To much of Broadway, she is Adela the angel, the flamboyant, chestnut-haired Spanish beauty who helped bring a struggling little show called Hair to the Great White Way—and thence to the whole world—by investing $57,000 in it in 1967. That strategic infusion, claims Adela LaFora Holzer, earned her $2 million. It also earned her a heap of fame among show biz folk and set her on the road to becoming a big-time theatrical producer. Actors, agents, composers, publishers—and, of course, psychiatrists—loved to mix with Adela and her third husband, Peter Holzer, who at one time or another has owned shipping and freight-forwarding companies. Everything about Adela, who claims to be 43, reeks of wealth: her multicarat jewels, her Halston gowns, her Manhattan town house (the taxes alone are $14,-000), her country home in New Jersey, complete with pool, sauna, gym and tennis court. So when Adela started jabbering to her friends about ingenious ways of making money, they listened.
And talk she did. In her galloping, heavily accented English, she liked to say: "Banks tell me I am a top business person. They say to me, you have such a mind. The bankers can't even follow." Adela spun sugarplum stories of wonderful "deals" through which she could help people multiply their money by buying land in Spain and selling it for huge markups, or by shipping Japanese cars to Indonesia, or by getting into the import-export trade. And a lot of folks, credulous and captivated, begged to get in on the action.
Off-Broadway. Lately the authorities also have become fascinated by Holzer's off-Broadway affairs. New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz is investigating. Last week the Wall Street Journal splashed the story of her business affairs on Page One, reporting that Holzer talked friends into putting about $10 million into foreign ventures, many of which are hard to track down. (Holzer says the total is closer to $2.5 million.)
Some of the investors did nicely indeed; New York Book Publisher Norman Monash, who plans to bring out Adela's heavily edited autobiography, says she helped him turn $50,000 into $190,000 in 13 months, though there is now a little problem about retrieving funds (from a recent real estate deal) that are blocked in Spain. But others have done much less well, and quite a few are afraid that they will never see their money again.
A research librarian heard about Holzer's wizardry through a friend and invested $2,500 in what she understood was a "cement deal." The first $600 in profits was to have been mailed to her more than a year ago; so far she has not seen a cent. Guillermo Seco, a Manhattan physician, made a $35,000 investment through Holzer, who, he claims, sent him glowing earnings reports of the venture. But when it came time to collect his profits, he could not. He sued and won a court judgment of $181,018. Holzer declines to discuss details of precisely how her businesses work. But for Seco's complaint she has little regard: "With $35,000 invested, he already was getting back $180,000 in three years!"