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“(KURT WAGNER’S) FLAMBOYANCE AND LACK OF RETICENCE IN BLOWING HIS OWN HORN HAVE MADE
HIM ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SURGEONS IN LOS ANGELES AND ONE OF THE MOST HATED BY
HIS COLLEAGUES AND COMPETITORS.” Los Angeles Magazine

DR.
VANITY
Under the Skin Stories
From The King of
Beverly Hills Plastic
Surgery
By KURT J. WAGNER, M.D.
Co-author, “Beauty By Design: A Complete Look at Cosmetic Surgery,”
and “How To Win In The Youth Game”
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DR. VANITY
Table of Contents

Who is Kurt Wagner, M.D.?

Introduction

I. A Sharp Focus

1. Last Night in Vienna

2. Not the Father

3. It Runs in the Family

4. Mrs. Miller

5. Barbara
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II. Beverly Hills

6. One Word: Plastics

7. The First Extreme Makeover

8. Clashing With the Establishment

9. Prostitutes, Gangsters, Porn Stars

10. Celebrities R Us

11. Liposuction, or “Only a Maniac Sucks Fat Out

of a Body”

12. Breasts, Boobs, Tits and Ass

13. Kathie

III. Fate Cuts In

14. The Sheik

15. A Downward Spiral

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16. Boca Raton

IV. What I’ve Learned So Far

17. The Man I Am Now

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WHO IS KURT WAGNER, M.D.?

By Bob Andelman

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1934, Kurt J. Wagner, M.D. came to

America four years later, one step ahead of the Nazis. He waved

goodbye to his grandparents from the train and never saw them again.

Wagner earned his bachelors degree at New York University in

1954 as a Phi Beta Kappa, and his Medical Doctor degree at State

University of New York College of Medicine at New York Center in

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1958. His internship was at Long Island Jewish Hospital and his

general surgery training at Cedars of Lebanon in Los Angeles.

A Board Certified Plastic Surgeon since 1966, Wagner was

trained in plastic surgery at the University of Oklahoma and Cornell

University Medical Center. During the 1960s he was in the Air Force

and spent time in Vietnam. He was later Chief of Plastic Surgery at

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He is a fellow of The American

College of Surgeons and has practiced in Beverly Hills, California, and

Boca Raton, Florida.

Wagner, who has been published in several medical books and

journals of plastic & reconstructive surgery, is also the author of two

popular consumer books on the subject, including:

• A Plastic Surgeon Answers Your

Questions, Prentice-Hall, 1972, with Helen

Gould (Original Title: How to Win In The Youth

Game)

• Beauty By Design: A Complete Look at

Cosmetic Surgery, McGraw-Hill, 1979, with

Gerald Imber, M.D.

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He was also featured in a chapter of The Super-Doctors by

Roger Rapoport(HarperCollins, 1975).

His list of fellowships is long, as are his

medical association memberships. In 1973,

Wagner was a cofounder of the American

Society of Aesthetic Reconstructive Surgery.

The professional organization donated free

plastic surgery services to young people who

couldn’t otherwise afford its services, as well

as certain accident and birth defect victims. Five years later, Wagner

led a similar program at the Beverly Hills Medical Center known as “A

Little Help From Our Friends.”

Wagner is a founding member of the American Trauma Society.

And in 1994, he was the recipient of the Liz Lewis Spirit of Hope

Award, given by the Associates for Breast Cancer Studies.

He is also the designer of three trademarked chin implants, the

Elite™, Sentinel™ and Magnum™, all produced by Applied Biomaterial

Technologies, Inc. and the “Wagner Breast Implant,” the most popular

design in breast enlargement.

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Today, Wagner, a father of two, practices plastic surgery in Boca

Raton, where he lives with Kathie, his wife of 36 years.

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Introduction

Plastic surgery was once a mysterious cabal, practiced largely in

secret.

But as an ambitious young doctor, a refugee and a Holocaust

survivor, I was proud of my work and believed we would all benefit if

more people knew what our specialty was all about.

The difference between a job and a career in Beverly Hills,

California, is timing and opportunity. Lily Lipton presented me with

both. She was an up-and-coming Hollywood press agent who wanted

a facelift. She couldn’t afford to pay cash, but she offered me

something potentially more valuable: exposure. In 1969, when she

came to me, public relations and advertising were taboo for doctors.

The only physicians known coast to coast in those days were fictional

creations — TV’s Dr. Welby and Dr. Kildare.

Verboten or not, I was a plastic surgeon desperately searching

for a niche in a landscape of sharp, shiny scalpels. I needed a way of

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bringing my talents to the fore and I wasn’t the kind of person willing to

wait another 20 years for a word-of-mouth breakthrough.

I told Lily that the only PR I would be interested in would be

appearing on television.

She booked me on some minor, local morning shows in Los

Angeles. She did what she promised, but the results didn’t set the

world on fire.

One day, Lily called me and she was so worked up that I thought

she might hyperventilate. “NBC is going to do a makeover show!” she

said, breathless with anticipation. “They’re going to take a lady, fix her

hair and her clothes. But what they really want is a plastic surgeon to

make it complete! And the surgeon they want is you!”

My first response was pure Brooklyn, not Hollywood. “I’m not

inclined to be on television with a bunch of fags,” I said.

“At least talk with the producer of the show,” Lily said, perplexed

by my resistance.

I agreed and met with the producer, Michael Gavin, at a forever-

famous restaurant in L.A., Musso & Frank Grill.

Gavin told me all about his plans for this show.

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“I’m interested,” I said, “but not in your format.”

“Why do you even want to be on television, then?” Gavin asked

me.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I’m already a great plastic surgeon.

Now I want to be a star.”

I shared my vision with Gavin and he embraced it. It came down

to this: instead of telling the story of a woman trying to recapture her

youth with makeup, new clothes, hair and a few nips and tucks, it

became “Kurt Wagner, Renaissance Man.” I introduced Gavin to my

fabulous Beverly Hills lifestyle, and to my beautiful wife Kathie, on

whom I had performed several cosmetic surgeries. I played piano,

tennis and swam in the pool, all for the TV cameras. The producer

even staged a four-hour “Black & White” ball at our club for more than

600 people and filmed that, too.

Threaded throughout the show was what was now the “B Story,”

following a 55-year-old woman through her makeover. She was 55, but

looked 90, thanks to premature aging. She told the camera that she

came to me because her granddaughter would look at her and say,

“When are you going to die, grandma?”

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Cameras showed me doing a facelift, a chemical peel and some

other work. They also sent her to the beauty parlor and a boutique for

new clothes. They flashed back and forth between me cutting her face

and her applying eyeliner. Finally, they showed this lucky lady walking

up and down Rodeo Drive like a proud peacock. She looked 40 years

younger. Conservatively.

Don’t take my word for it: look at these before and after pictures

of the lady from my book, Beauty By Design: A Complete Look at

Cosmetic Surgery:

That show put me on the map. A profile in Look magazine soon

followed with me doing a facelift for an LAPD detective. I wrote two

books — A Plastic Surgeon Answers Your Questions and Beauty By

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Design: A Complete Look at Cosmetic Surgery — about my techniques

and advice for prospective cosmetic surgery patients.

My surgical skill and Lily Lipton’s shrewd PR accomplished what

no mere medical degree could: A star was born.

•••

Alongside the birth of my career as the most celebrated plastic

surgeon in Beverly Hills, so too was a cycle of great news followed by

horrible tsuris. Lily Lipton reneged on our agreement and came after

me demanding $10,000 for her “role” in setting up my show! When I

refused, she reported me to the plastic surgery society. I was

suspended for a year, accused of self-aggrandizement.

I became the bad boy of my field for a long time, the whipping

child for every thing appearing on television to pioneering liposuction,

about which a prominent surgeon once complained, “Only a maniac

sucks fat out of the body!”

On the other hand, Producer Mike Gavin became my patient, as

did his wife, Paula, and her mother. And NBC’s “Today” show aired a

segment from the special, which was rebroadcast across Europe.

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I became a pseudo-celebrity. Not that I wasn’t busy before, but

before, people were hush-hush about cosmetic surgery. Now it was

being discussed and debated. Facelifts, nose jobs and many other

procedures became much more accepted and commonplace.

•••

What is the difference between a good plastic surgeon and a

great one?

It’s called DNA. Why could Michelangelo paint a ceiling while

other people paint the sides of houses? It’s luck and the ability to

nurture the strengths you have. When young people start out in my

field, they look at a patient and say, “Her neck is sagging.” But I look at

the same woman and say, “Her neck isn’t only sagging, her

cheekbones are too long! Her eyebrows are sagging.” The individual

who has the innate ability sees the total picture and sees it differently.

The same thing that makes a plastic surgeon great is what made

Ted Williams the last .400 hitter in baseball. There are many great

plastic surgeons. We go to a different level. But what separates a great

player from a journeyman is that sixth sense about not only what is

possible but also what he or she is capable of doing.

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You can’t shine shit. You can only put a glaze on it. You have to

have the medium to work on.

I operate on many transgender people. I did one complete

operation early in my training, start to finish, amputating a penis and

creating a woman. But I also did the ancillary procedures. I would fix

the face, do the breasts, shave the Adam’s apple – feminize the

features. One of them wound up on the cover of Vogue three years

later.

I had a black patient who was 250 pounds. He didn’t make

demands to be effeminate. He had a nose wider than the Lincoln

Tunnel. I made the lips smaller, I fixed the nose, and I gave him hair.

Then, after three years of doing surgeries on him, he said what he

really wanted was to look like Brooke Shields! I was stunned. Until

then, he always seemed to be happy.

There are more Frankenstein-like aspects to the work we do than

just vanity. The problem with Dr. Frankenstein is that he brought life to

a monster. In a way, I recreate life with plastic surgery. I give people a

new lease on life. Show me a woman or a man who is unattractive or

has a bad personality and I’ll show you a loner. But show me a person
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who is good looking and I’ll show you someone to whom people want

to be close. We’re looking for acceptance on the highest level. Today,

it’s all about being attractive and beautiful.

•••

The book is divided into four sections and 17 chapters:

I. A Sharp Focus
This section introduces my life as a young Austrian Jewish

immigrant, my inspiration for becoming a physician and my first wife’s

bizarre multiple personality disorder. It also includes the tale of my first

intimate celebrity encounter, with a “Mrs. Miller.”

II. Beverly Hills

Professional development is at the core of this section, as I move

into private practice as a plastic surgeon. In Beverly Hills, I found my

place in the world as “The King of Plastic Surgery,” appearing on

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television around the world and in national magazines. Movie stars —

as well as gangsters and whores — become regulars in my medical

office.

III. Fate Cuts In

My life and career took a terrible turn in 19XX, when my home

was robbed. Events rapidly snowballed downhill. I was accused of

arson when a Saudi Arabian sheik’s home was destroyed and the

police arrested me. My eldest daughter committed suicide. My practice

and reputation in Beverly Hills was almost destroyed and it took time to

get back on track. After going in another direction for several years, I

restarted my career 3,000 miles away in Boca Raton.

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IV. What I’ve Learned

So Far
You don’t live a life as wondrous and troubling as mine with

stepping back and examining it at some point. In this concluding

section, I look back at my life — with the help of analysis — and reach

some interesting conclusions.

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I. A Sharp Focus
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1. Last Night in Vienna

Nineteen thirty-four, the year I was born, was not a good time to

be Jewish in Vienna.

The Austrian Prime Minister was assassinated just before I was

born. There were riots, and some university students grabbed Jewish

men and threw them into the Danube. They knew they were Jews by

pulling down their pants down. If they were circumcised, they were

pitched into the river.

My mother’s name was Sonia Kaunitz. My father’s real name

was Bernard Wahrhaftig. Prejudice being as blatant as it was in those

days, my mother wouldn’t marry him until he changed his name to the

more Austrian-sounding “Wagner” – so she, in turn, could change her

name.

When I was born, our changing, violent world made my mother

hysterical. My family was well connected in Vienna, and someone

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convinced the chief rabbi to write a letter saying that because of

illness, I didn’t have to be circumcised. And I wasn’t.

Two days after my fourth birthday, Adolf Hitler came to Vienna

and annexed Austria. It was March 11, 1938. Because my mother’s

family was part Catholic and part Jewish, I grew up with one document

that said that I was a Catholic, another that said that I was a Jew, and

a third which excused me from circumcision.

Three months after Hitler took Austria, my father took his leave

for the United States — without my mother and me. My mother insisted

he flee immediately because she felt he was in the most mortal danger

if he lingered. My grandfather, who had been a big shot in Vienna,

thought it would blow over soon.

My mother, however was right. Shortly after my father left

Vienna, the Nazis came looking for him. They stormed the apartment

house we owned and in which we lived. The Nazis claimed that my

mother possessed money and jewelry that belonged to the State.

When she refused to relinquish it, they pistol-whipped her. I stood by,

helpless.

•••
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Our journey to America is an interesting story.

My father landed in Brooklyn in 1938. It may have been a bad

time to be a Wahrhaftig in Vienna, but it was an excellent time to be a

Wagner in New York because a distant relative, Robert F. Wagner, Sr.,

was on the rise in the United States Senate.

A relative of my father’s wrote to Wagner, whose origins were

Germanic, saying that two of his relatives in Vienna couldn’t get visas

to come to America. Wagner sent a cable to the American Embassy in

Austria, and lo and behold, Sonia and Kurt Wagner were granted

visas. Again, my mother was proved correct. What was in a name? In

Vienna, in 1938 — everything.

We left on a very infamous day — Krystallnacht.

My last childhood memory of pre-war Vienna, as we went to the

railroad station, is of Nazis pulling Jews out of their homes and

automobiles and beating them up, confiscating or destroying their

belongings and shooting many of them. My mother and I were in the

back of a train car. As it pulled out of the station, we saw my

grandparents running toward the train to catch a last glimpse of us. My

mother was crying.

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I was the big man of our little family for the time being — all of

four years old. I said to my mother, “Don’t cry, we will see them again.”

My mother looked down at me and she said without emotion,

“We will never see them again.” Once more, she was right.

•••

In this chapter, I’ll set up what’s to come later in life by describing

my experiences as a Holocaust refugee and survivor. Some of the

stories are tragic, others comic, such as the time I spent in an Italian

whorehouse.
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2. Not the Father

On her deathbed, my mother told me something that turned my

world ass-end up.

“Your father,” she said, “is not your father.”

When I was young and I didn’t know how babies were made, I

nonetheless knew that babies were found in women’s stomachs. I

used to say to my mother, “I understand that I am related to you

because I came out of your belly, and I guess I must be related to my

father by marriage.” And my mother used to laugh.

To think that I was right! The only way I was related to the man

who pretended to be my father was by marriage!

My real father’s name was Alfred Neuman. He was a lawyer in

Vienna who came to the United States and became a psychologist,

social worker and psychoanalyst. He eventually started Jewish

Services in Colorado. When he retired at 65, they had a “day” for him
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in Colorado. He was an interesting man that I came to know much later

in life.

•••

In this chapter, I’ll discuss growing up in New York and surviving

as a refugee. I’ll also discuss how, in 1944, I discovered a book called

New Faces, New Lives, written by Maxwell Maltz. Maltz became

famous for writing about psychocybernetics, which tied together

psychology and plastic surgery. On the book’s cover was a woman

whose face was half-scarred and half-smooth. I was fascinated. The

book was full of plastic surgery case histories. That very day, all of ten

years old, I told my father that I was going to be a plastic surgeon.

Years later, when I was in private practice, Maltz not only came and

watched me do surgery, he sent his stepdaughter to me. I fixed her

nose and her chin. It was an unbelievable experience.

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3. It Runs in the Family

The first surgical operation I ever saw was conducted in old Long

Island College Hospital. The surgery room was built at the center of

graduated, auditorium-style seats from which you would look down at

an operating “theater” like the kind in the old “Dr. Kildare” programs on

TV. But even on that show, you never saw actual surgical procedures

like you would today on The Learning Channel or the TV series “ER.”

Five of my medical school classmates and I decided it was finally

time to see an operation. Four of the five were doctor’s sons like me,

and the other was a dentist’s son, so we all grew up around

professional people. Dr. Jefferson Browder was the Chief of

Neurosurgery and Chief of Surgery. He was scheduled to do a

craniotomy, an operation that opens and goes inside the skull. From

our vantagepoint in the theater, all we could see at the start was the

top of a completely shaved head. Then Dr. Browder made his first

incision. Evidently, the patient’s blood pressure was high, because

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blood spurted out of the top of the head about six inches into the air,

when he hit an artery.

I felt like I was going to faint. I closed my eyes, and I said, Dear

God, don’t let me faint. How can I not be a doctor? After all, am I not

the fifth generation… In my whole life, I never thought of being

anything but a doctor; how can I not be one? How can I not?

Finally ready to see my future, I opened my eyes and turned

around. There was nobody there! Then I looked on the floor, and

everybody had passed out; one guy was out in the hall vomiting.

That was my first exposure to surgery.

Suffice it to say it had a marked effect on me. As the years went

by, whenever I was supposed to perform a craniotomy myself, I

always, always traded off with somebody. I would never allow myself to

be in a room with that operation again. Something about shaving a

whole head still bugs me. I don’t even like talking about it. Forget all

the thousands and thousands of procedures I have done, attended to,

or assisted in. I still get a little chill recalling that blood spurting from the

guy’s head.

•••
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In this chapter, I’ll tell tales from my medical school days and will

also describe the experience of applying a scalpel to human flesh for

the first time.

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4. Mrs. Miller

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

The telephone rang out the way it always did in 1961, loud,

metallic and shrill. In those days, every telephone was a dial telephone

and they all sounded the same. No turning the sound up or turning it

down.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

The fact that it was 4 a.m. made it sound even worse, like a civil

defense air siren was ricocheting through the canyons of California’s

San Fernando Valley.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
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The fact that I knew it was someone calling me from Cedars of

Lebanon, the Los Angeles hospital where I was a 27-year-old resident,

made my nerves jangle even more. The fact that I was actually

supposed to still be at the hospital, instead of enjoying a post-coital

glow with my wife Barbara, made it even worse.

Delaying the inevitable no longer, I reached across the bed, over

my wife, and answered the telephone.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

“Hello?”

“Wagner? Get your ass back to the hospital and see Mrs. Miller

on the VIP floor.” It was a prominent general surgeon. He didn’t like

me. And from this moment forward, I sure as hell didn’t like him.

“I was sleeping. Isn’t there anybody already at the hospital who

could see her? Isn’t there an intern on the floor?”

“You’re the resident who’s supposed to be here, Wagner. Get

your ass out of bed and back here now.”

I picked my clothes up off the floor and staggered downstairs to

the car.
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When I got to the hospital, I stopped by the nurse’s station and

picked up Mrs. Miller’s chart. There was no indication yet that there

was anything unusual about this patient. She was admitted with

complaints of severe abdominal pains. As I walked down the hall

toward her room, I noticed something I had never before seen at

Cedars. There was a guard at the door, which was unusual.

Who exactly was this Mrs. Miller?

Nodding to the guard, I went inside the private room and found a

nurse attending to a platinum-haired woman who was clearly writhing

in pain. She was also scantily clad; this patient not only rated a guard

at the door but she also was allowed to wear her own bedclothes.

With a wordless wave of the patient’s hand, the nurse left the

room. I examined Mrs. Miller and determined she suffered a gall

bladder attack. I ordered some Demerol from the nurse to relieve the

pain and I injected her with it.

After a short time, Mrs. Miller felt visibly better. I sat by the side of

the bed holding her hand as the Demerol began taking hold. Up until

this point, she said very little to me except for making the occasional

grunt or groan as I gently palpitated her abdomen.

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The color returning to her quite beautiful face, she said, “Do you

know who I am?”

“Yes,” I said. “Jane Russell.”

“You’re a tease!” she said.

“Of course I know who you are, Mrs. Miller,” I said, smiling.

“Have you seen any of my pictures?” she asked.

“All of them.”

“What do you think of me as an actress?”

“You’re getting better all the time.”

It was an honest answer – but not the one that Marilyn Monroe

Miller necessarily wanted to hear from someone in a white lab coat.

She pulled back her hand and looked away from me.

“All you men are the same – all you want from a woman is what

you can get from her,” she complained.

Somehow, I no longer represented doctors but all men

everywhere. It was a heady responsibility that I’m not sure I wanted at

5 a.m.

“Look, Mrs. Miller,” I said, “I want to share something with you.

I’m married. Would my wife have married me if I were a truck driver?

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I’m not a sex goddess of the world making half a million dollars per

movie. I didn’t pose naked for a calendar. I didn’t get a skirt blown over

my head. You are what you project yourself to be.”

I stood up and prepared to leave.

She desperately grabbed my hand again.

“Please don’t go,” she said. “I need someone. Stay.”

She took that deep breath we’ve all seen a thousand times now

on the silver screen and let it out slowly.

“You can sleep with me if you want.”

More than 40 years later, this story would have a more

provocative ending if I could tell you that I slept with Mrs. Miller. But I

did not. Would she not have been the most desirable woman in the

world? Without a doubt. Nice to know I could have, though.

•••

In this chapter, I will recount more episodes from my early

experiences as a resident at Cedars of Lebanon. These stories will

include many celebrities, including Dick Powell, Carolyn Jones, and

Raymond Massey.
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5. Barbara

My first wife, Barbara, was sensual and bright – in many ways,

smarter than I was. She was also a funny woman in that there were so

many of her.

We met when I was an intern at Long Island Jewish Hospital in

1958. Barbara was the head secretary for the pathology department.

How she got that job was pure Barbara. Making an appointment on

Friday for a job interview on Monday, she bought a medical dictionary

and read it over the weekend. On Monday, she got the job.

She followed me across the country when I moved to Cedars of

Lebanon and somehow convinced me to marry her. In Oklahoma,

there is a song, “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No.” At the time, I

couldn’t say no. I was a terrible chicken. I liked her because she was a

take-charge person.

I had no idea she had a personality disorder.

•••
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It was a Sunday afternoon. Barbara and I were in bed. Kirk

Douglas was on television in a biographical movie about Vincent Van

Gogh titled Lust for Life. While Kirk lusted for life, Barbara and I lusted

for each other. We made love with great passion and when our amour

was satisfied, we were still naked and breathless under the covers.

It should have been one of those great memory-making

moments, but instead I got the feeling something was amiss.

“Barbara?” I said.

There was no answer. And then I heard a voice that still sends

chills up my spine across the decades.

“That bitch isn’t here!”

No lie. There was a face looking at me under the sheets that I

didn’t recognize.

Over the next few minutes, at least three different voices came

out of her. Mind you, this was a decade before the movie The Exorcist.

First, I thought she was schizophrenic. Then all I could think of was my

mother urging me not to marry Barbara. Again. And again. But now I

was stuck. This was two months after I married her.

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I didn’t know what to do. I was bewildered. Barbara was alien

and hostile.

•••

One night we went to a club where Nina Simone was singing.

She was an unbelievably wonderful performer. At the time she had the

number one song in the country, “I Love You, Porgy,” from the movie,

Porgy and Bess. As if that wasn’t interesting enough, she was sharing

the bill on a national tour with Christine Jorgensen, the infamous

transsexual.

Speaking of men, my Barbara possessed brass balls. One of her

did, anyway. When the Simone/Jorgensen show was over, she said, “I

want to meet that black bitch; she’s a fabulous singer!”

Before you knew it, we were backstage in the dressing room with

Simone. Jorgensen, who sang “I Enjoy Being a Girl” in her act, came in

and joined us. I mentioned to her that I had been in the same

Copenhagen hospital where she had her sex change operation. (I was

there with a case of dysentery.)

Jorgensen said, “Dr. Wagner, would you mind stepping outside?”

“Why?” I asked.
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“I have to change,” she said.

“I thought you did that a few years ago,” I joked.

She took her wrap and strutted out of the room, indignant.

Simone thought that was fabulous; she became fast friends with my

wife. She said, “We should have a menage.” Me, my wife, and Nina

Simone.

“Now, my wife is not the only woman I’ve ever slept with,” I said.

“But Nina, you’re one of the ugliest women I’ve ever seen in my life. I

can barely stand to look at you.”

That pissed her off. Barbara, too.

Despite my disinterest, Barbara and Nina became fast friends.

Shortly thereafter, I asked Barbara to go see a movie with me.

“Not tonight,” she said. “Nina has the Asian Flu and I’m going to

take her some chicken soup.”

“You’re gonna give the black bitch chicken soup instead of going

out with me?” It really pissed me off.

A week later, Barbara came down with the Asian Flu. She was

sick and I, naturally, took care of her. She was feeling better after a

week and we went to the movies. At some point, Barbara left the
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theater to use the ladies room. Moments later, an usher came to me

and said, “Dr. Wagner, your wife has fallen down a flight of stairs.”

When I reached her, she couldn’t feel part of her leg. The next day,

she couldn’t see out of one eye.

She checked into Cedars of Lebanon and stayed there for more

than four months. I was with her night and day. She eventually

transferred to L.A. County Hospital, where they thought Barbara was

symptomatic of acute Multiple Sclerosis. If she didn’t have it, she

certainly remembered enough about it to convince a doctor of the

symptoms.

One or two occasions when she was blind, she begged me to kill

her.

The only positive thing about the experience was that her

multiple personalities seemed to have burned out.

Without a conclusive diagnosis, she was released from the

hospital in March. I was 25 years old and had not slept with anyone in

four months, except for the one time that Barbara and I tried

intercourse and she screamed out, “Porgy” — which is what she began

calling me after meeting Nina Simone — “I’m in pain!”

 Page 39

A short time later, Barbara really startled me.

“Porgy,” she said, “I’m pregnant.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Sure.”

We went to visit her family in Houston and share the news. They

hated me as much as my mother hated Barbara. Nonetheless, with

Barbara’s health on the line, my prospects in tatters and a baby on the

way, I asked my father-in-law to loan us $25,000.

“We don’t give money to raise Jew babies,” he said in his most

proper Texas oilman redneck drawl.

Barbara was so furious she wanted to convert to Judaism. I, on

the other hand, merely wanted her to have an abortion. She refused.

We had the baby. A wonderful baby. Allison all I have left from my first

marriage; Barbara died in 1966.

•••

In this chapter, I’ll go into more depth and share more anecdotes

about my first wife’s bizarre behavior and multiple personality

disorders. She was a doozy.

 Page 40

II. Beverly Hills

 Page 41

6. One Word: Plastics

I never wanted to be an internist, because when people are sick,

I get sad.

Plastic surgery and obstetrics are among the only areas of

medicine in which people come to their doctor with positive

expectations. When you want the baby, you love the obstetrician. I

thought for a while about becoming an obstetrician when I was in

medical school, paying homage to my grandfather, but I couldn’t stand

the hours.

Then, because my father was a psychiatrist — or maybe

because I knew I was kind of screwed in the head — I thought about

psychiatry. But I realized that I only wanted to become a psychiatrist

because I wanted to find out what made me tick. Most psychiatrists or

psychologists go into their field for selfish reasons. Maybe they want to

help people as a second cause, but the first cause is to find out about

themselves.
 Page 42

As for plastic surgery, when you have an accident, you are not

too keen on the doctor. But when you want to have bigger breasts or a

younger face or a smaller nose, you love the guy.

That’s why I chose plastic surgery, and I have no regrets.

•••

In this chapter, I will discuss my early relationship with the

engineers at Dow-Corning and my influence on the earliest pancake-

like breast implants. I even was credited with “The Wagner Design.”
 Page 43

7. TV’s First Extreme

Makeover

I was on NBC in 1967 as the plastic surgeon behind the first

extreme television makeover. But instead of being happy that the show

drew high ratings for the network and positive attention for my industry,

20 of my fellow surgeons complained and I was suspended by the

American Society of Plastic Surgeons for being on TV, “advertising” for

business.

But in retrospect, I was clearly the prototype for today’s much-

hyped makeovers.

I also got in trouble for commenting about Nancy Reagan’s

cosmetic surgeries on Irish TV.

•••
 Page 44

In this chapter, I’ll discuss my epic battles with my fellow

surgeons in Los Angeles. Because although they hated me and

everything I stood for, the public knew me as “The King of Plastic

Surgery.” And my every move only brought more glory — and business

— to everyone in our profession.

 Page 45

8. Clashing With the

Establishment

My career reached its zenith in the 1970s. I was profiled in the

national and international newspapers and magazines of the day,

including the Los Angeles Times, Look, Time and Cosmopolitan. And it

seemed like there was always a television crew following me around

the office or my home. For a surgeon, I was on top of the world.

Kathie and I hosted incredible theme parties once a year where

we would invite more than 500 people. The culmination of all those

events was a gypsy party in 1979 that attracted almost a thousand

people to our place. There were fortunetellers, patients, people that I

knew, people that I didn’t know, even dancing girls.

•••
 Page 46

In this chapter, I’ll reveal more about my fabulous lifestyle as a

world class plastic surgeon. Our Sherman Oaks mansion sat on two

acres and was once owned by Herbert Yates, a former president of

Republic Studios who had been married to actress Vera Hruba

Ralston. My office, meanwhile, was on one of the top floors of a tall

building that overlooked Rodeo and Camden Drives. When I used the

toilet, I looked down over all of Beverly Hills.

 Page 47

9. Prostitutes,
Gangsters and
Porn Stars

I am not beyond flirtation, and I am not beyond occasionally

falling off the wagon. I am not a sex addict, and I am not Wilt

Chamberlain, but occasionally I have engaged in affairs with my

patients. There is tremendous transference in the relationship between

a plastic surgeon and his patients. Once we operate on a person and

go under their skin, a neurotic tie develops, if that is what we choose to

do. We become bigger than life for many of these people.

Once I had an affair with a woman I’ll call Diana, who was well

known in certain Las Vegas circles. It started before I was married and

continued a little bit after I was married. She was the top working girl in

Caesar’s Palace for a long time.

 Page 48

The only way you could get to Diana was by having a credit line

of a million dollars with the casino. She lived at Caesar’s, and only the

big gamblers could have a date with her.

A guy I knew from Brooklyn introduced us in 1967. I was still

single, just starting my practice, and he said, “Kurt, this is Vinny. I am

sending a girl named Diana to you, take good care of her.”

Diana was 5’ 6”, possessed of a great figure, wit and charm that

made Marilyn Monroe seem like a schoolgirl. Her eyes sparkled.

Perfect lips that didn’t need collagen injected in them. There was a little

bump on her nose, which I later fixed. Her breasts were good but she

wanted them a little bit bigger. And those legs… her legs put Betty

Grable to shame.

In our initial consultation, Diana said, “My boobs are a bit saggy; I

would like to have them made a little bit larger. How much would it

cost?”

“Twelve-hundred and fifty dollars,” I said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I mean, that’s pretty expensive, but what

if I ball you?”

I paused for a minute and thought about her counter-offer.

 Page 49

“Then it’ll be $2,500,” I said.

“What?” she was shocked. Apparently no one ever charged her

for doing what came naturally.

I said, “Let me ask you a question, Diana. When you ball

somebody, do they pay you, or do they ask you or do you ask them?”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s just another surgery to me,” I said. “You want your breasts

done, that’s one thing; you want another procedure, that’s more

money.”

She left.

About a week and a half later, at the end of the day, I got a

telephone call.

“Kurt, honey, this is Diana.”

“Hello, Diana, what can I do for you?”

“I hurt myself,” she said. “My ankle hurts, and Vinny told me to

call you back.”

“I’m a plastic surgeon, Diana, not an internist. Call your family

doctor.”

“But Vinny said you would take care of me.”

 Page 50

She was in a suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. So, shmuck that

I am, I filled my doctor’s bag with stuff to tape her ankle and flew over

to the hotel. I knocked on the door, and when it opened, there was

Diana in a wide-open, bright red peignoir. In her hands were twenty-

five, one hundred-dollar bills.

“I want the surgery,” she said with a coo smile, “and I want the

other stuff, too.”

And don’t think that she didn’t get her money’s worth.

It was a mutually rewarding relationship, as I operated on her

nose, slept with her on and off, and she sent me a steady stream of

Vegas working girls. She introduced me to a guy named Frederick

Apgar, who created the “Lido Gay Paris” and the “Follies Bergere.”

Apgar also sent girls to me for breast augmentations. (I also did

Apgar’s face and eyes. He wanted to look good because he was doing

even more of the girls than he was doing.) Between Diana and Apgar’s

girls, I could have been screwed into the ground every time I went to

Vegas.

I really liked Diana; she was an extraordinary woman. When she

entertained her business associates, she learned to listen carefully,

 Page 51

walking away with many stock and investment tips. She bought land in

Vegas, and, at the age of 40, walked away from the business with an

extraordinary amount of money.

Diana was furious when I married Kathie. I operated on her a few

years later, a little tuck on her face, and she said to me, “Shmuck, you

made the wrong decision.”

•••

I operated on one girl, Bambi, who wanted to look like Raquel

Welch because she thought it would help her in porno flicks.

She is dead now, so I can tell you about her. Her real name was

not Bambi, of course; she was a Jewish girl named Rosalie. After I

worked on her, her career took off and she wound up actually having

an affair with Welch’s husband. I guess he thought it was kinky to

sleep with someone who looked just like his wife — but wasn’t.

Bambi sent me lots of pictures of herself, signed “With all my

love,” all of them half-naked, and she wanted desperately to carry on

with me. She sent many girls in the porno business to me, although

unlike her, most of them were sleazy.

 Page 52

This isn’t one of those quirky, happy endings, though. Bambi

ultimately became a cocaine addict and overdosed. Her husband, who

was in the jewelry business, blamed me, saying I made her look too

much like Raquel Welch, that I should have just let her be Rosalie. He

said I shouldn’t have fixed her nose and breasts and made her so

pretty.

•••

In this chapter, I will also tell the story of the cosmetic surgery I

unwittingly did on a wanted felon and how I finally became suspicious

when he wanted his fingertips changed.

 Page 53

10. Celebrities R Us

My first true celebrity patient on my own was film star Hedy

Lamarr.

It was 1968 and she was past her prime

by then, of course, but still – Hedy Lamarr! I

was a tremendous movie buff, and obviously,

she was one of the most beautiful women of her

era, of any era. My mother told me that Lamarr

was known in her youth for having loose morals.

And everyone heard the stories about her being married to a German

financier who tried to buy up all existing prints of her 1932 film, Extase

(released eight years later in the United States as Ecstasy), which is

considered by many to be the world’s first pornographic movie.

Her acting days were over, and Lamarr was into her famous

shoplifting phase. She was down on her luck, and had heard that I was

from Vienna. She told me that she had had a rhinoplasty in Vienna in
 Page 54

the 1930s. She was still quite charming. She put on airs about who she

was in the old country, telling me that her father was a well-respected

banker. But my mother had told me that Lamarr’s father was actually a

bank teller who committed suicide, perhaps because of shame over his

daughter’s notoriety.

We went through a tumultuous time, dickering over money.

Whether it was half out of pity, half out of awe, whatever it was, I did

surgery on her.

•••

Milton Berle’s first wife, Ruth, came to see me once but she

introduced herself by her maiden name. She pleaded poverty, and,

sucker that I am, I did a facelift on her for far less than the usual rate. I

saw her later at a social event and she said, “I put one over on you.”

But you know, they say what goes around comes around. Maybe

that’s true, because when she died, Milton thought so much of her that

he put her on ice for a week because he was on a tour, and he didn’t

want to interrupt his busy schedule to bury her.

 Page 55

My wife, Kathie, became friendly with Berle’s second wife, Lorna,

and the four of us went out for dinner a few times. He didn’t know who I

was relative to his first wife.

I didn’t particularly cater to celebrities one way or the other. I

didn’t solicit them, I didn’t look for them. If they happened to show, that

was fine. If they didn’t, it was okay. I always treat my patients as

though they are members of the family in that I like to get to know

them. And you know, the one thing about people who are celebrities is

that they are so insecure. They are afraid that somebody will find them

out and that they will fail.

I sometimes felt the same way. I was one of the busiest plastic

surgeons in the world, with a waiting list of six months or more, and

every once in a while I thought, Don’t they know I am just little Kurt

Wagner? An immigrant? A Holocaust survivor? Don’t they know? This

won’t last.

I operated on a couple of Mickey Rooney’s wives, but he had so

many! One was my patient while she was his wife and another one

was an ex. I also operated on actress Gale Sondergard (My Favorite

 Page 56

Blonde, The Mark of Zorro, The Life of Emile Zola, Anthony Adverse)

when I was a young plastic surgeon

When I was in residency at Cedars of Lebanon, I operated on

actor Edward Everett Horton, who played second lead in the 1930s

and ’40s, most notably in several Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals

at RKO.

•••

Joan Crawford was a controlling woman. She wanted what she

wanted, and what she wanted to carry on with me a little. How old was

she at the time? Seventy. At least.

She called me “Dear Boy.” She said, “Do you still think I am

attractive, dear boy?”

“Yes,” I said, “of course.”

What was I going to say, “You look like a piece of shit, you look

like an ogre?” Truth be known, she looked pretty good. And of course, I

had thoughts about her, too — but when I was younger. Much

younger.

•••
 Page 57

In this chapter, I will recall my dealings with classic Hollywood

stars such as Ginger Rogers, Hedy Lamarr and Joan Crawford. I was

more in awe of those people because I daydreamed about them when

I was a young kid growing up. And now these people were in my

hands, and I had something to do with their future. It was an honor and

a responsibility to maintain their persona and their dignity in their

golden years. I will also discuss my intimate involvement with actress

Natalie Wood.
 Page 58

11. Liposuction, Or
“Only a
Maniac Sucks Fat Out of
a Body”
Thirty years ago, a plastic surgeon in Rio de Janeiro, Ivo

Pitanguy, was the first person I knew of who practiced what we now

refer to us “body sculpting.” It involved removing massive amounts of

tissue. The process is in vogue now after women or men lose a

tremendous amount of weight through bariatric surgery. But at the

time, we weren’t thinking about total body lifts.

Pitanguy did thigh lifts and outer thigh lifts where he removed

slabs of fat and skin and then pulled up the remaining skin like he were

pulling up a pair of trousers or panties. Then he sewed them in place. It

was a long and tedious operation, followed by the post-operative

scare; there was a limitation of activity for several weeks.

My imagination running wild, I read everything Pitanguy wrote

about his work. One day, I thought, What would happen if I made
 Page 59

smaller incisions and took a curette to go underneath the skin and free

the fat? A curette is a scraper; it looks like a little loop. I figured out that

I could improve on Pitanguy’s process by making a smaller incision,

then take the curette underneath the skin and free the fat, pulverizing it

into mush. Then I would suction out the goo, the fat. My innovation was

that we needed only little incisions, not long, scar-inducing cuts. The

results were truly amazing. I did half a dozen tests, and it was apparent

that I had hit upon something special.

One of the ladies of the night for whom I did work came to me

about this time wanting her breasts enlarged. During a pre-op exam, I

noticed that she had some extra fat leading to her moneymaker. She

asked me if I could get rid of it in some way. I thought she was a good

candidate for my new procedure. She volunteered for the procedure

and offered to sleep with me if I would do the operation free of charge.

I declined, but she negotiated with a member of my family to accept

her proposal two weeks following surgery.

Not long after that, she returned to me with an infection on one

thigh where I removed fat. I gave her antibiotics and sent her on her

way. Unfortunately for me, one of her regular customers was a lawyer,
 Page 60

and he smelled blood. The attorney sent the hooker to see a UCLA

medical professor, Dr. Frank Ashley, for his opinion on my procedure.

Ashley already absolutely hated me. He took great glee in writing to my

insurance company. “Only a maniac sucks fat out of a body.” The

insurance company settled with the lady and admonished me from

ever again using suction to remove tissue. They strongly implied that if

I did it again, I would be blackballed.

I stopped doing it for ten years, but Ashley and I were at war for

most of that time. He frequently referred people that I had operated on

to insurance companies, and I did the same to him. The insurance

companies finally asked us to stop it, because he was being

overloaded with malpractice claims.

•••

In this chapter, I will share entertaining stories from the

development of many of today’s most common plastic surgery and

reconstructive techniques.
 Page 61

12. Breasts, Boobs, Tits

and Ass

When I finished my stint in the air force in November 1996, I

gave a lecture at an American College of Surgeons meeting. I said to a

group of maybe 800 doctors that if cancer of the penis were as

common as cancer of the breast, within 45 seconds, we would have a

non-surgical treatment for it.

I was always interested in breast reconstruction because my

family was replete with people who had breast cancer. My mother,

grandmother, great-grandmother, aunts, and the like all had had breast

cancer.

Many surgeons have a sadistic feeling toward their mothers.

Maybe, I suggested, we should look at the breast from a woman’s

point of view. It’s functional; it’s fashionable. It’s a crucial part of her
 Page 62

self-identity. We’d worry more about what we cut out and would

actually give a damn about what happens afterwards.

The surgeons in the audience did not appreciate my blunt

appraisal of the state of our profession. “What gives you the right to

say something like that?” many of them thundered at me.

“I had so many one-breasted women in my family that I thought I

was being raised by Amazons,” I answered back. “And I have an IQ

over 160. I have every right to give my opinion about what we are

doing, the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

If they had had tomatoes, they would have thrown them at me.

They virtually booed me off the stage.

In the years since then, the radical mastectomy has finally

become a procedure of the past. We are now much more interested in

doing minimal surgery, and reconstruction is on the upswing.

That speech was a typical moment where I open my big mouth,

but the result was that I turned out to be more right than wrong. It just

took 30 years

•••
 Page 63

In this chapter, I’ll discuss breast enhancement and reduction. In

so doing, I’ll reveal several “A-ha!” moments from my career during

which I modified standard operating procedures and improved patient

lives. I’ll also share my experiences and personal anecdotes about

other common plastic surgery procedures including nose jobs,

microdermabrasion, eyelids, Obagi, facelifts, tummy tucks, lip

enhancement, body contouring, and buttock implants.

 Page 64

13. Kathie

I may have made many mistakes in my life but Kathie Kelley

Wagner is not one of them.

When I left Los Angeles for Oklahoma City in 1962 to start my

plastic surgery residency, my wife Barbara was sometimes sick,

sometimes crazy and completely pregnant. The only joy in my life then

was an 18-month-old daughter that we named Allison. Mostly, I was

angst-ridden about the future.

Four years later, I returned to L.A. a new man — a board certified

plastic surgeon, a veteran, and a recent widower whose two small

daughters were temporarily living with my parents in New York.

And that’s not all that was different. Many of my old friends from

Cedars had long since finished their training and developed thriving

private practices. They welcomed me back, sympathized with my

personal plight, and within one week of my arrival, I had more the
 Page 65

numbers of more than 100 ex-wives, girlfriends and mistresses that my

circle wanted me to take on or take off their hands.

My personal and professional lives merged at this point, as I

became a junior associate of a Dr. John Williams. During the day I

worked as a plastic surgeon; at night, I was hunting for the next Mrs.

Wagner.

It was a lottery kind of experience. If I dialed a number and it was

busy or didn’t answer, into the trash can it would go, because there

were plenty more where that one came from.

But the weeks became months. And while the hunt was fun, it

was not personally fulfilling. Not, that is, until another plastic surgeon,

Dr. Richard G., gave me the number of Kathie Kelley, a former

girlfriend of his brother Jack. “Here’s a good looker,” G. said, “and

pretty smart, too.”

He said it was a short-term opportunity because Miss Kelley, a

schoolteacher, was leaving soon to accept a teaching assignment from

the USAF outside of London.

I thought of Miss Kelley on August 2, 1966, when I returned

home from another unsatisfying date. Half-heartedly, I dialed her

 Page 66

number. It was quite late for cold-calling strangers, about 10:30 p.m.

Things were going so poorly, I didn’t care if she rejected me based on

the time alone. To my surprise, a lovely voice answered the phone.

“Hello, this is Kathie.”

“Hi,” I said. Of all things, I felt nervous, like a schoolboy. Me, Kurt

Wagner! I didn’t feel that way with Marilyn Monroe, but suddenly a

complete stranger made me tingly!

I proceeded to describe myself as honestly as I could, starting

with my profession and winding my way through widower, father of two

toddler girls, athletic build and, finally, “slightly balding.” I recovered

enough to add that on a scale of 10, “I’m an 8.7.”

Making certain she was still on the line, I made my pitch.

“What are you doing on August 4th?”

Hesitating slightly — who was this guy? — Miss Kelley said that

her girlfriends were throwing her a going away party that evening. Just

as my hopes started crashing, she added, “but I could meet you

afterward…”

Two days later, at 10 p.m., there came a knock on my door.

When I opened it, I found a delicious looking blonde, almost perfect in

 Page 67

face and figure. She took me in, too, slack-jawed as I was. (Maybe I

was more than an 8.7!)

Thirty-six years and many plastic surgeries on each of us later,

we still hold each other in jaw dropping admiration.

•••

In this chapter, I will discuss the various operations that Kathie

has undergone with me holding the scalpel. She is proud of my work

and equally proud of her results.

 Page 68

III. Fate Cuts In

 Page 69

14. The Sheik

My wife Kathie and I were not enjoying the best of times in 1979.

I had an affair that she uncovered and was, naturally, unhappy with

me.

At this same time, my life became entangled with Harvey Rader,

a mechanic who worked on my four Rolls Royces and whom I had

helped start his own garage. Through Rader, I also came into contact

with his roommate, Michael Luterhof. Luterhof was the chauffeur for a

Saudi Arabian sheik named Al Fassi.

Luterhof was interested in having some plastic surgery done, but

he couldn’t afford to pay in cash. Instead, he said the sheik would let

him barter some collectibles in his rarely used Beverly Hills home as

payment. (You’re probably thinking it sounds ridiculous now, but at the

time, it wasn’t all that far out from other legitimate arrangements

people made with me. In Beverly Hills, the rules really were different.)
 Page 70

Kathie, whose main intention in life at that time was to shop, saw

nothing wrong with this arrangement. In fact, she came home one day

with a list of possible items at Al Fassi’s home, and she egged me into

go there and taking a look.

There were electronics, a collection of little antique boats,

Persian rugs, a ivory boat, and an ivory tower. “You want this shit?” I

said. “I don’t want this shit.” We had an argument, and I figured well, if

she wants to have that crap when we have a divorce, she could have

it. I agreed to do Luterhof’s nose, chin and eyes, in exchange for some

boats, electronic equipment, the ivory pagoda and an ivory tusk. One

day, they brought it over, and I thought nothing more of it.

Soon thereafter, a heavy electrical storm caused my electronic

alarm system to short out and I never bothered to get it fixed. At some

point, Rader came to work on my cars. I mentioned, in conversation,

the alarm being busted and he talked about being down on his luck. I

liked Rader and tried to pump him up, suggesting he was due for good

things in his life.

Kathie and I went to a plastic surgery convention in San Diego a

few days later. Actually, I left her in San Diego that first evening and
 Page 71

went home because I had surgery scheduled the next day. My

girlfriend, Marilyn, picked me up at the airport and drove me home. We

hadn’t done anything. I showed her the “treasures” Kathie received in

exchange for my performing surgery on Luterhof. The house was

supposed to be empty; my daughters were both in school. All of a

sudden, a door opened downstairs and I heard my older daughter,

Allison, walk in.

I was embarrassed, so I ran up to the bedroom and hid my

“driver” there.

But before I knew what was happening, in walked my other

daughter, Stacy. They were not expected, and before I could respond

to their presence, the household help came in with my son, and I was

virtually trapped upstairs. I didn’t know what to do with the girl. I

couldn’t get her out.

It was a teenager’s sitcom conundrum — in reverse.

Then a friend of my daughter’s showed up and the three girls

talked and talked and talked. I finally said to Marilyn, “I can’t get you

out of here tonight. You will just have to sleep here and we’ll leave
 Page 72

after the kids take off in the morning.” We were virtually prisoners in my

own bedroom.

Somewhere between midnight and one a.m., I heard peculiar

noises, but I didn’t want to leave my bedroom. I figured the kids were

running around, back and forth. I also heard what sounded like

scraping. At six a.m., I finally got Marilyn out. But as she went out the

door, I noticed the little antique boat is missing. As is the elephant tusk

and a whole bunch of other stuff. I was robbed, no two ways about it. I

sent Marilyn off and called the police and the insurance company.

Then I went back to San Diego and picked up my wife. Of

course, I had no intention of telling my wife who stayed at the house

that night.

My mistake was that I gave the police a complete list of

everything that was stolen, which we valued at $180,000 — including

two things that came from the sheik’s house, the tusk and a boat. I

gave them pictures of everything. I also gave them the name of the

people that I thought could have done it, and that included the

mechanic, Harvey Rader, the chauffeur, Michael Luterhof, and two

other guys.
 Page 73

A policeman, in the course of the robbery investigation, said to

me, “Dr. Wagner, you live kind of isolated up here. Maybe you should

buy a gun.”

Shortly thereafter, I was arrested on Rader’s say so for insurance

fraud. The subsequent legal shenanigans were front page news in Los

Angeles for weeks.

•••

In this chapter, I’ll detail my side of the story of my encounters

with Harvey Rader, Michael Luterhof and the Sheik, and how being

robbed dimmed my candle as a rising star in Beverly Hills. It also

caused me to buy a gun. That, in turn, cost me my greatest treasure

when my daughter, Stacy, committed suicide. To this day, I don’t know

why. Maybe she couldn't find any other way to deal with the shame

and embarrassment I had brought upon my family.

 Page 74

15. A Downward Spiral

My career as a plastic surgeon and reconstructive artist rode a

rising wave of three decades’ interest in body sculpting and

subsequently hit the shore hard. Although I never lost a suit as far as

design was concerned, I personally spent more than a million dollars in

legal expenses waged over flaws in the designs of silicon breast

implants.

Why me? It probably didn’t help, in retrospect, that my wife

Kathie went on the old “Merv Griffin Show” with me, and she trumpeted

the advantages of Dow Corning inserts on national television. “Kurtie

puts you to sleep with a little bit of an anesthetic,” she told Merv, “he

kisses you and then you wake up. And you can have small, medium,

and large inserts. She even mentioned Dow-Corning on television.

Since there was no advertising for medical products at the time, that

was an unwitting boost for the manufacturer.

•••
 Page 75

In this chapter, I’ll discuss giving up plastic surgery for a time and

getting in on the ground floor of DirecTV – and getting out too soon. I

eventually became an expert witness in Florida on the subject of silicon

implant deaths.
 Page 76

16. Boca Raton

People who seek cosmetic surgery sometimes are walking on a

tightrope, a real tightrope. One of the things that a plastic surgeon has

to do is make an assessment, relatively rapidly, about the mental

capacity and the psychological capacity of the patient with whom he is

dealing. Over the years you develop a sixth sense about such people.

Most of the people coming into my office today are part of a

demanding social scene. As a result, it is hard to tell a twenty-year-old

woman who has a B+ cup that being a C+ isn’t better. Breast size is

part of the facade that attracts people — men and women. In recent

years, I turned down women who were doing porno films because they

already had such big inserts that the right one touched the left one

over the sternum! You have to stop it and say, “I just can’t do any

more; I’m afraid that your skin won’t hold any more weight.” I will also

say to a woman that I am concerned about your future because the

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weight of your breasts will causing back pain and neck problems. And

it has been shown that woman with big breasts actually have difficulty

with respiration. In order to breathe, you have to heave out your chest.

Try heaving out your chest with five extra pounds on each side.

When a woman comes in today for breast augmentation with her

husband in tow, a man drooling over the opportunity to play with bigger

tits, I sometimes put a sand belt around their necks. It weighed about

ten pounds, and I would say, “Do me a favor, take a walk down the

street wearing that.” Invariably, they all returned, slightly breathless,

and said, “I guess I understand now.” And then they would have

second thoughts about forcing their wives into the procedure.

Now that I don’t have to see twenty or twenty-five new patients a

week, and I am not burdened with the operative schedule that I had

when I was younger, I can sit back, listen and pay attention on a

different level than I did when I was forty.

•••

In this chapter, I’ll discuss my active return to plastic surgery in

Boca Raton, a city with as much money, ego and social competition as
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Beverly Hills ever did. I’ll also tell stories of the nouveau riche

wannabes.
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IV. What I’ve

Learned So Far
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17. The Man I Am Now

I miss going into Beverly Hills restaurants and signing checks. I

miss the greater limelight of my youth, the classic cars, and my

collection of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec art.

I also regret the mistakes that vanity and ego caused me to

make. The characteristics that make me a good doctor and

sympathetic to some makes me a victim of others.

Who did the first makeover on television? Kurt Wagner. Now they

have a primetime series of TV specials on ABC called “Extreme

Makeovers.” Whenever I see it, do you think I am fuming?

Of course I am! Who did the first liposuction? Kurt Wagner. Do

you see my name anywhere? No. Who made chin and cheek implants

that are used all over? Is my name there? No way. Who wrote the first

popular books on how to do plastic surgery? I did, didn’t I? And so,

what do I feel like now? Do you believe that the Plastic Surgery

Society, most of whom were once my critics and are either retired or
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dead, would give me a formal apology and a medal? I don’t think so.

When I am dead one of these days, do you know what they are

probably going to call me? The Nostradamus of Plastic Surgery. Am I

bitter? You bet your ass.

Who am I most bitter at?

Me.

I caused good things to happen in my life. I also caused the bad

things. But I take responsibility for being foolish and trusting in my life.

Ten years in analysis brought me to this point of acceptance and

understanding. We are all driven by a repetition compulsion and I no

longer blame it on someone else.

I make bad decisions because I don’t know how to say no. If you

came to me and you needed a dollar and I had a dollar, I would give it

to you. I want to be accepted and loved, perhaps because I had such a

bad relationship with my father.

I am a sucker for people’s sob stories today because when I was

three years old, my grandfather sat down with me and said, “Kurt, God

gave some people a little, he gave some people a lot, and he gave you

everything. Because of this, you have to help everybody.” I felt my

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grandfather was God, and I said, “If you say so, that’s okay.” So I was

always a sucker.

Many people have said to me, “If God had wanted you to be

different, he would have made you different.” To which I always reply,

“If God hadn’t wanted you to be different, he wouldn’t have made me.”

•••

In this concluding chapter I will summarize the highs and lows of

my life, take stock in the lessons of analysis, and peek into the future

of plastic surgery.
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