The death of New York’s penny-pinching ‘Queen of Mean’

Profile of Eighties Manhattan property tycoon Leona Helmsley who famously declared during her 1989 trial for tax evasion that 'only the little people pay taxes' - and later found that the little people can bite back.

"No two billionaires loathe each other on a personal level more than The Donald and The Queen of Mean," noted Forbes of Manhattan's two most famous Eighties property tycoons, Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley. Their feuding became legendary, but it was Helmsley who gained most notoriety as the original "bully broad" so formidable that, during her 1989 trial for tax evasion, even her attorney described her as a "tough bitch". Her house-keeper's testimony sealed her reputation as the capitalist from hell. Helmsley, she told the court, believed "only the little people pay taxes".

Queen Leona came to the public eye after her 1972 marriage to Harry B. Helmsley, the "King Kong of Big Apple Real Estate", who'd risen from being a rent-collector in Hell's Kitchen during the Depression to control real estate worth $5bn, including the Empire State Building and a string of New York's finest hotels. Helmsley had been a "low-profile, behind-the-scenes kind of guy" until he ditched his wife of 38 years to marry Leona, then an ambitious estate agent, says The New York Times. "She was the one who understood that they were living in a time when wealth needed to be married to a sense of celebrity and self." Leona's real power came in 1980, when, after a series of strokes, Helmsley put her in charge of the hotel chain. "He said the best thing about it was that the board of directors meetings were over when we got out of bed," said Helmsley, who appeared in endless advertisements in a tiara and ball gown, announcing that at the Palace Hotel "the Queen stands guard". Hotel gift shops sold decks of cards with Queen Leona's picture on them and she became famous for her penchant for luxury towels. "I won't settle for skimpy towels why should you?" she asked punters.

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