Welcome in. We are so glad you're joining us
today because we've got a really fascinating
stack of notes pulled together just for you.
We're doing a custom deep dive into the Wikipedia
biography of a man named Mel Haber. Yes, and
I'm very excited to get into this. Right. And
right off the bat, I want to establish that this
is it's an absolute masterclass in entrepreneurship,
cultural trend spotting and just pure reinvention.
Absolutely. It's a wildly unpredictable trajectory.
Totally. We are tracing the journey of a guy
who literally started out selling peanuts to
crowds at Ebbets Field and somehow, through just
sheer adaptability, ends up hosting Frank Sinatra's
pre -wedding party. Which is quite the leap.
It's massive. And the secret ingredient to that
entire wild ride is a concept he called working
smart. It really is an incredible document to
dissect because, you know, this isn't just a
biographical timeline of one man's life. It's
a vivid, almost kaleidoscopic lens through which
we can view 20th century American consumerism.
By looking at Haber's career, we are essentially
tracking the evolution of the American economy.
Like a microcosm of the whole country. Exactly.
From those bizarre mid -century youth fads right
up to the golden age of Hollywood hideaways.
Okay, let's unpack this from the very beginning.
Mel Haber was born in Brooklyn, New York, in
1936. Classic Depression -era Brooklyn roots.
Yeah, and he was the youngest of four children
and the only boy. His father, Louie, was a garment
district salesman. But this standard mid -century
upbringing just shatters completely when Mel
is just 12 years old. A pivotal, tragic moment.
Right. His father dies of a heart attack at the
age of 52. And literally overnight. this 12 -year
-old boy becomes the sole breadwinner for his
entire family. It's an unimaginable amount of
pressure to place on a child. I can't even fathom
it. I mean, he isn't just getting a part -time
job to buy comic books or go to the movies. He
is literally keeping a roof over his family's
head. Yeah, and the sheer volume of work he takes
on to do that is staggering. He's delivering
groceries. He's at Ebbets Field navigating these
massive, chaotic baseball crowds just to sell
peanuts and beer. Which is grueling work on its
own. Oh, for sure. And then during the summers,
he heads up to the Catskills to work as a busboy
in these massive, incredibly fast -paced resort
dining rooms. And that Catskills experience is
where we find our first and arguably most important
major takeaway. The core philosophy. Right. While
he's rushing around those dining rooms, balancing
heavy trays, dodging waiters, and clearing tables
for hundreds of guests, he develops this personal
philosophy. He called it motion efficiency. Which
he later referred to as simply working smart.
Exactly. Because when you are a 12 -year -old
carrying the financial weight of an entire family,
you simply cannot afford to waste a single ounce
of physical energy. Or a single minute of time.
Exactly. Motion efficiency meant maximizing his
output while minimizing the physical toll. Every
single step he took had a purpose. No wasted
movement. None. And that exact same skill, that
ability to optimize his environment and his effort
is the precise operational foundation that later
allowed him to run six different complex restaurant
and club venues simultaneously without burning
out. It makes complete sense. I mean, if you
can efficiently navigate a crowded 1940s resort
dining room during the dinner rush, you can probably
navigate anything. It's the ultimate training
ground. So he graduates high school, and in the
fall of 1954, he enrolls in the Fashion Institute
of Technology, FIT, in Manhattan. Mm -hmm. And
not for long. No. His college career is remarkably
short -lived. Two months in, he gets a call from
a businessman named Artie Schifrin, offering
him a job at Walford Industries for $85 a week.
Which was decent money back then. Very decent.
So Hayward drops out immediately, takes the money,
and steps into what becomes a massive cultural
phenomenon. The timing of that job offer really
is everything, because in December of 1954, the
ABC television network airs a show called Davy
Crockett Indian Fighter. Starring Fess Parker.
Right. And Parker wears this signature coonskin
cap. It was an absolute overnight youth craze.
Unprecedented for television at the time. Yeah.
If you think about modern viral fads like when
fidget spinners or certain TikTok products suddenly
sell out everywhere in a matter of days, this
was the 1950s equivalent. But on a massive. physical
manufacturing scale. What's fascinating here
is the sheer speed of the boom and bust cycle.
It was so fast. Wolfram Industries, where Haber
had just started, saw this multi -million dollar
bandwagon and jumped right on it. They pivoted
to producing coonskin items as fast as their
machines could run. They went all in. They did,
but it's a perfect micro study of supply chain
economics. We have the specific numbers from
the source, and they paint a brutal picture of
what happens when demand completely outstrips
supply. The raw materials just vanished, didn't
they? Completely. The price of raccoon tails
surged from 25 cents a piece all the way up to
$5 a pound by May of 1955. Wow. The raw materials
became so astronomically expensive that the margins
just evaporated. The bubble burst, the craze.
ended and the whole operation crashed. Which
leaves Mel Haber, at 19 years old, out of work
for the first time since he was a child. A harsh
lesson in trend chasing. Definitely. So he regroups,
obviously. He tries selling shoes, he tries selling
stocks, but he's really just treading water until
Walfren Industries calls him back. Because they
had a new plan. Right. They aren't doing Kuhn's
skin caps anymore. They're pivoting to automotive
novelties, and they want Haber to help run the
operation. If we connect this to the bigger picture...
The macro context of this pivot is crucial for
understanding American consumer culture. Set
the scene for us. This is the post -World War
II economic boom. By the late 50s, the country
is selling approximately 10 million cars annually.
But more importantly, you have the rise of the
baby boomer teenager. Right. The car is no longer
just a utilitarian way to get to work. For a
teenager, the car is their living room. It's
their social currency. Precisely. Teenagers were
practically living in their vehicles. And Wolfern
Industries realized that these kids wanted to
customize these spaces. And they leaned into
it heavily. Between 1961 and 1968, they produced
an astonishing 750 different novelty items to
help teenagers express their identities. And
we are talking about the absolute quintessential
classics of mid -century car culture here. Oh,
the stuff you see in every period movie. They're
making the hula dolls that danced in your rear
window, dashboard religious statues. The classics.
The iconic fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview
mirror. tiger tails to hang on the gas tank.
It's brilliant because it's entirely frivolous,
but it's exactly what the market wanted. It was
pure identity signaling. Yeah, and their biggest
hit was something called Amber Lens Die, which
sold over a million units. They were monetizing
teenage self -expression at an unprecedented
scale, and it paid off massively. In 1968, a
company called Automatic Radio swooped in and
bought Wolfram for $3 million. Which means Haber,
who held a 10 % stake, walks away with... a $300
,000 windfall. A fortune at the time. Huge. He's
young, he's incredibly wealthy, he has a large
house in Long Island, and he drives a Rolls Royce.
But this is the exact point in the story where
that linear trajectory completely derails. It
really is a cautionary tale about the illusion
of generalized business genius. What do you mean
by that? Well, Haber had achieved massive success
in a very specific, trend -driven niche. But...
He takes his 300 grand and starts indiscriminately
investing it into a string of entirely unrelated
side businesses. The list is almost comically
disconnected. He launches a boiler cleaning business,
a front end wheel alignment franchise. He tries
an import business. Right. And then he gets into
things that are highly technical, like vacuum
forming and factoring medical centers. And those
last two are particularly notorious for eating
up capital if you don't know the industry inside
and out. Just to clarify for you listening. Vacuum
forming is a manufacturing process where you
heat a sheet of plastic and stretch it over a
mold. That's how they make things like plastic
blister packaging. Right. And factoring medical
centers is a financial service where a company
buys a medical clinic's unpaid invoices at a
discount to give the clinic quick cash. Neither
of which have absolutely anything to do with
selling fuzzy dice to teenagers. Nothing at all.
And predictably. Every single one of these ventures
was a total failure. He bled capital. Yeah, he
had to shut them all down. And the psychological
toll of that has to be immense. You go from the
high of a multi -million dollar buyout to watching
your money evaporate in boiler cleaning schemes.
It's humbling, to say the least. The source material
describes the aftermath as a textbook midlife
crisis. And he does something incredibly drastic.
He doesn't just downsize. He burns the ships.
Complete reset. Yeah. He trades his Rolls Royce
for a used Fiat. He leaves his Long Island house
behind, moves clear across the country to Los
Angeles, and rents a furnished apartment in Marina
del Rey. He essentially stripped away all the
physical trappings of his previous success, which
had become so entangled with all his recent devastating
failures. He was looking for a blank slate. Here's
where it gets really interesting. It's 1975.
He's out in California driving this used Fiat.
And a friend invites him to take a trip out to
Palm Springs. A fateful trip. Very. While he's
wandering around, he comes across a property
at 200 Ramon Road called the Ingleside Inn. At
this point, it's suffering badly from absentee
ownership. It's dilapidated. Very rundown. But
it has this unbelievable ghost town glamour to
it. The history of that estate is extraordinary.
It was built back in 1925 by the widow of the
Piercero motor car manufacturer. Oh, wow. But
its real legacy began a decade later when a Palm
Springs councilwoman named Ruth Hardy bought
it and transformed it into a 20 -room hotel.
The hotel doesn't really do it justice. No, Hardy
ran it for 30 years as an aggressively exclusive,
invite -only private club. The contrast of the
people who stayed there is fascinating. You had
your classic Hollywood royalty, of course. Like
Elizabeth Taylor. and Greta Garbo. Yes, but you
also had these bizarre cultural intersections.
Right, like you'd have Salvador Dali, the eccentric
surrealist painter, staying at the same highly
exclusive resort as JCPenney, the incredibly
conservative department store magnate. It's a
wild mix. Just painting that picture in your
head, these vastly different titans of culture
and industry hiding out in the desert under the
strict curation of Ruth Hardy. But Hardy passed
away in 1965, and without her enforcing that
exclusivity, the magic faded. By the time Haber
walks onto the property 10 years later, it's
a shadow of its former self. Now, let's look
at this objectively from Haber's perspective.
He has just failed out of half a dozen businesses.
Spectacularly. Spectacularly. He knows automotive
novelties. He absolutely does not know high -end
luxury hospitality. And yet, he looks at this
faded, rundown estate. and makes a spontaneous
$300 ,000 handshake deal to buy the entire property.
It is an almost incomprehensibly reckless move
on paper. On April 15, 1975, he officially owns
it. But this is where we see that childhood motion
efficiency roar back to life. The Catskills busboy
returns. Exactly. He doesn't hesitate or overthink.
He shuts the inn down for the summer, pours $500
,000 into a rapid, highly focused restoration,
and revitalizes the property, including adding
a restaurant he names Melvin's. And he moves
incredibly fast. By September 15th of that same
year, the Ingleside Inn reopens. And he somehow
manages to instantly recapture the exact lightning
in a bottle that Ruth Hardy had commanded decades
earlier. The turnaround is stunning. The inn
immediately becomes a massive magnet for a brand
new era of Hollywood's elite. You've got stars
from Marlon Brando to John Travolta walking through
the doors. But there was one event that really
sealed the deal. Oh, yeah. The moment that permanently
cemented the inn's legendary status happened
just a few months later in July of 1976. Frank
Sinatra and Barbara Marks held their pre -wedding
party at Melvin's. In the ecosystem of 1970s
celebrity culture, there is no higher endorsement.
None. Once Frank Sinatra chooses your venue for
something that intimate and high profile, your
reputation is bulletproof. You're set for life.
The inn was eventually featured on Lifestyles
of the Rich and Famous, hailed as one of the
world's premier dining venues. He went from a
furnished apartment and a used Fiat to hosting
Sinatra in barely a year. It's dizzying. But
Haber was fundamentally a trend spotter. He wasn't
going to just sit still. By 1979, the cultural
wave was disco. And Haber decides to build the
biggest surfboard he can find. He opens a venue
called Cecil's on October 1st, 1979. And this
was not a modest undertaking. Not at all. Cecil's
was a 9 ,000 square foot Chinese restaurant and
discotheque. A strange combination, but it worked.
It cost $1 .2 million to build in 1979 dollars.
The sheer extravagance of an expansive Chinese
restaurant that seamlessly morphs into a pulsating
disco that rivaled Studio 54. It was the undisputed
epicenter of Palm Springs nightlife. And he didn't
stop there. Nope. He followed that up by opening
two more dining ventures in the early 80s. Saturday's,
which was modeled after the TGI Friday's concept
and doubles located inside the famed tennis club.
At his peak, Haber was the second largest employer
in all of Palm Springs, with 200 people on his
payroll. This raises an important question about
how an entrepreneur navigates shifting cultural
tides. Pop culture historians widely consider
disco to have died right around 1980. The famous
disco backlash. Right. But Haber's motion efficiency
applied to his management style, too. He kept
Cecil's highly profitable for years after the
trend supposedly died. But crucially, he knew
exactly when to get off the ride. That timing
is everything. In 1985, sensing the era was truly
over, he sold Cecil's Doubles and Saturdays to
local businessmen, cashing out cleanly. He steps
away from the massive club expansions. But the
city of Palm Springs wasn't quite ready to let
him retire from the nightlife scene. Fast forward
to January 1994. The comeback attempt. The public
has been clamoring for his return. And he obliges
by opening Touche, a $1 .3 million Moroccan -themed
bar, nightclub, and restaurant. The opening night
was everything you'd expect from a Mel Haber
production. Over 500 people, celebrities everywhere.
They even got a plug from Robin Leach on television.
But once the opening night confetti was swept
away, a very stark, very troubling pattern emerged.
On the weekends, Touche was absolutely packed.
But midweek, it was a ghost town. Zero business.
This is where Haber's deep understanding of sociology
comes into play. A stubborn owner might have
just dumped more money into advertising trying
to force people through the doors on a Tuesday.
Trying to make the market do what they want.
Exactly. But Haber stepped back and analyzed
the broader cultural landscape. The 1990s were
not the 1970s. The culture had shifted from the
wild anything goes disco era to a much more corporate
health conscious decade. Right. People actually
had to show up to the office on a Thursday morning
now. Plus, the media was heavily driving a much
broader public awareness regarding alcohol and
substance abuse. Exactly. The era of the casual
midweek blowout was dead. And instead of fighting
a losing battle against a permanent cultural
shift, Haber applied that classic motion efficiency
once again. He cut his losses. In 1996, he sold
Touche for $250 ,000. He stepped away from the
nightclub scene for good and focused his energy
on the stable, thriving entities he still owned,
the Ingleside Inn and Melvins. It takes a lot
of discipline to walk away like that without
letting ego get in the way. But what is truly
inspiring... is what he did with all the time
and energy he got back. The philanthropy chapter.
Yes, he poured it into philanthropy. Going all
the way back to 1985, around the time he sold
off his first wave of clubs, he got deeply involved
with the Angel View Crippled Children's Foundation.
An amazing organization. This was an organization
that originally used local hot springs to rehabilitate
children with polio. but had expanded to help
kids with a wide range of physical challenges.
And he didn't just lend his name to a letterhead.
He joined the board, and by 1993, he was the
president of the foundation. Under his leadership,
they expanded their footprint significantly,
opening their 17th home in 2002, which was named
the Mel Haber House in his honor. Even after
stepping down as president of Angel View, he
kept going. In 2014, he joined the Board of Operations
Safe House. That's a tough front line to be on.
It is. This is an organization actively fighting
child trafficking and youth homelessness in the
Coachella Valley. They provide emergency shelter
for runaway and abandoned children. It's incredibly
vital work. Through his efforts there, they were
able to assist more than 800 children a year,
giving them a secure haven and a chance to rebuild
their lives. Talk about an impact. It's a profound
application of his relentless drive, taking the
organizational skills he learned, running multi
-million dollar venues, and using them to protect
vulnerable youth. And he somehow found the time
to become an author, too. He wrote Bedtime Stories
of the Ingleside Inn, which actually featured
a dedication by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and later
co -authored Palm Springs All -A -Cart. And the
city honored him for all of this, didn't they?
They absolutely recognized his impact. On his
60th birthday in 1996, he received a Golden Palm
Star, and the city officially designated the
Ingleside Inn as a historic site. A well -deserved
legacy. So what does this all mean? When you
look at this incredible stack of notes, you see
a journey that completely defies the conventional
rules of business. In every possible way. You
have a 12 -year -old boy in Brooklyn, thrust
into the role of sole provider, who learns the
vital art of motion efficiency while clearing
tables in the Catskills. And he takes that philosophy
and uses it to ride the wildest economic and
cultural waves of the 20th century. From coonskin
caps to disco. Right. He navigated the boom and
bust of the Davy Crockett craze. He monetized
the teenage car culture of the 60s. And he orchestrated
the glamorous peak of 1970s Hollywood nightlife.
But most importantly. He channeled all of that
hard -won success into a legacy of profound community
service. It is a remarkable, deeply unconventional
projectory. But for you, the listener, I think
there is a highly provocative thought to take
away from this analysis. Lay it on us. Consider
the ultimate turning point of Haber's life. His
greatest, most lasting success, the Ingleside
Inn, did not come from careful strategic planning.
It came immediately after a string of devastating
failures. When he was at his lowest. It happened
during a midlife crisis where he had surrendered
a Rolls Royce for a used Fiat. He walked onto
a dilapidated property knowing absolutely nothing
about the hospitality industry and made a $300
,000 handshake deal based purely on instinct.
Pure gut feeling. Right. It makes you wonder
in our modern world where we are so hyper obsessed
with linear career paths, perfectly optimized
resumes, and rigidly plotted five -year plans.
Wait. Is our modern obsession with playing it
safe actually cutting us off from our own spontaneous,
life -changing handshake deals? That is a phenomenal
question to end on. Are we planning so rigidly
that we forget to leave room for the leap? Thank
you so much for joining us on this custom deep
dive today. We really hope you enjoyed navigating
this incredible life story as much as we did.
We'll leave you with that final thought to mull
over as you go about your day. Catch you next
time.