A very un-aristocratic Charlene Marshall - "Miss Piggy" - would show up at her husband's trial every day. And emote inappropriately.
That husband was Anthony Marshall, son of Brooke Astor. Eventually he was convicted of trying to defraud his mother, who never seemed to like him much. It was his two sons who blew the whistle on him. He spent time in the slammer but got off the hook for medical reasons.
All the world and especially Everyman America enjoyed this play-out of the dysfunctions of the rich. In America, we expect the stories of those aristocrats to eventually turn out badly. The old riches to rags in several generations. Even the Kennedys and the Bushes could run out of money.
Well this particular story ends with Miss Piggy inheriting the little that was left of the family fortune: $14+ million. Peanuts, given that another branch of American aristocracy - The Clintons - can pick that up with a few weeks of hard-charging paid speech-giving. Marshall's two sons were shut out of the will.
The odds are that Miss Piggy will squander her inheritance. Soon enough we could read that she turns up at shelter in Manhattan or for a temp job at a call center. She will be processing orders for flowers to be delivered on Mother's Day. Likely she will have unhappy memories of her times with her own mother-in-law Brooke who didn't seem to like her much either.
The Astors had been fun to watch for a few centuries. Now, that's over.
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