A churchgoer in Maine once walked up to the late philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor and boldly asked the esteemed doyenne whether she was a lesbian.
“No, my dear,” Ms. Astor kindly replied, “I’m an Episcopalian.”
That’s according to her longtime friend, John Dobkin, former director of the National Academy of Design, bringing a brief moment of humor to the earnest trial of Ms. Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, on Monday, May 4.
Mr. Marshall, 84, stands accused of stealing from his frail mother’s reported $200 million fortune.
The wealthy high society maven wasn’t always so polite.
Referring to her son’s wife, Charlene Marshall, on one occassion, Ms. Astor once said “she’d rather have Boysie and Girlsie, her dogs, [with her on Christmas] than her son and that b-i-t-c-h,” according to her former ear doctor, Kevin O’Flaherty, who also took the stand on Monday.
Pressed as to whether Ms. Astor spelled the b-word or spoke it aloud, Mr. O’Flaherty indicated she said it outright.
Much of the testimony so far in the high-profile case has centered on Ms. Astor’s deteriorating mental condition in the years leading up to her death in 2007 at the age of 105—”throwing open the attic doors to reveal the most cringe-inducing personal details of her descent, in her final 12 years, from greatness into madness,” opined New York Post court reporter Laura Italiano in her big synopsis of the trial to this point.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that Ms. Astor was of unsound mind when she signed over some $60 million to her son Mr. Marshall.
“I recognized a deterioration,” Mr. Dobkin testified of his annual trips to visit Ms. Astor at her Maine retreat in 2000 and 2001, “comparing one summer to the other.” He recalled how Ms. Astor’s butler would drive her to feed seagulls, then take polaroids to later remind her of what she had done that morning.
Meanwhile, the ear doctor, Mr. O’Flaherty, commented about Ms. Astor’s significant loss of hearing over the years, but said he was unaware of her Alzheimer’s. Prosecutors asked about the effects of the two conditions combined. “It would be disastrous,” he said. (During cross-examination, Mr. Marshall’s defense attorney questioned whether Mr. O’Flaherty was speaking outside his area of expertise.)
Mr. O’Flaherty fondly described Ms. Astor as a bit of a flirt in her elder years. He recalled one conversation in which Ms. Astor offered to throw him a personal party at her Westchester estate, to which he could invite 10 guests. Mr. O’Flaherty, who was single at the time, asked if he could bring 10 women. Ms. Astor slapped his hand and demanded sexual equality. “There have to be five men for me and five women for you,” she told him.
After 2003, he testified, “she just didn’t seem as flirtatious as she used to be.”
Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Metropolitan Museum Director Philippe de Montebello were also expected to testify this week.
So far, jurors have heard from a prominent art dealer, haute society’s most sought-after caterer, a British Lord and the former director of the Astor family’s now-defunct charitable foundation; expected appearances by Henry Kissinger and Barbara Walters are still to come.