The Chick & the Macaw

For 60 years, the fluffy chick eternally popping out of its shell on the Bon Ami trademark has assured U.S. housewives that the famed old cleanser "hasn't scratched yet." But the Bon Ami chick, if not yet scratching, is not unscratched. Five years ago, the Manhattan-based Bon Ami Co. was looted of $3,000,000 by Swindler Alexander Guterma (TIME. Feb. 23, 1959). As Guterma was packed off to jail, a reform management team, headed by dapper airline and hotel operator R. (for nothing) Paul Weesner, 51, moved in to put Bon Ami back on its feet. Last week, in New York State Supreme Court, a mounting stack of complaints and affidavits charged that the chick had been plucked again by its new keepers and demanded that a receiver be appointed for Bon Ami.

Lined up against Chairman Weesner and four fellow Bon Ami officers was a formidable coalition: Tel-A-Sign Inc.. a Chicago billboard manufacturer which last month bought 16.5% (88,703 shares) of Bon Ami's outstanding stock, plus two former Bon Ami employees--ex-Vice President Olen Webb, 40. and his wife Pat, 44. who for more than ten years was Weesner's $12,000-a-year private secretary. Guided by Tel-A-Sign's largest stockholder. Attorney Roy Cohn, 35. onetime Boy Friday to the late Senator Joe McCarthy, the coalition charged that Weesner and his directors had illegally disposed of $550,000 in Bon Ami funds. Most of this money, they charged, was used to help pay off an $810,000 loan assumed by the Weesner team when it took control of Guterma's 90.000 shares of Bon Ami stock. But among other offenses, Tel-A-Sign and the Webbs accused Weesner of having used $1,581 in company funds to pay for a specially built cage for his pet macaw.

Denying all these accusations. Weesner last week insisted that the real purpose of the suit was to "bludgeon" Bon Ami (which showed a $300,000 profit for the first half of this year) into a merger with Tel-A-Sign (which lost $455,000 in the past fiscal year). Bitterly Weesner charged that Pat Webb had taken advantage of her position as his secretary to steal company records, and was now indulging in "distortion of those records, double-dealing, broken agreements." As for the cottage-priced bird cage, Weesner snapped: "Sure I have this macaw. This bird and I take a shower together every morning. But Bon Ami didn't pay for the cage. Nobody paid for it. In fact, the man isn't paid yet. That bill is too high."

At week's end, still trying to decide how much of this was for the birds and how-much was not. New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur G. Klein had yet to issue a ruling in the case. But with the affidavits and counter affidavits piling up, it seemed likely that the Bon Ami chick would be wriggling uncomfortably in the public eye for some time to come.

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