Paul Kalmanovitz, Beer Industry Magnate, Dies

Paul Kalmanovitz, a reclusive immigrant who became one of the wealthiest men in the United States through several brewing companies he owned, died of cancer at his home in Tiburon, Calif., over the weekend.

Kalmanovitz, who once wanted to spend $15 million to erect a Statue of Justice in San Francisco Bay to rival the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, was 81.

At his death he owned Pabst Brewing Co., Falstaff Brewing, General Brewing, Lucky Lager Brewery and a brewery in Zhaoqing, China. His worth was listed at $250 million in the Forbes 400 list of 1985.

Kalmanovitz, who kept a low profile despite a penchant for occasional full-page advertisements in newspapers urging Americans to “wake up” and return to the purchase of U.S.-manufactured goods, emigrated to the United States in 1926 from Lodz, Poland, and started washing cars, then managed and later purchased apartment buildings.

During the 1930s and ‘40s he also served on the personal staffs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, publisher William Randolph Hearst and Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

By the time he entered the brewing business in 1950, he had become a wealthy businessman with vast real estate holdings.

Normally a private man who kept to his home, he would surface occasionally, usually for a buying spree.

Last September, he visited a series of car showrooms and ended up purchasing a Bentley limousine for himself, a Rolls-Royce Silver Spur for his wife of 57 years, Lydia, and gifts of Bentleys for his chief of staff, his doctor and an aide. The bill came to about $800,000.

Often asked to contribute to causes, Kalmanovitz once told an interviewer: “There’s just me and my wife and a cat and a dog. And when my wife and I go, everything we’ve got is going to hospitals. But nobody tells Kalmanovitz who gets the money. I decide.”

He was, however, an avid supporter of Guide Dogs for the Blind and, although not blind, once donated $500,000 for a trained guide dog of his own.

In 1981 he volunteered to erect a statue of a robed, blindfolded woman holding aloft the scales of justice overlooking San Francisco Bay, saying “that a country dedicated to liberty and justice should have a statue to honor justice, too.”

But the statue failed to materialize after a series of debates over its location.