The Beverly Hills

"Sol soaked up every ounce of knowledge that he could from the American. He now had to get back to South Africa and build his mini-Fontainebleau. Even if he did not fully realise it at the time, he had learned far more from Ben Novack than just how to design a resort hotel; he had also seen how to run one. The result was not a 1 000-room beachside hotel in an established resort town but a 72-room replica of the giant Miami hotel, located in an undeveloped village on South Africa’s Natal coast. Sol stopped short of naming his hotel the “Fontainebleau”, which his prospective local clientele would not have understood. Instead, he settled for “The Beverly Hills”. Everyone in South Africa knew what that meant."

"In the late 1960s, Sol approached Ted Sceales, then the chairman of SAB, with a proposal to build and operate a chain of resort properties in South Africa, aimed at both domestic and foreign tourists. The proposal went way beyond SAB’s modest plan to build motels for travelling salesmen. Sol’s proposal was straightforward. He would contribute his controlling interest in The Beverly Hills and a 50-year land lease that he had recently acquired on Durban’s Marine Parade, while SAB would fund the construction of resort hotels in Durban (on Sol’s land and on other sites), in the Eastern Transvaal (near the Kruger National Park), in Plettenberg Bay on the Garden Route, and at other sites still to be agreed. Financially, Sol’s proposal was simple: SAB would put up the money, he would do the work and they would split the ownership 50/50."