Call it a sign of changing times, plain luck, or powerful lawyers, but being arrested in Hollywood on morals and drug charges in 1960 wasn’t what it used to be.
Once, it meant the end of your career and public humiliation. But for Perry Mason actor William Talman and the rest of the group, including host Richard Reibold, it was only a bump in the road.
On March 12, 1960, Talman and seven others were arrested at an apartment on 1156 N. Curson Ave., West Hollywood. Officers reportedly found everyone nude in a bedroom, plus they discovered marijuana and pornographic literature.
Ad Exec Richard Reibold
The party host and person renting the N. Curson apartment was Richard Reibold. For years, Richard Reibold operated on the edges of legality and respectability: a man who got into big-time trouble a couple of times, but always managed to claw his way back.
At the time he was arrested, Richard Reibold, 31, was Director of Radio and Television for a high-end Beverly Hills advertising agency, Lennen & Newell. Lennen & Newell had accounts in the TV and film industry.
Reibold started in New York and had only recently come to Los Angeles.
In New York, Reibold was an executive at the BBD&O advertising agency, now called BBDO–at least, until he was accused of rape and kidnapping.
Reibold’s New York Kidnap and Rape Attempt Charges
In 1956, while living in New York, Richard Reibold was accused of attempting to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard, 24, invariably identified by papers as an “attractive honey-blonde housewife.”
Reibold was married but separated from his wife for the last year and a half. He now lived with his aunt, Eleanor Simpson, at 81-10 135th St., Kew Gardens, New York.
On November 8, 1956, Richard Reibold allegedly attempted to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard.
Reibold had forced his way into Mrs. Burkhard’s car in the parking lot of the Bloomingdale’s department store in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY, and threatened her with a blackjack. He then ordered her to drive to an isolated area of Cunningham Park, where he tried to rape her.
Mrs. Burkhard fought him off. He ordered her to drive him back to the scene of the alleged kidnapping, where he got out of the car.
Reibold later claimed he had been walking around Cunningham Park for two and a half hours, “meditating about a big job he was readying for an account.”
Detectives, though, noted that Reibold’s auto hood was warm and they discovered a blackjack in his car.
During the trial, Reibold had many prominent and well-connected character witnesses, including fellow BBD&O ad agency executives and friend Carol Reed, a weather broadcaster for WCBS-TV.
A Queens jury, after deliberating for nearly two hours, acquitted Richard Reibold of attempted rape and kidnapping charges.
“I bear no animosity toward that woman,” Reibold said after acquittal. “I just didn’t do it.”
Reibold After Talman Scandal
While this is conjecture, it appears that Reibold was fired from Lennen & Newell due to the scandal.
Reibold landed not-so-feet-first at Nutri-Bio of California, Inc.
Nutri-Bio was a sleazy Amway-like multi-level marketing supplements company based in Vancouver, Canada. Reibold worked at Nutri-Bio’s Beverly Hills office.
For a period, Nutri-Bio did big business, reportedly pulling in over $30 million per year, gross.
Nutri-Bio also wasn’t well-loved by the FDA, charging Nutri-Bio with “falsely promoted as cures for ailments ranging from heart trouble to impotency.”
In other words, Mr. Reibold was directly involved with these suspect promotions.
Reibold bounced back, out of Nutri-Bio hell. Only a few years later, in 1963, Reibold was named radio-television director at far more respectable Los Angeles ad firm, Beckman, Koblitz, Inc.
Richard Reibold married Margaret “Peggy” Reibold, who is still alive as of 2023 and still living in the Los Angeles area.
Coda: Reibold’s “Unusual Spanish” in the Hollywood Hills
Richard Reibold finally lived at 3410 N Knoll Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90068, a house that the real estate ads in the 1960s called “an unusual Spanish.”
For a period, the house seems to have been unsellable, starting at $52,500 in 1966, down to $45,000 in 1967, then $36,950 in 1968.
Reibold ran his own company from there, The Reibold Company, Inc. He appears to have done well. As of 2022, he and his wife Margaret were listed by Pepperdine University as having given at least $1,000,000 to the university over the course of their lives.
Richard Reibold died in 2000.
