The Broke and the Beautiful: Housewives Edition

This week in The Broke and the Beautiful, housewives both real and fictional are in bankruptcy court, the New York Times nails a profile on former slugger Lenny Dykstra, and a former art-gallery director will get some nice weekend vacations—in prison.

One desperate housewife may be getting a little less desperate. Last week, The Broke and the Beautiful mentioned an emergency request from creditors of Eva Longoria’s Beso LLC to appoint a trustee to take control of the bankruptcy case of the company, whose Eve nightclub recently closed. But Beso’s situation may call for some celebratory Bloody Marys, as Bankruptcy Beat followed up Monday that a Las Vegas bankruptcy judge denied Mali and Ronen Nachum’s request to have the motion heard on an emergency basis.

Speaking of housewives, some nonfictional ones are being taken to task for their real financial troubles. In Touch magazine’s latest print edition covers the financial foibles of nearly a dozen of Bravo’s “Real Housewives,” according to a number of blogs. New Jersey’s Teresa Giudice, according to the magazine’s cover, said she’s “terrified of being poor.” Another Bankruptcy Beat mainstay, New York’s Sonja Tremont-Morgan, also told the magazine that she’s always been a bargain hunter. “Things change when you are doing it alone,” said Morgan, who’s going through a divorce. “Now I have toaster oven dinners…and I don’t have to scrub pots and pans after, either!”

Unlike the housewives, however, actor Robert De Niro has some cause to celebrate this week. According to Bloomberg, Leigh Morse, the former director of bankrupt Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, will now be painting pretty pictures from the comfort of a prison cell every weekend for four months. Morse, also an art dealer for the actor who’s starred in movies like “Meet the Parents” and “Men of Honor,” has to pay $1.65 million in restitution for defrauding artists’ estates. (De Niro’s deceased father, Robert De Niro Sr., had six of his paintings and drawings on display at Salander until the younger De Niro won approval to recover them last year.)

The Texas Rangers may be first place in the AL West, but that hasn’t stopped the team from encountering a few fouls. Though the Rangers aren’t in bankruptcy anymore, attorneys are still grappling over fees that Major League Baseball is demanding for various expenses. The Star-Telegram reported Wednesday that lawyers for the bankruptcy-plan administrator say some of MLB’s costs—including $98,000 for photocopying and $92,000 for online research—should be lowered. According to the newspaper, court filings noted that many of the costs that helped keep the team afloat with an MLB credit line were “unconscionable” because the amount of control the MLB had over the Rangers. Also this week, Rangers president, chief executive and owner Nolan Ryan will be on the DL for a few days before heading back to work. Ryan, an MLB Hall of Famer, was taken to a hospital Sunday after experiencing chest discomfort.

The Los Angeles Dodgers weren’t exempt from play this week. Among other things, the team on Monday blamed Commissioner Bud Selig for its financial strikeouts. As Bankruptcy Beat reported, the team said Selig unfairly and publicly called out the franchise for security issues while “quietly” dealing with a fan’s murder elsewhere. The team said Selig’s criticism following an attack outside Dodger Stadium on Opening Day that caused “fan unease” and “declines” in attendance, exacerbating the team’s financial issues.

Last but not least, the New York Times profiled the rise and fall of Lenny “Nails” Dykstra, a former center fielder for the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets turned financial guru. “He was enjoying his retirement from baseball, playing a little golf. But then Lenny had to go do what he did,” said younger brother Kenny Dysktra, no doubt referring to the charges of bankruptcy fraud, obstructions of justice and embezzlement, of which the elder Dykstra is accused. “He screwed us all out of money,” Wayne Neilsen, Dysktra’s uncle, told the Times. “He didn’t do right by his family.”