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This year Heidt will do a business of $566,000 in the Trianon, $248,000 in his Beverly Hills Steak House, $225,000 in the Lone Palm, nearly $1 million in the Biltmore, a round $2,000,000 in all.
The Hard Way. The son of a California small-businessman, Heidt started out to be an athlete. He was well on his way to becoming an All-America guard when he broke his back in the Rose Bowl game of 1922. While he lay abed, Heidt decided to be a bandleader. By 1927 his band was famous, chiefly because of Heidt's clowning with a dog that played bells.
In 1930, playing at Monte Carlo, the trumpeter jokingly threw a bun at Heidt, missed, hit the King of Sweden. Heidt was hauled off to jail, but the pictures made the world's front pages. (Next morning the King showed up to shake hands and apologize for the necessity of maintaining his dignity.)
Back in the U.S. for a triumphant tour, Heidt's band opened at Rockefeller Center, laid "the biggest egg in the history of show business." On the grounds that the $30,000 a week loss was "an act of God," the management pulled Heidt out of Rockefeller Center, sent him to Brooklyn where he laid another egg. Back on the 'West Coast, Heidt led a vaudeville band for two years until he went into radio, finally hit the Pot o'Gold.
Now Heidt spends most of his time in his office in his rambling, glass-brick house in the San Fernando valley, where he raises turkeys and tropical birds—at a tidy profit, of course. When his contract with M.C.A. runs out next year, he plans to get back into music by reviving his publishing company.