Ticketed to start a three-month stretch in jail this week: Boston Textile Magnate Bernard Goldfine, 70, crony of ex-Presidential Aide Sherman Adams. Goldfine was convicted of contempt of a federal court after he refused to produce records bearing on an income tax evasion rap.
The prototype of the penny-pinching near billionaire is U.S. Oilman Jean Paul Getty, 67, who last year plunked down a million more or less, for Sutton Place, the Surrey domain of Britain's Duke of Sutherland, partly to save money on his hotel bills in London and Paris. Last week, as if in final proof of his penny wisdom. Expatriate Getty went pound-foolish with a vengeance. To Sutton Place he invited some 80 gilded guests for dinner on gold plate, then opened the estate to more than a thousand other assorted peers, nobles, high officials, new and old rich. The after-dessert throng carried on in grand style till dawn and on. By then the hardy stragglers were surfeited with champagne, whisky and sturgeon eggs—plus beer for the inelegant and unlimited milk for nondrinkers. When the fireworks, dancing (to three orchestras) and tippling (at four bars) were all over, many of the elite—ranging from the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland to conspicuously untitled Douglas Fairbanks Jr.—had perhaps even forgotten the purpose of the affair. It was billed as a combined mansion warm ing and coming-out ball for Jeanette Constable Maxwell, 17, daughter of a longtime Getty friend. The party drew excellent notices from the press. "Easily the most fabulous evening since the war," burbled London Daily Express Columnist William Hickey, who also hailed it as "good, oldfashioned, vulgar fun." Another waggish Fleet Streeter made a kill joy calculation: the party lasted eight hours and probably cost Getty $30,000 —but in the same period his fortune automatically swelled by an estimated $67,000.
The late Philanthropist Vincent Astor is likely to go down in U.S. tax annals as the multimillionaire with the leastest —for the revenuers. Astor, who died last year at 67, left an estate appraised last week by New York State tax commissioners at an impressive $127,377,021.34. Out of this mountainous greenery came a nadir of sorts in mid-20th century U.S. estate taxes: $253,869.44—less than 0.2% of the amount that Astor could not take with him. How did Testator Astor do it? It seemed, under New York State and federal inheritance statutes, kind of easy: he left about $61.5 million to his wife Brooke as a taxless widow's mite. $60.5 million to the Vincent Astor Foundation and sev eral much smaller charities (also untaxable). Some $5,000,000 went to pay o"f debts, all taxes, administration expenses and lawyers. All that was left to tax was some $775,000, out of which the federal tax-types got a miserly $198,552 as top bite. The French Republic got an unspeakable $1.02 as last lick. The New York appraisal also brought to light the makeup of Astor's investment portfolio. His biggest holding was in Newsweek, Inc., of which he owned 177,200 shares, valued at $4,857,052 by the state appraisers. Since Astor owned about 60% of Newsweek, Inc.'s outstanding shares, the value of its stock is presumably around $8,095,000.