(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE STORY SEEMS like something out of a bizglamour potboiler. Four years ago Giorgio Inc., a privately held Beverly Hills company that long operated a Rodeo Drive boutique, began selling its own perfume for $150 an ounce. The fragrance, also named Giorgio, quickly wafted to the top of the best-seller charts in the $4-billion-a-year perfume industry. Then last year Fred Hayman, chairman and chief executive, tossed out on her ear Gale Hayman, co-owner of the company, creator of the fragrance, and until shortly before her ouster, his wife. In the latest chapter, James Roth Jr. and David Horner, two Giorgio executives who built and ran its perfume business, abruptly resigned. Meanwhile, the fragrance at the heart of the disputatious empire seems to be losing some of its allure. Gale Hayman, Fred's business partner for 20 years, spent over two years looking for the right scent and pushed her husband to get into the perfume business. Why then did he force her out of management? ''Gale and I were going in different directions,'' he says. ''It became an obstacle course, which you cannot have when you lead a big company.'' She retains a 49% voting stake in Giorgio Inc. and remains on its three-member board, but takes no part in deliberations. Of the chairman, Gale says that she ''had the instinct to sue him right after he forced me out.'' Instead, she says, she tried to work out their problems. Last year, for example, when Fred wanted to sell the company, she enlisted the financial backing of investment banker John Gutfreund, chairman of Salomon Brothers, to help her make an offer. When the bid was rejected as too low, Gutfreund got Estee Lauder to meet Fred's initial asking price. After eight months of intermittent negotiations with the Lauder company, Fred called the deal off. Giorgio Inc. is no longer for sale, he says. The departures of Roth and Horner won't help the company's prospects. Under them perfume sales increased from $15 million in 1983 to $100 million in 1985, a big chunk of Giorgio Inc.'s estimated annual revenues of around $115 million. The two ran everything from advertising to manufacturing, with little interference from the C.E.O. until he forced Gale out. ''Suddenly Fred went from talking to them once every two weeks to writing them six memos a day,'' says an insider. They resented the sudden change. They also differed with the boss on what to do about the growing softness in Giorgio's sales. Roth and Horner had worked with Gale on developing other products -- skin care lotions, candles -- based on the scent. She attributes the recent slowdown in sales to the company's failure to come up with anything new. Fred plans to reverse the downtrend by expanding the number of retail outlets where Giorgio is sold. While most successful expensive scents are carried in upwards of 1,500 stores, Giorgio is available in only 350 outlets in the U.S. and 40 in Europe. The chairman admits that it may be tough to maintain snob appeal while rolling the product out to a host of new stores. Can he do it? And what will become of Gale, who has formed her own cosmetics company and will bring out a makeup collection designed to ''save time and give instant glamour''? Gentle readers will just have to wait for the blockbuster sequel.