Meryl Gordon: The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark
Huguette Clark died in 2011 in a private room in Beth Israel Hospital, where she had “lived” for more than 20 years.
Huguette Clark was born in 1906 and grew up in her family’s 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. Her father, William Andrews Clark, was a copper magnate, the second richest man in America, and not above bribing his way into the Senate.
At 22, with a personal fortune of $50 million to her name, she married a childhood friend, William MacDonald Gower. Two years later the couple divorced. After a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society—first living with her mother and then moving into a lavish apartment on Fifth Avenue.
All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? What was her life like in that hospital? What happened to her millions of dollars?
Meryl Gordon is also the author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach. She is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and New York Magazine, and the director of Magazine Writing at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Host: Arlyne Krum
Cost: Free for members, $15 for guests
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