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attracted to the rich because of their freedom. But I
wanted also to avoid their burdens. And I didn’t want to
hide. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. I wanted to be free.
I was not remotely ambivalent about what I wanted: to
be free. That was the reason to make money.”
His rise at Bear Stearns was a swift one. And he
soon became the protégée of Jimmy Cayne (also hired
by Ace Greenberg on a whim—he met him in a bridge
game), who would go on to run Bear and to lose his
fortune in Bear’s 2006 collapse). Epstein’s leave-taking
or ouster from Bear was the result of politics, envy,
overreaching, or a securities violation, or...unclear. But,
no matter, when he left in 1982 he took with him
billionaire clients, including Marvin Davis, a real estate
developer who owns Twentieth Century Fox, and Herb
Seigel, a major media investor in the 1980s. At this
point, Epstein was dating Morgan Fairchild, a television
star in the new mega-rich-family soap operas, Dallas
and Falcon Crest.
The Concorde phase of his life coincided with the
Concorde phase of the 1980s. If the ‘80s were
happening pell mell in New York, they were happening
at double time and catch up speed in London. Thirty-
year-old Epstein was living a Lifestyle of the Rich and
Famous (he befriended the show’s star, Robin Leach), at
English shooting parties and country estates with
Saturday night black tie dinners, where he was meeting
the over-the-top families of Europe.
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