Madden’s ’s secret struggle Richard Johnson
STEVE Madden is so obsessed with women’s shoes, he couldn’t stay married, his ex-wife explains in the documentary “Maddman.”
There is no happy ending to Madden’s rags-to-riches story because his former director of operations,
Wendy Ballew — who fell in love with Madden while visiting him in prison — divorced him in 2015.
Ballew did not attend the Cinema Society screening of the documentary at the iPic Theater on Fulton Street, but Kelly Bensimon, designer Brian Atwood and ex-news anchor Greg Kelly did.
When Madden was sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2002 for stock manipulation and securities fraud, Ballew visited him every week as she tried to keep the company afloat. Their platonic relationship turned romantic.
Ballew joked of their first kiss: “It was so scary, I wanted to run, but I was in prison.”
When Madden gott out, the marriage crumbled. Ballew said, “It was great to have Steve in prison. It was the only time I had his full attention.”
Turns out Madden was also an alcoholic drug user until he got sober in the ’90s. Madden’s doorman describes how Madden, once up all night partying, somehow locked himself out of his apartment and had to walk stark naked through thehe lobby.
Eddie Llama, Madden’s retail-construction manager, said that when it came to drugs, “[Madden] wasn’t a weekend warrior. He was a full-time barbarian.”