J Myer Schine

J. Myer Sohine, multimillionaire real estate, hotel, theater and broadcasting operator, died Saturday evening of a brain tumor at the Neurological Center. He was 78 years old and lived at 4 East 66th Street. Mr. Schine set off a memorable legal conflict in 1965 when he sought to sell his holdings, valued at more than $150‐million and accumulated over a 40‐year period, to Realty Equities Corporation, a publicly held investment concern. Six weeks earlier Harry B. Helmsley and Lawrence A. Wien, real‐estate investors, had reached an agreement, they contended, to buy the properties. Included were 12 hotels, 60 motion picture theaters, 3,000 acres of oceanfront land in Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Fla., a radio station in Albany, la community antenna television system in Massena, N. Y., and the Ocean Ridge, Fla., mansion of the late Col. Robert R. McCormick. The most valuable properties were the Florida acreage and the 600‐room Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, which is on a 23‐acre plot of prime land on Wilshire Boulevard. The deal involved some $75‐million over mortgages on the properties. The legal manueverings finally to hearings before the American Arbitration Association. An arbitration panel ruled in 1968 in favor of the Realty Equities deal. Realty Equities took title to 52 cinema houses in five states and the Massena television system. Mr. Schine also came to public attention in 1954 through his son, G. David Schine, who had been an unpaid consultant of the Senate Permanent Investigations sub‐committee under the late Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. The younger Schine had accompanied a committee counsel, Roy M. Cohn, on investigative trips until he was called into service as an Army private. The then Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, accused Mr. Cohn of seeking to exert undue influence to gain favorable treatment for Private Schine. Senator McCarthy and Mr. Cohn then counter‐charged that the Army principals in the dispute had tried to “blackmail” them to halt an investigation of alleged subversion in the Army Signal Corps establishment at Fort Monmouth, N. J. The episode ended with the condemnation of the Senator by the Senate in a censure proceeding. Mr. Schine, a native of Gloversville, N. Y., started as a candy butcher and a dress salesman. With his savings he bought a roller rink in Gloversville and invested the profits in additional properties. In 1957 he turned over the family holdings, with the title of president of Schine Enterprises, to his son David. The older Mr. Schine, whose first initial was for Junius, leaves his wife, the former Hildegarde Feldman; David and another son, Richard, and two daughters, Mrs. Doris Maxwell of Wellesley, Mass., and Mrs. Renee Crown of Chicago, the wife of Lester Crown, son of Cot. Henry Crown, the investor. There are 18 grand chldren.