The personality trait I most deplore in others? Entitlement. Malcolm Stevenson Forbes probably means nothing to anyone under 65 years old. Yet, when he died in 1990 at 70 years old, he was one of the most famous men in the USA thanks to his shameless showoff smarts about self-promotion.
Forbes inherited Forbes magazine from its founder, his father, B.C. Forbes, in the late 1950s when he was just 38 years old. For a long time, this magazine had been a successful business periodical with an especially strong identification with old B.C. In the early 1970s, Malcolm Forbes became its sole owner, and he made it into an even bigger, better business monthly. Everyone, even those with no business reading about business, anxiously awaited the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 Richest. Americans love to read stuff about extravagantly wealthy families, characters who are famous for being rich, and rich for being famous.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Forbes lived a luminous, lavish lifestyle, separate from the sedate scene at his inherited estate and his large family. In those decades he became more high-profile, and he really fell for New York City. It was all about his public image: Forbes with his famous friends on his big yachts and private jets and in his many homes around the globe, powerful people by the planeloads.
The Ronald Reagan era embraced a “more-is-more” aesthetic. Punk was dead, Disco was over, the rich were getting richer, and brazen consumerism was wear it was at.
In late August, 1989, on a weekend between the 18th and 20th, Forbes threw himself a 70th birthday party in Tangier where he owned a castle built in 1929 on 10 acres. 800 guests were flown in on a chartered Concorde full of friends, wealthy associates, American Governors, CEOs of multinational corporations, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Robert Maxwell (father of the sinister felon Ghislaine Maxwell), and Forbe’s “date”, Elizabeth Taylor.
It was an event made of glitter, glamour, and guise, bigger that Truman Capote’s infamous 1966 Black and White Ball. This birthday party was covered in the fashion and society pages, and even made the front page of daily newspapers (back then the papers printed the news, not gossip; back then there were newspapers). The party was good business; mingling with advertisers and potential advertisers with the upper-classes, and, best of all, there was Elizabeth Taylor!
Taking care his wealthy friend in style was his specialty. Flying them to an exotic Mediterranean country made for a good party. It was done on a grand scale: 600 drummers, acrobats and dancers, plus a cavalry charge which ended with the firing of muskets into the air by 300 Berbers on horseback. The cost of this shindig was more than $4 million US dollars (that’s 8.5 million in 2023 dollars). The whole thing offered the kind of aspirational, yet vulgar experience and proximity to fame that Instagram influencers want so badly.
When asked how he felt about hosting a super expensive party that was written off as a business expense on his taxes, Forbes boasted:
“We all do things in our lives that probably aren’t essential. It’s just that this scale is more visible … I don’t feel guilty about it. I feel grateful that we can do it.”
Forbes left this incarnation less than 6 months after his big birthday party. He departed at home on his estate in Far Hills, New Jersey. Shortly after he checked out for good, Forbes was outed by gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile. Forbes sort of out with a few friends, but most people never guessed. My gaydar spotted him right away. In his later years he became quite the partier, making up for lost time. Wasn’t that always the way with those old-style upper-Atlantic establishment type Republicans? The kick out of the closet was a shock to those friends who had no idea, or maybe chose not to believe, that Forbes was into guys.
Signorile published the story in Outweek to show how more acceptable a gay man is without the predictable pale of prejudice. When Forbes was gone, many conservatives celebrated him as a great American capitalist. Signorile felt that history needed to remember his as a gay man. He interviewed people who knew Forbes as gay, some of them were men who had been in hookups with Forbes.
In 1990, a report on the undeclared gayness of a major public figure, dead or living, was shocking and scandalous. Months went by before some paper reported it. Some never did. Four months later, The New York Times about outing and still didn’t identify Forbes by name, saying a “recently deceased businessman” had been outed by a gay activist. Years later, The New York Times finally reported that Forbes was gay in a story about his son, Steve Forbes’, campaign for President in 2000. Squeamish Steve Forbes was a Tea Party Republican, and courted the Conservative Christian Right. He was publicly against Gay Rights, especially Marriage Equality, while campaigning for president. About his dick-hungry daddy, Steve wrote:
“My father had his life. We respected it. What he meant to us and to others I think speaks for itself. You don’t have to approve of something that someone does to have compassion and love.”
At the time, that grifter from Queens said of Forbe’s passing:
“Forbes’s death takes the excitement, creativity, and genuine business leadership away from every American businessman.”
Forbes was born rich and he spent his entire life getting richer. When he departed this world Forbes was worth $5.5 billion. I guess you can take it with you; his ashes are scattered around on his private island in Fiji along with 700 of his favorite motorcycles. I wish he were still around, I could have thrown a part in my back yard for his 104th birthday today.
