Marge Has Them Eating Out Of Her Hand

As it turns out, Schottzie is a trouper. The Dodgers are going crazy over her. Lasorda is talking to a reporter. "I told Mrs. Scott, uh, Mrs. Spott, uh, what's her name? Yeah, Schott, that I was looking forward to meeting her dog. Hey, take that Cincinnati hat off Schottzie, and put on Dodger Blue."

"She's a free agent," Marge says, "George [Steinbrenner] is trying to get her. And remember. Tommy, ladies first. I get to win tonight."

If there's anyone who doesn't need chivalry to win, it's Marge Schott. But she had to learn it the hard way. She was born Margaret Unnewehr in 1928, the second of Edward and Charlotte Unnewehr's five daughters. Her grandfather was the world's premier cigar-box manufacturer, and her father made a fortune in lumber, so that made her a really rich third-generation Cincinnati German Catholic.

Little Marge became the son her father never had, which is why he called her Butch. "My poor father," she says now, "he kept trying to have a son and he kept getting girls. People would say to him, 'What did you have?' and he'd say, 'A baby.' He wouldn't say a girl." He told her that if she would stay home, attend the University of Cincinnati and then go to work for him, he would buy her a white Packard Clipper. So she did—and he did. "I was the only one who would work for my father," she says. "When my family went into plywood and veneer, my daddy used to say I could run every machine in the place. I was Daddy's little girl." Then she met Charlie, and her life as a working woman ended—for a while.

The marriage of Margaret Unnewehr and Charles J. Schott took place in 1952. He was heir to an industrial fortune, he was German, he was Catholic and he was Cincinnati society. What more could a rich German Catholic girl ask for? Charlie bought Marge a 70-acre estate in the posh section of Cincinnati known as Indian Hills, and she settled quite nicely, thank you, into the life of a society matron while Charlie went out and, as she puts it, "beat the bushes." Marge threw fabulous parties, many of them charity benefits, and the biggest concerns of her life had to do with party decorations.

Until she found out they couldn't have children. Thai was the first blow. "I wanted to have boys, all boys, about a dozen of them," she says. It was a terrible heartache for her, and it explains, perhaps, her affinity for animals—and ball clubs. Once, when she and her mother went to Switzerland, they bought a Saint Bernard. "We got the dog back here," says Marge, "and in a week, we didn't have one Saint Bernard, we had 14, because she was, you know, a little bit pregnant. I tried to convince Charlie what a buy that was." Charlie also bought Marge an elephant, which they named Schottzie. They donated it to the Cincinnati zoo, and when it died, Marge bought the zoo another one—from the King and Queen of Denmark. That one is named Princess Schottzie.

Marge always had projects, which is what other people call hobbies. One year she made picture frames, covering them in leather to match the furniture in her husband's office. Then it was bees because she wanted honey. "Charlie said he figured that honey cost him about $500 bucks a bottle," she says. "Then I bought all steers, and if you're from the country, you know that means they're fixed. Well, the steers got the heifers pregnant. O.K., so somebody messed up. Charlie would just ignore all this. I would call him and ask him what do you think, and he would say. 'You know you're going to do what you want to anyway.' Oh, but I was so happy staying home."

Then in 1968, Charlie died. Boom, no warning, 42 years old and he dropped dead of a heart attack. "He was at work," Marge says. "When they called, it was a terrible experience. They said, 'Your husband's dead, we'll come out and get you.' By the time they got to the house I was hysterical."

She was 39, and that was the end of Marge Schott, happy homebody. It was also the beginning of Marge Schott, chairman of the board. Most of Charlie's businesses were out of town but what was in Cincinnati was the Schott Buick dealership, which never made money. She thought it might be kind of fun to run the business. Then she learned that the management at Schott Buick wanted to force her out. She had all the department heads fired, moved everybody who was left at the dealership up a notch and she was on her own. "My God," she says, "what I knew about the car business you could put in your left ear. I never bluffed so much in my life. But I did it with such conviction that everybody thought I knew what I was doing."

Well, not everybody. The boys at General Motors in Detroit refused to sign the franchise over to her because they figured a woman couldn't handle a job as important as a Buick dealership. Marge decided to stick it to them, and when the new Opel came out, instead of having it on show in the display room at the dealership, she had it delivered to her house and put it in the front hall. Says Marge, "The guys we used to get the car in the house looked like they had just come out of the drunk tank." When they finally got the car in place Marge had them pose for a picture and sent it to GM with a note that said, "These are my board members."