Larry Hillblom sex with underage girls, Eccentrics always make you wonder: Are they being eccentric for crafty and strategic reasons? Or are they truly wired differently than you and me? James D. Scurlock's "King Larry: The Life and Ruins of a Billionaire Genius" makes a good case for authentic eccentricity. The index entries include "Hillblom, Larry Lee, cheapness of," "Hillblom, Larry Lee, negativity and paranoia of" and "Hillblom, Larry Lee, as germophobe." (Flip to the page for the last item and you find, "For a time, he carried his own bottles of Lysol and ketchup everywhere.") Also encouraging: "Illegitimate children of" requires 24 page references.
And I'd argue that the subject of any biography that features a "failed rodeo-brothel-turned-drive-in-movie theater" is well on his way to legitimate eccentricity. Larry Hillblom (1943-95) was raised on a farm in California's Central Valley. He outgrew his hometown quickly and by the late 1960s was at Berkeley's law school, impressing fellow students and professors with his nimble mind and persistence. To earn cash, he worked as a courier. Nearly every day he collected documents around the East Bay, loaded them into suitcases and checked them as his luggage on a late flight to Los Angeles. Upon landing, he swapped these for Oakland-bound suitcases, studied and slept in the airport, then returned on an early flight in time for morning classes. When time permitted, Hillblom shifted to the more exotic Honolulu run. And his experience in the middle of the Pacific planted the seeds of an empire. For Hillblom became the "H" in DHL, a global air-express giant founded in 1969, shortly before Federal Express got into the market. (The "D" was Adrian Dalsey, a salesman for the courier firm that employed Hillblom; the "L" Robert Lynn, an investor who bailed almost immediately, convinced that the idea was doomed to failure.) Although the success of a trans-Pacific rapid-delivery service now seems a given, four decades ago few could predict that American consumers would have computers and electronics delivered direct to their homes from China. DHL also faced huge practical obstacles. The Loomis Corp., an armored car and courier company, enmeshed DHL in endless licensing battles. And the U.S. Postal Service sought to bar DHL from document delivery to protect its monopoly, which it claimed was essential to providing affordable universal service. (Turns out, the post office might have had a point.) By 1979, DHL was operating in 120 countries, and Hillblom was immensely wealthy. Yet instead of buying a hilltop mansion in Los Angeles, he lived in a relatively modest concrete home on the Pacific island of Saipan with a deck overlooking the beach and a windowless room where he kept his law books, even after the highly profitable sale of most of DHL in the early 1990s. His was the life of a minor island potentate. He bought an ambassadorship to Vietnam, was appointed a judge in Saipan and filled his days launching smaller-scale enterprises like hotels and resorts.On Saipan, he enjoyed roaming freely without an entourage. And he could indulge in his hobbies, which included flying vintage aircraft and driving his DeLorean—a gift from the Saudi royal family—around an island half the size of Martha's Vineyard. Then there was sex. He liked young girls—some very young. He cruised bars and brothels, especially for virgins. He claimed to have slept with 132 of them, at a cost of $10 million all told. In May 1995, Hillblom's old seaplane went down. The bodies of the two others aboard were recovered; Hillblom's was not. This led to a spate of Elvis-like sightings and conspiracy theories, including one alleging that, after parachuting out, Hillblom detonated the plane and was spirited away by a submarine. Hillblom—at least as depicted by Mr. Scurlock—seems to have had a singular talent: He could outmaneuver and outlast his opponents. Loomis Corp. tried to buy out DHL early on, threatening to drive it under using by using Loomis's contacts with federal aviation officials ("We've done it before," an executive explained), but Hillblom simply ignored shut-down orders from the government until he could counterpunch. The book also memorably recounts Hillblom arriving in D.C. to tangle with a federal regulator. When the official refused to see him, Hillblom slept on the couch outside his door until he emerged. Unfortunately, that talent is a small island in a turbulent sea of flaws and unattractive habits. As one of the dozens of people interviewed by Mr. Scurlock says, Hillblom "was incapable of relating to people except as a provocateur," which seems to sum him up. His unrelenting disagreeableness (he sometimes tended a local bar and would throw out friends who didn't spend enough) makes this account somewhat less compelling that it might have been—you can dislike someone for the length of a magazine feature, but it requires real stamina to stomach Larry Hillblom through a whole book. A second problem is that "King Larry" often drifts into the minutiae of legal and corporate battles. Mr. Scurlock spent five months on Saipan, much of it painstakingly copying out court proceedings, and some of the early going feels like reading a stack of memos. I looked forward to the book's latter half, which, foreshadowing suggested, would dwell on Hillblom's salacious extracurricular activities. I envisioned a trashy novel buried within the memos. Sadly, it never turned up. The account of Hillblom's sex life reads like more paperwork. And then he dies, with 100 pages left. Dry details of paternity and estate battles follow. Overall, the book works better as a 300-page footnote to the history of globalization than a rollicking tale of a picaresque character. The typical biography of a business genius will eventually coax out some tragic flaw. Hillblom, alas, seems all flaws, with a glimmer of true eccentricity and one big idea. DHL still does billions of dollars of business a year, long after Larry Hillblom disappeared.
And I'd argue that the subject of any biography that features a "failed rodeo-brothel-turned-drive-in-movie theater" is well on his way to legitimate eccentricity. Larry Hillblom (1943-95) was raised on a farm in California's Central Valley. He outgrew his hometown quickly and by the late 1960s was at Berkeley's law school, impressing fellow students and professors with his nimble mind and persistence. To earn cash, he worked as a courier. Nearly every day he collected documents around the East Bay, loaded them into suitcases and checked them as his luggage on a late flight to Los Angeles. Upon landing, he swapped these for Oakland-bound suitcases, studied and slept in the airport, then returned on an early flight in time for morning classes. When time permitted, Hillblom shifted to the more exotic Honolulu run. And his experience in the middle of the Pacific planted the seeds of an empire. For Hillblom became the "H" in DHL, a global air-express giant founded in 1969, shortly before Federal Express got into the market. (The "D" was Adrian Dalsey, a salesman for the courier firm that employed Hillblom; the "L" Robert Lynn, an investor who bailed almost immediately, convinced that the idea was doomed to failure.) Although the success of a trans-Pacific rapid-delivery service now seems a given, four decades ago few could predict that American consumers would have computers and electronics delivered direct to their homes from China. DHL also faced huge practical obstacles. The Loomis Corp., an armored car and courier company, enmeshed DHL in endless licensing battles. And the U.S. Postal Service sought to bar DHL from document delivery to protect its monopoly, which it claimed was essential to providing affordable universal service. (Turns out, the post office might have had a point.) By 1979, DHL was operating in 120 countries, and Hillblom was immensely wealthy. Yet instead of buying a hilltop mansion in Los Angeles, he lived in a relatively modest concrete home on the Pacific island of Saipan with a deck overlooking the beach and a windowless room where he kept his law books, even after the highly profitable sale of most of DHL in the early 1990s. His was the life of a minor island potentate. He bought an ambassadorship to Vietnam, was appointed a judge in Saipan and filled his days launching smaller-scale enterprises like hotels and resorts.On Saipan, he enjoyed roaming freely without an entourage. And he could indulge in his hobbies, which included flying vintage aircraft and driving his DeLorean—a gift from the Saudi royal family—around an island half the size of Martha's Vineyard. Then there was sex. He liked young girls—some very young. He cruised bars and brothels, especially for virgins. He claimed to have slept with 132 of them, at a cost of $10 million all told. In May 1995, Hillblom's old seaplane went down. The bodies of the two others aboard were recovered; Hillblom's was not. This led to a spate of Elvis-like sightings and conspiracy theories, including one alleging that, after parachuting out, Hillblom detonated the plane and was spirited away by a submarine. Hillblom—at least as depicted by Mr. Scurlock—seems to have had a singular talent: He could outmaneuver and outlast his opponents. Loomis Corp. tried to buy out DHL early on, threatening to drive it under using by using Loomis's contacts with federal aviation officials ("We've done it before," an executive explained), but Hillblom simply ignored shut-down orders from the government until he could counterpunch. The book also memorably recounts Hillblom arriving in D.C. to tangle with a federal regulator. When the official refused to see him, Hillblom slept on the couch outside his door until he emerged. Unfortunately, that talent is a small island in a turbulent sea of flaws and unattractive habits. As one of the dozens of people interviewed by Mr. Scurlock says, Hillblom "was incapable of relating to people except as a provocateur," which seems to sum him up. His unrelenting disagreeableness (he sometimes tended a local bar and would throw out friends who didn't spend enough) makes this account somewhat less compelling that it might have been—you can dislike someone for the length of a magazine feature, but it requires real stamina to stomach Larry Hillblom through a whole book. A second problem is that "King Larry" often drifts into the minutiae of legal and corporate battles. Mr. Scurlock spent five months on Saipan, much of it painstakingly copying out court proceedings, and some of the early going feels like reading a stack of memos. I looked forward to the book's latter half, which, foreshadowing suggested, would dwell on Hillblom's salacious extracurricular activities. I envisioned a trashy novel buried within the memos. Sadly, it never turned up. The account of Hillblom's sex life reads like more paperwork. And then he dies, with 100 pages left. Dry details of paternity and estate battles follow. Overall, the book works better as a 300-page footnote to the history of globalization than a rollicking tale of a picaresque character. The typical biography of a business genius will eventually coax out some tragic flaw. Hillblom, alas, seems all flaws, with a glimmer of true eccentricity and one big idea. DHL still does billions of dollars of business a year, long after Larry Hillblom disappeared.
Title: Larry Hillblom sex with underage girls
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Rating: 100% based on 99998 ratings. 5 user reviews.
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