Manuel Noriega
Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began his career touring with big bands and worked his way into Syd Nathan’s King records, producing rock and country songs. Along the way he worked with James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, who referred to Neely as his favorite uncle. Eventually he became one of the owners of Starday-King, until the other owners bought him out.He found himself sitting further back in music industry room.
In 1989 Hal Neely and Victoria Wise left the problems of Nashville behind and moved to Orlando, Florida. They looked forward to new careers in music, film, and education based on the connections they had made over the years.
For example, Neely had been a judge in the Miss Panama beauty pageant which was part of the Miss Universe franchise. During this project he met a former diplomat to the Vatican and a retired actor who was a member of one of the seven families that formed the core of Panama’s society in the early 1900s. He also befriended President Manuel Noriega.
In Florida Wise wrote a screenplay called “Panama Bay,” an Indiana Jones-type adventure and encouraged Neely to find investors to finance it. Neely contacted his old friend Noriega, told him about the film project and talked him into spearheading it along with his other influential friends.1
Noriega was not exactly the best government leader to be doing business with at the time. He had a reputation as a corrupt and heavy-handed dictator.
Noriega came into this world under corrupt circumstances, the result of a liaison between an accountant and his maid in 1934. Five years later a school teacher adopted him. He received a scholarship to a military academy in Peru where he graduated with a degree in engineering. When he returned to Panama Noriega became a favorite in the Army of Col. Omar Torrijos. Noriega took control of Panama after Torrijos died in a mysterious airplane crash. His reign over the Panamanian people became so oppressive that the United States considered intervention.2
Neely and Wise apparently were more interested in their film project than keeping up with the current political situation. Even today, years later, Wise becomes enthusiastic describing the plot.
“The movie opened on the sea at dawn as a B-52 buzzed a hotel on a small island owned by a young woman named Hattie who came from a rich family,” Wise explained. “A vast treasure had been found on Hattie’s island.” This drew the attention of the Indiana Jones character which Wise called Ace. A love triangle developed between Hattie, Ace, and an old sea captain. Wise wanted the main characters played by Sheree North, Sheb Woolly and Burl Ives. “I had a lot of fun writing it,” Wise said. “I’m kind of glad no one changed it around.”
In December of 1989 Neely and Wise flew to Panama to scout out shooting locations for the movie. Noriega arranged for them to go through the exclusive route at the airport. After they got off the airplane, Neely showed Wise to the VIP lounge. As they were enjoying their cocktails, men in uniform escorted them to an interrogation room where they demanded to know what Neely and Wise were doing in the lounge. Neely said nothing but gave them a telephone number to call. It turned out to be the personal number of Noriega’s mistress. After the mistress explained the situation to the men in uniform, the officials were very polite and escorted them to their hotel. The next few days went very smoothly. Noriega gave Wise a necklace which consisted of two pieces of Plexiglas, one side yellow and the other side blue.
Then Neely got a call from the office of Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker telling him to leave everything, including his clothing and film equipment, at the hotel and go immediately to the airport to fly home.3
Operation Just Cause, a full-scale attack with 24,000 American troops, had just begun. Over the next four days several hundred American troops and thousands of Panamanian soldiers died. Noriega surrendered to the Vatican Embassy on January 3, 1990. The United States convicted him on drug charges, and the new Panamanian government wanted to try him on murder charges.4 “Panama Bay” was never produced, which became a pattern of behavior for Neely, according to his friend Art Williams who also moved to Florida in the 1990s. Neely became easily excited about business deals which never came to fruition.5
Perhaps the most fortunate meeting in Neely’s later years came at Orlando International Airport in 1989 when by chance he came upon musician Roland Hanneman who had brought a mutual acquaintance to catch a flight. After the man had boarded his airplane Neely and Hanneman realized they had quite a bit in common. The man who had just left them had taken them both for not inconsiderable amounts of money.
“He would shake your hand with one hand and give you a rubber check with the other,” Hanneman said. “Hal told me that this fellow had sold him music which he didn’t own and that he was always one step ahead of federal authorities.”
Over the next few years Neely and Hanneman worked on several small music projects. Neely produced albums for people in country and gospel music.
Hanneman, a native of Great Britain, is also known in the entertainment industry as John St. John. He studied music at the Cambridge College of Arts. After moving to the United States, Hanneman worked for Miami’s WINZ as production director. He has recorded and/or produced for the Miami Sound Machine, Mary Hart, Jon Secada, Clint Holmes, Jimmy Buffett, the Orlando Philharmonic and many more musical projects. He has written music for two Orange Bowl Shows and composed and/or produced more than 241 records and CDs. He has his own production company.6
“Hal was an extremely generous man and was always helping people. But he could see through people in seconds,” Hanneman said. “I would run people past him to get an opinion, and he was never once wrong about any of them. I asked him once how he could judge people so well and he replied, ‘I’m a hustler, and a hustler can always spot another hustler.’
Hal described his life as being fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and somewhat charmed, but he was always–to his dying day–looking ahead to some kind of business venture. It was difficult for him to accept the industry had changed and the paradigm had shifted. At one time, 200,000 records were a lot but now it’s half a million.”
Hanneman learned Neely’s technique of using ego to get his way with an artist. One time Hanneman was trying to get payment from a client who had recorded at his studio. Neely volunteered to get the money for him.
“Hal called the guy, identified himself as ABC Records and offered a record contract on his cassette and a plane ticket to California. ‘You do own all the rights, don’t you?’ Hal asked him.” Neely offered him $10,000 for the master tape remix. The man immediately called Hanneman for the master tape, but Hanneman told him he had to pay the full amount of the studio fees to get it.
“The next week he called Hal who told him this song might be used in a movie so he increased his offer to $25,000 and again reminded the man he had to have the master tape.” He called Hanneman again and agreed to pay the full amount and was at his doorstep the next morning with the cash. He received his master tape, but he never heard from the guy from ABC records again. 7
Neely’s relationship with Wise resulted in marriage in October of 1990, one day after his divorce from Mary Stone Neely was final. He was seventy years old, and she was in her middle forties.
Wise had fond memories of her years with Neely. They would pack a lunch and a bottle of wine, go on long drives in the country and have conversations about acoustic theories. For example, she said, boys between the age of 10 and 11 are at the peak of their hearing capacity to discern low-level tones. They even talked about the sound of wooden posts as they drove by would change according to the thickness of wood, speed of the car and spacing of the posts
“Hal would write letters with poor grammar to somebody about credit card issues, threatening lawsuits and saying he was sending copies to officials,” Wise said. “And then he would sign my name.”
Wise said she was bothered because she did not notice Neely’s decline into dementia but only concentrated on how hurt she felt during his emotional outbursts.
“He was like an angry gorilla throwing things.”
When Neely’s brother Sam came to visit them in Orlando they would wait at the curb right in front of a liquor store, Wise related. Sam went in, but when he came out he didn’t recognize the car. “I could see it (the cognitive decline) in Sam but not in Hal.”8
His finances began to decline also, to such an extent that Neely had to sell off personal items, Hanneman said. Neely had a Baldwin grand piano which had belonged to Liberace. Neely thought the provenance would make it more valuable, but he had trouble selling it for a good price. The person who finally bought it never paid for it.
Neely and Wise moved to an apartment in Tampa so she could study geriatrics at the University of South Florida.9
***
It was during this time James Brown was paroled from the South Carolina prison where he had spent 2 1/2 years of a six-year sentence. Upon his release in February of 1991 he announced a Freedom Tour.
“I am hotter now than I ever was in my life,” he announced to the press. In March of 1991 he starred in a live, pay-per-view concert from Los Angeles, and by the end of the year produced a new album “Love Over Due.”10
***
Neely’s marriage to Wise steadily declined throughout the 1990s while she continued her studies and eventually worked at the University of South Florida in Tampa. As she studied, Neely produced gospel music for small groups in central Florida. Eventually they separated in 2003, and Neely came to rely more and more on his friends Hanneman and Williams.
“Hal would come to my house to sit by the pool and cry about the way Victoria treated him and talked to him,” Williams said. “I told him to go back to Mary who had a farm in Nebraska.” When Mary died she left the farm to her family members who, according to Williams, detested Neely.
Sitting around the pool, Neely also complained about business deals which had gone badly for him, particularly the sale of Starday-King master recordings to Moe Lytle of Gusto Records.
“He hated this guy(Moe Lytle). They would tell anyone wanting rights to sell not to deal with the other one. Each claimed the same catalog. It ended in a stalemate with no one buying the rights. Hal was always involved with threatening to sue people and writing letters. One of his lawyers would filter them. He had no follow through on legal matters.”
Neely told Williams he was going to serve Wise with divorce papers but he never did.
“I told Hal to sue her for support,” Williams said
Williams also suggested to Neely that he should apply for Medicaid. “As long as Hal sat there and talked about his million-dollar catalog he wasn’t getting Medicaid. He had to admit he was broke.”
Another mutual friend told Williams he should help out Neely financially, but he declined. “I had lent him thousands of dollars over the years. People who loved Hal took care of him, and it may not have been the best for him.
“Hal never lost his optimism and always thought the deal was about to happen. The catalog deal was always about to break.”11
Footnotes
1 Wise Interview.
2 http://notable_biographies.com/Ni-Pe/Noriega_Manuel.html.
3 Wise Interview.
4 http://notable_biographies.com/Ni-Pe/Noriega_Manuel.html.
5 Williams Interview.
6 Hanneman Interview.
7 Ibid.
8 Wise Interview.
9 Hanneman Interview.
10 The Life of James Brown, 183.
11 Williams Interview.