Ask anybody: In Los Angeles, the Corwin name is synonymous with charitable giving. And yet, Bruce Corwin, who at 73 is the family’s current patriarch and the CEO and chairman of Metropolitan Theatres Corp. — a California-based multiplex theater chain that has been in his family for four generations — doesn’t like to be called a philanthropist.
Back in 2004, attorney Jerry Neuman was driving in Hollywood with his then-4-year-old son, Jake, when the boy noticed a disheveled homeless man on a bus bench beside a shopping cart of belongings. Jake asked his father where the man lived.
Entertainment lawyer Ken Kleinberg was hospitalized for five weeks when he became seriously ill in 1999. His doctors eventually diagnosed him with kidney disease, but they couldn’t find a cause. “It was the eve of the millennium and I thought: How is it we do not understand this?” said Kleinberg, whose clients include Jack Nicholson, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Kayla Tinucci would never want to walk a mile in the shoes of the disadvantaged children she has vowed to help. “Their feet would be squeezing into shoes that were way too small for them,” she said. “I would pull off the shoes of one boy to measure his feet, and his toes uncurled because they had been in shoes that were too small.”
Todd Gindy, a certified financial planner, likes to tell a story about Johnny Carson to illustrate how nonprofits miss a big opportunity when they don’t suggest donors use life insurance policies as a vehicle for charitable giving. For years, the longtime host of “The Tonight Show” gave $1 million every year to Children of the Night, an organization founded by Dr. Lois Lee to rescue child victims of sex trafficking.
Alexander Soros — what a catch! And not just for the obvious reason. Sure, papa George is worth $22 billion, and as your bubbe says, it’s as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.
Last week, everyone was scurrying around Zane Buzby’s small but serviceable office, high up in a rather creaky building in downtown Los Angeles. Right inside the door, one person packed tubes of arthritis creams, soaps, magnifying glasses and Star of David necklaces. Someone else carefully counted cash into envelopes. And yet another entered data into a computer.
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