumers’ shoes, and made sure that they were getting the best product that they could get for what they were spending.”

By selling his share of the clothing business, Harkham used his money to move to Los Angeles in ’78 and invest in commercial real estate, including the struggling Radisson Bel-Air Hotel — now the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel. “I went into hospitality with the same mentality of quality control. I tried being on my own, but I was convinced that it would be useless on my own, that I had to join with a larger entity, which, I did. I joined two international brands and in the process of doing so, sold my profits for even more. And I just went, ‘We’ve won!’ I signed a very long contract, 15 years. But after five years, I said ‘Bye Charlie.’ I realized that there were others exactly like me looking for representation and for someone who would help them be found by the consumer. I decided to stop complaining to the branch I hired and mustered the courage to create my own brand and philosophy.“

And that attitude is evident when you walk into any of Harkham’s one-hundred-plus luxury hotels. “I tell my team where ever they are: ‘We all have to lead.’ I expect my staff to look better than I do when I am out there. And they do this 24/7. It’s all about that attention which is personal and genuine. It has to be perfection. It’s a way of life, and we teach it to the staff and executives. We teach it to everyone.”

An example was cited. A woman battling a stubborn cold checked into the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel. Harkham noticed and ordered the restaurant to send her freshly made chicken soup free of charge. It paid off. The guest now returns often and tells her friends about the gesture. He added: “This resulted in a long friendship with the guest, her entire family and work associates.

“We make sure every student employee understands that we want customers for life, not just for one day or one stay. We want them to celebrate their anniversaries or their birthdays with us. So that is the mentality that we’ve engendered at the company.”

Harkham cited another example as to how he acts on his ideas: “When we celebrated Beverly Hills’ 100th birthday, we had a specially baked 4,000-pound cake that had 15,000 slices, and residents flocked to that event. With the hotels we represent, we carefully select properties that have a one-of-a-kind individuality, rarely found among many hotel chains and collections that abound today. Each property has its own distinctive personality and they’re often located near historic sites offering compelling design and unique architectural elements.”

Though he travels regularly, he tries to be home with his kids on weekends. While on the road, he practices yoga and meditation to keep his mind and body fit. “Closing out the world is what it’s about — 15 minutes in the morning and again at night. It helps me maintain my sanity.”

Living in Beverly Hills, he also invested in the local industry — Hollywood’s film business, becoming associate producer for “Gorky Park” a 1983 crime drama starring William Hurt. No doubt he took an interest in this extracurricular activity because his hero is Walt Disney. “Animation was executed by many before him but [Disney] introduced something new. He created magic and made it special — that’s my goal for the hotel industry."