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 The good and the bad
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| A steam pipe in the roadway of Ffth Avenue fogs up the Guggenheim facade. 2:15 PM. Photo: JH. |
January 20, 2010. Yesterday grey, ehhh day in New York with temperatures reaching into the 40s, and the sky cast with that pale yellow tint of pollutants of the metropolis. There was rain in forecast only. By nightfall the city lights set the still dry metropolis sparkling.
I went down to the Bowery Hotel for a cocktail party of Vital Voices. Vital Voices is an international non-profit, non-governmental organization. It promotes and advocates the participation of women in leadership roles in the political processes of their societies and countries. Their stated mission is to identify, invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world.
It was started in 1997 as a US initiative. Hillary Clinton, then First Lady, was the keynote speaker at their first meeting. In her speech she pointed out that Human Rights for Women simply meant Human Rights for everyone.
Today they are at the forefront of international coalitions to combat human trafficking and other forms of violence against women and girls. They equip women with management, business development, marketing and communications skills to expand their enterprises, help to provide for their families, and create jobs in their communities. They have more than 7000 members in scores of countries across the world. These members are actively promoting women’s leadership in their communities and their countries. Within hours after the earthquake struck Haiti, Vital Voices members in that country were communicating their needs and the situation in their communities to the members in the rest of the world.
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| The Vital Voices cocktail party at the Bowery. |
Alexis Tobin, who had organized this party, introduced Alyse Nelson, President and CEO of Vital Voices who is a polished and very effective speaker for her cause, explaining how one of the differences that occurred by bringing women “to the table” brought diversity of interests and issues (both male and female) to the table. Ms. Nelson also introduced Jill Ischoll, chair of the New York Council for Vital Voices.
Last night’s Event Committee was made up of Anh Duong, Alexis Tobin, Samantha Thompson, Asia Baker, Ariane de Bonvoisin, Amanda Brooks, Whitney Dickerson, Mark Langrish, Adelaide Mueller, Bettina Prentice, Catherine Petree, Lauren Remington-Platt, Michael Volbracht and Sissy Yates. This committee represents the younger members who are actively involved in promoting the organization.
They did a great job in bringing out a good crowd of more than 150, which included Nina Griscom and Leo Piraino, Asia Baker, Peter Kostmayer, Sharon Hoge, Robert Couturier, Eric Cohler, Miranda Brooks, Sasha Heinz, Carolina Irving, Hamish Bowles, Yvonne Force-Villreal, Amanda Glendinning, Jon Hess, Greg Grimes, Joan Tobin, Ian Tobin, Adam Mahr, Richard Miner, Gregory Partanio, Stephanie LaCava, Lauren Remington Platt, Valerie Zilkha, Illy and Stuyvie Wainwright, Lynda Johnson Robb, Annie Wuerth Lieberman, Margaret Ahnert, Asher Simcoe, Helen Rosen, Duane Hampton, James Andrew, Robert Sjoberg, Gail Sheehy, Lisa Jonas, Alice Kandel, Geraldine Laybourne, Maya Hernandez, Osman Nawaz, Emmie Twombly, Roy Kean, Daisey Prince, Bettina Prentice and Dija Kane, to name only a few. |
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| Alexis Tobin and Anh Duong |
Joan Tobin, Guy Benn, Adam Mahr, and Alexis Tobin |
| Raj Tolaram, James Andrew, and Richard Miner |
Lynda Johnson Robb (LBJ's eldest daughter) |
Annie Wuerth Lieberman, Peter Kostmayer, and Duane Hampton |
| Greg Grimes, Janna Pasquel, and Siddhartha Kasliwal |
Valerie Zilkha, Eric Cohler, and Sharon King Hoge |
| Ian and Joan Tobin |
Jon Hess and Margaret Ajemian Ahnert |
Patrick McMullan and Gail Sheehy |
Meanwhile out in Hollywood, the land of dreams, schemes, the Huffington Post yesterday quoted a “family confidant” (now who could that be?) claiming that Dennis Hopper’s eldest daughter Marin is engineering “a deathbed divorce” for her father and “sending out lies to the media to try to bleed extra millions out of his sizeable estate.”
Ho-hum bunkum, as they say.
The same item reported that Hopper has only weeks to live (evidently true) and is currently heavily medicated at his Frank Gehry-designed compound (six buildings) in Venice beach. Painkillers yes. Compes mentes also yes.
You may have read here that Hopper has filed for divorce from Victoria, his fifth wife of thirteen years who is almost thirty years his junior. According to the Huff Post, daughter Marin is “pulling her father out of his bed and driving him to the divorce lawyers. The poor guy has no idea what is going on.” In other words he didn’t mean it.
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| Dennis Hopper at the Guggenheim. |
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Friends I spoke to tell me that the man is quite aware of what is going on, continues to make his own decisions, and that he had filed for divorce to protect himself from his current wife’s blatant activity in gathering her assets before his will takes over.
The Hopper marriage has been in trouble for quite some time. Last summer when the husband was working in New Mexico (where he had rented a house with all the amenities for his wife and their daughter to join him), Mrs. Hopper instead rented herself a very expensive house in the Hamptons where she spent the summer far far away from her ailing husband.
The husband’s complaints, already listed here in previous posts, have been (on his part) abandonment, lack of interest on the part of his wife. The other complaint that often drives any marriage crazy also includes Mrs. Hopper’s huge expenditures on herself, viz., clothing, jewelry, rental houses in the Hamptons. I’ve heard figures of hundreds of thousands to a million annually. This is an old story for that couple. Her spending habits are well known to many people in their crowd and her husband’s complaints about it are too.
During the Christmas holidays, Hopper, who had been treated for prostate cancer several years ago, collapsed from the pain of what has now been diagnosed as bone cancer which has spread. During that holiday, his wife had left ("disappeared" is the word he used to describe her departure) and was incommunicado, nowhere to be found. Daughter Marin, who has also been living on the compound with her daughter Violet, was the caregiver to her father, staying nearby to help him. When he needed to be hospitalized one very early morning in late December, it was Marin who carried her father down the stairs and drove him to the hospital, and stayed at his bedside. It was when he was in the hospital that Mrs. H returned/suddenly re-appeared (from the East I’ve been told).
The crux of the problem is The Money. What else is new in the world of It’s-Never-Enough. Mrs. Hopper had been executrix of her husband’s Will. Until she made the unheard of demand of a reading BEFORE his death. The reading was carried out.
You read it here: just as it was in Mrs. Hopper’s pre-nup, she was to get 25% percent, their six-year-old child Galen, 15% and his other three children, 20% each. After the reading Mr. Hopper decided to drop his wife as executrix and named his 47-year-old daughter Marin in her place. Fireworks without the Fourth of July, ensued. There was additional fury when she learned that her husband had barred her from his office and his personal files.
Currently Mrs. Hopper is living on the property with their daughter, and her mother and sometimes her sister. For awhile it was behind locked doors; perhaps it still is. “Friends” of Mrs. Hopper were quoted by yesterday’s Huff Post as saying that Marin makes her living booking appearances for her father.
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| Dennis Hopper delivering toast at daughter Marin's wedding in 2003. |
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While it is true that father and daughter (she’s the eldest of his four children) have been close for many years, and worked together in the past (she edited and published a book of her father’s photographs entitled 1712 North Crescent Heights about Hopper’s life when he was married to Marin’s mother Brooke Hayward in the 1960s), she’s been in her own business for years (NYSD readers may recall reading about this a couple of years ago when I interviewed her at a Michael’s lunch), creating products and producing events for Tods, Hogan and Formapura. She’s co-founder and co-owner of Hayward Luxury Inc., an accessories brand inspired by the life and lifestyle of her maternal grandfather Leland Hayward, film and Broadway producer of such shows as “Gypsy” and “Sound of Music.”
Hopper who is cognizant of his terminal condition has been motivated to get his wife out of his hair in his final days. An earlier attempt a couple of months ago involved him moving to the Bevelry Hills Hotel to be free of her. Evidently there have been no changes in the will which honors his pre-nup and equally distributes the remainder to his children.
Wars over wills are common in families where there is a lot of money and more than one wife (including a would-be widow) and children from more than one marriage. It is not uncommon for the last wife to feel entitled to most if not all of the husband/father’s estate. Not infrequently she succeeds in obtaining such through a variety of emotional channels (like demonizing the children in the eyes of their father, or poisoning the parental relationships) before the death-do-us-part.
Mrs. Hopper, so I’ve been told any number of times, has been richly rewarded over the years since the day she met the aging star (and mega-art collector) when she was hostessing in a local restaurant he patronized. Her rewards have been, if nothing else, in the form of jewels, paintings, vast amounts for clothes, as well as property. That does not include the division of the estate in the will.
Although he has been a generous father, none of Dennis Hopper’s children have been recipients of large amounts of cash, art or real estate. This is often typical in a marriage, particularly a May-December alliance, after several previous marriages.
The question arises: why did Dennis Hopper wait until he got to this point to dissolve a failed marriage? Most likely his health and his age and the fact that he has a child by this current marriage were factors in “going along.” Now his resistance is worn, and it is in the hands of the lawyers. And so, if Mrs. Hopper gets litigious, then so too, will much of the estate end up in the hands (and pockets) of the lawyers and not the heirs, including the wife. Ahh, sweet mystery of life. |
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| Riding back home on the FDR Drive North after the Vital Voices at the Bowery Hotel: there's a moment in the curve of the highway around the lows 20s when the city lights are breathtaking. I was too late with the camera to capture the grandeur but couldn't resist a shot of the Queens shoreline, the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, and the 59th Street Bridge on a beautiful night in New York. |
| Last Saturday night I went to dinner at the Waverly Inn with my friends Sara Vass and Richard Mauro. The Waverly was cozy and candlelit (and very crowded) on this weekend night. Outside some of the clientele were taking a cigarette break. |
| Leaning against (and anchored to) a pole was someone's custom decorated two-wheeler. |
| Sara Vass and Richard Mauro. |
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