Vanity Fair Does the Hunt Story

Posted on May 2nd, 2008 2:27pm by Tim Rogers
Filed under Business, Celebrity, Media

vanityfair.jpgEver since we published our story in March about the fight inside Dallas’ wealthiest family, I’ve been waiting to read Vanity Fair’s version, written by Alan Peppard. Yes, that Alan Peppard. Sources tell FrontBurner that Peppard got permission to write for the glossy because he has compromising photos of Bob Mong doing a beer bong with Matt Leinart. Anyway, the wait is over — at least for me. An advance copy of the article from the upcoming June issue found its way to me (hi, Lizzie!). I can’t post the PDF, but I took a picture of the printout for you. You might be able to make out a red box I drew there in that second column of the opening page. That’s my favorite sentence in the whole story:

She disassociated herself from the controversies over her father’s polygamous propensities and his right-wing political views — in a self-published 1960 novel, Alpaca, H.L. proposed a Utopia where extra votes were apportioned to those who paid higher taxes — by pouring her energies into domestic life with her husband, the handsome and athletic Al G. Hill Sr., and their three children.

I’m still trying to diagram it. Wonky editing concerns aside, though, the story’s strongest point is the detailing of Al III’s financial straits. Peppard has some good numbers we weren’t able to get. But, then, our story had more sex. Which magazine did the story better? You’ll have to wait a few days to read for yourself. Hang in there, Hunt family.

7 comments

  1. “Financial straights”?

    @ 2:37 pm on May 2, 2008

  2. I’m homonymally challenged. Fixed it, Gwyon. Thanks.

    @ 2:40 pm on May 2, 2008

  3. LMAO! Didn’t like my comment, huh?

    @ 5:43 pm on May 4, 2008

  4. We switched servers for the blog over the weekend, PuddinTane. Looks like some comments were lost during the transition.

    @ 9:39 am on May 5, 2008

  5. maybe it was lost in your beard hippy

    @ 4:17 pm on May 7, 2008

  6. It was an intersting article. too bad families have to fall apart in this way and the only winners turn out to be the lawyers.

    @ 1:01 pm on May 12, 2008

  7. Re the Hunt/Hill family legal proceeding, I have some thoughts after reading media articles and documents on the Internet.

    Without question, the only people with nothing to lose are lawyer Bill Brewer and Al 3’s wife, Erin, who along with her friend, attorney Brewer, convinced her once noble husband to sue his own father, his sisters, his aunts and his longtime paternal advisors. You get the picture. The lawyer gets the big fees and gets his hands on some of the Hunt family money and the wife gets a lucrative divorce settlement someday when she negotiates her profitable departing pay off. The losers are the rest of the family who have enduring having their private lives defamed and dragged through the mud by a lawyer obsessed with publicity.

    Bill Brewer apparently lives for publicity, has his own controlled public relations firm, and strives to attach himself to people the press will write about. This puts his victims/defendants as well as his clients, in the media, even though they probably do not want to be there. Brewer purports to be wealthy from a successful legal career. However, his cars and his NY house are rented and his home in Dallas is owned by the law firm. His three ex-wives have certainly not experienced him being generous. Erin Hill wears the mask of being community minded, however, the truth apparently is that she is more interested in what she can be provided in jewelry, luxury travel, expensive clothing, and accessories, etc. — whether is comes from Al 3’s father’s money or through an extortive series of ill-founded legal allegations.

    Al 3 is said to carry the bible in his telephone (in several languages) but he has obviously forgotten to read the part about “Honor thy father”. His flaunted Christian beliefs were, apparently, no longer important to him as he charged family members, including his two younger sisters with racketeering. Al 3, by the grace of God and a quirk of fate, was born positioned to carry forward with important family responsibilities but allowed himself to get sold on a scheme for a quick and large cash-out for which he had to sacrifice his love of family and his integrity.

    So how might this end? Maybe Al 3 has no money to pay for his beauty queen wife’s bills and for his family vacations in Palm Beach and France, and his father no longer funds his follies, his homes and cars, his “admired citizen charitable contributions”, and then Al 3 loses the lawsuites filed by his attorney who has not been to the courthouse in years?

    The big question is: if the case gets to the courtroom, how did Tom Hunt and his supposed co-consipirators harm the value of the Trusts when they are receiving $4.2 billion in the sale of Hunt Petroleum? Informed sources have indicated that the value of the company increased six times in the past eight years, during which time money was supposedly “wasted” on items like sports tickets, etc.

    At this point in the saga it becomes obvious that Al 3 needs a different lawyer, one who would not be disqualified for playing legal games and for over nine months kept Al 3 form communicating with anyone. Al 3 needs a lawyer who will tell him the truth about his fate so that he might still save himself. But Al 3 does not see what is happening. He has already lost his personal dignity. Will his wife be next? Will Erin, humiliated by the notoriety and generally negative public opinion, flee to Palm Beach where wealthy widowers and divorcees tend to congregate? Will Bill Brewer try to slip on to his next wealthy client/victim while flashing his press clippings?

    The winners and losers are predicatable, the family will go on to being a family and loving and respecting each other, and Al 3 will have a long, hot summer for many years to come.

    Let me know what you think.

    Mary Lampe

    @ 12:26 pm on July 29, 2008