$100,000 Difference : Millionaire Acts on His Belief That Individuals Can Change Things

Taped to the computer in Alan Gleitsman’s home office is a photo of his hero--Jackie Robinson, who, as a Brooklyn Dodger, broke baseball’s color barrier.

Gleitsman, born in Brooklyn 60 years ago, was a Dodgers fan. But his choice of heroes has more to do with his conviction that one person with heart and determination can change the thinking of a society.

A self-made millionaire who was always too busy working--or, he acknowledges, maybe just thought he was too busy--for social activism, Gleitsman, in retirement, has a new job. He is president of the Gleitsman Foundation.

At a May 22 dinner at the Hotel Bel-Air, the foundation will give away $100,000 of his money to two women who have confronted, challenged and corrected social injustices. Each year, another $100,000 will be awarded. This year’s award will be shared by Deborah Crouch McKeithan of Charlotte, N.C., and Sophia Bracy Harris of Montgomery, Ala.

McKeithan, overcoming two massive strokes related to cerebral multiple sclerosis, founded self-help groups for the disabled. Harris is a black woman whose experience with racial discrimination led her to fight for child care centers for black families in Alabama.

They exemplify Alan Gleitsman’s philosophy: “If people believe they can do things, they have the ability to make our life much better.”

Through the Gleitsman Award for People Who Make a Difference, he hopes to encourage others to take that first step.

A gate swings open onto a cobbled driveway leading from Pacific Coast Highway to an idyllic retreat on a bluff overlooking El Matador State Beach in Malibu. Gleitsman is waiting outside a pretty terra-cotta stucco house with French doors and a pitched roof.

There is a swimming pool; there are explosions of flowers and an ocean-view deck that wraps around a coral tree in bloom. A brown rabbit hops across the front lawn, stopping to nibble the grass. The faint roar of the surf can be heard.

It is a long way from Great Neck, N.Y., where Gleitsman grew up, the son of a salesman who peddled supplies to the jewelry industry. It is also, Gleitsman says engagingly, “a long way from anything I ever expected” to have.

His father died when Gleitsman was 9, and his mother worked as a secretary to support him and a sister. Once, he recalls, there was a chance to buy the house they lived in but it was $6,000, “which was completely out of the question.”

Like other kids of his generation, he worked summers and after school--”I mowed lawns. I was a baby-sitter. Every time it snowed, I shoveled snow. I sold magazine subscriptions. I worked as a soda jerk. I worked as a lifeguard.”

At Great Neck High School, he was active in student government and something of a political animal, “sort of a young liberal Democrat.”

He was chosen to speak at his commencement. He recalls “making one of those traditional speeches about where we fit ‘in this kaleidoscopic panorama.’ That was the biggest phrase I could think of.”

He could not have known that, 40 years later, he would be an American success story, living the good life in California, with the luxury of material things and the luxury of time to pursue the things that he thinks matter.

In 1951, Gleitsman left Cornell University with a degree in economics--and no idea of what he wanted to do when he grew up. The Korean War was on; having had two years of compulsory ROTC, he opted for two years’ active duty in the Air Force, accepting a commission as a second lieutenant.

The Air Force sent him seven miles from home, to a desk job at Mitchell Field.

Discharged in spring, 1953, and faced with getting a job, he joined a training program at a Manhattan firm that finished piece-goods for sale to manufacturers. He hated the textile business. Still, it was an education of sorts. “Selling piece-goods is a very tough business,” he says, “but I survived.”

In 1955, television started to catch on and Gleitsman was intrigued. He landed a job with Sterling Television, a small program distributor in New York. “They gave me a few cans of film and off I went,” covering territory south to Washington, north into New England, west to Cleveland, he says.

He grins and says, “We had not very memorable programs” to sell. There were: “Bowling Time,” “Movie Museum,” 15 minutes of silents and some cartoons. Still, he says, “There was a market”--mostly independent stations with air time to fill.

For young Gleitsman, it was a chance to meet program directors and station managers and to learn “what the business was all about.”

Eventually Sterling sent him to California to open a Hollywood office, a one-man operation. Pay: about $30,000 a year. He was thrilled. Ever since he and a friend had hitchhiked West during college, he had known that “California was the place I really wanted to be.”

Gleitsman, with his wife and three children under 3, arrived in Los Angeles in February, 1958, “the same time as the Dodgers,” he observes.

When Sterling merged with the Walter Reade Organization, Gleitsman became vice president for television. Then, in 1970, when Gleitsman turned 40, financially troubled Reade offered to sell the company to him and two other employees.

But Gleitsman did not want partners, and he wanted only the TV part because he saw theatrical film distribution as “a terrible business.” Reade rejected his offer, and, he says, “I was between engagements.”

There was an obvious solution: start his own distribution company. Alan Enterprises was born, with a film inventory that, he recalls, “was not going to give Paramount a lot of worries.” He had many foreign films, dubbed for TV; Laurel and Hardy; “The Mighty Hercules,” and Abbott and Costello.

In time, Alan Enterprises swallowed Reade. At last, Gleitsman says, “I was an entrepreneur.” In the deal, he acquired “Felix the Cat,” which seemed then to be of little value.

He was in the right business at the right time. TV was booming and, he says, “Each year (business) was 50 to 100% better than the year before.” Then video came along, another money tree.

From the start, Alan Enterprises was run out of Gleitsman’s home. “I’m sure everyone thought, ‘He’s doing that because he can’t afford an office,’ ” he says. But, shrewdly, he figured he “gained an hour or two every day” by not commuting.

Then, one day in the ‘80s, he had a talk with himself. It was time to sell. “For years,” he says, “I had wanted to be more involved in social and political causes.” In September, 1986, he closed a multimillion-dollar sale to Color Systems Technology. Now, he says, “I had a lot of money.”

He wanted to do good, but what? How? “For the last 10 or 20 years,” he recalls, “every time I read about an organization that I thought was doing worthwhile work, who was doing it? Stanley Sheinbaum. I called him.”

They met for lunch at La Scala. Sheinbaum, known for his commitment to such causes as public justice and human rights, helped him to crystallize his concept of recognizing people who make a difference. He decided to establish the Gleitsman Award to honor people who have “started something that has changed our whole viewpoint” on issues.

He says people become “so overwhelmed with daily living” that they don’t act on their convictions.

Among those he asked to serve with him on the first panel of judges was Candy Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a woman he cites as a prototype for social activism. The other judges are Sheinbaum; feminist Gloria Steinem; Stanford University President Donald Kennedy; Dr. Robert Coles, a Harvard psychiatrist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book series “Children of Crisis,” and former Sen. Lowell Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.).

Nominations, 100 in all, were solicited from opinion-makers, including members of Congress, the media, governors and mayors. In the end, the judges decided to split this year’s award to recognize a local activist (Harris), as well as one working on a national scale.

Gleitsman kept for himself the pleasure of calling the winners, who were “flabbergasted,” he says.

The calls were made from the foundation’s “world headquarters,” a sunny ocean-view nook of his home. With the money, each winner receives a commissioned sculpture by Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

Hands-on philanthropy is new to Gleitsman, although he has supported causes, including cancer research. “I had cancer (two melanomas) about 17 years ago,” he says. “That’s something that quickly gets your attention.” He has also established scholarships at UCLA, Cornell and his high school.

Divorced for 23 years and the father of four grown children, Gleitsman shares his Malibu home with Cheri Rosche, a former staffer at KCET, where they met. They have been together 13 years.

Politics are a passion. The Dodgers are a diversion. He also enjoys his greenhouse, where he putters with orchids and tomatoes while listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf and Glenn Miller.