by Meryl Gordon
Loyal to the Marshalls, Billy took on the role of gatekeeper. Tony now required almost everyone to call him in advance for permission to visit his mother, making only a few exceptions, for the likes of Annette de la Renta and David Rockefeller. "You'd make an appointment to go see her, and then Tony would cancel, several times," says Robert Pirie. "One time I was at the door of the apartment building and my secretary called to say he'd canceled. He wanted to control who saw her." Pirie finally gave up, but his last visit was poignant. "It was so sad to see her," he says. "She wasn't properly dressed, the flowers were dead, the place looked like hell. Yuck." Equally sad for Pirie was that it took Brooke four or five minutes to recognize him, at which point she said, "We had a lot of fun together, didn't we?" Pirie, who had always teasingly called her "kid," replied, "Yeah, kid, we had a good time.'"
The elevator was broken on September 16, 2005, when I went to see Tony and Charlene Marshall at their apartment at Seventy-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue, so I walked past the garbage bins and up the back stairs to the second floor and entered through the kitchen. An elaborate silver service that appeared to have been just polished was on the table. Tony escorted me past the dining room to the front of the apartment and the sunny corner living room, decorated with comfortable chintz furniture and a spinet piano, where Charlene was waiting.
I had been asked by New York magazine, where I was a contributing editor, to write an article about Brooke Astor, who had disappeared from public view. When I telephoned Tony right after Labor Day to request an interview about his mother—having no idea that this was a potentially explosive topic—he was friendly and obligingly invited me over, saying that he would be "delighted" to talk. I learned only much later that this was right around the time that the Marshalls fired both Alice Perdue and Erica Meyer and installed Daniel Billy. There may be no connection, but Tony's warmth had inexplicably vanished by the time I arrived to talk about Mrs. Astor.
After iced tea was served, Tony abruptly announced that he had changed his mind about the interview. "I really don't want to talk about my mother," he said. "She's going to be one hundred and four next March, and I feel uncomfortable. She can't talk for herself, so I don't think I should talk for her. She has said what she wanted to say during an active life, and now is a moment of peace for her. Maybe you should have your drink and go." Perhaps to temper his brusque dismissal, he suggested an alternative. "I thought that maybe you wanted to talk to me about my life, which I would be delighted to do."
Curious about where the conversation might lead, I began plying him with questions while looking at all the framed photographs perched on the piano and bookshelves showing Tony with his mother during various stages of their lives. During the next forty minutes, Tony ended up talking volubly about his mother, or at least around her, with a mixture of pride and pique. The Marshalls' dachshund, Pichou, lay at his feet, barking whenever his master tensed. Charlene, her arms folded across her chest in disapproval, kept vigilant watch, often interrupting with a hostile word whenever I displayed too much interest in Mrs. Astor rather than Tony. She seemed to view Brooke Astor as She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
"I've had a very independent life," Tony began. Yet even as he listed his accomplishments (the Marine Corps and storming the beaches at Iwo Jima, the intrigues of the 1950s CIA, his exotic ambassadorial service under Nixon, his self-published novel Dash, and his prestigious boards), all roads led back to his mother. He mentioned that he had put aside his own career to manage the Astor money, insisting, "I was happy to do it." Even though he portrayed himself as a dutiful son, he could not resist a bit of one-upmanship, saying, "I'm on the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. My mother was never on that."
In an effort to prolong the odd conversation, I mentioned that the Marshalls did not seem to be involved in the Upper East Side social circuit, unlike Mrs. Astor; was I right? "Yes, you are," Tony replied. "My mother loved people. I love people but on a different basis. My mother had"—he corrected himself—"has lots of friends, although a lot of them are dying off." When I followed up by remarking that he and his wife were not regularly featured in the New York Times Sunday society pictures by Bill Cunningham, Charlene interjected, "No. We're not by choice."
Then Tony turned the conversation to his life with Charlene, talking with palpable enthusiasm about their experience together as theatrical producers and her involvement at Juilliard and St. James' Church. Smiling at his wife with affection, he said, "We support each other's interests." With the dachshund at his master's feet, I asked whether Pichou was a relative of the famous Boysie and Girlsie. "No," he replied. "Pichou means 'darling' in Genoese," he explained. "My mother had a house in Portofino that we went to for many summers, from 1932 until the war broke out in '39. She had a dachshund, and the staff called the dog Pichou."
Most of what I knew about Tony Marshall before this interview was derived from his mother's autobiography Footprints. Using my memory as a guide, I asked about parts of his life described in the book. The conversation remained pleasant until I brought up Brooke's admission that Vincent Astor had been jealous of the time she spent with her son. Tony became silent, and Pichou, sensing his discomfort, howled. "It must have been complicated," I ventured, puzzled by what I had blundered into. Tony started to say something, and Charlene cut him off, saying, "No comment."
Then, unprompted, Tony began to reminisce about the one family member who had given him unconditional love: Brooke's father, Major General John Henry Russell. "My grandfather was the compass of my life. Still is, although he died in 1947. He was a wonderful person—good judgment. I spent a lot of time with him," Tony said, the words pouring out in a torrent. "He wrote me a great deal, gave me very good advice on life. I was the only grandchild. He never dictated to me. He never said, 'You must do this, must do that.'"
Tony looked so animated in expressing his love that I dared to ask, "Did you feel that your family, your mother and stepfathers, were supportive of you too?" Charlene interrupted, saying, "You don't want to get into that." Tony echoed her, saying, "No, that's too close." Pichou howled again.
Eager to terminate the interview, Tony decided to wrap things up by moving to a safer family topic—his son Alec. "I love photography. One of my sons, Alec, got the bug," he said. "I gave him a camera when he was eight. He's a professional photographer, done eighty or ninety assignments for Architectural Digest. He's very good, very attentive to details." After hearing this recital of paternal pride, I asked about his other son, Philip. Tony was dismissive, saying vaguely, "He's in historic preservation. He writes, does consulting work, he teaches." There was so little affection in his voice that it was evident there was some kind of strain between the two. "Your family has worked out their own worlds?" I asked. "Very much," Tony replied. "Very much indeed."
On October 25, Tony Marshall was in his element, receiving an honor named after his grandfather, the Major John H. Russell Leadership Award, from the Marine Corps University Foundation, a group that had been launched with the aid of a $100,000 grant from the Vincent Astor Foundation in 1980. Tony had been its founding chairman, and now he was receiving its highest honor in a roomful of generals and other successful Marines. Tony gave a sentimental and self-indulgent speech, offering glimpses of himself as a ten-year-old visiting his grandfather and firing his first shot at a Marine Corps shooting range. He invoked General Russell's heroism in Guam, Mexico, and Haiti and spoke earnestly about what a powerful influence the general had been on his life. "I think of my grandfather every day and have shared stories time and again with my mother about Bulba," Tony said, using his childhood nickname for the general. Reiterating the words he had used with me, he added, "He was the compass of my life, and he set me on the right course."
It was a heartfelt and triumphant address, but in hindsight it had a note of the-right-course-not-taken sadness. This would be Tony Marshall's last unchallenged moment of glory in his brief, late-in-life season basking in public acclaim. Little did this d
istinguished-looking eighty-one-year-old man with a hint of military bearing in his posture know how far and how fast he would fall.
Daniel Billy wrote a memo to Mrs. Astor's staff on December 9, 2005, detailing who was allowed to visit: two Episcopal ministers, Mrs. de la Renta and Mr. David Rockefeller, Mr. Melhado, Ms. Barbara Walters, Emily Harding, Randy Bourscheidt, Mr. Alexander Marshall, and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Marshall. The memo stated that several former staff members were not permitted unless specifically invited: Chris Ely, Erica Meyer, Marciano Amaral, a housekeeper named Natalia Patornal, and the former chef, Daniel Sucur, and his wife, Liliane. The memo warned, "NO ONE is to be allowed on the premises without prior approval."
Tony Marshall, like any employer, might have legitimate concerns about aggrieved former employees. But for the voraciously sociable Mrs. Astor, who had spent months in her apartment with no distractions, deprived of familiar faces, this was a lonely existence. Now being treated for skin cancer with radiation and sporting unsightly bandages on her nose, she had also lost her frequent outings to Central Park. As Marciano Amaral angrily says, "If you put me inside an apartment and I don't go out, I don't see friends, I'm not entitled to do anything, it's like being in a prison. This was murder in slow motion."
Christmas at 778 Park Avenue that year was short of good cheer for Brooke Astor's staff and caregivers. Pearline Noble, who earned $20 an hour as a nurse's aide, had recently requested her first raise after two years: she was granted a mere eighty cents an hour, a 2 percent raise per year. Rounding that number up to a dollar an hour would have cost Mrs. Astor an extra $8 a week. "They said there's no way they could go over this because things are hard," Pearline says. "They didn't expect nurses would take up so much money." With her perfect (presumably inadvertent) knack for making remarks that rub salt into wounds, Charlene announced to Pearline that her own children had worked for less money at minimum-wage jobs and they had survived just fine.
The Christmas bonuses were similarly meager. Private-duty nurses on the Upper East Side, who command $50 to $70 an hour, typically receive a week's pay at the holidays, perhaps as much as $2,000. Tony Marshall showed his appreciation by giving his mother's nurses $100 each. As even one of Tony's defenders later acknowledged, "He was really, really cheap."
But Mrs. Astor's generosity knew no bounds when it came to her daughter-in-law. On December 20, Charlene wrote her a note of "heartfelt thanks" for contributing $100,000—the entire endowment—to a fledgling charitable entity, the Shepherd Community Foundation, which had the third Mrs. Marshall as its president. The lawyer Peter J. Kelley explained that Francis Morrissey had asked him to draw up the paperwork to create the foundation, in 2002, in anticipation of Brooke Astor's demise. "They could see that she was declining," Kelley says. "The will provided for a goodly part of her fortune to be put into a foundation to be set up later. So he [Morrissey] figured it would be good to set it up in advance."
Francis Morrissey appeared to have discovered a legal loophole that would allow the Marshalls to circumvent the conditions established by Terry Christensen in the first codicil to Brooke Astor's will. That codicil, which would transfer some $30 million from Vincent Astor's trust to the Anthony Marshall Fund upon Mrs. Astor's death, pointedly excluded Charlene. She could not be a trustee, and the fund would cease to exist when Tony died. However, if Tony's foundation wanted to give millions to a charitable foundation run by Charlene, there was no legal stricture preventing him from doing so. Now, thanks to that $100,000 infusion, Mrs. Marshall, the president of the Shepherd Community Foundation, could write her own charitable checks: the Juilliard School received $12,500, and St. James' Church benefited too. Just as Brooke had burnished the Astor name with her philanthropic gifts, Charlene was on her way to enhancing the Marshall name as well as her own social standing.
While Roger Williams University was on winter break in early January 2006, Philip Marshall used his precious free time to head into Manhattan to visit friends and his grandmother. When he was in New York, he usually stayed either with his brother in Ossining or in the basement of his friend Tenzing Chadotsang's home in Queens. Despite his pedigree, he had never felt comfortable on the Upper East Side. The Chadot-sangs, devout Buddhists, had a prayer corner in their brick home where Philip would perform his devotions along with the Tibetan family. His hosts were mystified by the formality of his relationship with his father, since they could not believe that he had to make an appointment to see Tony. As Tenzing Chadotsang put it, "If I want to see my father, I show up."
When Philip went to see his grandmother on Park Avenue, he arrived late in the day, when he assumed that his father and Daniel Billy, Jr., would not be on the premises. "I did not want my father to be chaperoning," he said. He usually did not linger. "My grandmother was a twenty-minute visit, because she'd fall asleep," he said. "Sometimes I'd just sit there. What do you do with someone who is a hundred and four years old? You hold their hand, you give them a very gentle foot massage. You say 'I love you' a lot and make kissing sounds. My grandmother liked that."
Brooke no longer greeted her visitors in the red-lacquered library. Now her days were spent in the blue room, a sitting room adjoining her bedroom. Decorated with a floral tapestry rug, a pink-and-blue chintz couch, blue drapes, an antique mirror, and a framed dog painting, it had become a bit of a jumble, with books piled every which way and wear and tear evident on the furnishings. Brooke ate her meals there, watched Animal Planet on the ancient 13-inch TV, and dozed on the couch. On this visit, Philip sang children's songs to her; she smiled sweetly in response, closed her eyes like a child who has heard a comforting lullaby, and drifted off.
As Philip was leaving, he chatted with Pearline Noble and greeted Minnette Christie when she arrived for her shift. There was no overt agenda, just a chance to show his concern and appreciation by asking a few questions about his grandmother's life. Rarely have such pleasantries provoked such an outpouring. Emboldened by Philip's interest and fortified by each other, the nurses seized the moment and expressed all their frustrations and fears.
"Minnette said my grandmother was only going to the doctor once a month, and she wasn't going outside at all," Philip explains. The nurses complained that Tony had turned down their requests for equipment, from a hospital bed to an air purifier. They mentioned an unusual year-old memo from Erica Meyer instructing them not to call 911 immediately if Mrs. Astor had a medical emergency but to contact people on an attached list instead. The women claimed that the household was a shambles because no one was in charge and Daniel Billy was too polite to enforce a semblance of discipline. As a result, Boysie and Girlsie were not being walked regularly, with predictable results. Minnette said that she had complained to Dr. Pritchett that Mrs. Astor was being fed the same meal of leftovers four days a week. Tony and Daniel Billy had been told and had demanded that the cook make fresh meals daily, but those instructions had promptly been ignored.
There was more, much more. Minnette and Pearline also mentioned the curious ubiquity of Francis Morrissey. On the one hand, the lawyer had always gone out of his way to be kind to the staff, even handing Pearline $100 when she complained about how poorly she was being paid. At the same time, the nurses could not forget Mrs. Astor's distress before and after every meeting with Morrissey and the other lawyers.
The two women believed that they were blowing off steam and did not expect to be taken seriously. "We weren't saying anything bad about anyone in the family," Pearline later insisted. "Things were not getting done. We weren't trying to set the son against the father, never."
Philip walked out of Brooke's apartment in a daze. His father and Charlene either were not paying attention or were callously ignoring obvious problems. The nurses, who knew they were risking their jobs if their words were seen as disloyal, seemed motivated by genuine concern for his grandmother. Baffled as to what to do next, Philip needed a confidant who could put the nurses' words in a larger context. The obvious candidate was Chris Ely, who eagerly met Phil
ip in Manhattan the next day at the Pershing Square Café, across from Grand Central Station. Unlike their conversation a year earlier, after Ely had been fired, this time the former butler spoke bluntly about Tony and Charlene and their "meanness" to Mrs. Astor. As Philip remembers, "Chris egged me on. He was really angry."
At the Chadotsang home, Philip telephoned other members of the Astor staff who had been fired by his father. He hit pay dirt with a call to Alice Perdue, who was relieved that someone was interested in hearing her tale about financial irregularities and odd disbursements from Mrs. Astor's accounts to Tony and Charlene. "I thought, 'Oh, good, I can tell someone,'" Perdue says. Philip also reached Lourdes Hilario, the remaining bookkeeper who handled Mrs. Astor's accounts, and she was also willing to talk. "By the time I left Manhattan," Philip says, "I knew that things were much worse than I could ever have imagined."
At home in South Dartmouth, Philip ran a Google search on Morrissey and immediately found the 1993 New York Times article detailing the attorney's ethics problems surrounding his fee dispute with Mar Oil. Why would Tony hire a lawyer with such a history? "It was really tearing Philip up," says Toby Hilliard, Philip's prep school friend, who lives in New Mexico. "I spent hours on the phone with him. I was a good sounding board, since I was far away from the scene."
As a professor of historic preservation, Philip's specialty is paint-chip analysis, in which decades of grime and multiple coats of paint are scraped away to determine the original color and chemical formula. State agencies wishing to know the original color of bridges, railroad stations, and historic landmarks seek Philip out. Applying his skills at historical documentation to his grandmother's life, he tried to learn as much as he could about her medical and financial history. Although Tony's main office was at 405 Park Avenue, he kept a computer and some files in Daniel Billy's office in Brooke's apartment. On a return trip to New York, Philip, feeling a trifle ridiculous in this cloak-and-dagger role, went sleuthing. He snapped photographs of the peeling paint on the window frames and the stained carpets—signs of neglect—and poked around the fifteenth-floor office.