Thursday September 12, 2024. Another beautiful weather day in New York with temps in the 70s and cooling down to the low 60s at night. Can only be grateful for it.
Over the years (decades) I’ve acquired a massive collection of photographs which I have saved for many reasons. Personal photos, party pictures, newspaper clippings, screen shots, and everything in between.
There’s always someone or something interesting to get my attention, reminding me of the story behind it. Like this one of Tony Marshall, the son of Brooke, Mrs. Vincent Astor, by her first husband; with his wife Charlene at his trial when he was accused of embezzling money from his mother who at the end of her life had Alzheimer’s. After a trial of eight weeks, he was found guilty and sentenced to jail.
Marshall’s life as the only child of Brooke was not easy. She later claimed that she’d been raped by her first husband (she was in her mid-teens when she married him), and had very little interest in the child. It was a not uncommon manner in which she treated the child. He remained her “child” although her attentiveness was often neither motherly or affectionate. Nevertheless, he grew up as her only child, taking the last name not of his birth father — her first husband — but of her second husband Charles Marshall, a New York socialite, whose name she gave to her son Tony.
After twenty years of marriage, Marshall died suddenly of a heart attack. Soon thereafter, Brooke, now age 50, was looking for a good husband, preferably with the social (high) and financial background of her late husband.
She had also had several affairs during that marriage including a longtime affair — over several years — with a famous Hollywood actor who was also married throughout the time of their affair. It had occurred to her that perhaps they could then marry if he divorced his wife. Also a man in his early 60s, he decided it was too late to go down that road.
It was during that time that she heard that Minnie Cushing Astor was going to divorce Vincent. When Minnie told Vincent of her intention he responded by telling her that he wouldn’t agree to a divorce until she, Minnie, found him a new wife. Word soon got around.
Vincent Astor, then in his late 50s, was not a popular socialite. He regarded himself as something like a royal compared to his friends, and relayed the message by the way he treated others (obnoxiously). He also had a major drinking problem, a bottle of … before lunch. His problem got worse with time and he occasionally checked into a private hospital in Connecticut to dry out.
He had checked in during the time of Minnie’s planned departure.
It so happened that the widow, Brooke Marshall, who coincidentally lived only one block away on Gracie Square, also had heard about the Astor marriage break-up and Vincent’s stay up in Connecticut. She had not been part of the Astors’ circle, so she did not know Vincent. She decided to volunteer to assist his hospital’s service in looking after their “patient.” Shortly thereafter, she met her next husband and Minnie was free at last.
It was there in Connecticut that the relationship took hold. Vincent dried out and briefly recovered from his alcoholism while in Brooke’s understanding and listening. So, while Minnie was still in residence, he invited Brooke to meet her and propose marriage. And so it was.
It was the marriage that made Vincent Astor’s widow a very wealthy woman. Contrary to some reports, Vincent’s fortune was going basically to charity. It was extensive and he was very generous about assisting the living and health of the very poor. His will basically spelled the end of the Astor wealth in America: he gave it away.
However Brooke was well cared for, and her son for many years managed his mother’s assets very successfully increasing it despite her own spending, which was notable. His mother now lived and spent like a woman of wealth. For that he was paid a fee. At the time of her death he had increased the size of her largesse enormously. Of course he took his fee.
The case brought against him for mismanaging his mother’s estate was the work of some of Mrs. Astor’s “friends,” with some “major” New York names (and money) behind it, including one of his sons by his first marriage. Looking out for mankind.
The photo of Anthony and Charlene Marshall was taken right after he had learned about his fate — of years in jail for stealing from his mother’s estate. He actually went to jail although was hospitalized immediately thereafter because of a serious health issue, and so he was released to go home. He lived another year, and died.
Ironically in his own life, with first wife and children and later with Charlene, he was surrounded by people with overriding self-interests usually having to do with money. Ain’t we got fun!
Then there’s the photo of these two women Marlene Dietrich and Ann Warner, the wife of movie mogul Jack Warner (of the Warner Brothers) having an exceptionally private (at a Hollywood party in a restaurant) word about somebody they both know. OR: did Dietrich just ask Mrs. Warner if she can get something in her (Dietrich’s) eye that is bothering her.
Most notable was the photographer of this photo, Jean Howard, a longtime Hollywood beauty who was discovered by Louis B. Mayer, the Mogul of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when she was appearing in the early 1930s in the last edition of the Ziegfeld Follies, and fell madly in love with her (and threatened to kill himself by jumping out of a hotel window in Paris when she turned him down).
Jean shortly thereafter married an up-and coming and handsome and important agent/producer Charles Feldman instead. She left her “career” but became an internationally famous Hollywood social queen. Worn quietly, as was her manner, but with a certain charm (and class), this Texas girl whose father was a traveling salesman in the 1920s came to know the world at her doorstep.
She became a major social hostess in Hollywood/Beverly Hills where her parties were memorable because of the guestlist and the talent and the hospitality of the hostess.
An example was the party she gave in summer of 1960 on the night of the Democratic Presidential Convention when John F. Kennedy had been chosen as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in Los Angeles.
JFK couldn’t make Jean’s party until around midnight when he showed up, nominated and feted, finally having made his way to Jean Howard’s door (and not for the first time) where tout Hollywood was having a great time celebrating him.
Jean had divorced Charles Feldman about fifteen years later. He remarried to another beautiful woman but remained generous and caring with his ex-wife for the rest of his life. He allowed her to continue the grand and glamorous social life and travel that she had with him, even years later, after she remarried Tony, a guitar player she once met when he was appearing in a café on the island of Capri where Jean was a houseguest of Countess Mona von Bismarck.
In those years beginning with her first marriage, Jean studied and became a very talented photographer. She eventually published three beautiful collections of her life and surroundings and famous friends.
The two woman, Dietrich and Warner, having an intense tete-a-tete in the photo knew Jean and knew she was taking the photograph. So this being Hollywood, there’s a good chance that it was staged, giving it some mystery for the always curious about Hollywood.
Jean lived into her 90s, outliving the ladies in her photograph. Although friend Ann Warner left her a trust in her will to assure fresh beautiful flowers for her house at all times.
And now, today, these days, for “denouement” I can resist in this photo that I received last week from my friends Sassy Johnson and Stephen. Which as you can see is a ceremony of their marriage — which occurred on the QEII a couple of weeks ago.
They’ve been together for more than a few years now. They met when a couple, friends of hers, had invited a business associate of the husband who was recently widowed, and they needed a fourth to make it a nice dinner.
Sassy had told me about it because she wasn’t particularly interested in meeting anyone, including “some widower.” And he was the recently widowed. But out of respect for her friends who’d invited her, she attended.
And it turned out, he was nice and she liked him, which surprised her. And he liked her. And asked if he could take her to dinner. And they went. And she actually liked him, more than she’d thought. And evidently he was of the same mind.
Shortly thereafter they were dating frequently. And one day he very honestly told her that because he was such a recent widower, his children thought he should play the field and meet the world before “getting serious.” His children, all adults with children.
So being the straight forward and honest good father and character that he is by nature, he told her his situation.
It also so happened that Sassy had kind of liked him a lot. But being the sensible and mature and kind of woman that she is, she told him that if he felt he should look around, then by all means, he should. But if he felt he should, he shouldn’t bother to call anymore. She was not a kid, but she was too old for Back and Forth.
So, he didn’t. Bother to look around. And that was several years ago where they have been living together VERY happily. They lived in her apartment until one day they decided they needed something with a little more space, and they moved to their apartment which they love even more. And then one day, I guess; they decided to go all the way to Marriage-type love. And so it was.
And when I received this picture, I could only think: now there’s the REAL story. Really and truly. Two smart kids knew best.
