This story’s got it all: sex and drugs, the biggest names and defining moments of the modern art world, and a house in the Hamptons.
Robert and Ethel Scull were paparazzi material at its most unhinged. Known as Bob and Spike, they were one of New York’s most incendiary power couples of the 1960s. And now their son, Jonathan, along with author and childhood friend Amy Penn, are looking to bring the story to the big (or little) screen.
When the couple inherited Ethel’s father’s prosperous taxi cab company, they grew it to become the uber-successful Scull’s Angels, a bespoke cab company used by the city’s hoi polloi. They then had the means to begin buying up works by the most famous artists of the abstract expressionist and the budding minimalist and pop art movements — with names like de Kooning, Rothko, Rauschenberg, Warhol — and became, through a foundation, artist benefactors and acquaintances.
In fact, Andy Warhol created “Ethel Scull 36 Times,” a work now on display at the Whitney, and George Segal immortalized the couple in plaster, including a pair of Ethel’s Courrèges boots. An attractive blonde born into wealth, often the darling of Women’s Wear Daily, she personified the fun of New York fashion, wearing Halston and other name designers, including a bullet belt looped through suede hotpants. Her hairdresser was the one and only Kenneth who coiffed Jackie Kennedy Onassis and other celebrities.
Of Bob Scull, Tom Wolfe wrote, in “The Pump House Gang,” “He amassed a collection of pop art and op art and primary art, in fact, everything since abstract expressionism, that is actually better than the Museum of Modem Art’s in that area.”
The 1973 Sotheby’s auction of part of the Sculls’ collection — the first single private seller auction of American art — solidified the couple’s notorious standing. “Art collectors paid a total of $2,242,900 — a record for contemporary American works for 50 paintings, sculptures, and constructions by artists of the New York School, owned by taxi‐fleet owner Robert C. Scull, at an auction last night that possessed as much decorum as post‐game activities at Shea Stadium,” sniffed Fred Feretti of the New York Times.
Spike wore a custom-made Halston dress highlighted by the Scull’s Angels emblem. Bob was in a coat and tie and a beard that he refused to surrender, even for an Alfred Leslie portrait that spanned years in the making. The gavel banged non-stop during the one-hour auction, which set records for still-living artists, some of whom were in the room. Rauschenberg sported an attitude of fury and got into a shoving match with Robert Scull, who had purchased a piece from the artist for $900 and sold it that night for $85,000.
But as their fame and fortune grew, so did their addictions, their infidelities, their battles. The Sculls hosted ostentatious parties, rubbed shoulders with celebrities and socialites, and flourished in the limelight. But when home alone, whether on Fifth Avenue or Georgica Road, the carefully cultivated façade faded into ugly skirmishes and drug-addled hysteria.
According to Jonathan, Bob nonchalantly introduced his sons to his many lovers, as if this was the norm. Meantime, a furious Ethel would load up on prescription drugs, and weep to her sons about her marriage. Not to be left out, Bob’s paranoia and mood swings grew, thanks to massive quantities of cocaine.
The drugs spelled the end of Bob and Spike’s spectacular rise and highlighted their crash into an unforgiving fall. Bob kept his mouth closed, but Spike made everything public, blackening his name everywhere. She couldn’t handle the breakup, and raging dementia soon overcame her. She insisted that the people below her apartment were flashing photos of Bob onto the opposite building and sending her electric shocks through the floor. She sprayed all the windows with oven cleaner and covered the vent grills. Her increasing paranoid, delusional madness was fed by her addictions to Percocet and Valium.
“Art both made and destroyed them,” said Jonathan Scull. The couple feuded publicly and spectacularly over their collection before, during, and after their 1975 divorce. Bob died in 1986; Ethel in 2001.
Jonathan Scull and Amy Penn (who worked as an usher at the infamous auction) took time to tell us more.
Jonathan, how long has this been brewing for you as a story that needs telling and why?
Always? Is always good for you? This is a deep, dark 50-year-old brew formed by finding some distance and humor regarding the events about which I write. The story itself, on the face of it, is nearly unbelievable.
Give me some examples.
My father turned me and my youngest brother Adam on to LSD. Insisted, actually. My middle brother was already taking it. Bob couldn’t roll joints, so my brother and I rolled up 25 or 30 at a time for us all.
While I worked with him at the taxi garage, he tried to convince me that it was better for me to know his mistresses “rather than some stranger.” He’d drive into the taxi garage on Monday mornings with the woman who would eventually become his second wife, and tell me to gas up the Jaguar. Earlier, he’d asked one of his East Village photographer girlfriends to shoot my brother Stephen’s bar mitzvah at the 21 Club. She did, using a fisheye lens, so that everyone looked like they were extras from a Fellini film, especially Aunt Lillian next to Rosenquist, Warhol, and Aunt Sophie. You may be sure my mother was apoplectic at the results.
Another time, in East Hampton, my father sat with an open door in his big Rolls Royce. I ran between Ethel and Bob delivering messages; he wanted to confess, she didn’t want to hear it. I took drugs to kill the pain of being between them again. Valium and Percocet were my favorites, my mother’s preferred drugs as well. I wanted to help, but had no way of affecting the storms that inevitably rolled over all of us. It reminds me of a line from “Blazing Saddles:” “Mongo only pawn in game of life.”
Bob had this suit, brown with yellow dots. He was in his admiring-sharply dressed pimps on Broadway phase and talking about it. Each pocket contained a different drug like grass, hash, LSD, and speed. Did Ethel object? No, I suppose she was too busy being a fashion doyenne at the height of their social status.
The art world kissed his ring and prominent socialites asked my mother where she’d had her hair done.
Art made and destroyed them. It took over 10 years and destroyed every living thing in its path to decide who got how much of the collection.
People were, of course, jealous as hell. Everyone wanted to be Bob and Spike. Ethel couldn’t stop going to the press after he left her, everyone was kept up to date and our life was an embarrassing open book. I took more drugs.
One night the phone rang while I was entertaining a girlfriend. It was my father breathing like a bull. “Jonathan, you’d better come over, we had a big fight, your mother is on the floor.” Ethel lay on the floor of the foyer sobbing miserably. Bob stood over her in his bathrobe breathing heavily as before. I escorted her to her bedroom; they had separate rooms by then. I looked at Bob, he said nothing, just gave me this penetrating look. I left thinking what a fool I was to be involved in their mad, wild behavior. What can I say, I was a nice Jewish boy in the family business and tried to do the right thing.
Bridget, this is an epic tale; the rise, the fall, and the utter destruction of an infamous family. Never believe the way something looks, no matter how shiny, it’s what’s behind the curtain that counts.
Tell me some of your memories of the house at Georgica Road in East Hampton.
It began smoothly — we went to East Hampton, no matter the season. The home was a beautiful design by architect Paul Lester Wiener, very modern. It was open, airy, had lots of light, perfect for displaying art. I had my own room, there was a cook, I had friends and played tennis. Everyone wanted to visit, they had parties, but Bob preferred to get stoned, drive to the nursery and look at succulents of which he had a first-class collection. Spike hated “gazers” as she put it, and would chase strangers back down the driveway with a broom.
There were several parties nonetheless, with artists like Larry Poons driving his Porsche 908 racer, Andy Warhol and his gang, the Oldenburg brothers, Leo Castelli, other gallery owners and collectors, and yet more artists tumbling about. Another notorious get-together was for Women’s Lib. Writer and political activist Gloria Steinem attended a party in 1970. Betty Friedan gave a speech and lesbian activist Jill Johnston of the Village Voice pulled off her clothes and dove into the pool. “I always say if you have a pool, you have a pool,” Ethel told the Times. My brothers and I were vastly amused.
Nothing lasts forever. As Bob and Spike’s relationship turned toxic, we all suffered.
Amy, how did you get involved with this project and what are your memories of the East End?
I met the Scull family sometime in the ’60s. We both lived on Georgica Road in East Hampton.
This was a time for new role models, bicycles with foot brakes, and the explosively seductive art, writing, civil and women’s liberties. Then there was the smell of cut grass on the way to the beach.
At heart, I always wanted to be an abstract expressionist. Imagine smushing all that paint around, throwing in a cigarette stub, and getting recognized for it.
My parents gave me my first grown-up present for my tenth birthday, and a very East Hampton one at that: a James Brooks oil on paper, wishing me well in adult hues of reds and blues.
I loved East Hampton at that artistic and unpretentious time. I still dream of playing in the Artists and Writers softball game. I can hit a mean softball, but then there’s the catching.
Our East Hampton rituals were simple: go to Main Beach on our bikes, which we never locked, Sam’s Pizza or Lyon’s for Chinese food and Marley’s for newspapers and magazines. Main Beach had its own snack bar, “Roney’s,” with perfect lobster rolls at doable prices. When my father had a massive heart attack playing tennis, one of his first visitors at Southampton Hospital was Roney.
The Sculls were friends of my parents, their sons were buddies of mine and my brother’s. In the summer of 1970, I was a father’s helper to a wonderful two-year-old boy in Sagaponack. Betty Friedan was in our group home. She was looking for a fabulous house for a party in honor of Gloria Steinem. I suggested the Sculls’ house with all the wowza of Pop and Op of their art collection, and the driveway that scrolled to the back. That driveway. I introduced Betty Friedan et al to the Sculls and the party began.
Years later, I would approach Jonathan, asking him to write his family’s memoirs. Their tale needed to be told.
I’ve lived in many beautiful places, but have never experienced the scent and lure of newly cut East Hampton grass elsewhere, twirling from a lawnmower, and flowing with the innocence and joy of the ’60s. I still miss it.
The Sculls home in East Hampton is now Onna House, a sanctuary with a mission to create visibility and appreciation for the work of women artists and designers. Jonathan, how do you think your parents would feel about this new use of their home?
I’m not sure how my mother would take it, she was extremely possessive and territorial. I’m certain my father would appreciate that it was being used to emphasize women in art and might even agree there’s still not enough women’s art on the planet. That’s been an issue since my parents’ time and evidently it still is.
Interested investors can contact Jonathan Scull at jscull@scullcommunications.com.
