Issue #03/84, February 29 - March 10, 2000 
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By Billie Berle
This is the second installment of Billy Berle’s account of how former eXpat villain Michael Bass ruined his life. Berle is the son of the late Milton Berle and the author of My Father, Uncle Miltie.
The first thing Mike Bass did when we got "into business" together was to hatch a scheme to promote my father, and tie in Bob Hope and George Burns. This would have been a stellar idea if done with any legitimacy. But Bass brought in some idiot named Joseph Medawar, who was the front man for a shady company called ION Pictures. Medawar had a huge, fake smile like only a Middle Eastern car salesman can have. The whole company was not legit as far as I could see, but we tried to get Milton, Hope, Burns and other celebrities behind the idea. When ION could not bring anything to the table, we went to Dick Clark Productions, who were interested but not overjoyed. They insisted that some new superstar comedians be brought in to "sweeten the deal" for a network. So the whole thing failed after everything was said and done, and it could have been a truly great moment in show business.
Bass insisted that we promote a party the night of the Oscars, which he would fill with celebrities, festivities, and press coverage. Damn if he didn’t do most of it, all based on swindles and bullshit. We had the Beverly Hills estate of an Arab sheik, Bass somehow bullshit the representatives of President Ronald Reagan into seriously considering showing up, and of course he parlayed the mere innuendo of Reagan’s involvement to jump start several celebrities to commit, upon which he parlayed this snowballing avalanche of bullshit into even more celebrities agreeing to show up. Finally, Reagan’s people got wind of Bass being a convicted felon, and insisted that Reagan would show up at the pre-show press conference, but only if Bass (and I as his affiliate) were seated in the rear of the room and uninvolved.
The charity Bass had snagged to be the "recipient" of whatever nonexistent ticket proceeds, "Athletes and Entertainers for Kids," was itself marginally legitimate at best. However, they were somehow affiliated with Ryan White, the brave young boy who fought AIDS discrimination and became a poster child for AIDS awareness. Ryan White did attend the party, which was moved at the last minute to the Beverly Hilton Hotel because the local residents surrounding the Arab’s estate forced the police to withhold the permit. It was Ryan White’s last public appearance; he died shortly thereafter. Unbeknownst to me, Bass had been meeting with everyone involved with the event alone, convincing them that Milton Berle had agreed to use Michael Bass as his publicist and manager only if Bass would have Milton’s drug addicted or otherwise unworthy son as an apprentice. Bass undermined my credibility at every turn, and made sure each and every person involved with the event paid no attention or respect to my wishes or me. All the while that I was trying to help Bass rebuild his credibility, at the risk of my own, he was destroying any chance that people around show business would take me seriously.
The next Bass fiasco was his short involvement with Yogesh Gandhi, and the Gandhi Peace Foundation. For a whirlwind month of planning and plotting, Bass tried to arrange a worldwide pay per view peace concert, benefiting the foundation with the world’s most famous name in non-violence. However, Bass found out that Yogesh Gandhi was nothing more than a twelfth cousin to the third nephew of the real Gandhi, and the whole thing was too shaky and questionable for even Bass to be involved with (!).
We publicized and promoted my father’s career with great zeal and good results. Bass’ audacity and ability to stir bullshit until something legitimate happened was truly incredible. We threw two consecutive, star-studded birthday parties for Milton’s 82nd birthday, one at the Queen Mary ocean liner and one at the Improv comedy club in Hollywood. We had more celebrities and stars at the Improv evening than the club has had before or since, and by all rights it was a great success. However, Bass manipulated me into doing the important job of "managing" the paparazzi outside the club, making sure the celebrities’ arrangements were made, etc. While he was in the showroom elbowing up to the celebrities and taking full credit for the event.
Bass had always told me just how stupid my father had been in sabotaging his own career, which despite all Bass’ lies was completely true. So Bass got me all excited that we were going to save Milton Berle's career. We were going to undo all his mistakes, generate more and better publicity than he had known in years, we were going to "turn around a twenty year decline" in his notoriety, and more. Bass gave me just the dream I had wanted, to save my father’s career and earn his respect I so deeply needed. But again, Bass left me holding the bag. He told me that it would have to be me who told Milton about all the wrongs and how we were going to fix them, because "only you could tell this to your father, Billy".
Of course, Milton Berle the egomaniac blew his top over it, livid at the suggestion that anything at all could possibly be wrong with his decisions and actions. So after Milton threw a fit, screaming and yelling at me, resenting me deep down in the pit of his heart, "we" left in shame and defeat. Of course Bass had been quiet the whole time and avoided blame, and of course it was Bass who the next day went back to meet with Milton to "repair the damage", unbeknownst to me. I have no doubt that Bass told Milton something to the effect of "...let me handle Billy, Milton, he’s stupid and he never should have spoken to you like that, but I can handle him if you listen to me Milton, let’s you and I work together and let Billy feel like he’s important, but we’ll make the decisions you and I... I promise, Milton, I’ll try to get him off that white powder shit..."
And my father, not having a clue how both of us were being mind-fucked, bought it. After I had divorced myself from Bass a couple of years later, and demanded that Milton have nothing to do with him, Milton secretly met with Bass and allowed Bass to work on Milton’s behalf as a publicist, agent, and manager against my futile pleading to the contrary. This of course made it well known in any of my father’s circles that I was unimportant and unworthy of anyone’s respect, and that Milton Berle didn’t have the love or respect for his own son to let him have the least bit of authority or power.
The second and last Oscar Night party was held at the Roxbury Club in Hollywood, March 1991. Bass had had his fill of other charities, so along with a questionable CPA accountant, a very questionable attorney, and another large dose of bullshit, convinced us all that we should have our own non-profit charity. By this time I (finally) had more than my share of doubts about it all, but constant assurances by Bass and my desperation to prove myself to my father somehow allowed it to happen with my blessing. Again, hundreds of celebrity names were thrown about by Bass, mostly made-up. By the time the original celebrities caught wind of their names being used as fodder for Bass’ bullshit machine, enough legitimate celebrity names had been added to make the event marginally successful.
However this time, Bass had brought in another of his felon associates, Barry Gordon Brown. Brown was even more obviously crooked than Bass, and his pathetic claim to fame was that he had access to the father of Michael Jackson, the reportedly monstrous Joseph Jackson. Barry Gordon Brown was put "in charge" of securing a sponsor to foot the bill for printing the event tickets. Brown not only swindled Kinko’s Copies to print enough tickets for the event, he also had another thousand printed for he and Bass to oversell to throngs of Hollywood wannabees and limelight-struck businessmen. Many of the paid tickets were actually for a secondary party at some other club down the street, which had no celebrities and was probably quite a shock to the ticket holders when they read the fine print.
"The American Foundation for the Performing Arts", throwing a party in honor of famed film director Stanley Kramer, had a full house indeed. My suspicions finally got woken up, of course years too late, and it was a rude surprise to me that the CPA accountant (who formed the charity with us and was its treasurer), the attorney Bass brought in, and the other people involved simply stopped answering my phone calls and treated me like an unimportant cog in the great machine. I am sure that they were frequently "worked" by Bass, told that I was an incompetent idiot or drug addict, and manipulated into simply responding to bass alone. After three years of helping Mike Bass, risking my own fragile (and now destroyed) credibility to bolster his, and arranging for most of the financing of our ventures, Bass gave me the kiss-off in a most rude way.
He arranged for an entire 40 foot billboard above the Sunset Strip to be manned and used as a running scorecard for the Oscars, with the top of the sign reading "Michael Bass’ 4th annual Oscar Party" instead of Berle-Bass Productions, our business name. Inside Club Roxbury, a thousand helium balloons silk-screened with "Michael Bass’ 4th annual Oscar Party" were inflated and festooned the entire showroom.
A week later, I severed all ties with Michael Bass forever.
A few months after that, I made a very disparaging comment to someone about Bass, and it was somehow overheard by someone still under Bass’ spell. Two O’clock the next morning, my phone rang, and someone gave me an emergency message from Cedars-Sinai Hospital that Milton Berle had been admitted with a stroke, and was crying my name, wanting me to be there. After speeding through the night to the hospital at 100+ on city streets, I turn the hospital upside down looking for my dying father, not three years after my mother died. Milton was not there, it was a prank. Driving home, I remembered that the person who called me said his name was Edward Michaels. I believe it had been a cold, calculated, vicious psychological attack by my former show business partner, Michael Edward Bass. There is, from this alone, a score I have to settle with Bass someday, a score that transcends the usual payback for the back-stabbing and theft that’s not personal, just normal business in Hollywood.
And so I bear my soul to you all; everyone have a hearty laugh at my
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For the ruination of my already fragile relationship with my own father, I do not forgive Michael Bass.
Billy Berle is the author of My Father, Uncle Miltie. You can order it on amazon.com
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