Hotel Mogul, 'Queen of Mean' Leona Helmsley

In a momentous fall, Mrs. Helmsley exchanged her luxurious penthouse apartment for a jail cell to serve 21 months of what was initially a four-year sentence. She was ordered to pay more than $8 million in fines and back taxes.

Leona Mindy Rosenthal, the daughter of a hat manufacturer, was born July 4, 1920, in Marbletown, N.Y., and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her parents were Polish Jewish immigrants.

As a sophomore, she abandoned English studies at Hunter College to earn money as a dress-company model. Later profiles said she worked as a Chesterfield cigarette girl in promotional advertisements, but investigative reporters assigned to cover the Helmsley downfall disputed the claim.

She had a son in an early marriage to lawyer Leo Panzirer. She twice married and divorced Joseph Lubin, a garment industry executive. The son from her first marriage, Jay Panzirer, died in 1982 at 40 after a heart attack.

Survivors include a brother; four grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

By 1962, her marriages had collapsed and she was living with her mother. She took the less-ethnic pseudonym Leona Roberts -- she legally changed her surname just before marrying Harry Helmsley -- and found work as a receptionist at Pease & Elliman, a New York real estate brokerage company.

Her organizational skills and ambition helped her advance over seven years to senior vice president. By the late 1960s, she had become independently wealthy from commissions on a series of projects to convert rental buildings to cooperatives. In 1970, she was lured to a subsidiary of Harry Helmsley's company, and her assertiveness won the boss's notice.

Helmsley, who had no children, divorced his wife of 33 years and married Leona Roberts. To celebrate their union, her husband began the Harley Hotel chain, using the first syllables of "Harry" and "Leona" for its name.

Leona Helmsley remained an active figure in the business, particularly in the growing hotel holdings. She reportedly won the leadership of her husband's six New York hotels by criticizing and then improving on the professional interior design motif for his prestigious Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan.

In 1980, Mrs. Helmsley was named president of Helmsley Hotels Inc., which included the Hospitality Motor Inn national chain.

She was obsessed with customer service and micromanaged details in the kitchen and at the front desk. By the time the tax-evasion charges surfaced, she had long been dubbed the "Queen of Mean" by the tabloid media; other headlines used "Dragon Lady" and "Rhymes With Rich."

At 68, Mrs. Helmsley began serving time in a minimum security prison in Danbury, Conn. In 1990, she was portrayed by Suzanne Pleshette in a CBS television movie, "Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean," with Lloyd Bridges as Harry. The special was based on a book by Randsell Pierson and was one of many biographies about the Helmsleys.