ELDER ABUSE:
After his death, the world learned that Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee was the victim of horrendous abuse – and he was not alone. As William Langley reveals, elder abuse is rife in Hollywood.
Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee’s personal horror story
Like the superheroes who sprang from his blotter, Stan Lee, the maestro of Marvel Comics, seemed blessed with special powers. Among them was a phenomenal energy that kept him working into his 90s, an irresistible charm that could disarm the toughest of critics, and a laser-like business brain that helped revolutionise Hollywood. By the time he died last November, aged 95, Stan’s creations – Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Black Panther and The Avengers – had come to dominate the modern cinema box office, and the one-time New York sandwich slicer was a global cult figure.
There was, though, one bunch of not-so-comic adversaries that
Stan couldn’t defeat. Shockingly, it included some of the people closest to him. In the months since his death, a wave of allegations of mistreatment, cruelty and exploitation has washed through Hollywood, appalling his fans and highlighting the perils of growing old in a celebrity culture focused on youth, beauty and easy money.
“I saw all the vultures, snakes, leeches, jackals and coyotes circle around Stan to grab a piece of his flesh,” says his flamboyant former manager, Keya Morgan. “When you’re at your weakest somebody kicks you, especially when you’re a 95-year-old man.”
But now Morgan, a bowler-hatted former antiques dealer who claims friendship with some of Hollywood’s biggest names, is himself under arrest, accused of falsely imprisoning Stan and embezzling
$5 million from his estate. Another close business associate has been charged – grotesquely – with stealing Stan’s blood to sell to souvenir hunters in Las Vegas. Even Stan’s actress daughter, Joan Celia, has been accused of abusing him.
The case, following several others involving much-loved veteran celebrities, has caused soul-searching far beyond Hollywood. Like many Western countries, the US is experiencing an epidemic of elder abuse, driven by a perilous combination of increasing life expectancy and the shifting of wealth towards the older generation.
Over the next 20 to 30 years an astounding $30 trillion worth of assets held by US baby boomers will be passed on, much of it in the form of homes and possessions that the boomers’ children couldn’t otherwise afford.
“But the kids are having to wait a lot longer than they expected,” says Michael Hackard, a prominent California estate lawyer and writer on the subject. “So what we’re seeing is a phenomenon we call ‘inheritance impatience’. Add that to the obvious vulnerabilities people suffer as they get older, and it’s a perfect storm.”
Born in Depression-era New York, Stan left school at 15, taking a series of low-grade jobs before arriving as an office boy at Timely Publications, a company which grew into the multi-billion dollar Marvel Comics juggernaut. In an astonishingly productive 80-year career, he created dozens of celebrated comic characters, and was still working long hours until shortly before his death. One of the key questions investigators are now asking is whether he should have been. Or even wanted to.
Orbiting around Stan and his
$100 million fortune was a colourful corps of “aides” and “advisors”, including Morgan, who boasts of being friends with everyone from the mega-rich Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to former US President Barack Obama. Yet the most perplexing presence is that of Stan’s 69-year-old daughter, known as JC.
Court documents obtained by the film industry paper The Hollywood Reporter reveal that Stan and his late wife, Joan, set up a trust fund for JC, who, it appears, was regularly beset by financial problems and prone to chronic overspending.
“It is not uncommon for JC to charge, in any given month, $20,000 to $40,000 on credit cards – sometimes more,” one document reads, quoting Stan as saying that when he and JC argue over money, “which is often… she typically yells and screams at me and cries hysterically if I do not capitulate”.
A familiar figure in the ritzy boutiques and brasseries of Beverly Hills, JC, who has never married and only worked occasionally, is described as “kooky”, “fragile” and “impulsively generous”. Her fraught relationship with her father was well known in family circles, but few would have suspected her of being directly abusive.
That perception changed when Stan’s former business manager, Bradley Herman, went public with an account of witnessing a furious row between JC and her parents, during which Stan threatened to cut off his daughter’s allowance. Herman claims he heard Stan shouting: “I’ve had it with you, you ungrateful bitch. I’m going to stick you in a little apartment and take away your credit cards.” As tempers rose, JC allegedly assaulted both her parents, leaving them with contusions and bruises.
Speaking through her Hollywood lawyer, Kirk Schenck, JC flatly denies the incident, pointing to other statements that highlight her good relationship with her father, and is counter-attacking with a wave of
lawsuits against other prominent figures in Stan’s circle. In one court paper, she claims that her father was “the victim of an evil plot… of the kind typically found in comic books”. The allegations include that Stan was forced to work gruelling days at Marvel fan conventions, signing autographs for hours at a time even though he could barely remember his name. It’s claimed much of the income from these lucrative sessions was then siphoned off by his managers.
At one gathering held at a Las Vegas casino, stolen samples of Stan’s blood, apparently obtained from one of his nurses, were allegedly used to sign copies of Black Panther comics at hiked-up prices. Amid the distressing details of the case, what emerges most poignantly is how Stan’s world began to fall apart when his beloved Englishborn wife, Joan, died in 2017 after 70 years of marriage.
“Upon her death,” says a court deposition, “Mr Lee became the target of various unscrupulous businessmen, sycophants and opportunists who saw a chance to take advantage of his despondent state of mind.”
Such vulnerabilities lie at the heart of what Thomas Susman, a director of the American Bar Association, describes as “the crime wave of the 21st century”. Lawyers report a massive upsurge in elder-abuse cases, many of them complicated by the fact that the victims are often frail or confused, and the abusers have easy access to them. “Very often it’s the people with the most responsibility who are the worst offenders,” says Hackard. “They know which buttons to press, and they have a financial incentive.” Stan’s ordeal is far from the first to reverberate through Hollywood. Eight years ago, the US Congress heard harrowing testimony from Mickey Rooney, one of the nation’s most revered stars, of being abused by his own family. “For years I suffered silently,” he said. “I couldn’t muster the courage, and you have to have courage. I needed help and I knew I needed it. Even when I tried to speak out, I was told to shut up and be quiet.” In a detailed, emotional account of his mistreatment, particularly at the hands of his stepson and stepdaughter, the actor described being kept a prisoner in his own home, denied food and medicine and forced to work against his will. “When a man feels helpless, it is terrible,” he haltingly told Congress. “And I was helpless. For years I suffered silently, unable to muster the courage to seek the help I knew I needed.” When Mickey – a last link to the cinema’s Golden Age, who was once hailed by Sir Laurence Olivier as “the greatest ever film actor” – died in 2014, aged 93, only $18,000 was left in his estate. Other star names, including Tony Curtis, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mary Tyler Moore, have been at the centre of similar abuse allegations. When Curtis died in 2010 after a glittering Hollywood career, his five children, including actress Jamie Lee Curtis, found they had been left nothing. Inquiries revealed that the actor’s will had been radically changed a few months before his death, ensuring his entire fortune went to his muchyounger sixth wife, Jill Vandenberg. The children sued, claiming their father had been subjected to:
“She yells and screams at me and cries hysterically.”
“duress, menace, fraud or undue influence” and an out-of-court settlement was eventually reached.
Zsa Zsa, the eccentric Hungarian-born actress famed for her waggish aphorisms (“I am a great housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house”) found herself, in old age, the prize in a battle between her estranged daughter, Francesca Hilton, and her ninth husband, the self-styled Prince Frédéric von Anhalt, Duke of Saxony, Engern and Westphalia. Each accused the other of coercing and exploiting Zsa Zsa – a stand-off that only ended with Francesca’s death from a stroke, shortly before Zsa Zsa herself died, aged 99, in 2016.
Partly as a result of these highprofile cases, the US passed a new law two years ago, toughening the protections for older citizens, but all the statistics say the problem is only getting worse.
Experts point to the breakdown of the traditional, multi-generational family, which often stayed in the same neighbourhood or town and served as a support system for older relatives. But the real driver of the current epidemic is the staggering amount of money locked up in the estates of an ageing population.
Kristen Lewis, of America’s Trust and Estate Counsel, calls elder abuse “a societal plague” that is difficult to defend against because of the particular circumstances it tends to arise in. “Very often the victims are reluctant to report it,” she says.
“They are mortified by the thought that people they know would take advantage of them, and oddly enough they don’t want friends and family members to go to jail.”
The “plague” is worldwide and growing. New Zealand’s Office for Seniors estimates that as many as one in 10 older people in New Zealand will experience some kind of elder abuse. Over half the cases involve financial abuse and three-quarters of abusers are family members – most often children or grandchildren.
A key factor, according to a West Australian parliamentary committee report, is the rising numbers of “boomerang kids” driven back to parents’ homes after losing jobs or suffering relationship breakdowns. The strains of these living arrangements often cause problems that undermine formerly loving relationships and eventually lead to abuse.
What can be done? With billions of dollars at stake and ever-rising numbers of older people, “Elder Law” has become the fastest growing branch of the US legal system, and new mechanisms of checks and scrutiny are rapidly taking root.
One precaution is to arrange independent checks of finances, ensuring that any sudden outflow of funds or sales of possessions will be flagged.
Campaigners advise looking for other, less obvious signs, such as unexplained bruises, weight loss or poor hygiene. Carers – whether hired or from within the family – who seem anxious to keep their charges out of sight or prevent them from talking should be treated with suspicion.
Part of Stan Lee’s genius was understanding that even a superhero could suffer hurt. He gave his characters strength by prescribing them weaknesses. He allowed them to fail, to think and to worry.
“I set out with the idea,” he once said, “that just because a guy could shimmy up skyscrapers it didn’t mean he wouldn’t get dandruff or be dumped by his girlfriend, and that was why people suddenly started saying that these were characters they could believe in.”
Indestructibility was part of the story that Stan wove around himself, but in the end he was another vulnerable old man who needed looking after. And there were few heroes of any kind in his last chapter.