Crazy Eddie

Because the two most recent and visible examples of this TV phenomenon happen to be Joan Rivers and Joan Collins, let's name Bianculli's newest, nastiest Law of Television after them. Call it "the Joan Effect," and watch out - it has no mercy. What is the Joan Effect? Basically, it's what happens when the media and public, having conspired in chicken-and-egg fashion to turn someone into a megastar, suddenly reject the hurricane of hype - and, almost as quickly, the star at its center.

The boom-box blare of consumer electronics competition will leap into the high-decibel range when Crazy Eddie, New York's hottest home entertainment huckster, takes the plunge into the Philadelphia marketplace. The first Crazy Eddie store in this area is scheduled to open in the Cherry Hill Mall in late September or early October. The chain, with 23 stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, also will open in Princeton this fall. Although Crazy Eddie's public persona is a bigger-than-life front man whose screaming, obnoxious TV commercials have been known to offend even the most hardened New Yorkers, the real Eddie Antar - company chairman, president and chief executive - is an intensely private person who refuses all interviews and even ducked photographers at the company's annual meeting.

"Crazy Eddie" Antar, the jailed electronics tycoon, yesterday won himself and his brother a new trial for an alleged $121 million stock swindle. In overturning the convictions of Eddie and Mitchell Antar, a unanimous three-judge federal appeals court in Philadelphia said the judge who presided over their trial in 1993 gave the appearance that he was biased against them. The U.S. 3d Circuit Court of Appeals panel noted that U.S. District Judge Nicholas Politan, at a sentencing hearing last year, made a statement the tribunal found to be especially offensive.

Crazy Eddie, at least one Crazy Eddie, lost his name in federal court yesterday. Not "Crazy Eddie" Antar, chairman of New York's $250-million-a-year, 31- store Crazy Eddie electronics chain, newly arrived in Philadelphia with stores in the Northeast and Cherry Hill. But "Crazy Eddie" Barkowitz, the owner of Crazy Eddie's Surplus store at 22nd Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia. He sells all sorts of closed-out, used, and discontinued goods ranging from groceries to building supplies - and hopes to hit revenue of $1 million this year.

Crazy Eddie, the electronics retailer that opened in the Cherry Hill Mall late in September, has decided to move into Philadelphia and will open its first store in the Boulevard Plaza Shopping Center. The chain hopes to open its new 17,000-square-foot store at Roosevelt Boulevard and Haldeman Avenue "in time for Christmas," and is actively seeking other Philadelphia-area leases, said Crazy Eddie spokesman Ed Collotin. The new store will be part of the shopping center developed by Wilbur Breslin Associates.

The bidding for Crazy Eddie, the consumer electronics firm, just got a little crazier. Entertainment Marketing, a Houston electronics distributor, this morning revealed a bid that tops an offer by the company's founder to buy back the firm he launched and then left. Entertainment Marketing made a "negotiable" bid of $8 a share in cash, or about $240 million, to the Crazy Eddie board. Crazy Eddie, which is based in New York, declined to comment. Entertainment Marketing, known for shrewd dealings in closeout electronics, has posted strong growth for four years.

"Crazy Eddie" Antar, known for the antic TV commercials that offered "insane" prices at his chain of popular electronics stores, was arrested in Israel yesterday after ducking federal authorities for more than two years. The arrest, which came without incident in a small town outside Tel Aviv, was a result of a massive stock fraud and insider trading investigation. Antar faces extradition to the United States to answer a 17-count criminal conspiracy and securities-fraud indictment accusing him of pocketing $74 million.

Autumn hues fleck the foothills of the Catskills. At the summit of Two-Mile Drive, a short, bearded man with a nub of ponytail strolls the manicured lawn. Suddenly, from somewhere within the two-story beige-brick prison walls, a voice cries out: "Crazy Eddie's prices are INSAAAANE!" Eddie Sam Antar cracks a smile. "I hear it every day," he says. Not that he is amused, or enjoys the attention. But here at Otisville Federal Correctional Institution, the medium-security prison where he began serving a 12 1/2-year sentence in May for a securities fraud that cost Crazy Eddie Inc. investors $126 million, the firm's founder and former owner is adapting.

Eddie "Crazy Eddie" Antar, the high school dropout who became a millionaire with a chain of electronics stores advertising "Insaaane" prices, was convicted yesterday of swindling thousands of investors in one of the biggest stock manipulation and insider-trading cases in history. Antar, 45, was convicted by a federal jury in Newark on all 17 counts of stock fraud, mail fraud, racketeering and conspiracy for leading a scheme to trick investors and Wall Street analysts with inflated inventory and sales figures.

A federal appeals court yesterday ordered a new trial for electronics mogul and alleged stock swindler Eddie "Crazy Eddie" Antar and his brother Mitchell, stating that U.S. District Judge Nicholas H. Politan had prejudged the case. Writing in often-blistering terms rare in an appeals opinion, the three- judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Politan "in stark, plain and unambiguous language told the parties that his goal in the criminal case, from the beginning, was something other than what it should have been and, indeed, was improper.