He’s rented out their yachts, castles, palaces, etc.
Gil Brenner: friend, agent to the rich and famous
by Len Lear

This Rolls Royce was Brenner’s car for 11 years. “It purred like a kitten,” he said.

In this celebrity-obsessed world, most of us can only look at photos of the rich and famous, read about them in gossip columns or watch them on TV and in the movies or on talk show interviews. But for Gil Brenner, owner and CEO for 33 years (1979 to 2002) of Variety Leisure, a highly specialized Rittenhouse Square-based travel and real estate agency, the biggest stars on earth were clients whose castles, chalets, estates, palaces, villas and yachts he rented out for many years to vacationers who were tired of the garden variety hotel room, cruise, bus tour, etc. Variety Leisure had more than 1,000 rental properties worldwide, of which 57 were celebrity rentals.

For example, want to rent Casa Kimberly, the villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, that was owned by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor — six bedrooms and a staff of four — for a minimum of $7,000 a week, which includes two meals daily? Or what about England’s Princess Margaret’s own private residence on the island of Mustique in the British West Indies for a mere $3,700 a week (in the 1980s)? Or the $18,750 a month mansion in Morocco where Cary Grant lived during his brief marriage to heiress Barbara Hutton?

Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia’s premiere Baroque instrument ensemble, will perform all of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concerti as the focal point of its 2009-10 season. All five concerts will be played twice with each one featuring a performance in Chestnut Hill.

The first concert is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 23 at 8 p.m., in the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Ave. The second is set for Saturday, Dec. 29, 8 p.m., in the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the Fields, 8000 St. Martin’s Lane. The remaining three programs will be performed in 2010.

The beer is made right on the premises in these huge beer tanks at Iron Hill, so you know it’s fresh. (Photo by Len Lear)

I can’t tell you how many restaurants we’ve been in over the past year that are so empty because of the economy, you’d think they were declared off limits to humans by some communicable disease authorities. But apparently patrons of Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant haven’t heard about the recession/depression.

Last Tuesday we visited the five-year-old, 200-plus seat restaurant that brews its own beer at 1460 Bethlehem Pike in a shopping center in North Wales, just past the end of the Route 309 Expressway, 10 minutes from Chestnut Hill. Tuesday is usually an off-night for restaurants, especially in this economy, but at Iron Hill every night looks like Saturday night.