Another part-time sunny day

Looking south along The Great Lawn. 2:30 PM. Photo: JH.

September 30, 2009. Yesterday was another part-time sunny day in New York with rain clouds hovering but disinterested with colder air coming in as the sun was setting.

Yesterday afternoon at 4:30 JH went over to Central Park at 104th where Patsy Tarr and Jeff Tarr were inaugurating their Tarr Family Playground for the little ones of New York who will someday remember their earliest happiest times playing in Central Park at the Tarr Playground. Readers know Patsy as one of New York’s premiere dance philanthropists and supporters. Her husband Jeff is a private investor. Both husband and wife are always thinking of ways to share with their good fortune with the community in ways that will enhance lives.

Jeff and Patsy Tarr with daughter Jennie Tarr Coyne.

Jeff Tarr, Jr. with wife Amy and daughter Gigi (playing with her pa's eyeglasses).

Jeff and Patsy Tarr with Tom Gold.

Doug Blonsky addresses the crowd.

Adrian Benepe, Tom Kempner, and Doug Blonsky.

Doug Blonsky presents Patsy and Jeff with a photograph of The Tarr Family Playground.

The unveiling of The Tarr Family Playground ...

Adrian Benepe, Patsy Tarr, Tom Kempner, Doug Blonsky, and Jeff Tarr

The Playground, already in good use, even on a cold, overcast Autumn day.

Word was going around in the afternoon that the Astor jury were about to return a verdict. As of this writing (after midnight 9/30), I don’t know if that’s a rumor or not but the networks were getting ready. CBS Morning News interviewed me about the case briefly last week at Michael’s. ABC-TV interviewed me for a special hour they are doing on the trial when it’s finished. That’s more in depth.

Most people I know assume Anthony Marshall is guilty and that he did it all for his wife. Most people I know suspect anybody who’s put on trial when it comes to money, be it a will or a corporate matter. It’s ironic when you think about it: most people suspect others and yet would never expect to be “suspected” themselves.



	Anthony D. Marshall and wife Charlene Marshall depart the courtroom last week (John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times).

I don’t know if Mr. Marshall is greedy or avaricious although if he’s like the rest of us, he’s probably had his moments. I know that he’s been a generous friend to certain people. I don’t mean in an extravagant way. So I don’t know, obviously, what happened.

This has been a trial about a mean, vicious overweight woman who apparently hasn’t got an innocent bone in her body. I’m talking about Charlene Marshall, as seen through the eyes of firstly Brooke Astor herself, and then, in a domino -like effect, in the eyes of everybody else who knew Brooke Astor, until now she is a public pariah thanks to all the brilliantly perceptive experts on human personality that dominate the media today.

I’m very skeptical of public opinion which is informed by these aforementioned experts. In this case it began with a very indiscreet mother-in-law. Whether you like to think of her that way not, Brooke Astor, maybe a typical mother-in-law, was for years unkind and off-handed about her daughter-in-law. That must have been an embarrassment (not to mention hurtful) to her son. Others are not fazed by that kind of embarrassment, as long as it’s not them.

Furthermore, the players in the world of Brooke Astor are anything but angelic. And when it comes to greed and avarice, we’re now talking Derby winners. Charlene Marshall was a mere workhorse, and, mind you, regarded pretty much as that by Mrs. Astor’s circle. In other words: Not Our Kind. This kind of behavior is commonplace in that world, even ordinary. Read Edith Wharton. She never exaggerated and it remains la même chose.

So. I don’t know about Charlene Marshall because I don’t know her. A couple of years ago when this whole case started, and I first wrote about the Astor women, I wrote something about Charlene Marshall that someone told me had angered her. Whether or not that was true, one night in Swifty’s not long after, she walked by my table on her way out, and threw me what I interpreted as a dirty look. I knew that I hadn’t written anything nasty about the woman but I understand that people handle the public arena in different ways, and she’s not the first person who didn’t like something I’d written about them.

Carrying Mrs. Astor coffin down the stone steps of St. Thomas'.

However, the only real evidence that is apparent to me with Charlene Marshall is that she’s been married to her husband for seventeen years and he evidently simply adores her. If this were a novel, it would have been a happily ever after for the man whose mother was less than nice, a lot less ... and a mother who stuck around for eighty-two years. That’s a long time to have a mother who was not much in the loving mom department. So Charlene Marshall made up for it to the dear boy. So much so that it was even undeniable in the courtroom.

There is other stuff that has come up around the players in this case although it has not come out. I’ve been told, for example, that when Anthony Marshall divorced his first wife, the mother of his children, in the divorce settlement his children (by that wife) automatically inherit his estate on his death. That could be a practical explanation for why Mrs. Astor did not leave a substantial part of her fortune to her grandsons. Perhaps, that is even why Mr. Marshall turned the Northeast Harbor property over to his wife – because there wasn’t going to be anything for her at the end.

These are things that wealthy people with multiple marriages think about. I also don’t know anyone who doesn’t have something terrible to say about the stepmother/last wife if there’s money in the equation. The only exceptions I know are Michael Thomas who adored his stepmother Poppi (a close friend of Brooke Astor), and Brooke Hayward who loved her stepmother Slim. (Thomas and Hayward were a first marriage for both, coincidentally).

Charlene Marshall speaking to the rector with her husband Tony Marshall on her right (white hair).

Usually there’s a hostility in the mix. The last wife notices it because she’s the target. A friend of mine married to a very rich man, who appears to be very generous to her, told me that she knew that her husband’s grown children would be inheriting his estate, not her, and furthermore her stepchildren hate her, so that’s that.

Anyway, it’s almost over. Yesterday in New York magazine, Frances Kiernan, Brooke Astor’s biographer, wrote about running into Charlene Marshall in the ladies room in the courthouse. You see, the woman can’t even go to the bathroom. Ms. Kiernan’s report reiterated the “Miss Piggy” reference, just in case you’ve forgotten.

Kiernan writes: “According to the prosecution, all the changes in Tony’s mother’s will and all the money siphoned off from her fortune were to ensure that Charlene would be well provided for after his death. Without her none of this would have happened." (my itals).

Ms. Kiernan recounts several anecdotes about Charlene Marshall’s tendency to hug people on greeting or departing. These anecdotes continue to ridicule the woman’s behavior, lightly arousing more suspicion. Reading it I couldn’t help thinking that Charlene is, if nothing else, naïve. By now she should know. You’d think after what she’s been put through by armies of people who don’t even know her, that she would not talk to strangers, especially people she knows are writers and reporters. She can’t win; she’s lost that one forever. It’s a story for hacks now.

Some of the funeral guests included Charlie Rose, Whoopi Goldberg, Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelly, former Mayor Dinkins, Paul LeClerc, Gregory Long, Randy Bourscheidt, all visible in this photo.

She quotes Mrs. Astor’s butler Chris Ely about the hugging. Strike. Then she closes with a quote from Mr. Marshall’s son Philip – the one who claimed that his grandmother had promised him part of the Maine property – the property which now belongs to that serial-hugger-of-mean-ole-Charlene. Philip Marshall described his stepmother as candy coated poison pill.

I don’t know about you but I’m laughing. The real candy coated poison pill in this story is The Money. The Astor Money. I can never resist thinking that if that unsinkable Titanic had not gone down in the North Atlantic in April 1912, this trial never would have happened. Simply put: If Vincent Astor’s father, JJAstor IV had returned safely to New York and lived for even just another six months, he’d have lived long enough to see the birth of a second son, John Jacob Astor VI. That son’s presence would have changed all the arithmetic in the Astor estate and there would still be Astor heirs today. Brooke or no Brooke. Charlene or no Charlene.

But then, in life there are icebergs. More to follow. The story of the characters around this trial is a story that has not been told, although eventually it will be.

Meanwhile, yesterday in New York. At eight o’clock I went down to Feinstein’s at the Regency to hear my friend Yanna Avis in her debut in that room. Yanna is a chanteuse, “an exotic international chanteuse,” as she’s been described elsewhere.

She’s Parisienne by birth. A number of years ago she married the Rent-a-Car tycoon and industrialist Warren Avis. They cut a wide swath in the international high life here, in Europe and Acapulco where Warren had been a long time resident. Yanna put aside her career in the early part of her marriage. Although encouraged by Warren, she eventually began to pursue and develop it.

I’d seen her perform several times in cabaret, but last night was the first time I’d seen a complete finished act with a set of songs and a theme. And it was like the words Mr. Porter had written, “the bubbles in a glass of champagne ....” A very good time.

La chantouze is how she sometimes signs her notes to me. It also is the theme. The songs are a mixture of some familiar melodies with French lyrics, some familiar old American tunes – not so much the Broadway standards -- and a very intimately delivered monologue of the chantouze.

Yanna’s delivery is almost tongue in cheek. She moves. She gets up on the piano, she reclines; she’s back on her to feet and looking right at that spot, that audience of one whom she’s addressing and singing too (when she’s not singing to the rest of us). Her sense of humor is playfully sultry and sometimes self-parodying. Yanna in life has a very sunny disposish. She is very much the femme fatale, but she is also serious, the actress.

People who know her love her for this. Her show was like that. It’s authentic, and last night there were a lot of her friends in the opening audience. They loved her for it.

After Yanna’s show, I ran over to Doubles in the Sherry-Netherland. I’d hoped to get there earlier for a black tie dinner Carole Holmes was hosting for her mother Arlene Dahl and Marc Rosen who were celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary. By the time I’d arrived they were already having dessert. So I decided to take a seat away from the diners and watch.

It was a quiet, elegant party, candelit, with one long beautiful table. Everyone around the table, I recognized as close friends of the couple, such as Randy and Connie Jones, Tom and Diahn McGrath, Sharon Sondes and Geoffrey Thomas, Bob and Barbara Taylor Bradford, Rex Reed, Jane Powell and Dickie Moore, Suzanne Mados.

The conversation was quiet but lively. To the side was a man in black tie was playing American standards on the guitar. All of a sudden someone broke out singing one of the songs – a Rodgers and Hammerstein tune from Oklahoma. Soon it was a warm chorus. There were some ordinary voices and some beautiful voices in the mix and although it was quiet-ish like the conversation, they soon were accompanying the guitarist with every tune.

A few minutes later, desserts and coffee finished, the night was over.

A black tie dinner at Doubles that Carole Holmes was hosting for her mother Arlene Dahl and Marc Rosen, celebrating their twenty-fifth anniversary.

More last night: Christie's hosted an Elle Décor Young Collectors' Night to drum up interest for its latest Interiors sale.

The auction house has 10 Interiors sales per year, and they are positioned as the perfect way to find tasteful estate furniture to fill your apartment. Unlike other Christie's auctions, the price point starts at $500 and 90 percent of the items are offered without reserve, making the Interiors sale the closest thing to a retail store offering you'll ever find at the venerated auction house.

Margaret Russell, John Jonas Gruen, and Ginette Lospinoso

Margaret Russell and Amy Rosi

Last night's event was one of the four times a year that Christie's partners with Elle Décor magazine to host an event targeted at their joint audience, a combination of decorators, dealers, and collectors.

Among the crowd was Elle Décor Editor-in-Chief Margaret Russell; Deborah Russell, chief brand officer of Elle Décor and Metropolitan Home; designer Kara Mann; designer Zang Toi; photographer John Jonas Gruen (who befriended writers and artists including Jackson Pollack, John Steinbeck, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, and whose 1959 photographs are being featured in the auction); and Deborah Buck.

-SD