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 The city still in the post-holiday quiet
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| Side view mirror, 3rd Avenue and 81st Street. 8:15 PM. Photo: JH. |
January 7, 2010. Cold and sunny winter days in New York. Traffic picking up but the city still in the post-holiday quiet.
Casey. While waiting for the coroner’s report, private speculation is that the woman’s death was accidental – as in an-accident-waiting-to-happen – the simple result of mismanagement of meds. No drugs were found on the scene, and no signs of foul play. She may have overslept and missed an insulin shot. It may have been that simple in the final analysis.
Casey had type 1 diabetes and struggled with it through out her lifetime. Her family has been an important part of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for decades. Her father has been a tireless advocate for diabetes research, and Casey wrote a book on the subject in the 90s with her parents. Type 1 diabetes is an insidious disease, and, according to those who work with it, it most certainly added to the difficulties she encountered throughout her life. There are many families across the country coping with this disease. The burden it inflicts is relentless.
The condition itself was a natural opposing force to a lot of her personal choices. Furthermore she was a user of a lot of prescription drugs that are used “recreationally,” to put it nicely (and absurdly).
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| Casey Johnson. Photo: Patrick McMullan. |
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She was not the first diabetic to “use” nor would she have been the last. She’s just one we happen to read about because of all the ballyhoo around her life, and most specifically her family money. Prescription drug addiction is publicized because of the party atmosphere associated with it, but even then it most always was regarded reproachfully. We rarely acknowledge that “temptation” as it exists in the human condition is commonplace, ordinary. Some resist, others can’t.
There are a lot of non-party people out there who are actively using. And many are also parents. A lot of the kids first start down that road by going through parents’ or friends’ parents’ medicine cabinets, and helping themselves -- to what they naively think is just “a high.” Beginning of story, and end. Smart parents lock up their meds even if they trust their own children.
We can speculate on what someone with a strong sense of self, with a healthy self-respect might have done in her situation, considering her genetic chronic condition, her financial background, her parentage, and the time in which she lived and the location. It’s idle speculation and often has little to do with reality.
Meanwhile, from another part of the same forest (L.A.). Actor/director/ photographer/sculptor/art collector Dennis Hopper is very ill battling cancer. He was first diagnosed with prostate cancer a decade ago; was treated, and it went into remission. More recently the cancer has spread and his condition has worsened noticeably.
Dollars and sense. The situation in the Hopper household had been under something of a cloud for sometime, with the husband complaining that his wife was indifferent to him. It was exacerbated when the current Mrs. Hopper, Victoria, wife number five, presented the husband with a list of the art works in the household that she believed belonged to her.
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| Dennis and Victoria Hopper at the wedding of John Goldstone and Marin Hopper at Tony Duquette's Dawnridge in Beverly Hills, 2003. Photo: JH. |
Dennis and Victoria Hopper at a screening of ELEGY, August 2008. Photo: Patrick McMullan. |
The Dennis Hopper art collection is one of the most important collections of contemporary art in America today. He began collecting a decade before his wife was born (she was born in 1968), and it is also a substantial part of the man’s estate.
On hearing his wife’s request, evidently surprised by her claim of ownership, while getting his affairs in order, he removed her as executrix of his estate, and replaced her with his eldest daughter Marin Hopper (with his first wife, Brooke Hayward). Marin is separated from her husband and living with their daughter on another part of the Hopper property in Venice.
The change evidently did not go down well with the missus, who, it is said, went out and got herself a lawyer and demanded that the Will be read now. No waiting around. This unusual request was granted and it was done. From it, it was learned what she and each of the man’s children were receiving, her share being the largest. Fair and equal.
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| Victoria Hopper, Brooke Duchin, Dennis Hopper, and Dagny Corcoran, 2003. Photo: JH. |
Nevertheless, the stress around the house from this matter was very difficult for the man who is very ill. His doctor advised him to get away for a rest from the marital storms (Mrs. Hopper is said to be quite volatile). He moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel, although after less than a week, his condition worsened and he had to be hospitalized.
During this time, about a week before Christmas, Mrs. Hopper allegedly hired a truck and with the assistance of (her) relatives, removed a number of pieces of art (those which were on her List of personal possessions), household items, as well as the sterling. As well as herself and the daughter. For destination unknown to the husband.
Over the Christmas holidays, he had to be hospitalized again. His wife returned.
Will You Love Me In December As You Did in May? -- the title of an American popular song written more than a century ago. In the late atomic age, it remains the eternal question, although the context has been “updated.”
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| Lauren Hutton with Dennis and Victoria Hopper at LACMA Opening Celebration of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, February 2008. |
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Dennis Hopper and Victoria Duffy were married fourteen years ago this year. She was in her late 20s and he was just 60. She had the reputation among their friends for being a spender. However, he had a reputation for once upon a time being wild and had long since settled down. He was also known to be very rich, having built a fortune first created from his “Easy Rider” which also made him a star, and from his brilliant art collection.
In the past few years of the marriage, the actor had made it known to friends that he felt his wife was indifferent to him but was always busy with her own interests. A common complaint in such a marriage, not to mention many marriages. Last summer when he was again not feeling well, but shooting a film in the Southwest, he rented a house big enough for everybody to share but the Missus went off to the shores of the Hamptons and rented herself a house to enjoy the salty seaside air.
After the business of the removal of possessions last month, and the disappearance of the wife and the daughter to places unknown for several days, Mrs. Hopper returned to the domicile and, it is said, apologized to her husband.
The removed possessions have, as of this telling, remained removed. Mr. Hopper is evidently very upset about this but since they are a married couple sharing the domicile, the only way he can discover their whereabouts or get them returned is by filing for divorce. Which he does not want to do at this very late date in his life. The couple are now living under one roof. Mrs. Hopper’s mother has also come to stay, and they, mother, daughter, granddaughter, it is said, sleep behind locked doors in the domicile. The house of Easy Rider.
Ahh Fame, Oh Fortune! |
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