The curtain goes up this week on a courtroom drama pitting the longtime attorney of the late Broadway great Richard Adler against his high-living fifth wife — with big bucks at stake.
The Tony-winning writer, composer and producer is famous for 1950s hits “Damn Yankees” and “Pajama Game” and for producing the 1962 fund-raiser that featured Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”
In the years before Adler died in 2012 at 90, his wife, Susan Ivory, 70, went on a spending spree, lawyer Norman Solovay, the executor of Adler’s $22 million estate, says in papers filed in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court. Ivory spent more in 2010 than her hubby’s music company took in, Solovay says.
The company, Lakshmi Puja, which brings in about a half- million bucks a year, owns the rights to Adler’s biggest hit songs, including “Hey, There,” “Hernando’s Hideaway” and “Whatever Lola Wants.”
“The money was still being used among other things for trips for Susan and her children and other extravagances,” according to Solovay..
The indulgences included a family jaunt to the Balkans for Ivory and her kids from a previous marriage while the 89-year-old Adler stayed at home, said a source close to the case.
Ivory also threw a 90th birthday party in Southampton for Adler and 75 of his friends even though the composer looked like a “statue” who could barely speak, Solovay said.
After Adler died, Solovay accused Ivory of trying to swipe funds from the composer’s two grandchildren, Demian Delshay Adler and Scarlett Cheyenne Adler. They’re the children of Adler’s only son Andrew and ownd 36.5 percent of Puja.
“She [Ivory] continued to refuse to recognize the grandchildren’s . . . trust interest in the music company and to misappropriate their funds in a way that now might well be described as theft,” Solovay charges.
Ivory, the sole employee of Puja, pays herself a $75,000 salary, the source said.
Solovay was originally the sole executor of Adler’s will.
Ivory allegedly manipulated her feeding-tube-aided husband into making multiple changes to his will in a codicil he signed in June 2011.
They added Ivory as a co-executor and also gave $1.3 million to her children while allegedly depriving the composer’s friends and favorite charitable organizations of their bequests.
The codicil did not change provisions dividing the vast bulk of his estate between Ivory and Andrew.
Ivory and her lawyer did not return calls for comment.