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And she was fixed up with Vincent Astor in Memorial - on Memorial Day, and he proposed literally over the weekend.

Most of his money was tied up in trust, went to his children, some to his ex-wife. And Brooke discovered that she wasn't going to have a whole lot of money. She married three times, and her second husband, who Nancy Reagan described as the love of her life, Buddy Marshall, had died suddenly of a heart attack in November of 1952. The way she's described it, and others have, she was a recent widow. GORDON: It certainly doesn't sound that way. It's fair to say that the marriage between Vincent Astor and Brooke was not a great love match, isn't it? SIMON: Let me ask you about that marriage to Vincent Astor, who essentially inherited his family fortune when his father, I guess, went down on the Titanic. So I think she had her own persona well before she became a gazillionaire. She was in her 50s when she married Vincent Astor. So I think that even before she became the fabulous Mrs. GORDON: I think so, because there was just a genuine warmth to her and talent as a writer, interest in other people. SIMON: I have to ask, would people have detected that twinkle in her eye if she hadn't been so rich? And in her autobiography, "Footprints," she wrote about her mother's flirtations. GORDON: Oh, she learned the art of flirting from her mother. What I found fascinating as I was doing my interviews for the book is that it seemed like every man I talked to from 30 year-olds to 80 year-olds, gay, straight, married, they would say, oh, Brooke, with this kind of look of enchantment with her.

GORDON: She really led a remarkable life and warm, charming, talented. So many people said that she had this twinkle in her eye. SIMON: First, tell us a bit about Brooke Astor. Astor Regrets." She joins us from New York. Meryl Gordon covered that story for New York Magazine and has written extensively about the world of the Astors. Her grandson, Philip, went to court to accuse his father Anthony of mistreating his grandmother, firing those who took care of her, and skimping so much in her care that she was made to lie down on a sofa soaked with dog urine.Īnd then after Brooke Astor died in 2007, her son, Anthony, was indicted for stealing from and defrauding his mother. In 2006, that name splashed across the headlines of a grim and pathetic story. Brooke Astor spent most of her life, and she lived to 105, putting her name on good works and giving some of the fortune that she had inherited to New York's foremost museums, community projects, and the public library.