cover image Squandered Fortune

Squandered Fortune

Lisa Rebecca Gubernick. Putnam Publishing Group, $24.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-399-13572-9

Forbes magazine senior editor Gubernick here presents a comprehensive, irresistible albeit disturbing biography of the heir to the A & P grocery chain fortune. Researching the book, in 1986 she found the former multi-millionare, age 75, spending the little money he still had on drugs for himself and the women camped at his rundown Manhattan townhouse. Tracing his life from his privileged birth, Gubernick details the projects that, through Hartford's feckless management, ate up his legacy: a Broadway theater, an art museum, show-business journals and Paradise Island, the notorious mob-tainted Bahamian resort of Watergate fame where illegal campaign funds may have been laundered. Womanizing, another expensive hobby, led to divorces from three wives and trauma for the children. There are also stories about Hartford's pursuit of Lana Turner, Gene Tierney and young girls picked up on the streets. Photos. (Jan.)