In 1951, Dr. Roy Campbell committed suicide in his office at 814 1/2 S. Alvarado, Los Angeles.
Dr. Campbell’s will, which was never found, apparently left $100,000 not to his wife, Mrs. Iva or Eva Campbell, 55, but to Ondine Kifer, 35, his secretary.
Ondine Kifer
Dr. Campbell supposedly had written it by hand on a sheet of yellow legal paper. A tenant of the Alvarado building, Mrs. Mintia Schiller, claimed that she had witnessed Dr. Campbell sign it.
Mrs. Iva/Eva Campbell520 S. Serrano Ave., Los Angeles – Residence of Mrs. Campbell
Ondine Kifer later became Ondine Moore. She was a real estate agent for Don Roberts Realtor in Whittier. She died in Hemet, California in 2006.
Call it a sign of changing times, plain luck, or powerful lawyers, but being arrested in Hollywood on morals and drug charges in 1960 wasn’t what it used to be.
Once, it meant the end of your career and public humiliation. But for Perry Mason actor William Talman and the rest of the group, including host Richard Reibold, it was only a bump in the road.
On March 12, 1960, Talman and seven others were arrested at an apartment on 1156 N. Curson Ave., West Hollywood. Officers reportedly found everyone nude in a bedroom, plus they discovered marijuana and pornographic literature.
Ad Exec Richard Reibold
The party host and person renting the N. Curson apartment was Richard Reibold. For years, Richard Reibold operated on the edges of legality and respectability: a man who got into big-time trouble a couple of times, but always managed to claw his way back.
Richard Reibold, 1963
At the time he was arrested, Richard Reibold, 31, was Director of Radio and Television for a high-end Beverly Hills advertising agency, Lennen & Newell. Lennen & Newell had accounts in the TV and film industry.
Reibold started in New York and had only recently come to Los Angeles.
In New York, Reibold was an executive at the BBD&O advertising agency, now called BBDO–at least, until he was accused of rape and kidnapping.
Reibold’s New York Kidnap and Rape Attempt Charges
In 1956, while living in New York, Richard Reibold was accused of attempting to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard, 24, invariably identified by papers as an “attractive honey-blonde housewife.”
Allison Apartments, 81-10 135th St., Kew Gardens, NY
Reibold was married but separated from his wife for the last year and a half. He now lived with his aunt, Eleanor Simpson, at 81-10 135th St., Kew Gardens, New York.
On November 8, 1956, Richard Reibold allegedly attempted to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard.
Reibold had forced his way into Mrs. Burkhard’s car in the parking lot of the Bloomingdale’s department store in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY, and threatened her with a blackjack. He then ordered her to drive to an isolated area of Cunningham Park, where he tried to rape her.
Bloomingdale’s, Fresh Meadows, New YorkMrs. Ann Burkhard, 1956
Mrs. Burkhard fought him off. He ordered her to drive him back to the scene of the alleged kidnapping, where he got out of the car.
Reibold later claimed he had been walking around Cunningham Park for two and a half hours, “meditating about a big job he was readying for an account.”
Detectives, though, noted that Reibold’s auto hood was warm and they discovered a blackjack in his car.
Richard Reibold, 1956
During the trial, Reibold had many prominent and well-connected character witnesses, including fellow BBD&O ad agency executives and friend Carol Reed, a weather broadcaster for WCBS-TV.
Carol Reed, The Weather Girl
A Queens jury, after deliberating for nearly two hours, acquitted Richard Reibold of attempted rape and kidnapping charges.
“I bear no animosity toward that woman,” Reibold said after acquittal. “I just didn’t do it.”
Reibold After Talman Scandal
While this is conjecture, it appears that Reibold was fired from Lennen & Newell due to the scandal.
Reibold landed not-so-feet-first at Nutri-Bio of California, Inc.
For a period, Nutri-Bio did big business, reportedly pulling in over $30 million per year, gross.
Nutri-Bio also wasn’t well-loved by the FDA, charging Nutri-Bio with “falsely promoted as cures for ailments ranging from heart trouble to impotency.”
In other words, Mr. Reibold was directly involved with these suspect promotions.
Reibold bounced back, out of Nutri-Bio hell. Only a few years later, in 1963, Reibold was named radio-television director at far more respectable Los Angeles ad firm, Beckman, Koblitz, Inc.
Richard Reibold married Margaret “Peggy” Reibold, who is still alive as of 2023 and still living in the Los Angeles area.
Coda: Reibold’s “Unusual Spanish” in the Hollywood Hills
Richard Reibold finally lived at 3410 N Knoll Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90068, a house that the real estate ads in the 1960s called “an unusual Spanish.”
3410 N Knoll Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90068
For a period, the house seems to have been unsellable, starting at $52,500 in 1966, down to $45,000 in 1967, then $36,950 in 1968.
Reibold ran his own company from there, The Reibold Company, Inc. He appears to have done well. As of 2022, he and his wife Margaret were listed by Pepperdine University as having given at least $1,000,000 to the university over the course of their lives.
It starts with a photo in a LIFE magazine, July 11, 1938, with the caption saying, “Miss Lesley E. Bogert was prominent among Newport socialites at opening of the summer season June 21.”
LIFE was a family magazine, so risque comments like prominent didn’t happen often.
You see:
Lesley was born into the extremely upper-crust Newport-Palm Beach socialite world that existed in the 20th century. Her father, Beverley Bogert, was a banker:
Beverley Bogert Obituary
Here’s Lesley six months later while shopping in Palm Beach:
Lesley Bogert and Prince George of Russia, April 11, 1935
But nothing came of the courtship, if there was had been one.
In fact, Price George never would marry. Prince George became an interior decorator in New York and died barely 7 months later.
His body is now in Nanuet, New York, in a Russian Orthodox cemetery called Novo-Diveevo.
Steering clear of the doomed Romanov, Lesley ended up in the arms of one Francis Taylor
Lesley Bogert and Francis Taylor, January 1939
who is described as have gone onto the Harvard Business School, but no mention of a career, at least for the moment.
Francis Taylor came from upper-crust society but was a rumble-and-tumble sort, the polar opposite of Prince George, with a resemblance to Ernest Hemingway.
Francis Taylor
In fact, Francis Taylor eventually “forsook society life in 1951,” according to his obituary, to move to Moapa, Nevada, where he planted rotation crops and raised cattle at the Warm Springs Ranch.
He had already divorced Lesley Bogert by then.
Her next marriage was to John Yocum Randolph Crawford, a professional bridge and backgammon player, which likely means that he had family money.
Everything about this photo by Slim Aarons of Helen Dzo Dzo Kaptur just kills me. What I like is that Helen, 41 years old here and widowed for the last 10 years but prior to her marriage to Hugh Kaptur, is pure attitude, her posture, her so-what-ness carry it. Helen lived a rich life of two husbands, a career in modeling, three children, friends, travels. Helen’s obituary says of this and other photographs from Aarons’ series:
Getting invited by her friend Nelda Linsk to her home in January of 1970 for a casual photo shoot immortalized Helen. The resulting photograph entitled “Poolside Gossip” by Slim Aaron depicts Helen seated poolside with her friend Nelda Linsk “gossiping” while actress Lita Baron approaches them. The iconic photo has come to define the Palm Springs lifestyle of the 1960s; style, fashion and architecture.
Nancy Kovack is long retired, no need to act anymore, and firmly married to conductor Zubin Mehta. But in her day, she graced both the big screen and the cathode ray screen with her elegantly sleek looks reminiscent of Honor Blackman.
Nancy Kovack is also the one who got away. With big-star quality looks and acting chops, she was destined for greatness. Instead, she chose a different path.
The first the world saw of Nancy Kovack was in 1955, as the 19-year-old Queen of the Romeo Peach Pie Festival, in Michigan. She was tasked with distributing 50 peach pies around the U.S. to various luminaries. One pie that she delivered went to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
After that, Kovack made the usual round of Sixties-era TV shows: Love, American Style, Bewitched, Mannix, I Spy. If a casting director ever needed a beautiful face and a refined look, Kovack led the way in their Rolodex.
To compound matters–and it’s here where the faint-of-heart should clutch their pearls and avert their gaze–Miss Kovack owned a fantastically voluptuous body.
Nancy Kovack
Nancy Kovack is the one that got away. Directly or indirectly, it’s Mehta we have to blame for taking Nancy off the screen and out of circulation. After her marriage to him in 1969, her filmography drops off to only five or six more credits before disappearing altogether in 1976.
While it seems crazy, in 1991, when Mehta was 55 years old (and Kovack about the same age), Mehta fathered a child in Israel. An article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency relates the rumor of “a smattering of illegitimate children from various affairs.” Mehta admits to just that one boy.
There’s no need to Google-Image-search Nancy Kovack at age 55: we already know that she aged like fine wine.
Still a lovely 88, Nancy Kovack-Mehta and her husband Zubin Mehta live in Los Angeles, where he is Conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
