50 | MARCH 7 • 2024 
J
N

ALL ABOUT PHIL AND 
COCO CHANEL STINKS
Somebody Feed Phil, a 
Netflix documentary series, 
began its seventh season 
on March 1. The host is Phil 
Rosenthal, 64. He’s best 
known as the creator of the 
big hit series Everybody 
Loves Raymond (1996-
2005). Rosenthal oversaw 
the production of the 
show and often wrote, or 
co-wrote, the show’s scripts. 
He won three Emmys for 
his scripts alone.
In the new season’s 
eight episodes, Rosenthal 
travels to Mumbai (India), 
Washington, D.C., Kyoto, 
Iceland, Dubai, Orlando, 
Taipei and Scotland. As 
in past seasons, he looks 
for local gems and makes 
connections through 
cuisine.
Rosenthal has another 
premiere: On March 
5, Just Try It, a children’s 
book he co-wrote, was 
released. The other author 
is his daughter, Lily, 25. 
She’s just begun an acting 
career. Rosenthal’s other 
child, Ben, is about 30.
Their mother is 
actress Monica Horan, 
61. She played Amy, the 
girlfriend (later wife) of 
Robert (Brad Garrett), the 
older brother of Raymond, 
the star character. She 
had a Jewish grandfather 
but was raised Catholic. 
She converted to Judaism 
before she married Phil 
(1990).
In 2021, the Jewish 
Journal of Los 
Angeles covered a lecture 
on Jewish roots and foods 
given by Phil and Lily. The 

lecture was at the family’s 
L.A. synagogue. I hadn’t 
realized “how Jewish” the 
Rosenthal family was until I 
recently read this article.
Phil told the Journal: “I 
support the temple because 
it is a place of good … My 
wife attends services more 
than I do because she 
converted to Judaism, and 
converts are always much 
more into it. They chose it, 
but I had no choice.”
Phil Rosenthal is the son 
of two Holocaust survivors. 
His parents were both born 
in Germany. Max, his father, 
fled Germany just after the 
1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, 
and he managed to get into 
America. His mother, Helen, 
moved to France and 
survived time in a French 
internment camp. Later, she 
moved to Cuba, and then 
on to New York. She met 
Max in New York.
Fans of Somebody Feed 
Phil know that Phil placed 
a Zoom call to his parents 
each season. It was a 
popular, charming feature. 
After the deaths of Helen 
(2019) and Max (2021), 
these calls ended. However, 
celeb friends of Phil kind 
of took over, and they do 
the fun Zoom calls now. 
No word on the celebs this 
season.
Max and Helen happily 
escaped death. But, if 

you take a walk on the 
dark side, you’ll find Coco 
Chanel, the famous dress 
designer. Apple TV+ 
has just foisted on us a 
10-episode series entitled 
The New Look. It purports 
to be a biography of 
Christian Dior and Chanel. 
Most serious reviewers 
(Variety, others) say that it 
is a whitewash of Chanel’s 
virulent antisemitism and 
her cooperation with the 
Nazis during the Nazi 
occupation of France.
I thought that the 
writers of the FX/Hulu 
series Feud were “wrong” 
when they invented a 1966 
documentary, that was 
never made, about Truman 
Capote (see episode 3). 
What Apple TV+ has done 
is far worse.
The whole “Chanel loves 
the Nazis” real story is 
too extensive to lay out in 
detail here. Respected critic 
Nandini Balial, writing for 
the rogerebert.com website 
(Feb. 14), takes down this 
travesty point-by-point. 
Please read it. By the way, 
Dior has an “honorable” 
real background.
Balial says even when the 
series touches on Coco’s 
bad behavior, it distorts or 
leaves out many facts. This 
is true, she writes, when the 
series covers Coco’s “worst 
thing.”

In the 1920s, Chanel 
entered into a contract with 
the Westheimers, French 
Jews who ran a prestige 
perfume company. They 
put up all the money and 
Chanel, who didn’t have to 
do anything, got 10 percent 
of the profits. She got 
greedy soon and issued 
antisemitic statements 
about her Jewish partners.
She thought she, an 
“Aryan,” could get control 
of the perfume business 
during WWII. But the 
Westheimers looked ahead 
before they fled France. 
They legally transferred 
their company to a trusted, 
non-Jewish friend. He 
transferred it back after the 
war.
In the late 1940s, the 
family made the decision 
not to take Coco to court. 
They were afraid legal 
action, in a public court, 
would expose Coco’s 
vileness and just destroy 
the Chanel brand — 
clothes and perfume. So, 
they continued giving 
Chanel a lot of money. 
The Westheimer family 
bought the Chanel fashion 
house a couple of years 
after Coco’s death (1971). 
They still own the Chanel 
Perfume lines and they still 
own the Chanel fashion 
house. 

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Phil Rosenthal

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Monica Horan

LA TIMES, 1931

Coco Chanel