Background
Lewis Solon Rosenstiel was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the only child of Elizabeth Johnson and Solon M. Rosenstiel, a commercial broker.
Lewis Solon Rosenstiel was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the only child of Elizabeth Johnson and Solon M. Rosenstiel, a commercial broker.
He attended Cincinnati's University School and Franklin Prep.
Rosenstiel hoped to become an All-America football player and a doctor. Both of these goals were thwarted when he suffered an eye injury playing football at the age of sixteen. While hospitalized in Milton, Ky. , he accepted a job offer from his uncle, David L. Johnson, owner of the Susquemac Distilling Company in that city.
During his eleven years of employment at the distillery, Rosenstiel worked his way up from meal-room helper to superintendent. He never returned to school nor did he obtain a college education. When Prohibition became the law of the land in the United States in 1920, the Susquemac distillery closed, and Rosenstiel turned to a variety of jobs, including selling shoes and bonds. Winston Churchill, whom Rosenstiel met fortuitously during a vacation on the French Riviera in the 1920's, advised him to prepare for the repeal of Prohibition. Accordingly, Rosenstiel began to buy and sell medicinal alcohol and warehouse receipts to accumulate a supply of aged whiskey.
In 1923 he bought Schenley Products Company of Schenley, Pa. , which had an inventory of four thousand barrels of whiskey. Over a five-year period, Rosenstiel also purchased the Joseph S. Finch distillery in Pittsburgh from Sol Rosenbloom; it held 500, 000 gallons of Golden Wedding brand whiskey and a concentration permit, a federal license to store whiskey, something Rosenstiel had been unable to obtain when he purchased Schenley. Short of cash, he had to borrow $75, 000 from Rosenbloom to consummate the purchase. To round out his line of products Rosenstiel acquired distribution rights for a number of high-quality European brands of wines, liquors, and cordials in 1932.
On July 11, 1933, the Schenley Distillers Company (in 1949 it became Schenley Industries) was chartered in Delaware with the aid of a $2, 990, 000 stock issue arranged by Lehman Brothers. The new corporation was confronted with a tax bill of $12 million in 1933 when Pennsylvania enacted a floor tax on all liquor in the state. Rosenstiel's law firm fought the tax as unconstitutional and won. When Prohibition was repealed on Dec. 5, 1933, Rosenstiel already owned four distilleries, a large inventory of aged whiskeys, and a varied product line. Schenley Industries grew under Rosenstiel and at one point owned plants in seven states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and eight foreign countries. In the industry Rosenstiel was known as an innovator and a "battler" and was fondly nicknamed the "Chairman. " He held the reins of the firm closely, even to the point of approving every advertisement for every Schenley product--no mean feat when in 1957 the company employed twelve advertising agencies with an ad budget of close to $14 million.
As an employer, he provided workers with liberal health and welfare benefits and ensured equal opportunities. In 1964 he promoted Charles T. Williams to a vice-presidency at Schenley, the first black to win such a high-level position in any American industry. In the post-World War II period, the big four of the industry were Seagram's, with about 25 percent of the market; Schenley and National Distillers, with 14 percent each; and Hiram Walker, with 10 percent.
Ever since Prohibition's repeal, the industry had been subject to extensive federal and state government oversight, so that the firms were in continual battle with authorities over taxes, antitrust matters, product definitions, and distillery and withdrawal processes. In addition, after the war the industry had to deal with a declining market for distilled spirits and changing liquor tastes. In particular, the move from whiskey to vodka hurt Schenley badly since it had built its reputation on bourbon.
In March 1968, Rosenstiel sold his interest in Schenley to Meshulam Riklis of Glen Alden and Rapid-American Corporations and, in October, retired as chairman and chief executive officer of the company. Rosenstiel died in Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, and he was buried in Cincinnati.
Rosenstiel's business triumphs were many: the development of the Schenley Packed Column to facilitate conversion from beverage alcohol to industrial alcohol during World War II; the design of a mass-production process for penicillin during the war; the founding of the Bourbon Institute; and the successful passage of the Forand bill, which lengthened from eight to twenty years the period distillers could hold whiskey before paying withdrawal taxes (1959). He wrote about the liquor industry and always interested himself in the economic problems of the country. His "Plan for Sustained Prosperity" appeared as a monograph in the July 29, 1949, issue of U. S. News and World Report. At the time of his retirement from Schenley, Rosenstiel's stock holdings were worth an estimated $30 million, and his real estate (in New York, Connecticut, and Miami Beach) was valued at more than $2 million. During his lifetime Rosenstiel donated more than $100 million to educational institutions and philanthropies, including Brandeis and Notre Dame universities and Mount Sinai hospitals in New York and Miami Beach.
Rosenstiel's business triumphs were many: the development of the Schenley Packed Column to facilitate conversion from beverage alcohol to industrial alcohol during World War II; the design of a mass-production process for penicillin during the war; the founding of the Bourbon Institute; and the successful passage of the Forand bill, which lengthened from eight to twenty years the period distillers could hold whiskey before paying withdrawal taxes (1959). He wrote about the liquor industry and always interested himself in the economic problems of the country. His "Plan for Sustained Prosperity" appeared as a monograph in the July 29, 1949, issue of U. S. News and World Report. At the time of his retirement from Schenley, Rosenstiel's stock holdings were worth an estimated $30 million, and his real estate (in New York, Connecticut, and Miami Beach) was valued at more than $2 million. During his lifetime Rosenstiel donated more than $100 million to educational institutions and philanthropies, including Brandeis and Notre Dame universities and Mount Sinai hospitals in New York and Miami Beach. A gold medal from the George Washington Carver Institute was bestowed on him in 1950 for his fair employment practices.
Rosenstiel was married five times. His marriage to Dorothy Heller on October 3, 1917, ended with her death in 1944. They had three children. To memorialize the happy union, he established the Lewis S. and Dorothy H. Rosenstiel Foundation. Subsequent marriages were shorter and less successful than the first. On June 19, 1946, he married Leonore Cohen Kattleman. They had one child and were divorced in September 1951. On December 14, 1951, he married a cousin, Louise Rosenstiel, but the marriage lasted less than a year. Susan Lissman Kaufman became his fourth wife on November 30, 1956. They divorced in 1966, five years after they separated. On June 7, 1967, Blanka Wdowiak, a Polish national, became his fifth wife.
