Picking Up the Pieces

Each morning, in his extradition-proof haven of Brazil, Edward Mortimer Gilbert, 38, trudges down to take the sun along Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach.

Usually he is alone, brooding over the collapse of his financial empire (TIME, June 22) in the aftermath of Wall Street's Blue Monday skid. But last week Eddy had a companion--handsome, French-born Olivier Coquelin, 32. Coquelin is the manager of a Manhattan cafe society watering spot called Le Club, where Eddy, bedazzled by a "board of governors" that includes Noel Coward, Rex Harrison and the Duke of Bedford, was an eager member. Said the loyal Olivier: "I have come to see zat Eddee does not go to zee dogs."

Post-Mortem in Zurich. As they struggled to straighten out their own finances, it was more difficult to find such concern for Eddy Gilbert's welfare among other of his former friends and associates. Before he resigned as president of E. L. Bruce Co., Inc., and fled to Brazil, Gilbert admitted to writing $1,953,000 in unauthorized company checks in a futile effort to meet margin calls on his stock in Bruce and Chicago's Celotex Corp. Fortnight ago. a federal grand jury charged fraud and ticked off 15 counts that, if proved, could put Gilbert in jail for 74 years. The same day the Internal Revenue Service filed tax liens of $3,464,472 against Eddy and estranged wife Rhoda.

The reverberations of the Gilbert crash echoed in Europe, where Eddy had borrowed much of the money to underwrite his scheme for seizing control of Celotex. In Zurich, darkly smooth Abdulla Zilkha, 49, an Iraqi-born financier who makes a specialty of lending money to would-be securities buyers on low margins but high interest rates, ruefully admitted that his firm had some $2,000,000 riding on Gilbert. "We won't know about our losses," said Zilkha. "until a post-mortem is made."

Wounds in the Jet Set. Also nursing wounds were some jet-set luminaries who had eagerly grabbed a ride on what looked like the Gilbert gravy train. In New York, Wall Street's McDonnell & Co.. whose president is Henry Ford's brother-in-law, brought suit against Man about Manhattan Jacques Sarlie, 47, a Dutch-born market operator and art collector. Sarlie. complained McDonnell, refused to pay for $754,770 worth of Bruce and Celotex stock bought for his account. (Sarlie's rebuttal: McDonnell had bought the stock without his authorization, on orders from Eddy Gilbert.) Still another victim of Gilbert's downfall was his personal broker. Francis Farr, a socialite customers' man for McDonnell & Co., who invested heavily in Bruce stock. Until Blue Monday, Farr did so well that three months ago he was able to buy the late Dag Hammarskjold's old maisonette on Park Avenue.

Farr was typical of Gilbert's associates. No man to prey on widows and orphans. Gilbert cultivated people who were able to help him socially in return for a rids on his financial coattails. Said one Manhattan socialite: "I always thought Gilbert was rather gauche, ill at ease and pushy. But I just felt that a guy that ambitious for himself might bring my money up with him." Wealthy London Dandy John Aspinall grew so fond of Eddy that in 1959 he threw a $15.000 party for him in a Belgrave Square mansion decked out to resemble the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Among the 150 guests were such notable continental play people as Linda Christian and the Maharajah of Jaipur. Sighed Aspinall last week: "Eddy is the most generous man I know. I'm most upset to see him in his preset position."

This, however, was not the opinion of Igor ("Ghighi") Cassini, who as the Hearst chain's "Cholly Knickerbocker" plays chief tale-teller to the jet set, and used to namedrop the Gilberts in his column with insistent frequency. "Ghighi didn't lose a potful," said Gilbert last week. "Well, maybe he did--for him. It was about $30,000." Potful or not, Cassini's losses were big enough to have erased all his happy memories of the days when he enjoyed the expensive hospitality of the Gilberts' Riviera villa. Snapped Ghighi last week: "Nobody expected what happened. They thought Gilbert was a bluffer and a social climber, yes. But nobody expected him to be a crook."

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