When Howard Hughes sold control of RKO four weeks ago, the buyers promised to clean out the company from stagehands on up. They did, lopping off a batch of executives and underlings. Heading the new cast of characters were President Ralph Stolkin, 34, and his father-in-law, Abraham L. Koolish, 60, a member of the board. Chicagoans Stolkin and Koolish had put up 40% of the down payment* made by their five-man syndicate.
Having swept out the top floors of RKO's disordered house, Stolkin and Koolish last week announced that there would be no more mass shake-ups—"only constructive additions." Actually, movie-men have wondered whether the Stolkin-Koolish combine itself would be a "constructive addition'' to RKO. Last week the Wall Street Journal raised the same question in a series of stories that stirred up Hollywood and Wall Street.
Riding High. Director Koolish had a life story as full of ups & downs as a movie serial. He got his start with the K. & S. Co., founded with a Chicago partner in 1915, to sell cameras, jewelry and novelties by mail. Sometimes K. & S. mailed out unsolicited merchandise, gambled that enough people would send in their money to turn a profit. Often Koolish mailed out punchboards, furnished the merchandise prizes for the lucky winners. He spread out to candy (Chicago Mint Co.), counter devices such as peanut vendors and handgrip measurers (Pierce Tool & Manufacturing Co.), silk stockings and insurance. Koolish was so successful that he made a fortune now put at $4,382,348; he also built a fat record of complaints with Better Business Bureaus.
Three times the Federal Trade Commission ordered one or another of Koolish's enterprises to halt its "false and misleading" claims and other practices. One Koolish company, Westminster Life, sold mailorder insurance that offered payments of "up to $7,500" on premiums of only $1 a month for an entire family. The Chicago Better Business Bureau was told by postal inspectors that 67% of the death claims were rejected, and 24% brought payments of $10 or less. Among the small-print conditions on Westminster health inSurance: policyholders were insured against chicken pox, mumps and measles—provided they were over 60 and under 80. Westminster and Koolish were indicted for fraud in 1948, but the charge was" dropped because the indictment was faultily drawn. To such charges, Koolish, who gave up punch-boards years ago, says: "That's going back a long way." Now one of his major interests is Empire Industries, a company specializing in direct-mail promotion.