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Hot Deals: Call it Hair-, as Well as High-, Concept
Judy Quinn -- 6/29/98
Colorado-based agent Jody Rein, a former Dell and Avon executive editor, had a nice, if not hair-pulling, bidding frenzy last week for Beethoven's Hair, a proposed work of nonfiction by Russell Martin (formerly repped by Barney Karpfinger) that, yes, follows some 582 strands of the master's tresses throughout the ages. A hank of hair, yanked out with roots and all, by a young Jewish musician at the time of Beethoven's death, was eventually passed on to some Danes who helped the musician's descendants escape Nazi Germany.
In recent years the hair was auctioned at Sotheby's; it was purchased by Beethoven fanatics Alfredo Guevara and Ira Brilliant -- who has his own Website, where you can click on a picture of the hair -- and is now undergoing extensive DNA analysis. Broadway editor-in-chief John Sterling ended up buying world rights to the book with what is rumored to be a just over mid-six-figure bid; a fall 2000 publication is planned.
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