Lewis S Rosenstiel

Lewis S. Rosenstiel, founder of Schenley Industries Inc., the giant liquor corporation, died in January 1976 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach at the age of 84. He suffered a stroke in 1971 and was partly paralyzed. Mr. Rosenstiel retired from Schenley in 1968, when its sales were slightly less than a half‐billion dollars, and devoted himself to philanthropic activities. A domineering man with quick temper, Mr. Rosenstiel was at one time the most powerful figure in the distilled spirits business. His fight for supremacy in his industry with the late Samuel Bronfman, head of Seagrams Ltd., were legendary and often erupted into bitter personal and corporate battles. Called Lew by friends and “the chairman” by associates. Mr. Rosenstiel was a self‐made man. Not only did he achieve great success in business without a college education, but he also taught himself how to play the piano and to paint in oils. He enjoyed performing, mathematical exercises and would sometimes engage his associates in the exercise of computing the adertising line rates of newspapers throughout in the country. Lewis Solon Rosenstiel was born in Cincinnati on July 21, 1891, the only child of Solon and Elizabeth Johnson Rosenstiel. He attended the University School and Franklin Prep there and had two ambitions as a teen‐ager—to become an All‐America football player and a physician. These goals were put aside in 1907, after he was kicked in the face during a football scrimmage and his eyesight was affected. His doctors recommended that he leave school until the injury was completely healed, and he never returned. Mr. Rosenstiel went to work for an uncle, David L. Johnson, who owned the Susquemac Distilling Company in Milton, Ky. One of his first jobs there was as a belt splicer on big dynamos for $3.50 a week. When he retired from Schenley, his salary was more than $250,000 a year, and he was a multimillionaire. When Prohibition came in 1920, Mr. Rosenstiel turned to other jobs, including such unrelated activities as selling bonds and shoes. In 1922, while on a vacation on the French Riviera, he met Winston Churchill, who advised him to prepare for the return of liquor sales in the United States. The following year he bought a group of closed distilleries, including one in Schenley, Pa., that had licenses to produce medicinal whisky. He also bought and sold whisky warehouse receipts and accumulated aged whisky inventories in preparation for Repeal. When it came in 1933; Mr. Rosenstiel was ready to spring into action. He incorporated the Schenley Distillers Company in that year—its name was changed to Schenley Industries in 1949—and it became a publicly owned company shortly thereafter. Schenley grew rapidly over the years to become one of the country's major liquor concerns, selling both domestic and imported alcoholic beverages. Its major brands include Dewar's White Label Scotch, I. W. Harper bourbon and Schenley Reserve blended whisky. As a strong proponent of bourbon, he was the dominant force in the organization in 1958 of the Bourbon Institute, a trade association to promote its sale. He also led a successful industry‐wide drive in 1959 to change the Federal liquor tax laws in a way that would benefit distillers. The change eased the tax burden on American companies that held whiskys for aging up to 20 years and helped them compete with premium ‐ price liquors from abroad. Mr. Rosenstiel sold his controlling interest in Schenley to the Glen Alden Corporation, a multi‐industry company, in 1968. By the end of that year, when Glen Alden owned most of Schenley's shares, he resigned as chairman and chief executive officer and severed all ties with Schenley. Glen Alden was acquired by RapidAmerican in 1972. Around the time that he sold his control of Schenley to Glen Alden, Mr. Rosenstiel also sold his town house at 5 East 80th Street to Meshulam Riklis. Mr. Riklis, an influential figure then at Glen Alden, is chairman of Rapid‐American. Mr. Rosenstiel owned an estate containing more than 1,000 acres in Greenwich, Conn., since 1935. For the last 10 years, he was a legal resident Mr. Rosenstiel gave approximately $100 million to educational, charitable and philanthropic institutions, principally through the Dorothy H. and. Lewis Rosenstiel Foundation. Among the beneficiaries were Brandeis University, the University of Notre Dame and the Mount Sinai Hospitals here and in Miami Beach. Mr. Rosenstiel was married five times. His first wife was Dorothy Heller, his childhood sweetheart, who died in 1944. Two years later, he married Lenore Cohn, now the wife of Walter Annenberg, former Ambassador to Britain. In 1951, he married a cousin, Louise Rosenstiel; the marriage ended after a brief time. Five years later, he married Susan Kaufman; that union ended in 1966 after a series of complicated legal struggles. In 1967 he married Blanka Wdowiak, who survives him. A daughter by his second marriage, Elizabeth: six grandchildren, and a great‐grandchild also survive.