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My father was a banker, but he was an independent spirit. He was a very good pianist and very much into music.

As a senior in high school with no money working several jobs, I was sent to a wonderful school on the East Coast by a wonderful Jewish man. I've never forgotten that. I've sent over 5,000 young people to school around the world in memory of him because he was so gracious to me.

My father ran London Films. He made films like 'The Red Shoes,' 'The Third Man.' And he had had a long career in the film business, which was bifurcated with a career in intelligence. He had to deal with gangsters, and sometimes he would take me with him. Also, I went to school with their children.

My father was a golden boy from a very small town. He won a very prestigious law scholarship to NYU Law School, and there in Greenwich Village, he met my mother, who was very young, fresh off the boat from Germany.

My father was a successful entrepreneur.

My father belonged to a Jewish social club.

My father had a flourishing business as a publisher in North India.

Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews.

My father was into fame and leaving his mark. He was a city planner, sort of a genius in that world, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. He was on the cover of 'Time' once, and I remember going to his office and seeing, like, two hundred copies, which he would hand out to people.

My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.